Eating to change the way I live

     So I've been reading a lot of books about food and our food industry lately.  Some of it is pretty scary stuff, opening my eyes to what I thought was doing right was actually still kind of wrong.  In the past couple of weeks, I have read The Omnivore's Dilemma  and Food Rules by Michael Pollan and Food Matters and The Food Matters cook book by Mark Bittman.  I am just about to start In defense of food also by Michael Pollan.  I won't go into the details here, but the basic synopsis is to eat more plants and whole grains and fewer animal products.  Oh, and that even things that you think are "good" for you or the environment (like organic or free range) aren't always necessarily so (that was the scary eye opening part).  Michael Pollan kind of talks about how all this happens and Mark Bittman talks about recipes you can make within  this "diet."  So, with these books in mind, I am trying to eat in a more health conscience and environmental health conscience way.  I already do for the most part, but I am going to try even harder.  Every journey starts with a first step.  My first step were the following two recipes:

Cold Noodles with Cucumber, Avocado, and Crab

Makes: 4 servings 
Time: 30 min

Ingredients:
3 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and grated
1 tbsp minced ginger
8 oz rice, buckwheat (soba), or wheat noodles, preferably whole grain
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 avocado, skin and pit removed, chopped or sliced
8 oz lump crab meat
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup chopped peanuts
lemon wedges
soy sauce, for serving

Procedure:

1) Bring a large pot of water to boil and salt it.  Put the cucumbers and ginger in a colander, sprinkle with one tablespoon salt, and toss well.  Let the mixture sit in the sink for about 15 minutes, then rinse with cold water and set the colander aside to drain.

2) Cook the noodles in the boiling water until they're tender but not mushy.  Check them frequently: the time will vary from a minute or 2 for thin rice noodles, to 5 minutes for soba, or up to 12 minutes for wide brown rice noodles.  Drain the noodles, rinse with cold water, transfer to a serving bowl or platter, and toss with the oils.  Top the noodles with the cucumbers, avocado, crab, cilantro, and peanuts and toss again.  Serve, passing the lemon wedges and soy sauce at the table.

 Brown Sugar-Glazed Butternut Squash



Notes: A sweet glaze underlines the best qualities of roasted butternut squash, but only if the squash cooks evenly and the flavors are in balance. Here’s what we discovered:


•For the sweet element of the glaze, tasters preferred the complexity and depth of dark brown sugar to plain white sugar.


•Salt and pepper perked up the squash without overwhelming it, and a little melted butter added nutty richness and tied the glaze together.


•How the squash is cut affects how it caramelizes in the oven. We settled on 1-inch cubes, which had enough surface area to brown well yet were small enough to cook to full tenderness in a reasonable amount of time.


•A splash of cider vinegar after the squash came out of the oven countered the sweetness of the glaze and gave the dish some zing.


Brown Sugar-Glazed Butternut Squash


Serves 4 to 6


We like the deeper flavor of dark brown sugar in this recipe, but light brown sugar can be substituted.

Ingredients:
1 butternut squash (about 2 1/2 pounds), peeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, and cut into 1-inch chunks


1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar (see note)


3 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted


1/2 teaspoon salt


1/4 teaspoon pepper


1 teaspoon cider vinegar


Procedure:

1. PREPARE PAN Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Line rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil and coat lightly with cooking spray.


2. ROAST Toss squash, sugar, butter, salt, and pepper in large bowl until well coated. Transfer squash to prepared baking sheet. Roast, stirring every 15 minutes, until squash is well browned and completely tender, about 45 minutes. Transfer pan to wire rack, sprinkle squash with vinegar, and stir to coat. Serve

     Both dishes were really easy to make and really delicious. I learned a few things about soba noodles: one, they are very expensive if you get them 100% buckwheat ($9 for 8 oz, really?).  Two, they cook really fast.  I used a little too much ginger so I sometimes would a get a really gingery bite every once in a while.  I guess that's what you get for not measuring!  I just threw in the ginger, peanuts and cilantro in the food processor and pulsed until they were all chopped up.  Thank goodness for food processors!  I did use artificial crab meat as I happen to love it and real crab wasn't available.  Either way about it, I recommend this dish.
     The butternut squash was amazing!!!  I couldn't stop eating it.  It had a delicious sweet roasted flavor.  I think I overcooked it as it just kind of mushed together (look at my pictures).  However, it just had such a great taste that I really didn't care!  I would definitely make this recipe again although at first I was complaining about all the prep work involved in skinning, chopping and seeding a butternut squash.  It was totally worth it.  Amazingly enough, I've had this same squash for months and it is still good!  Amen for winter squash!  Yummy yummy yummy!





Cold noodles with cucumber, avocado and crab





Close up



Brown sugar-glazed butternut squash fresh out of the oven



Golden deliciousness



Our dinner plate (the chicken drumstick came from Scott)