New fruits, the joy of shopping local somewhere else

Len was in south Florida for a work conference, and while he did bring me a souvenir from a gift shop, he also brought souvenirs home from an even better spot -- a fruit stand.

You know you can find something new to try in your very own grocery store. Sometimes the stores even highlight a special fruit, in for a limited time. Pluots, star fruit, and dragon fruit come to mind. But while you haven't had to travel much of anywhere to find it, most of the fruit you might consider as ordinary, everyday, healthy-snack staples traveled very far to get to you. Avocados from Mexico, grapes from Chile. Bananas... oh, let's talk about bananas for a second.

The tropical fruit every American eats for breakfast. OK, maybe you and your second cousin's college roommate don't eat bananas, but the point is that bananas don't grow naturally in most of the United States, and yet they're affordable and plentiful for us. That's a problem.

Almost all bananas found in our grocery stores today are the Cavendish variety, because this variety is suitable to mass market: a high yield rate, ability to stay green for several weeks, disease-resistant... but not disease-proof. The main reason we all eat Cavendish bananas today is because the previously dominant variety, Gros Michel (which is said to have been tastier and more bruise-resistant), succumbed to a fungus. Wiped out! So, growers switched to the Cavendish, and only the Cavendish. Why grow any other variety when this one is so popular and ships so well?

I'll tell you why. Variety isn't just the spice of life, it's the failsafe of life. Genetic diversity in agriculture is like diversification in a financial portfolio. If any one cultivar/investment begins to fail, you can rely on the others to keep things running. But instead, a new strain of the fungus is now killing the Cavendish bananas, and there is no other kind of banana readily available for the worldwide marketplace. It's a long and expensive process to cultivate new varieties suitable for multi-national consumers. You might soon have to find a new everyday fruit you love and become a champion of eating locally because local is the only kind of fruit available.

All right, now that we've got that bummer out of the way, let's get back to the fun thing. 

The fruit stand. Trying local fruit in a new location. 

Imagine you had never seen a banana before, traveled to somewhere tropical, stopped at a roadside stand, and there it was. "This looks weird, but the guy told me to wait until it's yellow, and then it will be delicious. I guess I'll try it!"

That's exactly what Len did on his trip to Florida. He went to a fruit stand called Robert Is Here and found some exotic, locally grown fruits to bring home. Specifically, two canistels, also known as egg fruit, and one mamey sapote. 

We had to wait about two weeks for them to fully ripen in our cold midwestern kitchen, but then they all did ripen within a few a days of each other. I've never tasted anything quite like them.

The mamey sapotes are the brown, coconut-looking things in front.

I think we actually ate the mamey sapote a tad too soon. The guy in Florida had told Len to wait until it's very soft, softer than you think you should be, and then wait another day. The sapote was supposed to resemble pumpkin pie -- in color, texture, and flavor. It still had a very slight astringency to it when we ate the flesh raw, so I think we should have waited that extra day or maybe two to give it time to become really custardy. I ended up pureeing the rest and baking it into a pie. Slightly drier texture, but otherwise very similar to a pumpkin or sweet potato pie.

Mamey sapote pie, half gone already.

The cansitels, on the other hand, we timed perfectly. They had a somewhat dry texture (like a hard-boiled egg yolk) but at the same time, so creamy. It really was like eating custard. I'm so glad I tried that.

A canistel half, after I've scooped out the big seeds and taken a few bites with my spoon.

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Water budgets - they're a thing

Here I go again. Apparently my pet cause lately is water conservation. (See this post and this post.) Coinciding in the past week were our latest water bill and a water usage–related article in the Tribune called "Wealth collides with climate change."

First, for the curious, here's the latest on our own water usage. During the most recent two-month cycle, November-December, we again used 3 CCFs -- not our record lowest, but lower than our previous average. The two months before that, September-October, we were back at 4 CCFs. Our best guess at why our water consumption increased during that period is that it was appling season. We were sterilizing equipment and filling the wash basin with apples -- and water -- multiple times. We did some lawn seeding, too, so we probably used the hose a few times, but we never just set a sprinkler out. I do remember spending A LOT of time hauling water from the rain barrels to water the grass.

Now, on to the article that sparked this discussion. I'll sum up and provide commentary. 

California is one of the many places in the western U.S. experiencing severe drought. Last summer, the governor asked people to voluntarily cut 15% of their water use. Some local districts even enforce penalties based on water consumption, but here's the thing: In affluent areas, money is not a deterrent. Fill your swimming pools, water your tropical gardens, and take 30-minute showers in an apartment-sized bathroom -- who cares if you have to pay a fine for exceeding your water budget? 

I'll tell you who cares. I care. You should care. And the people of California should care, too. In Las Virgenes, a wealthy municipality northwest of Los Angeles, the water district is installing a metering system that will show customers in real time how much water they're using. Will these folks be surprised to watch the gallons tick away just by running the kitchen sink for a couple of minutes? Maybe, maybe not. But if they go over their household's water budget (based on number of residents and property size), they'll get a warning and then a fine. A third strike could earn them a flow restrictor! 

A flow restrictor is a rare and heavy-handed threat more typically reserved for customers with unpaid bills, but I think it could be an effective wakeup call. Sure, it feels a little dystopian, a government agency suddenly turning your faucets to an extremely low-flow setting when you were just trying to cool off by flooding your backyard, but fresh water is a resource we all have to share, a resource that is in short supply, and a resource that your government agencies treat and filter and recycle and recirculate and pump into your home for you. 

I certainly would not advocate for increasing the price of water services, given its necessity to life whether you're rich or poor. And, I've told you that our own conservation efforts save us only about $5 a month, not much of a reward on its own. So, if just the knowledge that we're decreasing our environmental impact and our strain on the system isn't enough to make people want to change their water-wasting habits, and paying a fine for using more than we should doesn't bother us, then maybe the threat of barely trickling faucets will help change our behavior for the better.

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Breakfast bowl for dinner - sweet potatoes and turmeric egg

Eggs for dinner rarely signifies a breakfast-for-dinner night in this house. While the breakfast menu of nearly every restaurant I've visited includes at least one version of eggs Benedict, the dish is more likely to grace our dinner table (OK, our dinner laps, on the couch in front of the TV), particularly in the form it took as one of my parents' regular dinner items -- toast, ham, asparagus, poached egg, hollandaise. My mom's hollandaise was always extra lemony. Yum. 

Then, Len and I discovered shakshuka, that delicious, eggs-poached-in-spiced-tomato-sauce dish that might be breakfast to some folks but has become one of our own go-to dinners when we need an easy way to use up some tomatoes and peppers. If you've never tried shakshuka, I urge you to try it. If it sounds too adventurous (I'm talking to you, kin of meat and potatoes and European roots), think of it as another form of chicken cacciatore. It's not chicken, but it came from a chicken, and there's a slight change in spices, but the sauce is familiar and homey. It's a comfortable dinner-time flavor. You'll love it. 

But, this post is not about shakshuka or eggs Benedict. Tonight, there's a new egg in town, and it's going with sweet potatoes.

I already love sweet potatoes as a side dish. When eating mostly vegetarian was our winning strategy for a weight-loss challenge, I came to love sweet potatoes as a main dish as well. I found these excellent chipotle stuffed sweet potatoes, and I continue to riff on them to this day. And now, there's this so-called breakfast bowl of sweet potatoes, which we are having for dinner.

The original recipe came from Bon Appetit, and you know I've made some revisions based purely on 1) not wanting to go to the store, and 2) trying to use up some random thing in the fridge. Hey, some recipes must be followed precisely, while others were born to be winged (wung?).

Roasted sweet potatoes and turmeric-poached eggs

• ¾ teaspoon garlic powder
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
• ¾ teaspoon paprika
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into ¾-inch pieces
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• salt and pepper
• 8 slices bacon
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• ¼ cup white vinegar
• 2 teaspoons ground turmeric
• 4 large eggs
• a few handfuls of salad greens (but I used thinly sliced purple cabbage this time)
• 1 dill sprig, fronds chopped and stem discarded
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• Smoked sea salt (for serving; optional)

Place a rack in the center of oven and preheat to 425°. Whisk garlic powder, cayenne, paprika, and oil in a large bowl. Add sweet potato and onion and toss to coat; season with salt and pepper. Spread out sweet potato mixture on a rimmed baking sheet. Place bacon on a separate baking sheet (lined with a rack if you have one, so the grease drips away from the strips). Roast for about 12 minutes, then toss the sweet potato mixture and check the bacon. 

When the bacon is as brown and crisp as you like (might be done now, might need another 10 minutes), it from oven and cut into 1" pieces and set aside. Either way, continue roasting the sweet potato until golden brown in spots -- another 15 minutes or so. Toss the sweet potato hash with oregano and keep warm until ready to serve.

Pour 2" water into a large saucepan and bring to a boil; then reduce heat so water is at a gentle simmer and add vinegar and turmeric. Crack one egg one at a time and gently slide it into the water. Poach until whites are set but yolks are still runny, about 3 minutes. 

In those few short minutes while the eggs are poaching, toss greens, dill, parsley, lemon juice, bacon, and any additional salt and pepper, to taste, in a large bowl. Divide the salad among individual bowls and top each with sweet potato hash. Last, use a slotted spoon to transfer a turmeric-poached egg to top each bowl. Sprinkle with smoked sea salt, if using. Serve immediately.

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Adventures in Cake Decorating #11 - Lego Block Cake

It's time for another cake flashback. (I keep telling you, the pandemic has got me baking less.) 

We're looking back, oh my gosh, almost five years on this fun and colorful, albeit hastily built, Lego cake.

We were baking and assembling this thing the morning of my nephew's birthday party, so the icing didn't have time to crust enough between maneuvers. Result: No matter how gently you touch it, the icing sticks to you and smears -- smooth, neat surfaces are but a dream. Oh well. The cakes still look like Lego bricks.

Did you know a regular loaf pan and Oreo cookies are just the right proportions to each other for a Lego cake? 

We baked the cakes in loaf pans and did a little sculpting for straight, flat edges. Two cake recipes gave us three full loaves and a fourth we sliced in half. 

The studs of the bricks are Oreo cookies, hastily covered with buttercream. To make the cakes look like stacked Legos, we stacked them (obviously), and placed stud cookies on only the exposed topsides. There are not Oreos hidden under the stacks.

The other fun decorations were the gelatin Lego pieces and figures. I don't remember how I came across the silicone candy mold for these -- probably a friend from the train showed it to me one day, and I bought it. The kit came with one mold for candies shaped like Lego guys, and another mold for a few different-sized bricks. The brick mold included a lid-like piece to make reverse stud impressions on the bottoms of the bricks, so -- yes! -- you can connect the candies just like regular Lego bricks. 

We used a gummy recipe using flavored gelatin, so the candies tasted like Jello, which was OK. Next time, I would try to intensify the flavor, maybe go for sours.

Also next time, I would give myself more time to build the cake, so the icing work could look a little more polished, but really, the cake tastes just as good either way. Only Pinterest cares how smooth your icing is.

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