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.
Crisp and Verdant 