Archive for the 'food' category
Healthy Snacks: Oatmeal Bars
July 7, 2008 3:26 pmSweet Tree Farms
July 6, 2008 9:54 amI couldn’t get away during the week to check out the farmers’ market, so I ended up going back to Irvine on Saturday. I hauled back a lot of fresh, yummy fruit, including ginormous strawberries, “fruit punch” pluots, and some lovely nectarines from the Sweet Tree Farms booth.
After a while, you start to get to know the regular vendors at the markets. For example, I love stopping by the Black Market Bakery’s booth, or the one who sells all the yummy flavored hummus, flatbread, and baklava. Sweet Tree Farms is one of the newer booths I’ve started to buy from regularly. The farm was founded in 2005 by Annie Florendo, and all their products are organically grown (they are in the process of being certified). I just love their fruits, and the fact that the farm’s owner is a woman is a plus.
Vegetarians and Eating Out
June 27, 2008 7:45 pm
Mike, the Liberal Atheist Vegetarian, sent an open-letter to Italian eatery (should that be in quotes?) Olive Garden regarding their menu items for vegetarians and vegans. Mike says that the OG doesn’t make it clear which of their items are suitable for non meat-eaters, and the first thing to pop into my head was this: while being a vegetarian or vegan is far from being a new and kooky concept these days, I (personally) think the masses are themselves unclear about what it means to be a vegetarian or vegan. Like, if I tell my aunt that I’m a vegetarian, and she offers me the fish dish instead. “But fish isn’t meat,” they’ll declare. Or when I dabbled in a vegan diet while I was nursing and had to keep repeating why I couldn’t have the pastry (because it contained eggs and milk).
So when the OG says “we can suggest the following items as meatless, but not necessarily vegetarian or vegan” I immediately think about spaghetti without the meatballs, but instead of marinara sauce, it’s meat sauce. Or seafood, because after all, that Shrimp Primavera is “meatless.” Well, unless you’re one of those nit-picky “vegetarians.”
Making Bread … the 80s way!
9:05 amOrange Farmers’ Market
June 26, 2008 3:37 pmToday I stopped by the Orange Farmers’ Market for the first time. (I normally go to the one in Irvine by UCI since it’s on Saturdays and that used to be my only day off.) This is the one that is in The Village at Orange parking lot, right outside of Sears. Now that I stay at home with our son, I have a pick of farmers’ markets to go to throughout the week!
It still never ceases to amaze me how much more produce costs at grocery stores. For $6 at Ralph’s or Albertson’s, you can get a large clamshell of strawberries (that are most likely not organic and pesticide-free, plus they were probably shipped or trucked from out of state as well). For $6 at the farmers’ market, I got six small (pint sized?) crates of locally grown, pesticide-free strawberries, and they are deliciously sweet. There’s more than I can consume in a few days, so I gave our babysitter two of the crates, and I’m still left with what you see in the photo. Oh, and that bowl of nectarines cost me $5.
