Gnocchi and Peach Cobbler (Ice Cream)

On Saturday, Rose and I decided to make homemade gnocchi. I have had some prior experience making pasta (spinach & mint ravioli, rosemary linguine, and spinach & ricotta ravioli), so gnocchi seemed like it would be a simple, quick task in relation to those daylong experiences. How little I knew…

The recipe was simple enough. We steamed 2 pounds of potatoes for about 30 minutes and then mashed them with a pinch of salt and about a tablespoon of freshly chopped rosemary. The recipe then called for 2 cups of flour to be kneaded into the potatoes. Unfortunately, an incredible amount of humidity mixed with my stubbornness in the kitchen when things go wrong is not a good combination. No matter how much flour I added the dough would keep getting sticky.

So, about after an hour or two and 6 to 8 cups of flour later, I finally gave up (with Rose’s insistence that everything would still work out). We rolled out the dough, which was 10x the size it was originally supposed to be, into thin rolls and cut them into 1” pieces. We then boiled the gnocchi’s in salted water for a minute or two until they floated to the top. Boiling all of this dough took a long time, but we were finally able to sit down and eat the gnocchi topped with tomato sauce with freshly squeezed lime aid while watching Monk (one of the funniest show ever btw, besides Arrested Development, Flight of the Conchords, and the Office).

While it took a few hours longer and much more flour than we expected, the gnocchis actually tasted really good! The fresh rosemary was a great addition, and now we will be eating gnocchi every meal this week and still won’t run out for a while!

Sunday I decided to make peach cobbler ice cream. The plan was to make a regular peach ice cream with cinnamon and then add toasted oats covered in brown sugar and butter, the cobbler topping. The peaches were not as ripe as they should have been to make peach ice cream so it is not as “peachy” as I would have liked. Next time, I will wait a few days after buying them until they are soft and juicy before turning them into ice cream. The oat topping though tasted delicious and truly made the ice cream. The recipe still needs a little work, but it is still quite delicious!

Operation Frontline

This morning was my first class with Operation Frontline. Operation Frontline is a joint effort with Share our Strength and local food banks throughout the country, the Capital Area Food Bank in DC, in which cooking and nutrition classes are provided to people in low-income communities. The class focuses on teaching people how to make healthy & nutritious meals on a budget. Most of the classes are taught in community centers, schools, etc.

I am a volunteer chef for a new program that the food bank is trying out at a farmers market that focuses on using fresh, local produce. The class is at the Ward 8 market in Anacostia, a tiny market by the Congress Heights metro stop. I had been nervous about the class since I am far from a professional chef and have never had to run a cooking demonstration before. Even so, I thought this would be an amazing opportunity for me to help share my love of food & cooking with people who could learn a lot from the experience.

This class was focused on whole grains (each of the 5 classes has a different food group if focuses on) and so I decided to make homemade oatmeal and whole-wheat pasta salad. When we got to the farmers market we visited the tables and purchased some peaches & blueberries for the oatmeal and veggies for the pasta salad. Becky, the director of the program, started the class off and then handed the rest over to Suzie (the nutritionist) and myself.

The class went well and all of the participants seemed to be interested and engaged the whole time. There were 6 people in attendance, mostly middle age or elderly people from the community. After Suzie did the first part of her nutrition lesson, I began making the oatmeal. I talked about the health & economic benefits of using rolled oats over instant oatmeal while slicing up peaches to be added in. After the oatmeal was done, we divided up the pot, and everyone topped their cereal with fresh, local peaches and blueberries. The highlight was when one woman originally said she usually eats oatmeal with butter said, "This doesn't even need butter!" The recipe was the basic recipe from the back of the oat container, but I also added in about a tablespoon of honey and a few dashes of cinnamon.

I then started the pasta salad by boiling a box of whole-wheat pasta and cutting up the veggies. We used a cucumber, zucchini, pepper, cherry tomatoes, and feta cheese. The dressing was a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, honey, fresh herbs (we used sage, parsley, and leeks, all from the Capital Area Food Bank's organic farm outside the city), salt, and pepper. We were supposed to also put in Balsamic vinegar, but we forgot to bring it. The pasta salad was a hit and numerous people said how they were excited to try the recipe that week at home.

We gave out a box of whole-wheat pasta for all the participants and a $10 voucher for produce at the market. Everyone left with a smile on his or her face and a few people mentioned how they were going to bring a few friends to next week's class.

I was worried that the class was going to be a total disaster but overall it was a huge success. The class went relatively smoothly and Suzie & I seemed to work well together. It couldn't have been a success without the invaluable help of Becky and Betina (the class assistant). The participants seemed happy & thankful for the class and everyone involved seemed to have a good time and get a lot out of the experience. I am so thankful that it went so well and that I was given this opportunity to begin with.

Next week's lesson is on fruit and veggies featuring salsas of the fruit and veggie persuasion!

I Love Ice Cream More Than Words Can Say

My absolute favorite thing to make is ice cream. This past winter I bought an ice cream maker with gift money from the holidays, and it was the best investment I have probably ever made! Since then, I have made a batch almost every week, if not twice a week. I have also dabbled in sorbets and gelato, but mostly I stick with ice cream. I recently made a list of flavors I have made over the half year while bored at work once, and here is what I could remember (in no particular order):

Peppermint Bark, Chocolate-Hazelnut gelatto, Chai, Berry sorbet, Pineapple-Orange sorbet, Pineapple-Orange-Strawberry Sorbet, Mint-Oreo, Birthday Cake (made by my old housemate, Sunny. She is amazing), Mango Sorbet, Strawberry, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, White-Chocolate Raspberry, Blackberry, Mint Chocolate Chip, Irish Coffee (also a Sunny creation), Caramel, Pumpkin, Pumpkin Pie, Chai Pumpkin Pie, Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Vegan Peanut Butter Brownie, Cookies and Cream, Maple Walnut, Thin Mint, Samoa, and my most recent flavors were Mexican Chocolate and Coffee Oreo.

I have spent a lot of time experimenting with different ice cream recipes, changing the proportions of cream, milk, and sugar and the use of egg. What I have found is that there is one recipe that tends to work amazingly well and it is this recipe that I use for 95% all ice cream I make now. Not surprisingly, this recipe comes out of the Joy of Cooking (or as I refer to it, the Bible), the single best cookbook for anyone to purchase in my opinion.

French Vanilla Ice Cream
2 C heavy whiping cream
1 C whole milk
2 egg yolks
3/4 C sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
2 tsp vanilla

Start by heating 1 C whole milk an 3/4 C sugar, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Then, slowly temper the egg yolks into the cream mixture (by slowly adding about 1/2 C of the hot mixture into the eggs before pouring the whole thing back into the pot. This will help the eggs heat up without curdling). Stir this mixture constantly until it reaches about 175 degrees fahrenheit. I use a candy thermometer, but if you don't have one, you can use a wooden spoon and when the custard gets thick enough to cover the back of the spoon, you should be good. Take this off the heat and let it cool down for about 1/2 an hour before adding the 2 C cream and vanilla. Let this chill in the fridge for at least 4-6 hours, but overnight is better. I put a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of the cream to prevent a skin from forming.

Once the cream has chilled all the way, place it in the ice cream maker for 15-20 minutes. If adding solids to the ice cream (chocolate chips, broken cookies, nuts, etc) do this two minutes before the churning is done. The measurement for these is almost always 1 C. Once it had doubled in volume, transfer to a container and place in the freezer for at least 4-6 hours before eating.

For the Mexican Chocolate ice cream, I added 1/4 C coco powder to the egg yolks before tempering them into the hot milk/sugar mixture. Once it cooled down and the cream was added, I put in only 1 tsp. vanilla, and some cinnamon and ceyenne pepper. Unfortunately, I didn't measure the spices and just did it to taste, but it turned out amazingly well. You taste the cinnamon and chocolate, but then the spiceyness of the ceyenne comes at the end almost as an aftertaste. Awesome.

For the Coffee Oreo ice cream (technically Coffee JoeJoe, since I used the Trader Joe's version of oreos, which in my opinion are much better and they don't have high fructose corn syrup!) I added 1/4 C coffee into the milk/sugar mixture once the sugar disolved. I took the pot off the heat and covered it, letting it steep for 1/2 an hour before straining the coffee grounds out. I then put the mixture back on the heat and followed the rest of the recipe with the eggs & cream. Two minutes before it was done churning, I added 1 C of crushed cookies.

If you have any ideas for future ice cream flavors, let me know and I will try them out!

Cranberry Walnut Bread

Last Monday, I decided to make a sourdough starter. A starter, or a sponge, is a technique that was used in bread making before the commercialization of yeast in which a mixture of flour and water ferments over a few days, collecting yeast from the air, which then multiply. All of my previous bread making has remained in the realm of instant yeast and I was intrigued by the idea of a starter. My fellow intern, Iris, talked about using starters for bread and I thought it was the coolest thing to have a living organism in your fridge that would be able to make bread indefinitely! I did research the night before and was overwhelmed by the commitment required to make a successful starter. By far the coolest fact I learned was that starters will live forever as long as they are taken care of, and that there are some in existence today that have been alive for centuries! How cool!?

I started Monday morning by mixing 2 cups AP flour, 2 cups water, and one package of yeast, and covering the bowl (having not made bread in this kitchen before, I was told there wouldn't be enough yeast spoors in the air and to add yeast to the mixture to get it started, the rest will grow from that). Every twelve hours or so, I would feed it with another cup of flour and cup of water. By day two, the starter was almost 8 cups and I was becoming a little concerned that this project would take over my entire room (I didn't force my experiment upon my housemates, and so I left the concoction in my bedroom). I learned from a website that you could actually dump half of the starter and add back the same amount in flour and water again so it doesn't end up filling the entire sink. After only a few hours of adding the flour/water mixture, the starter would start to bubble and become incredibly foamy, increasing some in volume.

I figured to give my starter a try on Wednesday night as a sort of test run for the actual loaf I was planning on making for the 4th of July. I made a simple whole wheat loaf by adding 2 C starter to 4 C flour (I used 2 C whole wheat flour & 2 C bread flour) I then let that mixture sit in the fridge for 12 hours or so to let it proof (fermenting the dough). I then took the dough out of the fridge and let it reach room temperature for about two hours before adding some more bread flour and kneading for about 10 minutes. The recipe called for 1/2 C flour, but I found I needed to add much more since it was humid and the dough was too sticky. After kneading, I shaped the dough into a ball and let it rise for two hours. I baked it in a 450 degree oven for 40 minutes with a tray of boiling water underneath to make a thick, crisp crust. The loaf turned out pretty well and was a hit at the office.

The real loaf that I had been planning on all week was made on Friday morning. I did the same steps as above, but added 1 cup of cranberries and 2 cups toasted walnuts to the dough. This bread was gorgeous and quite delicious! It was one massive loaf that weighted a few pounds Below are pictures of the dough while it was rising and right after it came out of the oven.

Overall, my sourdough starter was a success and I will use it (hopefully) for years and years to come. If anyone would like some starter, let me know and I can give you some of mine!

The Seed & the Sprout

The Seed:

My interest in food and hunger issues has grown over the years from a mere interest to a lifestyle. Food has not always played a central role in my life; to the contrary, I was the pickiest child imaginable while growing up. I refused to eat half of the meals my parent’s made and so ended up eating lucky charms for dinner more often than I would like to admit. I didn’t even eat vegetables until I entered college and that was because the lady in the salad line forced them upon me! It is amazing to look back over the past two years and see how my relationship to food has changed so drastically and how that relationship has transformed me personally. People often laugh when they find out that I am a vegetarian who didn’t eat vegetables up until three years ago, and that my first mushroom wasn’t until a year and a half ago!

So I decided to start a blog. While I can only hope my family and friends read it once and a while, the main purpose is for me to have a place to think and talk about food, share my successes and failures in the kitchen, and to try and piece together my many thoughts on food, agriculture, the environment, hunger, and sustainability. The product will hopefully be something semi-coherent and something that will continue to grow and change as I grow and change.

Hungry Sprout will be a site where I talk about everything related to food. I will talk about adventures from the oven, recipes I’ve found, ice cream I have churned, bread I’ve baked, vegetables I’ve grown, and my attempts to try and give back to the community around me when I can. I realize this sounds very ad-hoc. There are cooking blogs, baking blogs, and social progress blogs. To me, cooking, sustainable agriculture, and fighting hunger must go hand-in-hand. If we are to build a sustainable food system, it must be rooted in an agricultural system that is healthy for the earth, our bodies, our communities, and the world around us.

I am no expert on any of these issues. My experience in the kitchen and on the farm is limited and far from professional. But food is my life and I love sharing with my friends and family. I hope these little posts will add a new dimension to my relationship with food and friends. If people do end up reading for some reason, please please please post and share experiences, recipes, etc! I promise to try them out!


WARNING: THIS FIRST POST IS TERRIBLY LONG, BUT I FELT I MUST WRITE EVERYTHING. ALL OTHER POSTS FROM HERE ON IN WILL BE SHORT AND TO THE POINT…I HOPE.

My interest in food and hunger issues began in the winter of 2006/Spring of 2007. That December I traveled in India for two weeks with a study tour from school. That was my first experience with poverty on such a large scale and I was unsure how to deal with it in any healthy and productive way. Every morning my group would walk out of our hotel and women begging for money and food would surround us. They could not speak English, but their body language was impossible to misinterpret. These women would take their right hand to their mouth as if to eat food, but they clearly hadn’t eaten in days. Most of these women had small children in their arms that were visibly malnourished, every one of their bones protruding through their skin. One friend on the trip told me of how one of these women tried selling her child to him in exchange for money to purchase food. A tour guide explained how many of the beggars actually drugged their children to make them look even more ill in hopes that it would help them to get more money from tourists. I had no way of processing this reality and found myself trying to shut it out of my mind and turning a cold shoulder.

It is not that I didn’t care (I was brought to tears numerous times a day), but I felt paralyzed. I didn’t know how I could possibly help these people who were so desperate to survive that they were willing to sell their child. Our group leaders explained how we shouldn’t give them money since that would just cause more and more people to follow us around and that giving money or food might perpetuate their poverty, that giving money to an organization when we returned home would better help the community in the long run. This thought helped some, but I still could not get over the terrible feeling I felt every time I saw someone starving to death because they couldn’t afford the plethora of fruit and vegetables that were being sold right down the street in a market.

I returned from India with only two weeks before I left to study abroad through the Semester at Sea program. I had no time to process anything I saw and tried to shove it in the back of my mind. Semester at Sea took me around the world in 100 days, eleven ports in nine different countries. For a detailed account of my semester and my trip in India, you can go to the travel blog I kept, which is linked to on the right of the page under “Food for Thought,” entitled the Tyranny of Distance.

While on the ship, I took the most influential class of my life, entitled “Food & Society,” with Professor Simon Nicholson from American University. The class went over many aspects of food, from the history of agriculture, industrial agriculture, sustainable agriculture, the future of food, and world hunger issues. It was this class that helped me to realize the power of food. It is over these few months that the connection between my passions, the environment & human rights became evident. I realized how food is one of the strongest relationships humans have with the environment, their body, their family, their community, and every living human being.

My experiences in port seeing hunger in a world of plenty in every single country strengthened my interest in food and hunger issues. From favelas in Brazil, townships in South Africa, a Dalit village in India, and on the streets of Beijing, everywhere I went I saw hunger and I could not escape it. And then I would step back onto my cruise ship and sit down to an all-you-can-eat buffet dinner where waiters brought drinks and dessert. The dissonance I felt was overwhelming and ever-present…


The Sprout:

When I returned back to the States I knew that I was changed beyond belief. For the first time, I knew what I wanted to do with my life, what I had to do with my life. I wanted to dedicate myself to helping to build a sustainable agricultural system and helping to provide those less fortunate with healthy, delicious food.

For the next eight months, I worked part-time on an organic farm while at school. I learned more practical knowledge during my time on the farm than my four years at college. I focused the rest of my non-academic energy on the environmental club at school, helping to bring food issues into our work. I spent the entire year writing my senior thesis entitled “America’s Failing Food Aid System & the Need for Reform.” (If you would like to read it, I would be more than happy to send it along, although I must warn you that it is long…longer than this first blog post).

I am currently living in DC and working for Food & Water Watch on their food team. The main project I am working on is related to labeling laws for rBGH, an artifical growth hormone in milk that has unknown and potentially dangerous effects on humans. I just received a volunteer position through Operation Frontline, a joint project of the Capital Area Food Bank and Share Our Strength. I will be a volunteer chef at a local farmer’s market (Ward 8 Farmers Market in SE), teaching people in the neighborhood how to use local, fresh produce in a cheap and delicious manner. That starts next weekend and I will be sure to update about that when it happens. I am nervous but incredibly excited, since it seems like the perfect opportunity for me, bringing together all of my passions and interests in a really fun way.

Starting in September, I will be a Fellow with the Congressional Hunger Center for a year. For six months, starting in September, I will be living in Tucson, Arizona working with the Community Food Bank. Then I will return to Washington, DC for six months to work on hunger policy through a governmental or non-governmental organization.

On top of all of that, I find time to cook constantly. I make ice cream every week and try making bread every week or so (I just made my first sourdough starter…more on that to come). I talk about food non-stop to my friends (thankfully most of them are just as obsessed over food as I am!)

So that is who I am and why I am here. That is why I am always talking about and working with food and what motivates me to get up every morning. If anyone read this far down, I applaud you. I will name an ice cream flavor after you or something in return! I feel as if I am always on a journey, learning new things about food, trying new flavors, and continually fighting industrial agriculture. I hope the Hungry Sprout will help me to make sense of this journey and will be something I can look back on for years to come.If people do read, I urge to always share your foodie thoughts, recipes, pictures, and experiences! Thank you and enjoy!