Some Kind of Ancient Flavor

I’m fascinated by olives.

Olives are evocative of Ye Olden Times…. Ye Golden Tymes… Gnarled, hardy trees bearing fruits from heavy boughs…

I had olives along with my mid-afternoon snack today. These particular olives weren’t particularly excellent. They came from a can. I think olives from a can absorb some metallic taste, and I don’t think the brine percolates around them quite so nicely as those olives from a jar.

I’m not so into eating food from cans anymore. But that’s besides the point.

The only downside of olives is that they’re not a local food for me…maybe they are for you, if you live in California’s Central Valley, the Mediterranean or perhaps even Phoenix, Arizona.

I’ve heard that I have distant relatives in Sicily who are olive farmers. They make their own olive oil. I would like to see olive oil being made at some point in life. I don’t find olives to be an oily fruit. Where does all that oil come from?

How do you like to eat your olives?

The Joy of Recipe Sharing

Now that I have found myself reading all of these food blogs, I just can’t help but to want to make some of these recipes.

After Sonia of Master of Her Romaine mentioned homemade sweet potato fries (awhile back), I felt like a light switch had just flipped on in my brain. I’ve kept meaning to make them since then. I love sweet potato fries – of course it would make sense to make some at home! Then, she gave me the recipe… and I thought: cumin? A brilliant choice to pair with the sweetness of the vegetable. I decided to substitute some salt for the chili powder (I can’t do spicy foods too well), and I changed the oven temp/time to suit what I already had baking…but in any case, these turned out great! My husband also really enjoyed them.

So – what else was baking in the oven, might you ask?

Banana bread! Everyone keeps talking about banana bread lately on these blogs. I can’t give you an exact recipe because I didn’t follow an exact recipe and didn’t even measure all my ingredients, but it went something like this:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup spelt flour
About 1.5 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
4 mashed bananas
1/2 cup applesauce
A few generous splashes maple syrup
One generous glub of honey
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp nutmeg

I think that’s it. I baked it for about an hour at 350. It turned out on the lighter side, probably because I didn’t use any butter. I think it’s a good late-summer bread, though, not too dense.

And then, one last blog-inspired recipe from yesterday: Chickpeas with Spinach. Again, thanks to Sonia of “Master of Her Romaine”. I slightly tweaked this recipe that Sonia had linked to on her site. I used kombu leaves to soak the dried chickpeas with, which eventually became incorporated into the dish. I also added garlic afterwards, instead of during the cooking process. Anyway, I thought this dish was another fairly light one which I was able to chill in the refrigerator and bring to the picnic that my husband and I attended today, with fellow blogger and friend, Anna, and her husband Ryan. (Anna brought a great fresh and summery Mediterranean pasta salad to share – lots of good picnic food was had.)

Here’s a photo of the chickpea dish cooking:

This food blogging thing is all about sharing, isn’t it? That’s the joy of it to me. Through passing forth our recipes, we’re actualizing something our grandparents used to do on small sheets of paper – exchanging a bit of culture, tradition, and/or contemporary invention. Through giving each other these plans to work with, we set forward a chain of momentum, as families and friends experience the fruits of creation.

Food blogging may be our generation’s answer to a food industry that has tried to feed us things fashioned by machines, things that fell forth from conveyer belts. We’re bringing back the human element to food: the patience, the caring, the attention – things I think we really need. Ironically, we’re doing these very human things over the internet… But it does bring people together from all over the country, and all over the world. And it even allows you to discover great friends in places not-too-far away that you never would have found without the blogs.

Yee-Haw and… The County Fair

Would you believe that this…

Came from the same place as this?

Yes, healthy choices were made today at the famous Grange Fair. My husband and I found a place that sells fruit cups, of all things, amidst other options such as:

We were happy to see that the Crepe Booth returned from last year. I love watching crepes quickly cook:

I had mine filled with vegetables, pesto and cheese. It came in fairly environmentally-friendly packaging! A small cone of wax paper, with a few napkins. (Sorry – no photo. Didn’t want to get crepe filling juice on the camera!)

The fair brings out glorious products of nature, in full display:

Ever see oblong watermelons?

I was entertained by some produce that was characterized as ‘vegetable freaks’:

One of my favorite parts of the fair are the beautiful ‘market baskets’. Here’s an award-winning one:

There’s signs of the seasons here. When our nation used to need to do this to make food last:

Oh the things that the sunshine gives us! To last the whole year through.