eclaire (what’s in a) name?

hello, dear readers! my fabulous cuz sent me this link about the slow food movement and i thought i’d share it with all of you.  have you heard of the movement?  what do you think about it?  what do you think about this article?  does the slow food movement make sense in our current global economic times?

while i agree with most of the article’s points, what really made me think was the statement: “We’re all full of gastronomy, recipes etc. Turn on a TV anywhere in the world and you will see an idiot with a spoon. And every newspaper and magazine has recipes and a photo of the dish taken from above like a cadaver…We must normalise food rather than put it on a pedestal far out of reach.” ok, so i am most certainly full of recipes, i may just be another “idiot” with a spoon, and i definitely take tons of pics of food, but my goal with this blog is to share with all of you how much fun i have cooking with seasonal and simple ingredients. i also try to convey my personal belief in the importance of enjoying the process of taking care of yourself by making healthy and delicious meals instead of eating calorie laden and nutrient deficient fast foods.  so stay tuned for many, many more recipes!

i don’t know about the rest of you, but i am extremely excited about our 44th president! the night before his inauguration, i was driving home and listening to npr when this story played over the airwaves. in case you’re the kind of person who won’t click on that link (meaning that you and i are more alike than you know!), an NPR correspondent interviewed members of the DC Central Kitchen. DC Central Kitchen is a charity organization that has grown in the past 20 years from collecting leftovers from previous inauguration dinners and distributing them to homeless shelters, into a culinary arts program for people who have been in prison or homeless. thus, instead of feeding people with challenging circumstances, the DC Central Kitchen now trains them and places them into jobs as the complete the program so they can feed themselves. for this inauguration, the DC Central Kitchen made over 8,000 shortbread cookies from Michelle Obama’s own recipe. i haven’t had a chance to try these out, but i wanted to share the inspirational story above as well as the recipe with you (recipe is after the jump). here’s to a new administration of change and hope!

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as it gets darker and colder, i’m having a kind of reverse spring cleaning urge – i’ve been busy organizing closets and cupboards and getting things updated and reordered here on my blog. (although i may just hibernate soon – i think a lot of the cleaning fervor came from election anxiety, and now that i know our country will be in amazing hands soon, i think i can safely tuck in for the winter : ) ).

one of my latest projects was sparked by the discovery of flour beetles in flour we were about to use to make a cake for my mom’s birthday. we promptly threw out the flour, bought brand new stuff, and made a delicious cake. but the incident (and worry about future outbreaks) was enough to launch me into hours of consolidating bulk foods into existing containers and then buying new containers to house boxed foods (corn meal, corn starch, cake flour, couscous, etc). by the time all items were securely repackaged into airtight containers, as shown above, i was tired but excited to have accomplished the feat (i should have taken a before pic!).

the other big project mike and i undertook last weekend (after having tons of fun on halloween) was to make some changes to this website (ok, mike is the one who has made all the changes – i just had some ideas). on the right column of my blog, you’ll see that you can enter your email address to receive an email every time that i post, so you don’t have to keep checking the website if you don’t subscribe to the rss feed. also in the right column, you can now select a category (breakfast, entree, soup, salad, dessert) to look through all recipes or posts in that genre. and if you scroll past my blog lists, you’ll see a better tag cloud in case you’re looking for a recipe for a specific ingredient, and as always, the search option below that.

please let me know if there are any other ways i can make my site more conducive to you, my dearest readers, and thank you in advance for any input you might have!

my macbook’s monitor has been having issues, so we brought it in to the apple store last weekend. thus, i’m without a laptop for a whole week and have to draw straws with mike to try to get some time on his macbook. so i’m not sure if i’ll get to do a real post this week. but to tide you over, i thought i’d share the interesting website below, where you get to make your own breakfast cereal. it’s more expensive than oatmeal or the muesli i often consume, but it’s got me thinking about how awesome it would be to create your own cereal and have it shipped to you within a week! check it out:

http://www.meandgoji.com/CreateYourMix.aspx

as you probably have gathered already from my posts, i am a vegetarian who doesn’t consume much dairy. most of my friends and family members are omnivores, however, and i completely respect their eating preferences (and hope that they respect mine!) because i think that people (in general and in moderation) should eat what sounds appealing to them.

the beginnings of my vegetarian preferences go back to my childhood – i never enjoyed eating meat unless it was disguised in the form of a hot dog or potsticker. although my mom, dad, and sister are omnivores, my parents prepared many meat free meals, and thus i knew the option of not eating meat (and eating lots of yummy tofu!) was possible. around the age of 10, after many years of bargaining with me to eat just one more bite of meat, my parents decided i was old enough to make my own food decisions and to help them prepare vegetarian meals. they suggested i read the book diet for a small planet, and from this book – and them – i learned about nutrition and how to combine complementary foods to create complete proteins (like rice and beans). i chose to be a vegetarian way before i learned about how meat is produced and the environmental impact of mass production of raising animals for human consumption – but once i learned about these issues, i realized that vegetarianism went hand in hand with my personal belief system.

october 1 is world vegetarian day, and while i am not the kind of vegetarian who tries to convert people to my way of thinking or eating, i would like to challenge each and every one of you to eliminate meat in your diet tomorrow. if that doesn’t sound feasible to you, maybe try eating a lot less meat than you usually do, just to see what it’s like to eat more veggies, fruit, and grains.

as you ponder this challenge and think about what you might be eating tomorrow, i’ll leave you with the seven word quote from the fantastic author michael pollan: “eat food. not too much. mostly plants.”