It must be February, and other thoughts on eating seasonally. 23 February 2007 7:22 pm
Posted by Tracy in : CSA, cooking, eating, meat, seasonality, vegan, vegetarian , trackbackSome people I know swear that summer is their most carnivorous season — they just can’t resist dead animal flesh cooked on the grill. Not me. I get closest to veganism or even (gods and goddesses forbid) a raw foods diet during the hottest days of the year, when everything growing is so ripe and fresh it’s hard to think of eating anything else. Ice cream is far too rich for some days in August, and even sherbet can be pushing it. Sorbets are better, lighter and more refreshing. (I have been haunted by the idea of tomato sorbet ever since Laurel posted this picture, perhaps because it made me long for summer with every bit of my Oregon winter-dampened being.) Yogurt and some cheeses are about the only animal products I can consistently stand when the temperatures outside approach body heat, and then only cautiously, with gratitude for refrigeration (yogurt can be so refreshing, and salads love cheese). Around the fall equinox, even before I notice the days have started getting shorter, my caution starts to fade. By the time the rains begin in October or November, I have joyfully returned to eating eggs.1 And come February, when it’s been dark and wet for longer than I thought possible (every year it happens! I never learn), I start thinking that something’s gotta die, and I’d rather it not be me.
So last night we had kielbasa for dinner, with smashed potatoes and sautéed braising greens, and I almost managed to eat a whole sausage because it’s that time of year. The potatoes were based on the Fingerling Home “Fries” from Jack Bishop’s A Year In a Vegetarian Kitchen, but it turns out that recipe really is best-suited to smaller spuds with lots of skin to keep them from falling apart (but smashed potatoes are still all kinds of delicious, so hey). I rediscovered the joys of horseradish, which probably means it’s been far too long since we last made the Easy Russian Dressing from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics. A good time was had by all, and now I might be done eating dead animal flesh until the next family style dinner at Iraila (Mark told me they decided not to compete with Oscar Night this Sunday, but I don’t know if I can resist their honey-rosemary lamb skewers unless there’s a similarly awesome offering for March 25).
Tonight: black beans with some kind of cornmeal pancakes; I mentioned the idea on Pancake Day and it was just too good to pass up for very long. The black beans I can play by ear (to mix some crazy metaphors), but I haven’t settled on a pancake recipe yet. It won’t be Jack Bishop’s this time, since his griddle cakes call for fresh corn, which isn’t exactly in season, to put it mildly. Which brings us full circle, back to seasonality. Hurray! Best weekend wishes to all of you; I’m hoping mine will bring enough clear weather to play in the garden a bit (earlier this week I planted carrots, peas, and spinach to celebrate the fact that my garlic is up and it’s staying light past 5 PM, well until 5:30, even, but it’s about to become crazy garden season and I’m raring to go, in case it wasn’t abundantly clear from my community garden/urban farm fantasy).
- In What To Eat, Marion Nestle says that “eggs account for 35 percent of the overall cholesterol intake in American diets”, but I’m guessing that percentage is much higher for me since I’m sort of atypical about meat and dairy foods (What To Eat, 251).
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I skimmed through (sorry, usually I give tracyposts a much more attention– but I’m a little behind on other projects right now), and I find I am more meaty when I am cold! I want steak and I want it to bring its friend the big, steamy potato dripping in butter. Wow! Bodyboarding this weekend made me crave meat as if it were cocaine and I was a junkie!