Lentil and sausage soup

One of the contradictions of my pursuit of minimalist living is that I aim to simplify my consumption of things I actually love to consume. Project 333 is more delicious if I try to make every single one of the 33 items in my wardrobe something I love and could wear EVERY SINGLE DAY, if I had to. Likewise, I love cooking, but most of my adult life has been devoted to discovering ways to maximize my enjoyment of kitchen time and produce great leftovers. The result is a seasonal approach to ingredients combined with what I call "investment" cooking: cooking a large batches of food that can make several encore appearances.

Winter is my time for chili, soups, stews and roasts. Having a large pot of soup simmering on the stove, or a savory roast in the oven on Sunday, warms and perfumes the house with promises of quick meals in the busy week to come. This week's soup is a recipe I clipped about 35 years ago from a now-defunct magazine, Attenzione.

Lentil Soup

2 cups lentils
1 lb. Italian sausage, browned (I prefer sweet, but if you like a really spicy soup, you can use 1/2 sweet, 1/2 hot)
8 cups water
2 cups chicken broth
8 oz. thinly sliced pepperoni
1 cup chopped onion
1 16-oz. can of tomatoes
2 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp sage
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Combine all the ingredients above in a 6-quart pot, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes, stirring now and then.

Add:
2 medium carrots, sliced
2 stalks celery, diced

Simmer 40 minutes more.

We'll be eating this all week, and I don't care. In fact, I'll be sorry when it's all gone.

If you love the idea of minimalist cooking, I recommend Mark Bittman's "The Minimalist" column in the New York Times and the brand-spanking-new blog Simplifried, Unclutterer's baby sister devoted to "ending mealtime stress".

What food should you buy organic?

Not everyone can afford -- or find -- organic fruits and vegetables. The Environmental Working Group has a guide (.pdf or iPhone app) to help you choose the safest produce for your family. The "dirty dozen" include some items -- carrots, kale, lettuce -- that are easy to grow, too!

http://www.foodnews.org/walletguide.php

Icebox to zero; the cycle begins again

Early spring is an interesting time in my kitchen. The freezer is giving up the last of last year's harvest -- okra and pureed squash (not together, heavens no!). The garden is just beginning to produce (thinnings of lettuce and spinach). If it ever stops raining here in Maryland I will be adding some tomatoes, squash and eggplant to the mix. And, joy of joys, our local farmers markets are open again and brimming with tasty fresh veggies.

We are not complete locavores, but I do have a working philosophy. In the winter, we eat what we've frozen), augmented by non-local varieties: bananas, oranges, avocados. I do try to select fruits and vegetables which have traveled the shortest distance (Georgia, not Chili), and wish there was a little "train" sticker to show me which have come at least halfway by rail. But for things I can get locally in season, I wait. There really is something special about enjoying strawberries, corn and peaches during that brief time when they are really fresh and ripe. For now, butternut bisque and spring greens. Soon, strawberry rhubarb pie. Worth waiting for!

Thinking bigger: ethical consumption

I just returned from an extended trip to South Florida, where I attended the annual General Assembly (GA) of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. Among other business, GA selects a social justice issue for congregational study and action for the next few years. The issue selected for 2008-2012 was "Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice". It's a big topic, and an important one, but I found myself wishing that we'd thought even bigger and taken on ethical consumption, not just food issues. It's not about riding my own hobby horse of ethical fashion; it's about recognizing that we are whole, complex beings, behaving in complicated, interconnected ways. As people begin to think seriously about the environment, they won't want limit their actions to a single category of consumption; they want to be consistent, to understand the big picture and to feel like they are making meaningful changes. We use the same resources for a multitude of products. Petroleum
provides gas, Glad bags and fleece vests. Corn can be food, fuel or fiber. The growing ethanol controversy (fuel or food?) demonstrates how the solution for one consumption problem could create problems in another area.

Don't worry, I am not going to stray from ethical fashion; but I will avoid discussing it in isolation!

Might the U.S. finally catch up with Canada?

It's not fashion, but it's good news to me, anyway. About twenty-three years ago, we visited my brother in Ontario and marveled at the milk bags that had replaced plastic bottles and cartons. They fit in a special holder and use MUCH less material than the jugs so common in the U.S. Now I have seen about six articles about the wonders of milk bags and how they might actually be adopted in the States.

It's about frickin' time!

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Eat Local

Nice White Lady is all about "right living": examining what that means on a daily basis and a personal scale. It's not about tackling the big issues of our times -- poverty, racism, global warming -- in big, dramatic ways. Not that I am opposed to large-scale efforts to change habits or policies; it's just that I subscribe to Margaret Meade's statement "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has", and scale it down to personal, daily choices.

Take the environmental impact of our food habits, for example. It's great to be able to buy strawberries for your Valentine's Day fondue party, but what hidden environmental price do we pay, in terms of transportation? Will buying New Jersey tomatoes at the supermarket make it harder for your local farmer to say no when the developers come around with an offer to buy his land? We are used to the convenience and low cost of grocery store produce, but it isn't always "good for us" economically, environmentally or nutritionally.

Enter my new local heroes, Renee Brooks Catacalos and Kristi Bahrenburg Janzen of Real People Eat Local. They are neighbors of mine in the small, inside the Beltway suburb where I've lived for 22 years, but we've never met. In a recent interview, Renee described how for the last two years she and her family have purchased most of their produce from farmers' markets or other local outlets. It's a great website, with archives of their newsletters (I subscribed right away) and links to local food directories, food policy information and magazines.

My personal action items:

• locate local produce markets within 5 miles of my home (we live in a dense suburb, and 10 miles would probably include way too many!)
• visit one new produce market every two weeks
• plan my meals around in-season produce