What's Been Cooking at Our House? Summer 2016

August 27, 2016

It's better, cheaper and healthier to just make what you want to eat at home.

One of the core concepts here at oftwominds.com is control what you can. We can't control very much of the world around us, but we can control what we put in our bodies, what fitness we provide our bodies and what thoughts we feed our minds.

As to what food we prepare and put in our bodies: what's been cooking at your house? Here's a semi-random selection of photos of things that have been prepared in our kitchen or gifted to our table by good friends.

Let's start with the healthy stuff and then move to the baked goodies. Here's a salad that is mostly greens from our garden. Note the purslane on top, which "contains more omega-3 fatty acids (alpha-linolenic acid in particular) than any other leafy vegetable plant." Purslane typically grows on its own as a volunteer-- before we knew its health/taste benefits, we pulled it out as a weed (dumb--it's a nutritional powerhouse!).

Art that you can eat! Incredible vegetarian spring rolls, courtesy of our good friends:

Musubi (also known as onigiri) with a piece of fried ono (a type of fish) with stir-fried zucchini and green beans from our garden:

Ulua (a type of fish in Hawaii) sashimi with a Lagunitas IPA beer. Onolicious! (The ulua came from a relative who caught it, and we reciprocated with an ohelo-apple pie--see below.)

The baked goods section starts with collecting (legally) wild ohelo berries.

The ohelo berries being mixed into raw sliced apples.

The mouth-watering result: ohelo-apple pie, with a scoop of ice cream:

When fresh cherries were in season early in the summer, I made a number of clafoutis (claw-foo-tee) to bring to parties and pot-lucks. I love this baked custard dessert because it looks impressive but is easy to prepare:

Our good friend Katharine K. conjured up this amazing homemade strawberry shortcake for a dinner party at our house:

And as a bonus to a family meal shared in Honolulu: a full late-afternoon rainbow:

Many of the things we like to eat are not available elsewhere at any price; no store or bistro makes spring rolls or pies like this on a regular basis. Maybe some $100-per-person restaurant makes an approximation of these dishes from time to time, but who has the time or money to go searching for what may well be inferior to the homemade version?

It's better, cheaper and healthier to just make what you want to eat at home, and give any surplus to those who gift you wonderful ingredients, dishes and treats.


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