Finally Bought An Ulu Knife

Yes, I succumbed to the pressure and finally bought the Ulu knife that is seen in various videos. I plan on making a mushroom chili this week so besides using it to chop salads I'll be trying it out on mushrooms, like Dr. Fuhrman is using it for here:



But before I invest in a hundred dollar wooden bowl, let me see how it works in the Tupperware bowl I have, first.

Salad Days

Life interferes with the best laid plans. Besides last Friday's flare-up of my degenerative disc disease causing agonizing pain in my lower back and left hip, and arthritis pain in my left toes making every step painful for the previous 2 weeks, we now have no water in the kitchen. The drain pipe has a 6 inch hole in it, so any water that went down our kitchen sink flooded the apartment beneath us, the apartment beneath that one, and all the way down to the basement. The owner spent 4 hours here the other night, nearly in tears. He usually does all the repairs himself, but this one was a doozy and he felt he needed the help of one of his friends who knows plumbing, but he's unavailable for at least a week. He left our kitchen a mess, including a non-functioning dishwasher (Never worked in the 15 years we're in this apartment) blocking my stove and most of my kitchen cabinets and a pile of soggy, moldy plaster and fiberglass insulation in the space where the dishwasher used to be. Not to mention the gigantic hole in my wall exposing that leaky pipe and soggy wood and insulation. Of course, our water is turned off in the kitchen.

Great. I'm not only having to spend the holiday weekend with no way to cook but it may take as long as 2-3 weeks. I could wash some dishes in a bucket in the bathroom, but of course, would rather not. And most of my pots, dishes, microwave, even some food items, were now unreachable behind the piles of crud and the dishwasher. Thank goodness he came up during dinner so we had a few plates, bowls, and one small pot either in the sink or the dish drainer, so we could use those, along with the one accessible burner on the stove. My son was able to shift the dishwasher enough and with his long arms managed to grab the oatmeal for breakfasts, the toaster so he and hubby could make their toasted bread for lunches, the teapot, so I could make up some McDougall cups for myself for my lunches, and, using one of those grabbers, our medications.

Time to make something new for dinners instead of the planned meals. Mary McDougall has a lot of hearty salad recipes in the McDougall Quick and Easy Cookbook, so the next morning I had my son bring me to the grocery store (My back still hurts too much to drive myself) and grabbed a few items I would need to make a week's worth of salads for dinner. I figured I better make them all right then before plans changed and I had people tearing my kitchen apart for who knows how long. I'm glad we always keep a stash of paper plates, bowls, and plastic utensils handy - and they were on the other side of the kitchen!

Because I was still able to reach one burner of the stove and the one pot we had was the right size, this was the first one I made.

I doubled the recipe because we like to get a few meals out of each recipe.

Here it is, still in the mixing bowl, and when put away, it nearly filled the 11-cup Pyrex:

Since we haven't eaten this yet, all I can say about it is that I really don't like the smell of fresh cilantro. Unfortunately, it's used in more of these recipes and in greater quantities.

More in the next post. For some reason Blogger won't let me insert anymore graphics.

Jeff Novick's Fast Food 4: Beyond the Basics - At First Glance

Here's what I wrote on the McDougall forum today about this DVD:

He starts off with a few basics - the 10 Healthiest Packaged Foods, Fast Food recipe template, then goes on to some basic recipes - vegetable broth, marinara sauce, and 3 different tahini sauces. These will be used later in the DVD.
His new set of recipes themselves starts off with 2 different soups - Mushroom Barley and Gypsy. He found frozen diced sweet potatoes in a store and uses them in the Gypsy soup. I wish stores around here carried them, but the only sweet potatoes in the freezer section are the deep fried ones. 
Next comes the entrees. First is the only old recipe from his FaceBook page, the Kasha Varnishkas, but slightly different than what he previously posted there. He's mentioned in the Fast Food 2 video that this was his favorite dish growing up and the one his mom makes for him every time he visits.
The next is Quinoa, Lentils and Greens and uses one of the tahini sauces made earlier.
Couscous, Fava Beans and Peas is next. Another one with tahini sauce.
Mediterranean Millet introduces yet another grain to the stable and also uses the tahini sauce.
The last recipe on the DVD is another of his grandmother's favorite dishes. It's called Tzimmes, or Sweet Potato Stew. This one got a high-five instead of the thumbs up from the Fast Food Twins, so I look forward to making this one soon.
These recipes are not the "glop in a pot" recipes, as someone once described the original SNAP/Fast Food recipes. He introduces new starches, new beans, new sauces, and even new spices. A few recipes use raisins, a few others almonds & pine nuts. Tomatoes are an optional ingredient in the Gypsy Soup and he made it without it here.
Most of the dishes follow his fast food 10-minute guidelines, although for a few, the grains might take a bit longer than 10 minutes to cook or you'll be making one part of the dish while another is cooking, like browning then cooking the kasha in one pan, frying up the onions in another, and cooking the pasta in yet another, before mixing them together and heating them all together with other ingredients to make the final dish.
Another thing mentioned a few times is how many frozen vegetables are no longer packed in 1-pound bags, some as small as 12 ounces, so multiple bags may need to be purchased for the amount needed in a recipe. Each recipe should contain around 2 pounds of frozen veggies, plus the other ingredients.
They all look interesting and sure to be staples along with the original SNAP recipes with this family from now on.

Chef Del & Chef Sarno Demo How To Cook Onions Without Oil

I keep losing this video so decided to link to it here now, so I can always search for it on my own blog. Knowing me I may still lose it, but for now, here it is.



I just saw this video by Chef Sarno today, but I think he says at one point ". . .since you already started out with an oiled pan . . .". See if it's just my ears or he really said that.

Coach Ami's Pantry Tour

Engine 2 Extra Coach Ami Mackey and her husband travel by RV a lot, and in this video she's giving a tour of the pantry/kitchen storage area. She remarks that the refrigerator is so tiny, but it looks to be the exact same size as the refrigerator and freezer in my apartment! She also has more pantry shelves than we have in our kitchen. That's what I get for living in an old urban area with pre-WWI apartment houses.