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Too Many Teas!

17 Sunday Jun 2012

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…ARGH…so many choices and where in the hell was the one I needed?  For the totally off the wall, random recipe that inspired me to make a special trip to the grocery store to pick up a few ingredients?? 

I am not a hot tea drinker.  There, I said it.  Quelle horreur, right?  I hear about all the wonderful health benefits from drinking tea, a few co-workers have quit coffee and now only drink green tea and on and on.  It’s just not my thing.  I do enjoy a cup of (black) coffee in the morning but I’m not obsessive about it and I’m not homicidal when I don’t have it.  Yes, I do live at Starbucks Ground Zero but coffee is not a ritual for me.  Now, when it comes to tea, I can drink gallons of plain, unsweetened iced tea.  Homemade in the sun with a lemon wedge or Diet Snapple lemon flavor, I’m callin’ your name.

I’ve been getting re-intrigued with raw food lately.  And not the vegetarian or vegan style either, although there are incredible recipes out there across the spectrum.  I say re-intrigued (yes, I think I just made that word up) as I’m making an effort to keep trying new varieties of foods.  To keep varying my diet.  I experimented with raw food a few years ago – maybe even prior to starting this blog I think…probably around 2007-2008. 

Recently I picked up Carol Alt’s newest book, Easy Sexy Raw.  I have her two earlier books as well and I love how they’re all written with both a no-nonsense style and a little humor too.  Food should be fun, not serious!  And ugh, who wants to read and learn about a food lifestyle where the author is preachy or condescending?  What a turnoff.  Carol’s books are educational and such a pleasure to read.   For those of you who don’t know who Carol is, she was a model on countless magazine covers in the 1980s.  She’s also an actress and is probably the most familiar “face” of the raw food movement.  And if you see pictures of her today in her early 50s…wow, still a knockout.  She says she had a very unhealthy diet growing up and during her modeling years and once she later went raw, her health problems vanished and her energy skyrocketed.  Sounds pretty inspirational to me!  We’re never too old to make changes in our lifestyle to improve our health!

So what’s the deal with tea?  Well, the recipe I wanted to try (which I’ll share at the end of this post) called for a quarter cup of Lapsang Souchong tea.  No offense to tea experts out there, but what the hell is THAT?  I probably have tea stashed deep in the dark corners of my pantry but had no desire to dig around and I knew it certainly wasn’t that kind.  And for some reason, as much as I love grocery shopping (really and truly – today was a one of those rare times I didn’t) I didn’t feel like making a long drive out to one of our nearby specialty stores which I was certain would probably have it.  We’re so blessed here in the Seattle suburbs to have Whole Foods, a PCC (co-op), Metropolitan Market, Trader Joe’s and on and on.  And I am very fortunate to have a grocery store that’s a 2 minute walk from my townhouse.  The good old Safeway. 

Getting to that Safeway, however, is a nightmare and by the time I’m in the store my blood pressure is skyrocketing.  What’s the problem?  Well, whether arriving on foot or by car, the street nearby and the parking lot are very unsafe.  The parking lot is poorly designed.  Between people coming and going with carts, small kids, combine that with a Dairy Queen drive-thru lane dumping out in the opposite direction, a McDonald’s drive-thru on another part of the entrance and a busy 4-lane street that’s dangerous to cross on foot (drivers do NOT yield in the cross walk there – it’s bizarre and scary) you have a mess.  It’s just a weird vortex where common sense goes out the window.  And no, I don’t think it’s just me! 

For some reason I decided going to said Safeway today would be a good idea.  They do have a pretty good selection of specialty, natural foods and organic produce.  So off I went…in search of frozen corn kernels (that was easy) some gourmet mushrooms (I choose a small handful of Shiitake mushrooms), and the elusive Lapsang Souchong tea.  The tea was going to be part of a marinade for the mushrooms.  Sounds interesting, don’t you think? 

And then there it was.  The tea aisle.  I was beyond overwhelmed and probably had my jaw on the floor.  I could not BELIEVE how many kinds of tea there were!  The gatherer/cave woman within me freaked out!  TOO MANY CHOICES that I knew NOTHING about!  And that damn Lapsang Souchong tea was nowhere to be found! GAH!  And I realized, given my near total ignorance about tea, that I had no idea what would be a decent substitute!  So I grabbed some Stash green & black tea blend and said hell with it.  Now I’m truly curious how much different this marinade turned out having used another kind of tea. 

And now for something completely different…this recipe is for Lapsang Souchong wild mushrooms with a fresh corn polenta.  Yes, you can make a raw version of polenta!  In fact, as Carol writes, just about any food out there has a raw ‘twin’ of sorts.  She also shows ways to incorporate raw partially into our diet without needing to go 100% cold turkey.  Again, this is part of the reason I love her books and writing style.  It’s not in-your-face, shoveitdownyourthroat.  It’s informative…and funny!

Serves 4 – requires some marinating and soaking time

  • 3 cups wild, fresh mushrooms such as chanterelles, porcini, oyster or trumpet
  • 1/4 cup brewed Lapsang Souchong tea
  • 1/4 cup cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon Nama Shoyu (unpasteurized soy sauce)
  • 1 1/2 cups raw cashews, soaked then dried completely
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 1/2 tsp minced garlic
  • 2 cups fresh corn kernels or thawed frozen kernels
  • Freshly ground black pepper

To make the tea, steep 1 to 2 teaspoons of tea leaves into 1 cup of hot (not boiling water) for about 5 minutes.  Alternatively, steep the tea leaves in room temperature water in the sun for several hours.

Soak the cashews for about 2-3 hours.

To make the mushrooms, use a damp cloth to wipe the caps and stems clean.  If using larger mushrooms, cut them into smaller pieces so they are all uniform in size.  Combine the tea, olive oil and nama shoyu and mushrooms in a large bowl.  Toss and massage with your clean hands to mix well.  Set aside for 15-20 minutes to marinate.  The tea will give the mushrooms a smoky flavor and the oil and nama shoyu will help soften them so they appear to be cooked.

Meanwhile, make the polenta.  Combine the cashews, salt and garlic in a food processor and process into small pieces.  Add the corn kernels and process to mix well.  Season with black pepper.

To serve, scoop the polenta into individual dishes.  Top with the mushrooms and spoon over some of the marinade.

Carol gives a nod to Ani Phyo for creating this recipe.  It’s truly unique!

Now, I admit I blew it somewhat on a few steps, but I’m excited to try again (and not only to see what it tastes like with the rightly intended tea).  The Safeway did not have raw cashews, so I substituted bulk, salted cashews.  I think this was a mistake.  The polenta calls for a little extra sea salt to be added and so that combined with already salty cashews made for too-salty polenta.  Oops. Thankfully I made about 1/4 of the recipe given this was a way off the beaten path experiment for me, so I don’t feel like I wasted a lot of food.   My frozen corn kernels were also not completely thawed, so the polenta texture was not as pudding-like as it was supposed to be.  But boy it tasted GOOD.  And it didn’t take much to fill me up.

I think that’s the idea about eating foods in their natural state…without additional chemicals, fillers or other ways we alter our food, we’re satisfied with less. 

Buon appetito!

Lost Hour, Gained Time

11 Sunday Mar 2012

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…and wouldn’t that be nice eh?  The gift of time is one of the most precious of all.  And here I sit on a glorious Sunday…quiet save for a little street noise.  And yet I glance at the clock and grumble.  I so fucking hate Daylight Savings Time I don’t even know where to begin.  And I’ve probably bitched about it in last year’s posts.

No, wait – I haven’t.  Or maybe I mentioned it briefly somewhere last year or even in my posts from March 2010.  Hmmm, go take a peek and see for yourselves.  Dang…Marches have been tough the past two years – a whole lot of memories come flooding back as I glance through those old posts.  Ahhh, I do see a DST rant in a March 2011 post.  At least I’m consistent.

Why am I so anti-DST?  Well, I’m a terrible morning person.  So when we do this Spring Forward thingy and move our clocks an hour ahead, it takes me a good week or so to adjust.  I feel like I’m constantly running late – running behind.  Exhausting, especially for someone like me who tries to be pretty punctual. And yet when I travel and do time zone changes, it doesn’t bother me one bit (well, overseas travel takes a day or two to adjust but that’s expected).  And I snap out of hating mornings.  I’m somewhere new and different and don’t want to just sleep the day away!

I’ve been stressed out the past few weeks – work, HOA stuff, the popcorn ceiling scraping project and on and on.  I finally admitted to myself that while my townhouse isn’t super duper neat and clean, at least when I make a mess it’s MY mess.  Now I’m in a state of transition, as L and I slowly progress through the popcorn ceiling scraping project.  My rooms are rearranged and oddly cluttered.  And it’s disruptive.  Messy.  As I’ve posted before, I now totally get why people move out during home renovations whenever possible. 

So I was mentally gearing up for another round of ceiling scraping with L this weekend.  The plan was that he was going to come over to my place Friday afternoon, work from there, crash on my couch and then we’d start work first thing in the morning.  This is what we’ve done before and it’s worked out really well.  We hadn’t done any work the past few weeks given our schedules and I was looking forward to getting back to it.

Those of you who regularly tune in here know that work has been stressful.  I come home at night mentally fried and it takes me awhile to unwind and untangle my knotted forehead.  While it’s the “good” kind of stress (mostly) that motivates me, it still takes a toll.  I had a big smile moment on Friday when my Manager asked me if I planned to take off any time for vacation in July.  And I giggled and said well, you know, this really could be a moot conversation!  My work assignment is slated to wrap up end of June, by design.  So while I’m not getting my hopes up – things like budgets need to be approved and all – I take it as a teeny good sign that my engagement could be extended out a few more months.

I trekked into downtown Seattle after work to toast a friend’s birthday.  Happy Hour at PNK Ultra Lounge.  It was wonderful seeing friends again and a nice change of scenery getting out of suburbia and into the city – something I achingly long for.  More city time.  Sometimes this girl in the suburbs feels a little out of place.  That’s probably more fodder for another post!

I had told L I had a great idea for a slow cooker recipe for Saturday and he seemed all for it.  I had a shopping list somewhere deep in my purse and knew I needed to grab groceries when I got home.  But when I got closer to my house I had to pee so bad I couldn’t just go right to the store.  I got home, gave L a big hug and just unwound for a few minutes.  The hot UPS man had delivered more new Silpada jewelry samples and I couldn’t wait to unpack them all and play!

L was hungry and so I grabbed a pizza along with the stuff for cooking tomorrow morning.  I was going to make a Bolognese sauce in the slow cooker and then bake it over some sliced polenta and a little parmesan cheese.  GREAT comfort food.

I got back home again, unpacked the groceries and realized I needed to go upstairs and do a little more work on the home laptop here.  Which was completely misbehaving and running super slow.  I couldn’t launch what I needed to and had to reboot the laptop several times.  I felt guilty for being upstairs and not spending time with L, watching TV together.  Finally (FINALLY) I got my additional stuff done.  It was probably 9:30 by now and I was not in a happy mood.

I went downstairs and unpacked a few more jewelry samples.  Just kind of shuffled the little boxes around, trying to get my mood stabilized and happier.  L and I talked about the plan for Saturday and got caught up on the latest Californication episodes.  I gotta admit, this series is growing on me – it’s been out for a few years but I didn’t have Showtime until just recently.  (But the Charlie character will always be Harry Goldenblatt to me – just saying).

Around 11 we were both tired.  I went upstairs to sleep.  When I woke up Saturday morning, it seemed really quiet downstairs.  I went downstairs and L (and the dog) were gone.  So was his car.  I figured he went out to get coffee but then I found a note by my phone.  Said he wasn’t feeling well and went home – didn’t want to wake me up. 

NOT happy here.  I’d slept off my weeklong stress and was psyched to get to work and tackle more of this project with him.  Now, I felt flaked out on and, frankly, taken advantage of.  Here was someone I let hang out in my house all day and left before doing the work he promised he’d help me with. ERRRGHHH!!  We texted and he told me he wasn’t feeling well and that I seemed cranky.  Hmmm, probably not a good combination.  Then we chatted on the phone for a bit.  We’re definitely going to reschedule – we just haven’t confirmed when.

So once again I sat in my living room and had a moment.  What the hell is going on here?   Am I REALLY that much of a cranky bitch that people don’t want to be around me? How did I go from happy person enjoying a night out with friends to coming home and feeling overwhelmed again at home?  On the other hand, L knows what he’s getting into when he stays at my place.  We are not dating and the vibe is totally different when it’s a platonic, male friendship vs. something romantic, obviously.  It’s kind of like having a part-time roommate.

And then I wondered: is there a technology conflict between my internet service and his?  He uses a portable, wireless service when he comes over here to work.  Does that conflict with mine?  Hey, if anyone out there has any theories let me know.  Or is it just a coincidence that every time he’s here and working and I fire up my laptop my speeds are down to a crawl?

And then I wondered more:  why am I taking him leaving so goddamn personally?  He’s not feeling well.  End of story.  And if someone is sick they should be home resting and not spreading germs around.  I remembered to stop, breathe and remember The Four Agreements.  One of which is Don’t Take Things Personally.  Yep, that’s my uber challenging one – a lifelong lesson for sure.  Once again, I let someone push my buttons.  Sensitive buttons.  

So now I breathed again…this is a gift of time!  Let’s be positive here! Gosh, what can I do on a now freed-up Saturday?  Well, I connected.  I got caught up with two friends over the phone and later went to a nearby craft store to check out jewelry display trays.  Normally craft stores make me mental – I have little patience for crafts – but a little browsing and shopping (candles and ocean-scented potpourri) was just what I needed to reset. 

Now I’m just enjoying the afternoon and may grab a nap before hockey tonight.  Yep, the ground beef went into the freezer – I’ll save the Bolognese sauce cooking for another time…just like the home projects.