Mango Creme Fraiche Salad Dressing

I was reading David Lebovitz in my facebook feed today and he has posted a link to Cafe Fernando blog story about their recent visit to Chez Panisse. Great photos, fun story. What caught my eye in the story was the creme fraiche dressing on the smoked fish salad with black cod and salmon. Stopped me in my tracks. So guess what I bought today at the coop? Creme fraiche. I wondered what they mixed in the dressing to make it so loose. I thought lemon juice if I had a guess. I tend to overuse lemon juice so I thought mango. On nectarines. With mint, on a salad.
I wondered if the fiber in the mango flesh would ruin the whole experiment. I wondered if the creme fraiche was too thick to blend in my blender. I wondered if it would need acid to cut the fat. Oh the mind chatter of my food mind! I decide to go simple and just blend the flesh of a medium sized mango and 1/2 cup of creme fraiche and a pinch of salt in my blender. It would either work or be a throw-away.
Here is how is ended...a certain 7 year old was caught with a small soup ladle in hand (a spoon was not large enough) scooping out a second "taste" after I let her taste the goods, running into the living room to be alone with her mango creme fraiche. Bottom line: it turned out pretty fantastic. And with THREE ingredients, super, fabulously, crazily, easy to make.
I used nectarines on the salad to add acid. I added fresh mint to the lettuce mix to add some verve and then ate it for dinner. This dressing would be wonderful on grilled fish, crab cakes, or to dip strawberries into. I could imagine a fresh blueberry scone too...oh the list could go on. I think what makes creme fraiche work so well in these instances is the slight sour taste that carries it, but its not overly sour taste. Either way, the hardest part of this recipe is getting out your blender and removing the flesh from the mango. If you don't know how..Simply Recipes has a great tutorial. This made over a cup, plenty for a couple of dishes.

Mango Creme Fraiche Dressing
Makes a big cup

1 med. ripe mango cut and skin removed (about 1- 1/2 cups)
pinch of salt
1/2 cup creme fraiche

Blend in blender until very smooth, about 3 or 4 minutes.
I tossed my salad in a small bit of olive oil before topping with fresh nectarines and fresh mint. I spooned about 1 tablespoon on each salad plate.

Homemade Lemon Teriyaki Sauce...and stuff to eat it with...

Summer is here. Tank tops, iced tea, nectarines, cherries, light meals, crickets, green everything.  Summer means I start having itches for dinner parties on lawns, picking berries with my lady posse and staying up late. Swimming in the river, wide brimmed hats and popsicles. I love that a hot summer day is reason enough to invite people over and drink something with fresh lime juice in it. This summer I want to experiment with some new flavors. Violets most likely. I am also experimenting with my new neighborhood. My two very cool and lovely friends happen to live on the same street as me. I know, the odds against that happening are sky-high, but here we all are. Kate and Sarah are their names. It was sheer luck and determination that we all found places to live together on our lovely one-way, dead-end street. I love it when the stars line up like that! We all have kids. We all just drop by each others houses and hang out. We have dinner together every week or more. Lucky us. The kids loop back and forth from house to house to yard. Like a real old-fashioned neighborhood before stranger danger ruined things!
Sometimes when I make a special dish, I get bummed if we are not all together and it turns out extra special. Tonight that happened. I made lemon, ginger teriyaki sauce. I always make my own because it is so easy and the flavors are light years better than the bottled kind.  Teriyaki is all about ingredients, so once you have the essential components, it just needs to simmer. I decided to eat it with grated carrots and turnips, toasted sesame seeds and a poached egg on top. I loved it.
Teriyaki is essentially a soy sauce marinade. Incredibly versatile. An easy way to impress your friends at dinner! This batch makes a modest amount (about 1/2 cup) so if you are cooking for a crowd, double or triple it.

Lemon Teriyaki Sauce:

1/3 cup mirin (sweet rice wine)
1 tbls shoyu
1 tbls fresh lemon juice
1 tsp honey
1 tbls toasted sesame seed oil
1 heaping tsp. fresh grated ginger

Simmer in a saucepan until it coats the back of a spoon. Mine took about 15-20 minutes. Right before it is ready, it starts to bubble become slightly foamy. The sugars are starting to caramelize and the sauce is thickening.

We have Lacto Fermented Soda! (Raspberry and Olallieberry to be exact!)

She is my fearless taster!

Captivated by the fermentation bubbles!

 My first lacto fermented soda experiment is over! It had a slight yeasty, boozy taste. Nice and carbonated. I have not had enough fermented soda to know if this was off the mark.  I put slightly more than 1 1/2 cups of sugar in my gallon of soda, which may have contributed to the aggressive fermentation.  But, I am still drinking it.  Even though no yeast was added, lactobacillus produces carbon dioxide, alcohol and lactic acid as a result of fermentation and I am wondering if my soda is reaching 1-2% alcohol due to this.  Now I am making batch number two and I have a good feeling about it. This batch above was raspberry and olallieberry soda and the next one I am making is blackberry ginger flavor. And I am going not going to put more than 1 1/2 cups of sugar per gallon (I added a bit more to make it sweeter this first time) because I think that made it over-ferment. I have wished about six times I had a 1-800 number to call for my fermentation questions. The most tense time of the whole experiment was tasting the soda before bottling for the second fermentation. Would the acidity really prevent pathogenic bacteria from flourishing in the starter culture? Would I start throwing up in 4-8 hours? Dang, those microbiology and mycology classes in college filled me with way too much information. But here is the deal; after my life these last 8 months, a little food poisoning is no biggie. Turns out however that our little friend (who attempted to spend the night last night) had to go home at 1am because of diarrhea and vomiting. So, M and I are drinking lots of soda today in hopes of bolstering our gut flora....
In other news, little M has graduated kindergarten. No more rice and beans day on painting day. No more Fairy Mother passing down her little ones to each child in the class. No more healing gnomes or silk scarves  or soup day on fridays. No more chopping vegetables, no more bees wax moldeling. No more good morning dear friends songs.  No more waldorf kindergarten. Her fly-away ceremony was heartfelt. Our good friend Jilan came to the ceremony and greeted little M with a bouquet of roses as we watched her fly away to her new teacher. The school moved the next day to our little downtown to occupy the old space where elementary school used to be. It is precious! Now we get to walk to school! It reminds me of the waldorf school in downtown Mill Valley in Marin. A day we will always remember.

Lacto-Fermentation Soda Class

The lovely Shan Kendall teaching about lacto-fermentation!

Well, things here are coming along. Never had I expected the roller coaster of emotions like divorce brings though. Big, big, big waves. It is as though the universe won't let one little bit of unresolved emotion get by. I am looking in all the nooks and crannies, uncovering all the parts of myself that are coming forward to be set free by my self-forgiveness. Until going through this experience, it has felt like I have had blinders on that shielded me from my own capacity for loving. It has felt a bit like I am reprogramming my dna when in all the  moments I want to blame, shame or escape, and I choose not to. Well, I do sometimes at first, and then I go inward by mediating, journaling, listening, processing. It is easier to blame someone else in the moment when have you have a story that your life has been ripped to pieces by their actions. But, then what? You get up in the morning and everything still hurts. Your relationships are still the same. No relief. So, then I know it is time to get back into the sacred waters of transformation and start finding the loving for myself. It has been there, and only there I have shown myself these last 8 months that this is a process of opening my heart and trusting my life. It has shown me that every disruption in my life, every single one, is to get me into my loving. This is a challenge. When I am sitting in the shower sobbing, or losing my house, or playing the story that I was replaced by a younger woman in my marriage, it can be tricky. I have had a lot of help re-framing everything though. It was not about being replaced by a younger woman. It was about reclaiming my authentic life and finding the deeper love for myself. It is a constant re-framing. My moments of this deep knowing are stretching out farther and farther each time I step foot into the waters of forgiveness. The more I forgive myself and my beliefs about myself, the more I let the loving in and the easier it is to come back to that spot. So, how do you forgive yourself? I move into whatever emotion I am feeling and look for the belief I am carrying about myself that is not true. When I hit upon a false belief I am having about myself, I usually can feel it in my body and feel that I have hit a tender spot. It can be feeling unlovable, unworthy, useless, powerless, etc. Then I say "I forgive myself for believing I am unworthy of love". I take a breath and let it go. It has been a process that is not about changing what is in my life, but changing my relationship to my life. I am using my fear to unlock rather than to lock down. I am working in the fields of trusting my disturbances.
Rebecca Skeele has a great website and book "You Can Make It Heaven" that goes into detail how to do this yourself. She also has a radio show I podcast every week. Rebecca mentioned a few shows back about the Mayo Clinic publishing articles about forgiveness on their website . I googled "Mayo Clinic Forgiveness" and quite a few articles showed up. I even saw an article a week or so ago about Lady Gaga's bikram yoga teacher talking about self-compassion! Well, enough about me....

Last night I went to a Lacto-fermentation soda class. It was taught by the local chapter leader of the Weston Price/Nourishing Traditions, Shan Kendall. Wow, she is a wealth of inspiration and information. Along with making ginger soda, kombucha, root beer and fir-tip ale, we ate her sauerkraut, kimchi and her chicken and coconut soup. I was inspired to take this class after being at the Ferry Building a month or so back and buying a bottle of lacto-fermented rose geranium soda made by DrinkWell Softers. Wow! I thought it blew kombucha out of the water. It was the best soda I have ever drank. Drink Well uses whey to ferment their drinks. Shan however, taught us how to use ginger root to make a lactobacillus starter for soda. It utilizes the lactobacillus on the ginger root, along with sugar and pure water. Most of the sugar is eaten away by the yeast which then makes the soda nice and fizzy. Since you were not able to be in class with me last night, I found a website that has a how-to video and instructions and a recipe if you would like to lacto-ferment your own soda at home.  I am going to try the blueberry soda. What are the advantages to a lacto-fermented food or drink? It has enzymes and lactic acid bacteria that build up healthy gut flora. Lacto-fermented foods are healing to the gut. They have been a staple food in cultures that typically live long lives and have lower cancer rates that the rest of the world. Lacto-fermented foods are also easily digestible. It is a truly living food. If you decide to make lacto-fermented soda tell me! I would love to hear how it turns out...

Someone Special Had A Birthday Party!

Jilan, a good friend and photographer took this with her ultra-cool camera

Besties

Yesterday was little M's 7th birthday party. I made food for three days for her special day.  My little darling had a notebook with the details of how the party was going to go down. She managed to get all her wishes granted. Pinata, garden treasure hunt. friends, music, sun, drinks. I think all bases were covered. I absolutely adore all of my friends, so for me it was a party with them too. I perhaps went a little overboard on the food, but I love a reason to cook. I think that maybe the french onion dip was the winner. There was a lot of feedback about that one. I posted that recipe recently. So easy to make too!
I have been getting into my new garden. I mowed the lawn last week. I have never mowed a lawn before. It reminded me of my friend freshman year in college that did not know how to work a washing machine. Better late than never right? I took extra long to mow because I loved it so much. I am growing some starts as well. Today I started cowpeas, english peas and shiso. I finally am going to have my own shiso plant!

Creamy French Onion Dip

Many of my holidays growing up were spent at my grandparents house. Easter Sunday always included a ham spiked with cloves, and the very popular french onion dip appetizer. A package of Lipton french onion soup mixed with sour cream along side a plate of celery and carrot sticks. A vivid memory in my mind. I have tried making it from scratch before, mixing sour cream, mayonnaise and sometimes chevre with onions to create something vaguely similar to what my childhood mind remembers. I never was able to get it just right however, until now.
I decided to skip the sour cream and mayonnaise component and instead opted for creme fraiche. I wanted a slight sour taste that had a mostly creamy taste and texture. Mayonnaise has a flat flavor note that I thought would cover the subtle taste of shallots and onion. I was right. Creme fraiche turned out to be the perfect blank canvas for caramelized onions and onion powder. This dip was incredibly easy too. A perfect throwback to the old days of my Easter dinner traditions. Serve with carrot sticks, celery, sourdough toast points or plain potato chips.

7.5 ounces Creme Fraiche (213g)
1 heaping cup finely chopped onions (150g)
3 Tablespoons finely chopped shallots (1.5 oz)
1/2 teaspoon salt (1.5g)
1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon onion powder (18g)
1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (.5 oz)
pinch salt

Saute onions and shallots with olive oil and small pinch of salt over medium heat until caramelized, about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally. Cool in a bowl to room temperature after cooked.
In a bowl, gently mix onion powder and salt into creme fraiche. Add the room temperature onion mixture. Refrigerate overnight, covered. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Super Natural Every Day Book Signing

When I think of Heidi Swanson, I think graciousness and style. Her book signing was no exception. It was a bit of a blustery but clear night in San Francisco at Omnivore books. The place was packed! Three tables were set up, all filled with Super Natural recipes people brought to share. I loved the metal tubs sitting on the front window ledge filled with chilled Sorelle Bronca Prosecco, which just happens to be my favorite prosecco! Super Natural Every Day is filled with recipes I would want to feed the world with. They are simple in their preparation, but interesting. I think pulling that off is a serious skill.

I especially liked Heidi's mustard recipe. I have been tinkering with mustard in my own kitchen in the last month, and could not figure out why my mustard kept turning out so hot and spicy until I read in her book that if you leave the mustard in the fridge for a couple of weeks the flavors mellow out. There is a lot of very useful information she provides in the book like that, along with online resources, cooking tips and stories about her cooking life. Reading her book, you really feel like you are getting a glimpse into her world.

Heidi's smile lit up the whole room. It was fun night. I just peeked on Amazon and it is currently 29th in the top 100 books!