Saag

Let me start this post with 3 confessions:

1. I don't know jack - Jitendara? - about Indian food, other than that it's delicious.
2. I don't know diddly about babies.
3. I can't stand low-carb diets.

Ironically, I've made Indian food twice this week, am 7 months pregnant, and am on a low-carb diet due to gestational diabetes.

Life is weird that way.

Friends of mine had a baby boy last month.  They've been incredibly kind and supportive as I've progressed through my own pregnancy, so I offered to take them dinner and a gift for the baby.  They gladly accepted.  Then the wife drops this bomb: she's allergic to tomatoes.

I started going through my mental recipe repertoire & excluding the things that have tomatoes in them.  Crap, that's like everything that I make this time of year.  Chili, pot roast, many soups... all out.  And because I can only have very limited amounts of carbs, no pastas either.

I remembered having seen a Veena's Market saag spice packet in my cupboard.  I bought a few of them last year around Christmas and this was the last package.  I called my friends and asked if they like Indian food and, if so, could she eat spicy food while breastfeeding.  The answer to both questions was a resounding "yes".  Saag it was!

What, exactly, is "saag"?  According to this website:

Saag, or palak, dishes are spiced purees of spinach or other greens common in northern India. They often contain additional ingredients such as potatos, fresh cheese, chicken or chickpeas to make a more substantial dish.

Gene, who doesn't like cooked spinach, loves this dish.  If you're not a cooked spinach fan, try this recipe once before dismissing it.

I wanted to make my saag with chicken.  I started out with cutting up 2 chicken breasts and cooking them in oil.  Then I just put them aside while I made the spinach puree.

Veena's instructions are to saute the spices in oil, then add chopped onions.  You have to be very careful about this because it's shockingly easy to burn the spices and ruin your dish.  Her packets are numbered for you.  (BTW, Veena is a friend of mine but I bought these packets.)

Next, you add the spinach and let it wilt - this takes about a minute.  Don't be shy about how much spinach you're using; it will reduce significantly.

From there, you put the spinach into a blender with some water and puree it.  Return it to the saucepan with the chicken to reheat, salt to your taste, and stir in a dollop of plain yogurt.  Serve the saag over rice or...

... can you guess what this is?  It's not rice.  Nor is it couscous.

This, my friends, is cauliflower!  Run raw cauliflower through a food processor until it looks like couscous.  Out it into a microwave-safe bowl and cook without water until it's done, perhaps 3-4 minutes.  Voila: low-carb rice alternative.

Because I was travelling with this dish, I simply layered the ingredients in a covered Pyrex dish and reheated it once I arrived at my friends' house.

They asked to keep the leftovers. 

As for the gift for their son, a little pair of light green merino wool booties, I completely forgot to take pictures!  The booties fit him perfectly and both parents were appreciative.  They've promised pictures, which I'll post upon receipt.

I still have so much to learn about babies.  The first time I held my friends' new son I experienced a panicked feeling of "ok, now what do I do with this little guy?".  I haven't changed a diaper since the early 1990s, if then.  I just bought some nursing bras and laughed at the sight of my boobs in holsters.  Gene, who has children from his first marriage, looks at my boobs & apologizes "for what's going to happen to them in the next few months".  Yikes.

I'll figure it out.

McDonald's rant

Last week I started to see tv commercials and billboards promoting Mcdonald's food as "local".  There are pics here of some of the billboards in the Seattle area. 

Photo: Gillman Park

In today's paper there was a full-page ad about this.  You can see the full copy here.  A direct quote:

[W]ithin Washington state itself (...) close to 95 of every 100 fries (are from Washingon potatoes). To put that in perspective: It’d be easier to find someone who doesn’t like ice cream or puppies than a french fry in Puget Sound that wasn’t made from a Washington potato.

No they di'int!  They played the puppy card.

This ad campaign has rubbed me the wrong way ever since I saw the first blast.  But I haven't been able to say why without blasting holes in my own belief system about buying local.

Is McDonald's food local?  Yes, some of it was grown in Washington.  That's got to be good for our economy, right?

And I promote eating local foods in part because it supports the WA State economy.

So why, then, does this whole "from here" crap irritate me worse than sand in my ass crack?  I want to scream every time I see one of the ads, but why?

I support local agriculture for many reasons.  Puyallup, the town next to mine, was once a sleepy farming community that was known for its luscious berries and fine produce.  Now it's widely recognized for its strip malls, warehouses, and housing developments.  There are only a handful of berry farms remaining in the valley.  When I buy berries from Puyallup farms I am helping sustain a way of life that will be paved over unless people support it with their money.  Money talks.

Berries were once such a way of life in Puyallup that there's a bronze statue of Ted Picha, an early berry farmer.

Photo: http://www.miltonedgewoodsignal.com/article/2099

I've recently befriended Lisa, co-owner of Lucky Pig Farm (ironic name noted).  The meat I've bought from her, which she raises in Tenino, is spectacular and very reasonably priced.  Granted, the prices are higher than Safeway but lower than other local pig farmers.  Today I asked her if she has any kielbasa and she said that she was toying with the idea of making some from the next pig to be slaughtered, which is this week.  I bet she'd save some for me if I asked.

I have decided to purchase pork exclusively from Lisa.  Lisa gives me ideas for how to use the meats they raise and I know that she raises animals responsibly on her 7-acre farm.  Lisa recently told me that they only raise a head of cattle every other year because doing so is very hard on the land.  I believe that she's a good steward of her land because her family depends upon the health of the land to make a living.

I'll write more about Lisa and her adorable son, Calvin, as soon as I can remember to take my camera to the Sunday market. 

Getting back to my point about the "from here" campaign from McD's...

I realized that what "eating local" means to me is being close to your food, understanding where it comes from, eating foods that are minimally processed, and supporting sustainable environmental and economic practices.

Potatoes are healthy until they're deep-fried.  But McD's doesn't just fry the potatoes.  The fries have more ingredients than you can count on one hand.

Apples are a wise choice until you dip them in caramel or wrap them in a trans-fat-filled pastry whose ingredients list sweeteners 4 times: "high fructose corn syrup, sugar, sugar, brown sugar".


Fish is great until it's highly processed, breaded, fried, and served smothered in cheaply made tartar sauce.

Eating foods that you've raised yourself or bought as close to their original form as possible is always the best bet.  As soon as Mega Food comes into the picture, the nutrition goes out the window, even if the food was raised within a day's drive of your front door.

Just because it's "from here" doesn't make it "local".