La Platicona Habla: Tastes, Passions and Pursuits

Date and Cherry Granola Bars

December 03, 2007

Holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas make me think of my mom’s enchiladas and all the desserts I love to eat and make. While I am no Baking Fool, I have attempted some holiday treats for parties I will attend and host. Inspired by a cheesy VH1 special about Wavey Gravey and the Hog Farm Collective who claims to have "invented" granola at Woodstock, and also by a recent story on NPR with Nigella Lawson and her unsavory version of a breakfast granola bar, I give you the Date and Dried Sour Cherry Granola Bar, adapted from Alton Brown's recipe. You can add whatever fruit and nuts you fancy, but this combo seemed the best to me.

You will need:

- 2 c rolled oats (not instant)
- 2/3 c wheat germ (I used Bob's Red Mill all natural wheat germ, found in the heart of a wheat berry)
- 1 1/2 c walnuts, chopped
- 1/4 c packed brown sugar
- 1/2 c honey
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 c chopped dried dates (buy them cheaper whole, remove the stones, and chop them up yourself)
- 1/2 c chopped dried sour cherries (buy these in bulk)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees; grease a small 9X9 cake pan with butter.

Step One: toast the oats and wheat germ on a cookie sheet for 15 minutes, stirring them every five minutes. Toast the walnuts for 10 minutes, also stirring every five minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside. Reduce oven heat to 300 degrees.

Step Two: In a stock pot, combine the butter, honey, sugar, salt, and vanilla over medium heat. Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon so it does not boil or simmer until the ingredients are all incorporated and the sugar appears dissolved (about 8 minutes).

Step Three: Combine the oats and wheat germ in the pot, continuing to stir. After the dry ingredients are coated with the wet ingredients, remove the mixture from the stove and add in the dried fruit, stirring well.

Step Four: Pour the mixture into your greased cake pan, and with wet hand, press the mixture down. Bake at 300 degrees for 25 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature. Cut into squares and store in a ziplock bag or other air tight container in the refrigerator (remember it has butter). Eat for breakfast and stop starving yourself.

Labels: Dates, fruit, oatmeal

posted by Anonymous, Monday, December 03, 2007 | link | 0 comments |

Ode to Gleaners

November 15, 2007

I was recently inspired to hunt down a documentary by the French experimental film maker, Agnes Varda (b. 1928), entitled "Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse" (The Gleaners and I) after visiting the Fancy Tiger and inquiring after knitting and sewing classes. While discussing aspects of the arts and craft movement in urban America, the conversation turned quickly to food, my favorite topic. During the discussion of various techniques of food preservation such as canning and drying, I was confronted with a very provocative proposition - dumpster diving and putting recycled goods to use (like clothes, appliances, recycled art, etc) as a form of modern/urban gleaning.

Gleaning immediately invoked in my mind the story of Naomi and Ruth of the Book of Ruth. Aside from the fact that Ruth, a widow, chose to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi and care for her rather than return to her own family, what always struck me about her story was the lengths she went in order not to let her mother-in-law go hungry. At one point in their epic journey, Ruth goes into the fields to glean for food.

Gleaning is an ancient practice of hand-collecting crops from fields after they have been harvested. In some cultures and societies, gleaning is promoted as a form of social welfare by laws (both religious and legal) requiring farmers to leave a portion of their field unharvested and leaving it for the poor to glean.

For instance, the passages of laws from the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy instruct farmers not to harvest everything, but to leave it to the poor and for strangers: "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien." Leviticus 19:9-10 (NIV version) (see also Leviticus 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:19).

In modern times, societies have either promoted gleaning or crushed the practice all together. In the former Soviet Union, the "Seven Eighths" law, or Law of Spikilets was passed on 7/8/1932 and permitted authorities to arrest peasants and children caught gleaning the leftover grains ("spikilets") in the fields as a crime against state grain production. The French on the other hand, maintain an extensive system of laws that protect the practice of gleaning, as explored in Agnes Varda’s film.

Gleaning is certainly practiced in the modern era, not only by urban homeless in dumpsters, but even my family. As a child, we stalked the public lands of the southwest often for a crop of pine nuts - pulling out our blankets and combing the forest floor for the seeds. You can see these little treasures in my very first blog on Pinon.

While I cannot lay claim to a field or forest nearby for gleaning, gleaning in my town is all about making and following your very own feral fruit map. My boyfriend has this habit of riding his bike around the neighborhood in search of fruit trees such as pears, apples, and alley grape vines and bringing home a grocery bag full of his finds. While I discount this practice as a form of trespass, he always defends himself saying that the fruit just falls off and goes to waste otherwise. Confronted now with the idea of modern/urban gleaning, I have to say he is right.

So with this thought, I bring you the feral fruit harvest of my neighborhood. In one evening, I managed to find pears, apples, and concord grapes. I also decided to follow the feral fruit map method. I found this link about an artist's take on gleaning and the Fallen Fruit movement while researching gleaning and thought it was apt for this blog and a great way to bring some legitimacy to the feral fruit gatherers of your neighborhood in the hope that you join, rather than scorn them.

I also bring you a simple recipe for concord grape juice. While it is very late in the season, some grape vines are still producing the last of their fruit before a hard frost. If you are lucky, you too can enjoy some homemade juice.

You will need:

- 2 pounds of concord grapes

- 3 cups of water

- sugar to taste

Step one: Pick through the grapes and separate the vines, twigs, and leaves out. Wash the grapes thoroughly. Place them in a large stock pot and crush them with your hands. Add the water.

Step Two: Cook the grapes over medium-low heat. You do not want the grapes to boil, rather, you want them to simmer slightly. Cook the grapes for about 30 minutes once they begin to simmer. Add sugar to taste (about 1/2 cup does the trick, and use evaporated cane juice if you can find it). You can also choose to add no sugar if your grapes are overripe.

Step Three: After the mixture cools, strain it through a large sieve or Chinoise (china cap stainless steel strainer). Pour the juice into a container for storage in the refrigerator.

Note: the picture of "The Gleaners" is an oil on canvas from 1857 by Jean-François Millet.

Labels: agnes varda, feral, fruit, gleaners, grape juice, harvest, traditional

posted by Anonymous, Thursday, November 15, 2007 | link | 0 comments |

Strange Fruit

September 27, 2007

There have been some strange fruit showing up at the grocery store lately, and naturally, they ended up in my grocery cart. Dragon Fruit, a member of the cactus family, was easily recognized by my boyfriend who ate them regularly while he was in China this summer. The fruit has a beautiful fuscia outer skin, and looks like an overgrown egg with petals. The Dragon Fruit is also called a Pitaya, and blooms only at night. When you cut into the fruit, it looks nothing like the outside and nothing like you'd expect it to, especially if you've eaten other cactus fruit

s like Nopalitos. The flesh is white and freckled with little black seeds. The flavor is not strong, but reminds me of a soft fleshed jicama. The fruit would make a great mixed drink or sorbet - but frankly, on its own it is sort of plain.

Now my second purchase, Monstera Deliciosa, had to mature before I ate it. Whoever named this fruit certainly had seen no other fruit as ugly and abnormal as the Monstera. Yes, its name means monstrous, but its second name indeed means delicious. The fruit is found in nature on the Monstera plant vines that grown throughout the tropical regions of Latin America. These monstrosities are creeper vines that can grow as large as trees and drop roots from the forrest canopy to the forrest floor. The fruit is the shape of an overgrown banana with a scaley texture - the scales are bright green when immature, but left to ripen they turn black and fall off revealing the flesh beneath that is only edible when ripe (if you cut it open while unripe, it will expose oxallic acid which is inedible and dangerous).

I left my little monster fruit to mature. The picture to the right here is when I frist bought it. It took about two weeks to fully mature and the "kernels" fell off on their own (scaley nightmare to the left). The taste was uniquely "banapinapple" and sort of mushy. You couldn't really cut it up, rather, it is like eating corn on the cob in the sense that you eat the flesh off of the core which is inedible. I frankly did not like the fruit because it burned the edges of my mouth, but the smell is fantastic - perhaps I'd prefer it in a breakfast drink with some yogurt, but I don't think the Monstera Deliciosa will grace my counter ever again. I guess I just don't have a place in my heart for a fruit that sheds before becoming consumable.