thoughtful consumption

The night you pick up your CSA share consider establishing pizza night. The idea is that you plan on supper being a hands-off, household favorite that everyone enjoys. Your pizza night could be as simple as a frozen pizza. You could go out to your favorite Tex-Mex place. Pick up barbecue sandwiches. Or order in Chinese food.

Here’s the reasoning behind this cunning plan.

First, it’s Pavlovian. If members of your household are ambivalent or even hostile towards the CSA idea, it can’t hurt to have them associate the arrival of your share with a favorite meal. (more…)

Read Full Post »

For the ultimate in fine cooking, you would wait to prep all of your ingredients until just before cooking. But, let’s face it, if we were dealing with the ultimate in fine cooking, someone else would be prepping your ingredients.

By prepping, I mean things like washing, peeling, dicing, and the like.

washed beet greens, diced beet stems for stir-fries, and washed baby greens to add to salad (not pictured, beet roots for roasting)

(more…)

Read Full Post »

While cleaning upon our return from vacation, I stumbled across the instructions for the corn stripper.

So I totally see now how Kitchen Kung Fu got gored. These instructions are dumb and dangerous. I must have either missed or ignored them because here’s how I’ve been doing it.

First, shuck the ear, but don’t remove the stem. It’s handy to hold on to.

Then brace the top of the ear in the bottom of a bowl, like this.

Works for paper towel rolls, too!

Then you can push downward with more force, more safely. You have a lot more control pushing down than pushing up, and your non-cutting hand stays out of the danger zone.

Hope this helps – stir-fried sweet corn is too good to miss!

Read Full Post »