East African pomegranate citrus juice

How's that sound? Good, yes, and we had two pomegranates from the gigantic fruit basket that Ray and Edith gave us, and some spare oranges and tangerines, and we were thirsty, so for breakfast on the day after Christmas, I made some juice. Kevin helped. We used a recipe from A Vegan Taste of East Africa by Linda Majzlik.

Step one, cut two pomegranates and spoon out the seeds.


Two, boil with two cups water and a tablespoon of brown sugar, five minutes.


Three, put cooked seeds in fridge while squeezing a couple cups of fresh juice, using high-leverage press made in Aguascalientes, Mexico.


Four, when the seeds are cool, squeeze out as much juice as possible.

Five, mix and serve. Very refreshing!

Strawberry Muffins

I made these muffins this morning with fresh Plant City strawberries. Plant City, FL, which is about 15 miles east of Tampa, is known and the winter strawberry capital of the world, and according to Wiki, is named for its flora (vegetables, fruits, and tropical plants). This recipe was adapted from one I found online, that specifically called for Florida strawberries.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh strawberries
• 1/2 cup turbinado sugar
  
• 1/4 cup turbinado sugar
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• a few extra sliced strawberries for garnish
  

DIRECTIONS

1. In a small bowl, combine the strawberries and 1/2 cup sugar. Set aside for about 1 hour. Drain, reserving liquid and berries separately.
2. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Grease a 12 cup muffin tin, or line with paper liners.
3. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and 1/4 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt and nutmeg; stir into the creamed mixture alternately with the juice from the berries. Gently stir in the berries. Spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups.
4. Garnish muffin tops with sliced strawberries
   
5. Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the tops spring back when lightly touched. Cool in the pan on a wire rack.

A nice bowl of (soupy) oatmeal

I know there are a lot of oatmeal fans out there: John, a year-round oatmeal man who fortifies his with a big spoonful of peanut butter; Kevin, who makes it as a snack any time of day or night; Mike, a steel-cut oats purist; and Pam, who sits next to me at the winter table eating something hot and made of oats, but quite different than my oatmeal.

I like mine real soupy, with lots of nuts and fruit. (So soupy that certain family members make fun of it.)

I start with whatever piece of fruit Pam has cut in half, usually a pear or apple because it's winter, sometimes a banana or peach. Chop that up, then break up a good half handful of walnuts or pecans or mixed nuts, and for extra flavor add in some chopped dried fruit, like the excellent apricots and plums that Brian gave me for Christmas.

And of course the oats, just under a half-cup of quick oats from the cardboard tube.

I add enough water mixed half and half with soy milk or dairy milk to almost fill the bowl, and give it four minutes in our underpowered microwave. If it comes out thick, I add some more water before sitting down to read the papers and take in a fine well-balanced meal. That's good eating!

breakfast at noon

ahem. this is Grace reporting on my status in foods. shown right here is my breakfast at noon. (no-i did not wake up ant noon. ) these are english whole wheat muffins with philadelphia straberry cream chees. the brown gunk on the top is a generous helping of cinnamon sugar. of course, this would be better on a real bagel and with plain cream cheese. alas, we did not have either. but if you want to stop by with bagels and cream cheese, that would be greatly appreciated. i understand that you have not seen the before pics of tis years gingerbread house... only the devestated after's. here you go-well, aparently, it didwhere i wanted to, but who cares. thats the completed gingerbread house,yogi, and a doll started eting the gingerbread house. i think i'll call this one "when plastic dolls attack. and Carolyn... have you looked at your sandwich comments latley?

Christmas observed -- with Royal Family Dosa

We decided to have an early Christmas celebration because Janet is leaving town tomorrow, and I had promised to make my "famous" dosa while all the kids were home, so this was our opportunity. And we invited Granny to join in the festivities.

Dosa are those South Indian pancakes that you serve with a spicy soup/sauce called sambar, and they aren't so hard to make thanks to MTR (Pure and Perfect Since 1924, a company out of Bangalore) Instant Mix Rava Dosa. Like it says on the package, "Whether it's a snack or part of a meal, crisp golden dosa are now so easy to make."

What you need is a good hot cast iron frying pan filmed with a bit of oil, or in our case, three of them going at once. You mix the powder with enough water so that when it hits the hot pan it makes a great sizzling noise and creates bubbles in the batter, which is mostly semolina and rice flour. Before flipping the pancakes, you garnish with chopped onions, cilantro and thin slices of fresh jalapeño.

I had trouble flipping some of them because the dough broke apart, but the one in the picture and a few others came out perfectly. Dip them in the MTR sambar, which is redgram (lentils) and spices with added potatoes, and you have yourself a nice spicy meal. For a cooling balance, we also had Pam's new Mexican Christmas salad, with jicama, roasted beets, pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, lettuce and oranges.

That was fun, especially all the frenzy around the hot frying pans, but there was one incident. The raw jalapeños were pretty strong, and I was sweating pretty well from eating them, so I wiped my face near my eyes, but YOW! I was wiping with the hand that I used to sprinkle the peppers onto the dosa, and in about three seconds my eyes were blazing and tearing enough that Janet rushed to the laptop to seek remedies. She suggested aloe vera, so I cut a branch off a handy plant (thanks Sandra!) and everyone laughed at me as I swabbed my nose and around my eyes with aloe juice. Ahhh, what relief.

We opened our own presents and then Brian and Sheila and Erin and Adam and Grace stopped over and we opened a few more, all of us jammed into the kitchen because the rest of the first floor is out of commission due to construction. It was a fine pre-Christmas celebration.

And now Janet's home

The scientist from Sarasota flew into Midway Saturday evening and was only slightly delayed by the snowstorm. We needed to eat and Janet had a hankering for real Mexican food, so I suggested Atotonilco Taqueria on 47th west of Ashland, the flagship restaurant of the company that makes what I consider the best tortillas in Chicago (yes, better than El Milagro). So we moved slowly through the snow from Midway and had an egg torta (Janet) and egg or avocado tacos (Pam and me), with orchata or licuados to drink.

I wish I could say the food was great, as that's what I remember from when I discovered the place maybe 15 years ago, but it was just so-so, a bit dry and with big pieces of winter tomato that didn't make things better. And they were frying up a bunch of carnitas for the next day's
Sunday-noon traffic, which didn't make things especially appetizing for us non-carnivores. But the tortillas were good, very fresh (the factory is half a block west) and a bit crispy.

Now our own Sunday lunch, that was better. Pam made her famous chipotle potatoes with sides of green beans and avocadoes, and I fried up some Phil's free-range eggs. We cleaned our plates while Janet told Granny about her new concentration in cancer immunotherapy and Granny told us about her awesome immune system and her quick recovery from the recent stent placement in her leg.

That's two kids home with Kevin due to arrive on Wednesday, so Pam and I went to Dino's (now known as Devon Market) and filled up the shopping cart with wide variety of foodstuffs, just like in the old days when we had to feed five hungry people every day.

That's what I call fun stuff.