Weekly shopping 4/2/12

I give up, my official grocery shopping budget has to be $250.00.  Since the kids are gone we bought a bunch less food, and then I thought, I'll get some treats that I don't usually get.  And, voila, $247.00.  $50.00 per person per week seems reasonable.  44% of our purchases were P6, mostly because we bought less dairy.  The only local produce we bought were the potatoes and the hydroponic tomatoes.

Meat: can of wild caught crab meat, bacon, ground beef, chicken thighs, breakfast sausage, chuck roast, flat iron steak, Boston butt roast, bratwurst, and mild italian sausage.  Meat total: 93.39.  It was the steak and the crab meat that did me in.

Produce: a bargain bag with some little potatoes, garlic, and an onion, and another with three zucchini and 2 cucumbers, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, carrots, 4 artichokes, a savoy cabbage, bunch cilantro, 2 cara cara oranges, chard, 4 avocados, 3 pabloanos, a vine of hydroponic tomatoes, asparagus, bananas, tomatillos, a giant papaya, bag of yellow potatoes, a mango a bunch of pears, and a yellow bell pepper.

Dairy: 1/2 gallon whole milk, pint cream, butter, 2 dozen eggs, and a container of cottage cheese.

Bags, boxes, and cans (otherwise known as the center of the store:) Nut thins, Earl grey tea, Breakfast tea, rice thins, nori seaweed, coconut flour, sesame oil, sauerkraut, beet kvass (weirdly magenta, but tasty,) kombucha, dish soap, cleaning concentrate, and olive oil.

Signs of spring

Strange photo-booth picture of the red bud

I let my sons take the camera, technically "their" camera on vacation, so these are taken with my in-computer camera.  Sort of dreamy and odd.  The plums and red bud are in full bloom, and some time this week we are going to have to build our fence to the plants don't get too big.

Since the children are all out of town David and I are trying to eat down our food in the house a bit before we shop.  I made chicken stock with the remaining chicken and turkey products that have been taking up space in the freezer.  I am looking forward to a light shop later today or tomorrow.

Day lilies!

Plum blossoms with the neighbors apple tree in the back ground

Buckwheat crepes!

I finally got around to making the buckwheat crepes I mentioned earlier in the week.  They were great!  David ate his with yogurt, maple syrup, and bananas and liked them very well.  I salted mine and tore off pieces to eat with a soft boiled egg, as though it were toast or a socca.  They had a flavor that reminded me a little of injera, the Somalian flat bread normally made with teff flour.  I might try letting them ferment longer next time to get more of that sourdough flavor.  The texture on the tongue was smooth and crepe like, but they are not as resilient as wheat flour crepes, I would fold them rather than roll them around a filling.

Next time I am going to add a smidgen of baking soda, and beat the egg whites and make the batter into small blini type pancakes and serve them with some sort of savory topping.  I think that would suit the texture more.  David said they would make fine dosa substitutes with some sort of curry filling.

The yogurt and buckwheat flour mixture was very thick, and I used all of the whey from two containers of yogurt to make up part of the 8 ounces.  If you are making your own greek yogurt this would be a great way to use the drained off whey.  I might also try this with buttermilk or kefir instead of the yogurt.

This amount made 8 thin 8 inch crepes, plenty for two, probably enough for four if you have other dishes as well.

Buckwheat Crepes

4 ounces raw buckwheat groats
8 ounces plain whole fat yogurt
4 eggs
pinch of salt

Put the groats in your blender and blend on low for 4 minutes.  Sift through a fine mesh strainer returning any coarse bits to the blender and repeat until all of the flour passes through the strainer.

Whisk the yogurt and buckwheat flour together in a bowl and cover loosely with a plate or a cloth and a rubber band.  Leave in a warm draft free spot overnight or up to 24 hours.  (I did mine over night and there was a mild sourdough taste and a little yogurt taste, I think I would have liked to ferment it longer.)

In the morning add the eggs and a pinch of salt, whisk till smooth, and cook in lightly buttered crepe pans till gently brown on the bottom and dry on top.  Flip and cook for a minute or two more until the other side has some brown flecks.

Edited to add: According to MyPlate this recipe has about 850 calories, and around 40 grams protein, 50 grams fat, and  60 grams carb.  (If you figure on 2 good tablespoons of butter for the pans.)  1/4 of that would make a fine breakfast side dish with some meat or eggs for me.  1/2 would be about right for David. 

I made the first one too thick, and liked it best.  Experiment with how thick you like them.  My crepe pans are non stick, but I buttered them liberally and enjoyed the buttery flavor a lot.  Unfortunately we gobbled them all down before I thought to take a picture.

A collection of links: Friends

Many of my friends and family members have blogs or web sites, I spent the morning making a page of links in the sidebar, but I thought I would also post it as a regular post.  I will add more as I find the links to others.  Oddly, other than Barth Anderson none of them are writing about food, but I am blessed with a lot of friends who are amazing writers, musicians, and artists.


My friend Barth Anderson is a food writer, food policy wonk, and also a fantastic fiction writer.  His book Patron Saint of Plagues is one of my favorite books of all time.  He writes about food and food policy at Fair Food Fight.

My friend Eleanor Arneson is a fiction writer and a poet, and gives the most amazing poetry advise.  She blogs about popular culture in the form of movies, economics, the environment, feminism, Iceland, and more here.

Tanya Brody in addition to being a lovely musician, knowing how to sew life size puppets, and writing for legal publications blogs here.

Daniel L. Byman was the best man at my wedding, and is very smart.  If you are interested in counterterrorism and mid-east policy, he's your man.  He writes articles with some regularity, like this one at Foreign Policy, and also writes policy books like The Five Front War.

My friend Kevin Caufield is a potter, though he doesn't blog.  Wouldn't you love a set of hand made dinner ware?

Haddayr Copley Woods writes very smart and interesting essays about disability, autism, and family.

Ted Davis is an international man of mystery, I am pretty sure he knows everyone.  As in, all of the people, everywhere.  This is his business.

Tate Hallaway and Lyda Morehouse write science fiction and paranormal romance novels and blog about writing and parenting here. (They're secretly the same person, shhhh.)

My dad Charles Hoffman makes guitars and has a great web-site, and blogs too.

My mom Susan Hoffman is a realtor if you would like to buy a house you should call her.  Her old friend and broker has a fun column about getting your house on the market called Dear Pat.

Doug Hulick is also a fiction writer and blogger who has been known to write about writing, sword fighting, and fatherhood here.

Dakota Dave Hull is sort of like my music uncle, he played at my wedding, schooled me about great coffee at an impressionable age, and generally has been an avuncular presence in my life.

Naomi Kritzer writes about writing and motherhood.

My friend Kevin Matheny blogs about gaming, technology, and coaching little league.

My friend Mike Matheny is blogging about his journey with cancer at The Unintentional Expert.  He is a great musician as well, you can download his latest album here.

My very old friend Kelly McCullough is a fiction writer, and blogs about writing, cats, and sometimes his adventures in Wisconsin politics, which completely blows my mind.  Kelly, a county commissioner, what is the world coming to?

As far as I know John Calvin Rezmerski doesn't blog, but you should read his wonderful poems anyway!  He is the current Poet Laureate of the Minnesota League of poets.

My childhood friend Jessy Scholl used to blog here, but the old posts are interesting, so go read what she had been writing, and perhaps by the time you catch up she will start back up.

Also not blogging is my amazing artist friend Margo Selski, but her gallery has a website with a lot of her art.

If Dakota Dave Hull is my musical uncle, then Robin and Linda Williams are my musical god parents.  I grew up in the Minnesota folk music scene, and volunteered for years at the greatest folk music coffee house The Extempore.  Whatever I know about singing I learned from singing along with Linda while I listen to their albums.

Several of these lovely writers and several more of my friends also blog at their writers group site Wyrdsmiths.

Google seems to think I have used up all the search band-with I am allowed for the day, so I will add and update more later.  If you are a friend who has an internet presence don't be offended if I left you off of the list, but do send me your link so I can add it.  I want to add several other of my music friends for instance, and I have very few of my artist friends on the list yet.  Also, now that I am blogging I can't for the life of me imagine why my book club ladies don't start a blog.

Blogging out of school

I think I have mentioned that I am an art teacher.  I spend my days drawing and painting and playing with clay, with the most amazing, adorable, interesting children.  I get to tell them all the things that are cool about art history, and make connections with science and literature, and figure out what's going on in their life, and try to support them.  Sometimes I get to order boxes and boxes of art supplies, which when they come feel exactly like birthday presents, and then I get to unpack the boxes and neatly organize things in my cupboards, and make lists.

Seriously, could there be a better job?

The school where I teach (FAIR school Crystal) is focused on integration and equity, and one of the areas we seek to create equity is through technology.  We are working hard to eliminate the digital divide.  We do this through a strong commitment to technology.

If you think about it there are 3 intersections between technology and education.  1. Using technology as a teacher to make the work of teaching more efficient or effective.  2. Using technology with students in the service of your curricular goals.  3. Teaching technology to children, or providing them with technology resources.  An example of number 1 in my room would be the amazing ease with which I can make power point presentations using high quality images from museum web sites to show my students art history examples.  Early in my career I would check out books from the library, mark images I wanted to use in my instruction, rent time with a photo-copy stand at a local art center and take slide-photos of the examples I wanted to show children, and have the film processed into a slide set.

Some aspects of using technology as a teacher have slowed me down.  I used to use a paper grade book, calculate my grades with an adding machine, and fill in bubble sheets with a number two pencil to submit my grades.  Now I use an online grade-book and submit my grades electronically.  It takes about 5 times as long.  Seriously, the software was designed by a committee!  I actually weep regularly when I have to use it.  Don't even get me started about the wasted potential of photo-seating charts, but every time I try to use the software I have realized I would have been better off with a ruler and some graph paper.

I use technology with students in several ways.  The classroom teachers all have interactive "smart boards."  For several years I was angry and hurt that I didn't have one, but honestly, a lap top projector is all I need.  My students are doing most of the time, they don't need to come to the board to get that sort of stimulus.  Google image search is nirvana for art teachers.  I used to have so many reference books in my room, books about animals, books about the ocean, cupboards full of National Geographics (actually, I still have that, you can pry them from my cold dead hands,) books about art history.  Now if a kid wants to know how to draw an emu, I have them look up an emu online.

Also, the photocopier is my best friend.  What to do in the background of your self-portrait?  Here, let me make you 3 photo-copies and you can try three ideas and decide which looks best.  Can't decide what medium to use?  Photo copies!  Need to enlarge your drawing, but don't think you can do it by hand?  You get the idea.  And projecting images my children have made during performances, conferences, and posting them online?  Awesome.

One of the best ways to get teachers to confidently teach technology is to give them access to technology.  Our district, and my principal in particular, have committed to giving teachers, and thereby students, immersive access to technology.  Our 8-12 grade students have lap tops to use.  So do the teachers.  We have many wonderful programs, film editing, photo editing, you name it.  And teachers and students are encouraged to bring their computers home, share them with their families, and use them for their personal interests.  Because that kind of fluent, personal use is how people learn!

All of which is a very long introduction to why I feel totally fine using my work computer to create and maintain a personal blog.  And to explain why I have been sick to my stomach all week and haven't been blogging.  In a recent post I casually linked to the P6.coop site when I mentioned the percentage of my groceries that were P6.  A teacher friend of mine followed the link and was re-directed to a fairly raunchy porn site.  Yuck!  She posted a comment chastising me for this, rightfully so, I should not be posting corrupted links.

Upon further examination I found that my link was good, the site had been hacked.  We tried using the url from home on several devices and realized the fault was in the site, not my link.  So we notified the people who might be able to fix it, and I assume all is fixed, though to be honest, I haven't checked it out on my work computer...

So here is the thing: technology and the internet is very perilous for us teachers.  I have read cases of teachers being fired because a friend posted a photo of the teacher drinking wine at a party.  I have read cases of teachers being fired because there was horrible mal-ware infecting their computer which caused a child to see a porn image.  But how can we expect teachers to stay current and teach their students and be relevant if we deny them access to resources that almost everyone else takes for granted?

Negotiating the balance between changing technology and the classroom is a huge challenge.  Everyone in the modern world is hooked in to their cell phone, but is it appropriate for a teacher to have a cell phone on during instruction time?  I would say no.  How about response times for e-mail?  My husband will return a work e-mail within 20 minutes.  I might not check my e-mail till the bitter end of my day depending on clean-up, parent phone calls, and prep work for the next day.  Don't expect me to have access to a computer until after work most days.

I have no conclusion, just a wish list.  I wish that our society would remember the variations in peoples work day/rhythm/technology access.  I wish my district had grading software that actually saved me time.  I wish I could afford a personal laptop to blog from at home, and while I am at it a good digital camera with manual focus and a tripod to photograph close-ups of wee little plants in my garden.

And I really wish that things that I link to don't get hacked by icky porn sites that make me afraid to link to anything again.

More signs of spring

The red buds are coming!

Enough chives to eat.

One week till rhubarb sauce.  The not-yet unfurled leaves look like green brains, or morel mushrooms.

Melissa Mcewen's take on food-reward

I think Melissa share many of my reservations about the current theory of food-reward.  Please read her article here.

I am going to edit my previous post to include that link, but if you were interested in my post about how modern food lies you might like her post as well.

Edited to add: Oh, look, Paul Jaminet seems to agree with me as well.  Or, at any rate isn't quite on board with food-reward as it is currently advertised.

Though, let me take this moment to re-iterate that Stephan Guyenet is a very excellent blogger, seems to be a level-headed scientist, and also seems to be a nice guy.  But I do believe that respectful disagreement is one great way to increase the total of knowledge.

Buckwheat crepes?

This photo has nothing to do with crepes, but I like it.

You may have noticed I bought buckwheat groats this week.  The universe of blogs seems to be telling me to eat buckwheat crepes, so who am I to deny it?

Shauna at Gluten Free Girl and the Chef posted a lovely photo and the ratio for crepes here.

Melissa at Hunt.Gather.Love wrote about buckwheat pancakes in this post, which I have already linked to.

I plan to use Shauna's ratios and suggestion to grind the flour in my blender, but Melissa's suggestion to soak the flour in yogurt (or maybe a yogurt water mix so it's not too thin thick?) for a day or two first.

Hmmm, maybe I will make those instead of rice noodles for fish night.  I wonder if I could get my hand on some caviar?  Make a russian mushroom cream sauce for the fish?

Weekly dinner menu, 3/25/2012

We helped a friend move and paint all day yesterday, so when we got home there was no way we were going to cook.  We got Nepalese take out from Himalaya.  They have the best palak paneer in town.

I got another bag of end of the road bell peppers which I am about to roast, and I made beef/lamb stock with the ox-tail and lamb bones this morning.  I keep a zip lock in the freezer to which I add leek greens, mushroom stems, etc. and when I make stock I have some vegetables to flavor the stock with.  Today I also added celery, allspice, bay leaves, and a few carrots.  I roasted the lamb bones at 450 till they were brown and put everything in a big stock pot with filtered water to simmer for a few hours.

Tonight we are making the eye of round as roast beef, making mashed rutabagas and parsnips, and broccoli and asparagus.  I think I am going to make latkes as a side dish for the meat eaters and the main dish for the vegetarians.  Once the meat is out of the oven I am going to make a pavlova shell, we have a lot of cream left over from last week so I am going to use it up in a fancy dessert.  We have too many lemons and limes so I may make curd for the dessert.

Monday: I got two lovely looking pieces of salmon, I think I will make a teriyaki type glaze, pan fry some rice noodles with sauce, and make spinach with sesame seeds.   I got some shiitake mushrooms, so they will work their way into the meal too.

Tuesday: I am going to bake all 5 pounds of the russet potatoes and serve baked potatoes with cheese sauce for the kids, and stroganoff for the grownups.  Green beans for a vegetable.

Wednesday: Twice baked potatoes, baked ham, and chard.

Thursday: French onion soup?  I made beef broth this morning after I went shopping, so something lovely with that.  I have bonito in the house, so I promised my son I would make him soup with noodles this week, I will start the vegetarian soup with dashi, and then either make a hearty miso with tofu and green onions and other vegetables, or perhaps make a sweet and sour vegetarian soup.

Friday: Turkey with mashed sweet potatoes and broccoli, frittata for the vegetarians.

Saturday: Ham again, probably just pan fried with whatever vegetables are left over.  All of our kids will be gone, the boys are going to Chicago with their Grandparents, my daughter is going to Belgium with her aunt.  To be honest I just think my husband and I will clean and do yard work all of spring break.  We both have really hard busy weeks at work, probably we will both be working more than 40 hours this week, so I am really looking forward to break.

Weekly shopping 3/25/2012

I have figured out why I have been going over my budget the last few weeks!  I have been bringing David with me.  Not that my husband is a profligate shopper, but we have doubled up on things without noticing, and our inner mental menu doesn't necessarily match.

We spent 250.00 again this week.  46% of our purchases were P6, (Edited to add: someone followed my P6 link and ended up at a porn site!  Ack!  My link was good, so I think the P6 site is hacked.  I broke the link and will see if I can find a different P6 link. ) which is pretty good considering we are in the absolute winter produce doll-drums right now.  We manage that amount by buying all local meat, eggs, and dairy.  Which, by the way, is mind boggling.  Think about how much more sustainable my animal products are than the produce I bought.  If we didn't have an oil based shipping economy my family could still eat the same animal products, we would probably eat less rice and more oats, buckwheat, and tubers, and during March the only vegetables we would be able to eat would be sauerkraut and stored winter squash.  So much for a vegetarian diet being sustainable.  I wonder how high I can get my P6 percent during the summer?

Meat: we still have hamburger and the never ending supply of frozen chicken from several weeks ago, so we just bought ox tails which were on special, and lamb soup bones, an enormous ham, also on special, and a variety of sausage and some bacon. Our fish this week is frozen wild Alaskan Sockeye. Meat sub total: 75.00  (actually it was 72.something, but close enough.)

Dairy: We got lots of yogurt, whole plain, and flavored, 1/2 gallon of whole milk, a pint of cream, butter, cream cheese, cottage cheese, 3 dozen eggs, colby jack and muenster cheese.  Dairy sub total: 106.48  All of our dairy products cost about 5.00 per unit, I wonder if that's some sort of psychological dairy purchasing limit beyond which people don't like to go.

Fresh produce: bag of almost over the hill peppers, bulk spinach, #5 potatoes, daikon radish, shitake mushrooms, bag of oranges, mushrooms, asparagus, cucumber, onions, beets, garlic, limes, kale, lemons, ginger, orange bell pepper, scallions, avocado, green beans, bananas, kiwi, bag of pears, broccoli, sweet potatoes, bag of apples.

Cans, boxes, and bags: nut thin crackers, crushed tomatoes in a glass jar, rice noodles thick and thin, buckwheat groats, frozen raspberries and blueberries, veggie burgers, rice, coconut milk, rice thin crackers, tortillas, and dried kelp, because I just read an article about kelp and I had to have some.

Apparently the co-op tracks purchases for members and can provide a purchase history for us.  I am both intrigued and horrified by the thought of seeing my grocery shopping broken down over a quarter.  Maybe once I have been shopping weekly for a while I will give it a try.