What makes calories saintly?

There are many things that make a meal saintly. It's really about eating thoughtfully. These are some of the things I think about when choosing the food I eat.

Locale: Close calories conserve fossil fuels, boost the local economy, and support local farmers and/or fishermen. The food is fresher, more nutritious, and tastier. Small family farms often use less pesticides, take better care of their land as well as their livestock, and have healthier work conditions for people too. Food security, diversity, soil health, heirloom seeds/breeds, and environmental health are also much more likely to be valued on these farms and by the local markets that sell their products. 

Cruelty Free: Ingesting misery isn't good for anyone. Work conditions and wages should be healthy for humans and animals. Livestock deserve a clean, happy life and a quick end.

Poison Free: Pesticides are really bad for workers, consumers, and the whole world we live in.

Sustainability: Farming and fishery practices should be mindful and responsible for not only the long term health and sustainability of their harvest but also how they impact their environment and the planet at large.

Today's Sunday lunch, inspired by recipes from Amy Chaplin's Whole Food Cooking Everyday and Asha Gomez's My Two Souths was pretty saintly.                                             

Sweet potatoes from Uncle Don's Local Market and greens from Potlikker Farm were the starting points for this meal. Patrick's recipe search lead to sweet potato bhajia on page 130 of My Two Souths and green tahini sauce on page 247 of Whole Food Cooking Everyday.  

Our adaptation of both these recipes.....

sweet potato and kohlrabi bhajia

3/4 cup lentil flour (grind dry lentils in a coffee grinder)

1/2 teaspoon cumin powder

1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder

1/4 chili powder

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1 pound sweet potato grated

1/2 pound kohlrabi chopped

1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil plus more for frying

In a large bowl combine lentil flour and spices. Using your hands, toss sweet potato and kohlrabi with a tablespoon of oil. Then combine with lentil flour and spice mixture. Gradually add about 4 tablespoons of water to make everything stick together.

In a large cast iron skillet heat 1 inch of oil. Form small sweet potato patties with your hands and fry about 2 minutes on each side or until deep golden brown. Drain on lined cookie sheet. Serve warm with green herb sauce (recipe below).                         

 

green herb sauce

Blend the following in a food processor until smooth.

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 cup fresh parsley 

1 cup fresh cilantro 

1 garlic clove

juice of 1/2 lemon

salt to taste

just enough water to make a thick liquid 

But the green doesn't stop there! This pak choi salad was so good I could have eaten the whole bowl myself but I didn't. I shared.

pak choi  and ramen salad

1/4 cup unsalted butter 

1 package ramen noodles broken into pieces (season packet omitted)

Melt butter in a cast iron skillet. Add ramen a cook until browned. Set aside.

3-4 cups chopped pak choi

1/4 large sweet onion

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon reduced sodium soy sauce

Toss together last 4 ingredients and top with browned ramen.

Saintly bonus points: Use local pottery and table linens. 

We set the table with plates and bowls by Elizabeth Pottery , napkins by Dot & Army , and place mats by Handwovens by Pauletta. 

Eat saintly and have a great week!

 

 

Christmas 2020

 There is a lot we would all like to forget about this year. But it had its high points too for me and my family. I got married and being Patrick Holladay's wife is definitely a high point! We moved into a dream house with boys and dogs and even planted a garden. I found out just how blessed I am in my family, friends, mud family, work family, and this community. 

So I hope we remember to love our neighbors, lend a hand, drop off supplies, and shop close to home. Let's keep seeking out local farmers, local art, and local services. Our community pulling together and supporting each other is something I don’t want us to forget.

It does my heart good to know and support the makers and farmers that helped make our Christmas 2020 breakfast beautiful and delicious. We started decorating the table with foraged greenery collected near Village Creek Landing and added heirloom placemats made by Patrick's Grandmother, Mama T and cloth napkins by Dot & Army, and Guale inspired plates by me. We enjoyed eggs and potatoes from Uncle Don's Local Market topped with micro greens from Green Way Gardens LLC. It just wouldn't be Christmas without citrus and these satsumas from Grassroots Farms were a real treat! 

Here's to remembering the high points. 

Eat Local Save the World

I have become very passionate about eating local due in part to the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. Long before the term locavore existed I knew mullet tasted best when my dad caught them at dawn close to home and we ate them soon after. And that peaches were a treat that I had to wait till July to enjoy where I lived. I also knew I was an artist.

The business of the day on St. Catherines is research and conservation (saving the world). I have always had a great love for wildlife and wild places. Close encounters with said wildlife was a daily pursuit as was recording these moments with crayons, paint, and little animals sculpted out of marsh mud. But I wanted to save the world too.

I believed I could share my magical moments with sea turtles and shore birds through art work. And I did do just that from an early age but most of my stories were being told not through paintings or sketches but at the dinner table. I think if you really want to bring someone round to your point of view then feed them shrimp or fresh caught fish or wild blackberries...you see where this is going. The places, the flora, and the fauna that I wanted to inspire people to love I put on a plate. 

If you care about nature then you will conserve it. And you can start with what you put on your plate.

Local, seasonal, and poison free aren't just tastier but better for us and the planet too.

"If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That's not gallons but barrels. Small changes in buying habits can make very big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just start with a good breakfast."
- Barbara Kingsolver
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

So this blueberry crumble is what I made for breakfast. 

Crumble topping:

1 cup Back to the Basics 101 wheat flour from The Farmer and The Larder 

1/4 cup Florida Crystals organic granulated sugar

4 tablespoons cold sea salt  Banner Butter from The Farmer and The Larder cut into pieces plus more for the skillet.

Blueberry Filling:

1 pint Harrietts Bluff Farm blueberries from Uncle Don's Local Market 

1-2  tablespoons H.L. Franklin’s Healthy Honey

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine flour and sugar then cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal.  Set aside.

Heat a pat of butter in an 8"  Lodge Cast Iron skillet. Add blueberries and drizzle with honey. 

Cover berries with crumble topping. Bake for 20 minutes or until top begins to brown. Serves 4-5.

I enjoy setting the table with not only my artwork but with friends and neighbors contributions as well. The cutting board is by Island Sea Designs, linens by Dot and Army. I often pull out Grandma's silver too because every meal should be a celebration. Eat neighborly for the joy of it!

Second photo by Kimbrough Daniels.

"When you care, you conserve."

Quote Serving Bowl and Loggerhead Bowl 20131121_140324, a photo by Elizabeth's Pottery on Flickr.

"When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world." John Muir

Years ago while I planed to take a large group of friends to St. Catherines I asked them if there was anything anyone particularly wanted to do. Of course I wanted to go walk the beaches, see the lemurs fed, tour the Button Gwinnett house, see south end settlement, visit the mission, and have drinks admiring sunsets over the marsh, maybe even crabs for dinner. Any other requests? Then my friend Kari asked "Elizabeth, what do you want us to get out of this visit?" I was touched, I thought only a moment..."I just want you to care, to care about this place."

"When you care, you conserve."

When you care you will find your own way to take care. No one has to lecture you to reduce, reuse, recycle or to eat local organic food. No one need explain the evils of plastic, power lines, pollution, or paper mills. Things like not walking on dunes, turning out lights on the beach on summer nights, choosing sustainable seafood for dinner and refusing that Styrofoam to go box are just decisions you make more and more. This list of dos and don'ts is different for every individual according their passions, backgrounds, and abilities. It's important to follow our hearts. If you sit down to dinner with me you may notice a great deal of my heart is on an island.

I grew up on an Island

In the mid 1970's when I was almost two I moved to St. Catherines Island with my father and very brave mother. This is not an island resort but also not like Gillian's island either. We lived in a house with electricity, indoor plumbing, a TV with rabbit ears made of foil and access to four channels but no phones. The only way to reach this place is by boat. When I was a child island staff and their families could leave the island only once a month for the day round trip on personal business such as grocery shopping. So we ate a lot of fish (which I LOVE) and powered milk (which I have never learned to enjoy). I found island life wonderous as only a child can and my brother, sister and I were only tempted to leave on this day of stocking up and errand running by the promise of seeing the current playing Disney movie. On island endangered exotics were being reared, native ecosystems rebuilt, and every "ology" from archaeology to zoology was in practice. Before I reached school age a archaeological site of great importance was found and uncovered carefully for years. What this meant to me was that for a few months out of the year we had "neighbors". Beyond island exploration the chief entertainment was and still is... eating. These visitors brought exotic foods with them like bagels, olives, humus, even cranberry sauce in a can to name only a few. And of course we had oysters, fish, crabs, and pig on hand so to speak. Because of this the archs began to jokingly call the island "Saint Calories". Anyway that's how I thought of the title of this blog. I so enjoyed a good meal with family and friends especially after a day spent out in nature. I still do. I am also learning that the choices we all make at the table can change the world. So I started sharing my thoughts here... in the spirit of making meals matter.