Archive for June 2009
Sinusitis: Trying to Heal Myself, Naturally
Soothing breakfast for an invalid: soft-boiled eggs and strawberries
Ah, to breathe freely through the nostrils again. My sinusitis, whether bacterial or viral, has finally subsided, likely thanks to the natural remedies I tested out on myself. Though many urged me to take antibiotics, I tried to hold out. After all, medical studies have shown antibiotics don’t cure sinus infections but may make patients more resistant to the drugs in the future. I tried to be patient, sleep and test out some natural remedies instead.
Having a Neti pot is key, so you can clean your nasal cavities out with a saline solution, sucking the liquid in one nostril and out the other. Be prepared for a bit of brain burn from the saline. You cough a bit up. Of course, I was so congested at first the saline solution didn’t go through. I then swabbed coconut oil into my nostrils to soothe them after the astringent rinse. I ingested raw garlic and swabbed some in my nose and ears (luckily I couldn’t smell my breath!). I ate a paste of local honey mixed with tumeric. I swallowed echinacea/goldenseal capsules and a platycodon herbal blend. I ate some lacto-fermented kimchee and avoided sweets, processed carbohydrates and dairy. And I drank lots of fluids: Emergen-C and a tea of fresh ginger, lemon, peppermint and honey.
And I watched a public television documentary on two Chinese immigrants who ran an herbal apothecary in rural Oregon just after the Gold Rush. It inspired my resolve.
Western medicine seems to always search for the quick fix, but often our bodies can heal themselves, with some natural prodding, and albeit more slowly. We pop antibiotics so we can get to work or other engagements the next day, but what complications might await us down the road?
Not Your Typical Strawberries and Cream
Oatmeal shortbread with Mascarpone cream
Craving tangy strawberry and sweet cream taste combination? The Oregonian‘s FOODday feature offers lots of interchangeable, relatively effortless suggestions that go beyond shortcake. I just happened to have picked up Mascarpone cheese at Trader Joe’s, so I made the dark chocolate-flecked cream. And the oatmeal shortbread was simple yet nutty and substantive. You can make the same dough into a crumble or press it into a tart shell. But for some reason tart pans elude me. I’ll stick to the cookies.
Not that there’s anything wrong with shortcake. It’s was the perfect end to the “That’s My Farmer” dinner Chef Intaba catered last week (I volunteered to help her with the meal). When you have to feed a crowd, and strawberries are just in season, there’s no finer dessert.
In an (Asparagus) Pickle
Dilly pickles I boiling-water canned at home
Pickles we low-pasteurize water-bath canned in class
Learning pickling has been my favorite part of the 8-week master food preservation program I’m doing through Oregon State’s extension office. Asparagus are now officially my favorite vegetable to pickle. Make some while the elusive green stalks are still in season this fleeting spring. I made a batch at home this week with local asparagus from Sunbow Farm. Boiling-water canning the pickles for 10 minutes was no problem: all the jars popped, sealed shut, upon removal. But I could have used a few extra hands of help like I’ve gone accustomed to having in our class.
Just about everyone seems interested in canning these days, whether motivated to save money, preserve local produce or simply learn an ancient food art. The New York Times had a big canning feature last week, focusing on Eugenia Bone, author of the new cookbook, Well Preserved. Then NPR features Preserved on its list of the “10 Best Summer Cookbooks.” I’ve never gotten more Facebook comments then when I posted pickling photos from my preservation class. It’s a sign of the times. Now my cousin and I lament the fact my grandmother never taught us to make her curry pickles. But as a kid, I never thought making her pickles or famous raspberry jam would interest me. Yet, here I am.
I tried to recreate the Oregon-made dilly asparagus Pretty Pickles by adding dill seed to my recipe. I also like extra garlic, but I ran out. Add a whole cayenne pepper for spice and colorful effect, if you like. Experiment with any spices you like but don’t mess with the instructions on heating the brine and water-bath processing times. I like that Eugenia Bone’s recipe has that extra garlic. But I used the simple one from my OSU Extension “Pickling Vegetables” booklet (see page 15 for asparagus). What’s your favorite food to pickle?
I will not be pickling eggs, as our teacher did in class. But their pink pickled beet-enhanced color did contrast nicely with the yolks.
Pickled eggs
Summer Reading: Food (and Cycling) is Hot
Elegant book review illustrations by Chris Silas Neal
It’s a rare delight to feel the theme of a magazine’s issue or newspaper section was selected with you just in mind. That’s how the New York Times Book Review made me feel today. I wanted to read everything all at once: the sections on cookbooks, foodoirs, gardening, a David Byrne-penned review of an Oregonian reporter’s book on the Pedaling Revolution, the backpage essay on the previously unpublished culinary tidbits from the Federal Writers’ Project, or the “Food Bloggers of 1940.” What would I give to be a part of such an endeavor, that attracted the likes of everyone from Zora Neale Hurston to Eudora Welty, among a mass of mostly unestablished writers, “lots of chaff.” If only President Obama would resurrect the writer’s project for our own trying times.
The “Heartburn” review of three food memoirs-with-recipes reminded this food blogger to cling to her journalistic chops, to guard against cloying sentimentalism in her tales of food. I’m most eager to read Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life, as I follow her Orangette blog and Bon Appetit columns. But Wizenberg’s whimsical tone and fairy tale days do seem out of touch at times.
She goes to Paris for a few weeks, then returns to her apartment in Seattle and does . . . what? It isn’t clear how she spends her days beyond making sentimental meatballs or French-style yogurt cake with lemon and writing about them in her fine-tuned, flowery prose…
While she’s mastered the short-attention-span form, Wizenberg can be wincingly twee, writing in a confidential style that flips into blog mode and addresses the reader directly: “I learned that kissing a man while leaning against a warm dishwasher is a lovely, lovely experience. (Go ahead! Try it! I’ll wait.)” Compared with many other bloggers, though, she’s Alice Munro. Besides, you’re not looking for literature in the cookbook section, are you?
Goodies abounded in the Cookbooks section. I’m most excited to sink into Rustic Fruit Desserts: Crumbles, Buckles, Cobblers, Pandowdies, and More, co-authored by Oregon’s own Cory Schreiber, founding chef of Portland’s Wildwood restaurant who now works with the Oregon Department of Agriculture to get more local produce into public schools. We have to have him on the radio show!
BaltimOregon to Maine 