You are what you eat

Me on a juice fast??

Yes, me on a juice fast.

It all started when my daughter told me about a documentary called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. (You can read her take on the film and juicing here, here, and here). I watched it on Netflix's instant play.

The documentary was inspiring and even, at times, moving. To see Phil--morbidly obese, dependent on medications, lethargic, and depressed and despairing because of his poor overall health--transformed into an energetic, healthy person who no longer needs medication is quite compelling.  No, I don't have his health problems or his weight problem, but most of us could use a little boost from time to time, and if a side benefit is to shave off a few pounds, so much the better.

I've often thought of buying a juicer, but the expense put me off, as well as the worry that if I did spend the money, I wouldn't actually use the machine. But at the website connected to the film I found a juicer that's actually quite affordable, and I thought to myself that I could do a juice fast every so often throughout the year just to drop some pounds and some toxins and perhaps revitalize myself. That's called a "reboot" by the filmmaker. And it appealed to me. Making fresh fruit and vegetable juices part of my regular diet also appealed to me.

The juicer I went with isn't the best kind of juicer, but it didn't cost hundreds of dollars and it's going to suit me just fine. I'm not even going to get into the types of juicers available; you can Google that yourself if you're interested.

My Breville juicer arrived yesterday, so the spouse and I made a trip to the supermarket for produce. We bought a slew of it: oranges, limes, apples, pears, cherries, carrots, spinach, kale, ginger, parsley, cilantro, carrots, tomatoes, radishes, beets, celery, cucumbers, bell peppers, and a watermelon (I'm probably forgetting something). My husband is not joining me on the juice fast, but I have a feeling he will benefit considerably just from having so many veggies around. I told him I'd cook for him but it would be mostly vegetables accompanied by simply prepared protein of some sort. He's cool with that.

I started off this morning with fruit juice. (There's a juice constantly in evidence in Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead known as "Mean Green," but I'm working my way up to that one.) Breakfast  was juice made from an apple, a pear, haf a lime, and about a dozen cherries. It was delicious. Midmorning I had a carrot-kale-spinach-apple-ginger concoction and it too was tasty. It's something of a jolt to put all that bulk into the machine and end up with only two cups of juice. Makes you understand that the only way to get lots of phytonutrients and significant protein is by juicing, as no one could eat enough of the raw, fiber-filled veggies to ingest the amounts concentrated in the juice.

I'll be writing about my experience--the first time I've tried any kind of fast--here and cross-posting to View from the Loft. If you're at all interested, at least you can see how one person's juice fast goes.  

Maple syrup: all sweeteners are not created equal

As I've written elsewhere, we're lucky enough to have three maple syrup producers within a five-mile radius of our home. We've been buying the local syrup since we moved here, and we will never again insult our tongues with the likes of Log Cabin, Aunt Jemima, or Mrs. Butterworth. Nothing can compare to real maple syrup, and it's a joy to support the local producers.

So I was happy to learn that researchers at the University of Rhode Island have discovered 54 different beneficial compounds in maple syrup. 

"I continue to say that nature is the best chemist, and that maple syrup is becoming a champion food when it comes to the number and variety of beneficial compounds found in it," Seeram said. "It's important to note that in our laboratory research we found that several of these compounds possess anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, which have been shown to fight cancer, diabetes and bacterial illnesses."

Inflammation has been implicated in many chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, some types of cancer, and Alzheimier's. Maple syrup phenolics, which are anti-oxidant compounds, inhibit certain enzymes that contribute to diabetes. Ironic, isn't it? A sweetener that contains anti-diabetes compounds.

The researchers also found five compounds in the syrup that do not occur in nature. This sounds somewhat ominous, but again, the compounds are beneficial to humans. They are produced in the process of boiling down the sap.

The only fly in the ointment is that the research was financially supported by the Canadian maple syrup industry. I don't know about you, but I get suspicious when those who would benefit from positive findings underwrite scientific research that results in positive findings.

Still, I find a parallel between maple syrup and honey. Honey contains anti-oxidants and several nutrients (sugar has none). These two natural sweeteners seem far preferable to refined sugar.

No one, least of all the researchers, is proposing that we all consume gallons of syrup. Too much sugar, in whatever form, is bad for your health. But if you're going to eat pancakes, eat them with maple syrup.

Going crackers!

Ever since I took up bread baking I've been meaning to try baking my own crackers. Sometimes all I need is the motivation to try something. When I volunteered to help out with the food for our latest book group meeting, that motivation was born.

I thought I'd make some beer cheese--say, I should post that recipe--and then had the idea of making the crackers to go with it. I ended up making three different varieties. On the left, parmesan crackers; seeded crackerbread in the back; and rye crackers on the right. The secret to crisp crackers is to roll out the dough very thin and to be unafraid to let them bake a little longer than the recipe says.

 
 I made the crackerbread first, using a recipe from the King Arthur Flour company's Whole Grain Baking. This is unbelievably delicious. You bake the crackerbreads as wholes and just break them up as desired. They're rustic and sturdy.

I just let them be amoeba-shaped, but if you're a perfectionist, you could try rolling them out as perfect circles. I don't seem to have the ability. I used my baking stone instead of a baking sheet.

Seeded crackerbread 

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup rye flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
2 tsp. salt
2 T. olive oil
1 cup water
1/2 cup assorted seeds, such as sesame, poppy, cumin, fennel, caraway, etc.
2 T. assorted dried herbs, such as rosemary, basil, dill, thyme, etc.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Line a baking sheet (actually, you'll need more than one) with parchment paper.

Combine the flours, cornmeal, and salt. Mix in the olive oil thoroughly, then add the water. You might not need all the water, so hold back a couple of tablespoons or so and check the texture, which should be stiff but not crumbly. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it until it's a stiff yet supple ball of dough. I did all this using my stand mixer, or it can be done in a food processor. You don't have to knead this much, just so it holds together well.

Mix the seeds and herbs in a small bowl.

Divide the dough into 8 pieces and cover with plastic wrap. Working with one piece at a time, scatter a couple of tablespoons of the seed-herb mixture on your work surface. Press the dough onto the mixture. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin. If the dough sticks, flip it over, apply more seeds, and continue rolling. Roll it as thin as you can get it. The idea is to get the seeds thoroughly stuck into the dough and for the dough to be really, really thin.

Place the breads onto the baking sheet and bake until the tops are a medium brown, about 7 to 10 minutes (mine actually took a minute or two longer). Cool completely on wire racks.

* * * * *

From the same cookbook comes this recipe for rye crackers. 

Rye crackers

1 cup rye flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 T. cocoa powder
1 tsp. salt
4 T. butter (half a stick)
3 T. caraway seeds
1/2 cup water
1 T. molasses

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Line some baking sheets with parchment paper.

Combine the flours, cocoa, and salt in a large bowl, or place flours, cocoa and salt in a food processor (that's what I did). Cut in the butter (or pulse the food processor) until the mixture is crumbly. Add the caraway seeds and mix them in.

Combine the water and molasses in a measuring cup and stir to mix. Gradually add the liquid to the dry ingredients, working it in until you can gather the dough into a cohesive ball. Or add the water to the mixture in the food processor, holding a little back in case you don't need it all. It should come together as a ball in the processor.

Divide the dough into 3 pieces, rolling it out one piece at a time until it's very thin, about 1/16 inch. Use enough flour on your work surface to prevent sticking.

Cut the dough into 2-inch squares, or do as I did and use a biscuit cutter to cut out circles. Transfer to the baking sheets. Sprinkle with salt, if desired. Bake the crackers until they begin to brown and smell toasty, 18 to 23 minutes. Cool completely on wire racks.

* * * * *

The next recipe comes from Mark Bittman's encyclopedic How to Cook Everything. I used 1/3 whole wheat flour instead of all white flour, and the taste was terrific. Next time I'd double this recipe, as these crackers disappear fast and the taste is quite addictive.

Parmesan crackers

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan
1/2 tsp. salt
2 T. butter
1/4 cup water

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Lightly dust two baking sheets with flour (I used a baking stone instead). Put the flour, cheese, salt, and butter in a food processor and pulse until the butter and flour is combined (you should have crumbs of dough). Add the water and let the machine run for a bit. Continue to add water about a teaspoon at a time until the dough holds together but is not sticky. If you don't have a food processor, mix the flour, cheese, and salt together and cut in the butter using a pastry blender, fork, or your hands. When it's well combined, add water as above.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface to a thickness of 1/8 inch or less, adding flour as needed. I cut out circles of dough for the crackers; you could roll out a rectangle and score the dough so as to break it easily into squares or rectangles, baking the dough as a whole. Or you could cut the dough into strips or squares using a knife or pizza wheel.

Transfer the dough to the baking sheets. At this point I sprinkled the crackers with poppy seeds and salt. Bake until lightly browned, about ten minutes (it took longer for mine to get crispy). Cool on a wire rack. These are delicious warm, but you can keep them in an airtight container for a few days.

 

 

"Shopping" in the freezer

We've got a big chest freezer in the basement, but there's too much in it and I need to make room for the half a cow I've got coming in a month or so. Not only that, but the food should be used before it gets any older. Not only that, but why should I spend money at the supermarket when I've got an array of goodies right here at home?

So I'm planning meals around what's in the freezer (and pantry, as far as that goes, but I'm not going there right now). Last night is a case in point. Well, "planning" doesn't actually apply in this case; it was more of a spontaneous "let's see what's in the freezer that will do for dinner."

Anyway, it was a blowy, drizzly, gray, cold, nasty kind of evening, the kind that makes you say, "This is soup weather." I could have made soup very quickly in my pressure cooker, but I thought I must have something in the freezer. Foraging around, I found a container of beef bits frozen in home-made broth, one of beef stew, and one of minestrone. Voila! Dinner! I thawed them, mixed them together, added a little liquid and some barley--oh, and some leftover green beans from dinner the night before--and it was delicious. Jim kept saying how good it was. A little of this, a little of that ... Gourmet cooking it ain't, but it sure hit the spot on a wet, windy night.

Today I found a mystery container--you know, the kind the label has fallen off of, and you sort of peer at it and say tentatively, "Well, it could be chili ... looks like some kind of beans in there ..." I thawed it out, and it turned out to be black bean soup with corn and squash. Seemed to me I had some frozen  black beans somewhere or other ... Yep, I located them. I thawed and mashed them, added them to the thawed soup, jazzed up the spicing (a little more garlic, some jalapeno pepper, and most definitely some cumin), and heated the whole thing up, simmering some of the liquid away. Black bean burritos for dinner tonight. Oh, and there were some roasted tomatillos, too, which will become salsa verde.

I still have quite a few of last year's tomatoes in the freezer, so some homemade tomato soup is in order shortly, and no doubt some spaghetti sauce as well. Not to mention chili, especially if I still have some grass-fed ground beef left (I really need to take inventory!).

There are some leeks left in the freezer, so I got a jar out to thaw in the fridge, having leek-and-potato soup in mind, especially given the bonanza of potatoes we harvested this year. I'll serve it with a beef recipe of some sort--haven't decided that part yet.

Chickens. I have several whole chickens in the freezer, and the very large, tougher ones (free-range chickens can be tougher, especially when they're allowed to get quite huge) will make terrific soup stock that can be frozen--that'll take up a lot less space in the freezer. I think I'll roast a smaller one and serve that with some of the ginger-carrot soup taking up space down there. Our carrot crop is all but non-existent this year, due to neglect on my part (the weeds took over), so I'll make do.

I noticed some frozen cabbage soup--the kind in a tomato base, often called Jewish cabbage soup, and I'm thinking that would go well with sauerbraten. Don't you think? Last year's beef needs to go, too, after all.

After I take inventory, I'm sure I'll come up with a dozen more ideas for dinner. And I'm hoping to do that before my next trip to the supermarket, believe me. In economic times like these, who needs to spend a fortune at the store when the freezer is well stocked?

Easy ways to preserve your harvest

When you think of preserving foods from your garden, do you think of arduous hours of canning, perhaps of blanching and freezing and all that entails? Lots of people believe that food preservation is hard work and time-consuming, especially if they're new to the processes involved.

But with some vegetables, it's quite easy to put up food for the winter months.

Take tomatoes and peppers (both sweet and hot), for example. Tomatoes can be cored and tossed into a plastic freezer bag, sealed, and popped into the freezer. While the texture when thawed will not be like fresh or even canned tomatoes, frozen tomatoes can be used in soups, chili, spaghetti sauce, and all manner of dishes in which the tomato taste rather than texture is the goal. If you thaw the tomatoes in the microwave, the skins will slip right off.

Same with peppers. They can be frozen whole; big bell peppers can be halved if you like (perfect for stuffed peppers) or even chopped. For cooked dishes, they're wonderful. If you're more ambitious, you can roast the peppers (learn how here), put them in a plastic bag, and freeze them. Don't bother skinning them: when you thaw them, as I do in the microwave, the skin will come off easily. Roasted sweet peppers make a good salad dressed with a little olive oil, while roasted hot peppers can be stuffed or used in dishes like chili or burrito fillings, to name just a couple.

Few people grow leeks, it seems, but we do. All you have to do with leeks is slice or chop them after thoroughly cleaning them (they tend to be pretty gritty) and pack them into can-or-freeze jars. Don't put them in plastic! The aroma of leeks will escape into every corner of your freezer.

Onions can also be peeled, sliced, and frozen without blanching.

Eggplants can be roasted whole in the oven after pricking them all over with a fork or using a sharp knife to make small slits in the skin (no expoding eggplants, please!). Just place in a 375- or 400-degree oven for 40 to 60 minutes, perhaps turning them once or twice. When the eggplant collapses and has a few charred spots, it's done. Scrape out the flesh and place it in freezer containers. I usually chop the flesh, but you don't have to. You can make baba ghanouj in midwinter out of your own eggplant.

Another way I like to preserve some of my veggies is as soup. I made a quantity of asparagus soup minus the cream, which I add after I thaw the soup base and am re-heating it. I did the same with carrots last year, making big batches of ginger-carrot soup. I've also frozen leek-and-potato soup (using our own home-grown potatoes as well as leeks), again omitting the cream. Broccoli soup also freezes well; it turns into cream of broccoli soup when you're ready to eat it and add the milk or cream (and some cheese, if you're like me). It should go without saying that this method is particularly easy and efficient if you've already planned to make soup for dinner anyway--just make a bigger batch and freeze some.

So don't throw out that excess of veggies! While many vegetables must be pressure-canned, pickled, or blanched and frozen, some may be frozen without blanching, others can be roasted and frozen, and some can be turned into soup . . . soup that will be mighty welcome on a cold January day. And you'll feel good about eating food in the winter that you grew last summer.  

Florida establishes nation's first honey regulation

It may come as a surprise to most consumers that the U.S. has no established definition of honey, nor are national regulations in place that would keep adulterated honey from being sold as pure honey.

Frustration with the situation has prompted the state of Florida to enact a regulation that

is being touted as the first regulation in the nation - and possibly in the world - requiring that any product that is produced, processed or sold in Florida as honey must be "natural food product resulting from the harvest of nectar by honeybees."

If the product includes sugar water, flavorings, antibiotics sprayed into hives to keep bees healthy or anything else that is not honey produced by bees, it cannot be sold as honey in Florida.

It's high time that the US passed such a "Standard of Identity." As I posted earlier, the lack of standards has resulted in problems with imported honey, particularly from China and India.

Kudos to the state of Florida and the beekeepers who pressed for such regulation. I just wish the FDA would follow suit. In the meantime, your best bet is to buy from local producers of honey.

Michael Pollan's new rule

Michael Pollan has found a need to update his rules. The minimalist  set of rules: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." The expanded set includes such things as "don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food" and "don't eat anything with more than five ingredients on the label."

Pollan is an advocate for un-processed food, and one of the markers he used to identify highly processed foods was high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This is not something the home cook can add to a recipe. It's manufactured using highly technical processes, and thus, when it appears on a food label, serves as a warning that the product has undergone intensive processing in a manufacturing plant.

But now that HFCS has been identified as a no-no, food companies are going back to sugar. Yet sugar is not a health food and is not particularly desirable. As Pollan says,

But to boast about your product not having high-fructose corn syrup as being some kind of virtue is really stretching it. And I think what we see here is another example of the food industry’s ingenuity in taking any critique of industrial food and turning it into the next marketing strategy. It’s a lot like the low-fat campaign, you know, which began as a government critique of food, you know, beginning with George McGovern in the ’70s saying we should eat less red meat because of heart disease. Whatever you think of the science of that, which turns out not to have been that good, it was a well-meaning campaign to improve the American diet. Industry came back and re-engineered the whole food system to have less fat in it and no fat in it. And that campaign sold a lot more food. And, in fact, since that campaign, we’ve been eating about 300 more calories a day, and we’re a lot fatter. So, you can’t—you just can’t underestimate their ability turn any critique into a way to sell food.

Too true.

As a result, Pollan has formulated a new rule: "Don't buy any food you've ever seen advertised":

And with all this new marketing based on these ideas, my new suggestion is, if you want to avoid all this, simply don’t buy any food you’ve ever seen advertised. Ninety-four percent of ad budgets for food go to processed food. I mean, the broccoli growers don’t have money for ad budgets. So the real food is not being advertised. And that’s really all you need to know.

Amen.

Quick vegetarian meals, part one

This post is in response to a friend who asked for some fifteen-minute vegetarian recipes. I laughed and said, "Well, maybe 30-minute recipes ..." and she replied that even that would be helpful.

I was a vegetarian for nine or ten years, and believe me, it was no hardship (except, as my friend pointed out, in restaurants, which can be a problem in that you always end up having a pasta dish or the meatless pizza or some such). At the time I didn't object to soy-based meat substitutes, but today I'd balk at that, so I'm not going to include these in my menus or recipes.

Most vegetarians depend on legumes for much of their protein. I love beans, lentils, and split peas, and I relied on them for many of our meal plans. During my vegetarian years, I didn't have a pressure cooker, which was foolish of me. A pressure cooker makes fast work of dried beans, even if they're unsoaked.

But let's start at the beginning. (I want to state right here that my friend probably knows all this, and I'm just throwing it out there for anyone who hasn't stopped to consider these points.) I'm a believer in meal planning, and I plan meals covering one to two weeks. This simplifies grocery shopping, I never have to wonder "what's for dinner," and I don't rely on those nasty processed foods. I have all the ingredients I need to make dinner on a given night. It also ensures variety and gives me the advantage of being organized, so that I know I have to soak beans on Tuesday night for Wednesday's dinner. I'm not rigid about this stuff, but having a general plan works great for me.

So, the first thing to do is to plan your meals around your schedule. A busy day followed by an evening of work or social obligations is not the time for an elaborate dinner. Save that for weekends or whenever you have the luxury of time.

Second, I can't emphasize enough how much a pressure cooker can help. I can whip up split-pea soup in under half an hour, including chopping the veggies. In the smaller of my two pressure cookers, I make risottos whose taste cannot be differentiated from the time-consuming stove-top, constant-stirring-required version. Dried beans are cooked through very quickly compared to the hours of simmering they otherwise require, and they're far superior to canned beans (cooked dried garbanzo beans, in fact, seem like an entirely different vegetable from the canned variety). Vegetable broth is done in a matter of minutes.

The slow cooker (crock-pot) is also extremely valuable, especially for the working person. I had forgotten this handy tool until one summer when I had so much to do out in the garden that I never felt like cooking at the end of the day. Putting dinner in the slow cooker before noon meant that we were guaranteed a decent meal after the busiest (and grimiest!) of days. And it doesn't heat up the kitchen much, either. Among other conveniences, the crock-pot cooks previously soaked dried beans overnight so that they're ready for the next day's meal.

Next, let's consider the meal itself. Your meal should include protein, so if you're having, say, spaghetti with marinara sauce, it's a good idea not only to sprinkle your pasta with parmesan, but also to have a side salad that incorporates feta and chickpeas, or whatever cheese and bean varieties you like. To simplify putting a balanced meal together, it's helpful to have the following on hand:

• Washed salad greens. Either buy pre-washed salad greens, or wash the greens, spin them dry in a salad spinner, lay them on paper towels, roll them up in the toweling, and put them in a plastic bag. Don't add juicy veggies like tomatoes and cucumbers until you put the actual salad together, as they will cause wilting and sogginess.
• Cooked dried beans, or canned beans. These can be added to salads and pasta (and pasta salads!) and soups and casseroles ... you get the idea. Having a bean salad in the fridge is even better; use two or three kinds of beans for variety, throw in some scallions, tomato, bell pepper, sliced black olives, celery, or whatever, and toss with a vinaigrette, and you've got lunch or a dish to round out a dinner. Add cooked pasta for a great main dish salad.
• Hummus, if you like it. Spread it on a pita, topped with some fresh veggies and/or sprouts and some good yogurt, and you've got an instant lunch.
• Cheeses that you like. These can be shredded into salads, rice, pita sandwiches, quesadillas (I'll get to that), refried beans, vegetarian chili, etc. to complete the protein in a meal.
• Hard-cooked eggs. These add protein to a tossed salad, fit well in many pasta salads, and are good to eat out of hand or as deviled eggs. I love egg salad, which can be used to stuff a tomato as well as serving as a sandwich filling.
• Tofu, if you like it. I don't, but I wish I did. It can be used in all manner of dishes, including salads, soups, stir-fries, breakfast eggs or shakes, etc.
• Better Than Bouillon, vegetarian or mushroom type. This is somewhat expensive, but even a little really strengthens the taste of soups and stews. You can also make a good mushroom gravy using fresh mushrooms and the Bouillon.

Of course, I never had all these things on hand at all times, but having some of them, at least, does make things easier when time is at a premium.

Other things to consider:

• When you cook dried beans, cook more than you'll need, and freeze the rest in some of the cooking liquid for another recipe down the line. Toss cooked beans into salads, rice dishes, pasta, soup, etc. for a protein boost.

• Cook more rice than you need for a recipe, and plan to use it as fried rice in the next day or two (more on this to come).

• Freeze leftover soup, or dishes like lasagna or eggplant parmesan, in amounts suitable for lunch or for another dinner. The freezer is your friend!

• Make veggie stock when you have time and freeze it in amounts you're likely to use for your favorite recipes.

• Think about how to use one recipe two ways. For example, leftover vegetarian chili is great as a burrito filling (just simmer the excess liquid away) or even an omelet filling.

Neither of the above lists exhausts the possibilities, of course, but it should give you some ideas about planning, using ingredients efficiently, and so on.

Next up, I'll post some ideas and recipes for quick meals.

Corn your own beef

Having purchased half a cow, we have lots of beef in our freezer. I suppose it's only natural that we'd eventually think of corning our own beef, especially with St. Patrick's Day coming up next month.

According to Wikipedia, the term "corned beef" dates from at least 1621, while the "corn" in corned beef "refers to the 'corn' or grains of coarse salts used to cure it." Salting meat is, of course, a very old way to preserve it, although today most of us are familiar only with corned beef as an example of this formerly widespread technique.

Why corn your own beef? Well, why not? It's easy to do, and by doing it yourself you won't get any of those nitrites we'd all rather avoid. You can also vary the herbs and spices you use.

I turned up some recipes on the web that called for brine, and others that used a dry rub. We went with the latter for our experiment.

The brisket is the most commonly used cut of meat for corned beef, but roasts can also be used. We chose a round roast weighing about 5 pounds.

After two weeks of brining the meat (it does release its own juices to make a liquid brine), yesterday we soaked the meat in several changes of ice water (otherwise the salt would make the meat inedible!) over a period of a few hours and cooked it our favorite way--in the pressure cooker. The result? Delicious! We had been on tenterhooks about the result of our first attempt. I can hardly wait for the reubens we're having for dinner tonight. Not to mention the corned beef hash to come.

You need to know that homemade corned beef will not be red like that you buy. That's because there are no nitrites. So expect it to be the color of any other cooked meat.

I'll list the steps of the technique, then offer a recipe for the rub.

• mix together the rub
• spear the meat about 20 times per side with a meat fork
• rub each side of the meat evenly with the salt-herb-spice mixture
• place the meat in a 2-gallon plastic zipper bag, forcing out as much air as possible
• place the meat in a pan large enough to hold it (we used a 9" x 13" x 2" baking/roasting pan)
• place a similarly sized pan over the bagged meat
• weight the top pan down with bricks or heavy cans (about 10 pounds' worth)
• refrigerate for about two weeks, turning the bag once a day (we also "massaged" it through the bag)
• before cooking, soak the meat in cold water for a few hours, changing the water several times and making sure the water stays ice cold

Aye, here's the rub:

3/4 cup kosher salt
1 generous tablespoon peppercorns, cracked
2 tsp. whole allspice berries, cracked
1 T. dried thyme
1/2 T. paprika
1 tsp. crumbled sage
4 bay leaves, crumbled or torn into small pieces

I have a second coffee grinder that I use exclusively for grinding spices, so we put the whole peppercorns and then the whole allspice berries in for a few whirls of the blade to produce the cracked versions of these spices. Then mix all the spices and the salt together well and proceed as above.

When you're ready to cook your home-corned beef, you could do worse than follow this recipe:

Corned beef dinner

soaked corned beef, 4 or 5 lbs.
4 cups water
2 large bay leaves
4 or 5 potatoes, scrubbed
1 small green cabbage, quartered

Pour water into 6-quart (or larger) pressure cooker. Add the bay leaf and the meat. Arrange the potatoes on top. Lock the lid in place. Over high heat, bring the contents to high pressure. Reduce heat just to maintain high pressure and cook for 60 minutes (for 4 pounds) or 70 minutes (for 5 pounds). Turn off the heat and allow pressure to come down naturally. Remove lid, tilting it away from you to allow steam to escape.

Transfer the potatoes to a plate or platter and tent with foil to keep warm. Test the meat for doneness; it should measure around 150 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, and the meat on the ends should shred easily. If the meat is not done, return it to high pressure and cook another 5 or 10 minutes. When the beef is done, transfer to a cutting board and let it sit for 10 minutes before carving.

If there's less than a cup of liquid in the pressure cooker, add enough water to equal a cup. Set over high heat as you add the cabbage to the liquid. Lock the lid in place and bring to high pressure; reduce heat just to maintain high pressure for 3 minutes. Quick-release the pressure (by running a stream of cold water over the cooker in the sink). Remove the cabbage from the cooker (be careful to avoid the escaping steam) and drain.

Slice the corned beef against the grain. I like to serve corned beef with a mixture of sour cream and horseradish, sometimes with a bit of Dijon mustard added.

Instead of processed: tartar sauce

Well, this isn't entirely un-processed, as I use commercial mayonnaise (although, come to think of it, now that I'm getting eggs from a nearby farm, I could make my own mayo safely). It is well known that I use only Hellman's, and that I never, ever touch the "lite" or low-fat or whatever it is variety. Of course, all cooks suit themselves and those who will dine on their creations, so suit yourself!

I started making tartar sauce when a jar of the commercial stuff that I had in the fridge looked pretty iffy--it was rather old and not very appetizing. Now I just make a small quantity whenever we have fish; I no longer have ancient jars of it to wonder about or toss out. It's fast, simple, and can be varied in numerous small ways if you like. Usually I use home-made dill relish (I can it during cucumber season) instead of the chopped pickle, but last night I had neither relish nor dill pickles, so I simply chopped up some dilled green beans (canned last summer). They worked fine--Jim didn't know they were beans until I told him.

This is the quantity I make for the two of us. Sometimes I have a tablespoon or two to throw out, but it's better than throwing away half-full jars. If I know we'll be having fish again within the week, I'll make a little extra and keep it refrigerated.

Tartar sauce

1/2 cup mayonnaise (I don't actually measure, just eyeball it)
1 T. or more, to taste, dill relish or chopped dill pickle
1 T. minced or grated onion
1 T. parsley, minced (opt.)
1/2 T. capers (opt.)
1/2 T. lemon juice, or to taste
1/8 tsp. salt, or to taste

Just mix the ingredients together. I sometimes put some dried dill in, especially if I'm too rushed or lazy to deal with the parsley. Chopped stuffed green olives also make a good addition.