I know that the District used to have incredibly tight regulations about food carts, which they’ve recently started to relax, but even downtown there are few food carts, and most of them are dominated by tourist-friendly hot dogs and ice cream – nothing a hungry office worker would ever grab for lunch.  In the neighborhood of my office, outside DC proper, there’s almost nothing.

DC has plenty of good, local restaurants.  Why this lack of food carts?  I have to believe it’s because of regulations and obstacles, not the lack of inspired entrepreneurs.  If so, that’s a sad thing.

I think this is the 4th year in a row that I’ve gone – every year that I’ve lived in the DC area, which seems now like a stunningly long time.  Every year I go, my experience and perspective is a little different.  This year… I feel cynical.  I walked through the main hall, where all the exhibitors have their tables, and was struck by the impression that, apparently, you have to spend a lot of money to be green.  There are a LOT of things to buy.  And, honestly, I wonder how green some of them really are.  Green America screens all the exhibitors, so you can be assured that all of them meet a standard, but the value of some of them is debatable.  Should you buy bottled iced tea?  Sure, it’s healthier than soda, but is it that much better for the environment than bottled water?  Why not buy some loose tea and brew your own iced tea?  It’s not rocket science.  Or, how about a soda-making machine for your home?  That doesn’t have the high carbon footprint from shipping water around the world, but what are the health impacts?  Should you really be drinking so much soda that it makes financial sense for you to make it yourself?  What about all the processed foods being sold?  Sure, the companies are green, but is it better to support a green company or cook for yourself?

These sorts of questions, conversations, and introspection are notably absent from the Green Festival, which at times seems to be more about creating new green consumers than greener lifestyles.  There are a lot of great companies there, doing some really noble things.  But there isn’t much debate about how to be green, or what it even means to be green.  The event is very green-economy focused, which is not surprising considering the organizations behind it.  Green America does amazing work critiquing large, irresponsible corporations and promoting small, green businesses in their place.  But because of that focus, there’s a whole side of the green lifestyle that’s not really represented, which is the notion that we, as a society, should start consuming less.

That gap is partially, but not satisfactorily, covered by the really top-notch speakers.  Again the topics vary, but most of the speakers focus more on the big picture and the future of the movement than on particular steps (or purchases) to make you greener.  This year, I had the good fortune to hear Dr. Cornel West and Joel Salatin.

Dr. West talked about the need for justice, and tied that need to the green movement.  I don’t think I can give a fair summary of his talk – it was rambling and inspiring and ended up as a cluster of big ideas in my head without particular points that I can remember and articulate.  But the gist was that there’s still a lot of injustice in the world, and that not only should Washington be addressing it, but we each need to live our lives with justice and love (Dr West is big on love) in our hearts.

The second speaker, Joel Salatin, took a much more political, pratical approach to being green.  He’s a farmer and one of the major advocates for small, sustainable farms in our agricultural policies.  He runs Polyface Farms in Virginia – if you’ve read Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” you’ll probably remember Salatin as the prime example of small organic farming.  He’s quite a speaker, and he’s unapologetically critical of Big Agriculture and the USDA (which he pronounces “U-S-Duh”).  His talk was called “Everything I want to do is illegal” and he took us on a whirlwind tour of the regulations designed for big factory farms that make it prohibitively complicated and expensive for small farms to do business.  He was especially vicious about the USDA’s insistence that farmers use “science-based” practices… while refusing to recognize studies suggesting that factory farming itself puts our food in more danger than small farming ever could.  At their heart, Salatin says, government regulations are designed on the assumption that farmers (large farms, that is) will do everything they can to cut corners… while honest, hard-working farmers who put their personal integrity towards the food they produce are forced to play by the same rules as the big guys.

From Salatin came my new favorite guideline for deciding whether to favor a government regulation: “If Monsanto’s for it, I’m against it!”  (Monsanto being the biggest of the big industrial agriculture corporations – whether or not you know them by name, they’re involved in the production of almost everything you eat.)

I think Salatin shared some of my frustration with the festival – towards the end, he somewhat apologetically shared something he “just had to get off his chest”: there were a lot of great companies at the Green Festival, but we’d all be better off if we’d just buy food from our local farmers, and cook it ourselves.  Amen to that!

Both the talks I saw were great, but there was still an overwhelming lack of dialog – lots of incredibly smart people sharing their ideas one at a time, with no conversation between them.

Maybe the Green Festival isn’t the right forum for that sort of dialog and deeper thinking, but I’m not sure what the right place would be.  Maybe it requires an entirely new event.  But it felt to me like something was missing – there was lots of joyful consumerism and sharing of innovation, but very little introspection.

Or maybe I am just getting old and cynical…

The truth is, I started making the gnocchi with the thought of writing about how easy it was, how it seems so intimidating but really it’s a breeze, how I don’t know why everyone doesn’t make them all the time.  Then I made them, and it simply wasn’t so.  These things were kind of a pain in the ass.  A tasty pain, but still a pain.

None of the steps are very hard, or complex, or finicky.  That’s a benefit: there’s very little chance you could mess these up.  It might take an afternoon, and they might not be pretty, but you will have gnocchi and it will be good.  There is plenty of labor involved, though, and I’ll give you one piece of advice: if you have a good stand mixer, use it.  I think that’s where I got my misconceptions: last time I made these, I was in an industrial kitchen and had a mixer as big as me to do the hard work.  If you’re mixing by hand, be prepared to work it.  Or draft a “volunteer” to help you.

The process is straightforward, so simple that you barely need a recipe.  In fact, the recipe might be counterproductive, since the proportions are almost sure not to be what the recipe says.  Here’s what you do: first boil some potatoes – mashing potatoes like Russets are best, because once they’re cooked through, you’ll need to peel them and mash them.  Make sure they’re really, really smooth, then start to stir in flour.  And more flour.  And more flour.  But not too much!  You’re aiming for a dough that you can handle and shape nicely – but I never got mine beyond “tolerably sticky”.  The pretty, uniform gnocchi that you can find at nice Italian restaurants?  Mine looked nothing like that.  Mine looked more like globs, because I got tired of stirring in flour.  Once the dough is at whatever point it’s going to be at, form it into little balls and drop them, a few at a time, into simmering water.  In two or three minutes, they’ll start to float, and then you just fish them out and eat them.

The good news is that once they’re covered in sauce, no one cares in the slightest what they look like, and they will taste delicious even if your potato-to-flour ratio is slightly off.

One recipe I read suggested a pound of potatoes to a cup of flour – but it’ll undoubtedly vary with your potatoes and your flour.

That’s all there is to it.  You could probably add other things to them: a little salt and pepper, some finely grated parmesan (which I did), even some herbs.  But at the core, they’re just potato and flour.  But when you eat them, they’re so light and fluffy, you’d never know it.

If you think that’s fun, the next thing to try is cheese gnocchi – similar creatures, but perhaps even more delicious.  I made the cheese gnocchi recipe from Moosewood a couple years ago, and it was… well, come to think of it, maybe it’s about time to make those again…

I’m perplexed by the apparent strength of feeling many cooks have for the subject.  Sure, dried beans come out better than canned ones – but are they so much better that it’s worth the extra effort?  In general, I say no.  (Garbanzos may be an exception in my book – I find that canned garbanzos sometimes have an off taste.

Cooking dried beans isn’t hard, but it does require you to plan ahead by almost a full day.  First, you soak the beans for at least 8 hours.  Then you simmer them for several hours (depending on the variety) or cook them all day in a slow cooker.  You can pressure cook them, but that still takes almost an hour.  If you’re me, you still risk turning them to mush, regardless of your chosen cooking method.  For that reason, I’ve always felt that dried beans are nice, but canned beans are a perfectly acceptable substitute for the average meal.

I’m gratified to see that Mark Bittman agrees that maybe canned beans aren’t so bad after all.  I’d think that dried beans run somewhat counter to the idea of being a Minimalist – wouldn’t you?

Well, who says I can’t eat popsicles as an adult?  I didn’t think of it until I read Kettle And Cup’s idea for tea popsicles, which I haven’t tried yet even though I keep meaning to.  But I love icy snacks, and I went out shortly thereafter and got a set of my own popsicle molds.

Even in just the 2 weeks I’ve had them, I’ve been having a ton of fun, and discovering all sorts of things that make good popsicles.  Since the molds I got are individual, you can refill each one as you empty it, which means potentially and ever-changing rotation of flavors.

So far, my favorites are actually the simplest: orange juice is the best, followed closely by chocolate milk.  But you can freeze just about anything, and I’m looking forward to trying some tea pops soon (but it’ll be so hard to decide on the flavors!)  There are also some great lists out there with ideas for what to freeze.

Do you have fond memories of homemade popsicles from your childhood?  Have you refused to give them up?  Tell me some of your favorites!

I was starting at a disadvantage – when you think of chili, the first words that come to mind are probably “meaty” and “spicy”.  Mine could be neither, if Nathan and I wanted to eat it.  Since it couldn’t compete on traditional grounds, it had to have something else that made it distinctive.  I pulled inspiration from a few different cookbooks and went for strong, sweet-savory flavors: roasted garlic and bell peppers, toasted spices, vegetables cooked very very slowly, and a long simmer for the whole concoction.  And it worked!  My mild vegetarian chili won second place, right after the really spicy full-of-meat chili.

This recipe is a departure from my usual style of cooking.  It’s involved, it’s time-consuming, and it’s totally worth it to put in the effort – it pays off directly in flavor.  But, I bet it could still be pretty tasty with some simplifications, and that would make it much more reasonable to cook for a normal meal.  I’ve tried to indicate some of those shortcuts in the instructions.  Anything you can do in advance – especially roasting the garlic and peppers, a day or two before when you have some time – will help.  I used dried anasazi beans (a red-and-white heirloom variety) because I saw them in the store and thought they were pretty, but you could use canned pinto beans without losing much.  On the flip side, I used canned roasted tomatoes from Muir Glen, for the added flavor, but you could use diced fresh tomatoes, or roast your own.

Red and Orange Roasted Chili

• 1 head plus 3 cloves garlic
• 1 onion
• 1 tb olive oil
• 1/2 tsp whole cumin
• 1 tsp oregano
• 2 red or orange bell peppers
• 2 carrots
• 4 oz. mushrooms
• 2 cans diced or crushed tomatoes (preferably roasted)
• 3 cups soaked, drained, and cooked anasazi or pinto beans
• 1 tb paprika
• 2 tb maple syrup (optional)
• 1 tsp cider vinegar (optional)
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Roast the head of garlic: drizzle it with olive oil, cover with foil, and bake at 350 for about an hour.  Stop when it’s soft; you can remove the foil towards the end, but watch for burning.  When it’s cool, you have the messy, gooey job of separating the soft garlic from the papery skins.  Mash the garlic to a pulp and set it aside.  (Simplify: roast the garlic ahead of time, or find it pre-packaged at a store.  But really, you should roast it yourself because it will make your house smell delicious.)
2. Roast the peppers; place on a foil-covered tray, in a 400+ oven, and turn every few minutes as the tops blacken.  When they’re soft and sagging, remove them from the oven and put them in a paper bag or covered bowl for a few minutes.  This will gather steam and help remove the skins.  When they’re cool, remove the stems, seeds, and skins, and dice the pepper flesh.  Set aside.  (Simplify: roasting gives the peppers a whole new dimension of flavor, and contributes a lot to the chili, but you could simply dice them and add them in with the other vegetables if you have no time.)
3. On a small dry pan, toast cumin and oregano over low heat for a couple minutes, until they smell very good.  Crush them in a mortar and pestle, then mince the remaining garlic and mash it together with the spices.  (Simplify: I think this step is fun, but you can skip it without too many ill effects.)
4. Heat olive oil in a large pan.  Mince the onion and cook it very slowly until it’s soft.  Add the minced garlic and spices, and cook a few minutes more.
5. Finely chop the carrots and mushrooms, add to the onions, and cook slowly until they begin to soften.
6. Combine vegetables, roasted garlic and peppers, beans, tomatoes, paprika, maple syrup, and vinegar in a large saucepan or slow cooker.  In saucepan, simmer gently for 30 minutes or so; in slow cooker, cook on low for several hours.

Example: last week we had artichokes.  I prepared them very simply, in the way I usually do: steam for 45 minutes, then dip the leaves in melted butter with a little garlic or lemon, and eat.  Utterly delicious!

Now, as much as I love artichokes, I’ve always thought of them as a special treat, which is probably why I always prepare them in the one way I know I really like.  Why mess with a good thing, right?  But I know there are other good ways to make artichokes; I’ve heard of braising them, stuffing them, and all sorts of wild things.  I’ve been hesitant to try any new recipes when I have them so rarely, but I’m thinking maybe this winter is a good time to experiment a little.

So, I’d love some advice.  What are your favorite ways to cook whole artichokes?  Any suggestions?

Pick it, ship it off to a factory.  Grind it up, separate it, mix it up with enzymes and catalysts and all sorts of complex chemical processes; out comes high-fructose corn syrup and a number of other products, like stabilizers and preservatives and the like.

Ship off your HFCS and other corn derivatives to another factory.  Mix them together, mold them into a tiny shape that vaguely resembles an ear of corn, and dye it in corn-looking colors.  Call it “candy corn”:

Looks like corn, sort of.  Comes from corn, sort of.  Tastes like corn, not at all.  Seems like a lot of work to get something that’s like corn, but isn’t.  Still, I love the stuff – it’s one of my rare indulgences, kind of like how I’m still fond of processed cheese dip, even though I know it’s fake if I think too much about it.  And if there’s an organic/natural candy equivalent for candy corn, I’ve never seen it.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

I have to ask: why?  Is even just-add-water packaged/flavored oatmeal too hard?  For about 50 cents you can combine your own cereal, milk, and sweetener in a bowl and microwave it for a couple minutes, getting something that’s probably healthier and definitely made the way you like it.  Plus, when you buy in bulk (instead of individually-packaged servings), there’s almost no waste, which is a big plus for the environment.

Sometimes I think we take the idea of convencience “cooking” too far.  What other products have you seen out there that are creating more convenience where none is needed?

A lot of people out there never think of making applesauce from scratch, because it’s so easily accessible from a jar.  I would argue that it’s so easy, and so good, to make from scratch that it’s absolutely worth it – if you’ve never made it yourself before, it will be the best applesauce you’ve ever tasted.  It’s more flavorful, undoubtedly more appley.  You can season it to taste – as much (or as little) sugar, cinnamon, and clove as you like.  It takes little more effort to make a big pot than a little one, and it keeps well, so it’s great to make a bunch and have it on hand.

And the best part?  While it’s cooking, your whole house will smell like apples.

This is almost another non-recipe because it’s so easy, and the quantities are so flexible.  Be bold and experiment – it’s hard for it to go wrong.

Applesauce

4-6 apples (multiply at will)
water, cider, or juice
1/4 to 1/2 c sugar if desired
Cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves

The only tricky part is the apples: make sure they’re good sauce apples.  There are so many varieties that I can’t advise you on what’s best, but most farmer’s markets and grocers will put descriptions to tell you which apples are good for baking and sauce.

Peel, core, and coarsely chop the apples.  Put them in a pot large enough that you can stir them comfortably.

Add about 1/2 cup of liquid – this will keep the bottom from burning before the apples soften.  Turn the heat on medium, bring to a slow boil, and reduce heat to a simmer.

Now just let it cook.  Keep it on the back burner while you make something else.  Stir it occasionally to make sure all the apples cook evenly.  If it seems dry or in danger of burning, add a bit more liquid.  (This is more of a danger for a really big batch, so keep an eye out.)  As the apples soften, they will fall apart, and thicken into sauce.  You can press the apple chunks with a spoon to speed up the process.

Once the apples have all fallen apart and the liquid has cooked off, you can season and sweeten to taste.  Put the sauce through a strainer or food mill for a smoother product, or just leave it chunky.  It’s best eaten warm, but you can cover it and keep it in the fridge for a couple weeks.

This sauce is great for breakfast, on pancakes or french toast, or as a side dish for almost any dinner.