Summertime...and the living is restless....

Sometimes my limited diet makes me a little bit crazy. And sometimes it makes me really crazy. I'm usually okay with this life of eating like a tree squirrel. But sometimes it gets to me, and today was one of those days. A perfect summer day. Lots of folks coming back to the city after their holidays. Everyone out in their white pants and yellow shirts to show off golden tans. And everyone eating ice cream cones, slices of pizza, french fries with ketchup, drinking frothy cappuccinos, eating tall pieces of chocolate torte, or lazily stirring a cocktail. They all look so free, and easy-going.

Nobody is having a conniption fit because someone touched their ice-cream with the scoop that touched the cone (and thus got gluten all over everything). Nobody is sitting there licking strawberry sauce off their fingers and wondering if the strawberries were grown locally and organically as promised or if they were actually trucked in from unknown parts, sprayed with all sorts of anti-fungals and antibacterials and rodentcides and pesticides to make them look fresh and thus making a trip to the ER a real possibility sometime in the night. No one gets alarmed when the guy making the espresso is also eating a sandwich (crumbs in the cup). No one slurps froth from their powdered-mix-made cappuccino while nervously reading the teeny-weeny-font of the ingredient list from the packaging to scan for additives, colorings, and preservatives that will require some sort of antihistamine concoction to prevent hives within 15 minutes.

Summertime and I think Christmastime are the times when my food restrictions cause me a wee bit of grief. Convenient food is such a huge part of these times of the year, that it really can make a person who is unable to eat those foods really feel like they are not a part of it all. Like someone on the outside looking in.

I know this feeling is silly because there are so many other problems out there so much bigger than this. But I'm just being honest. I know global warming and economic crises and wars and injustices and all sorts of bad stuff is going on. But today, I got to feeling sorry for myself because I couldn't have a regular ice-cream cone from the regular ice-cream place with all the regular people. Boo-hoo-hoo.

I think I'll treat myself to a nice ice-cold bottle of Italian mineral water that I left chilling in the fridge. What's this? Hey, who left the cap slightly unscrewed and let all the bubbles out?!!!!!!!

Winter market bounty

The farmer's market runs right through the winter months. There's lots of local produce by way of cabbage, squash, pumpkins, onions, potatoes, garlic, and things like dried beans and dried figs and plums. What is in season right now is grapefruit, oranges, lemons, and a variety of apples (my picture above is from last October and features a local tomato which is not in season right now).

Plus these incredibly sweet miniature little mandarins, which are soooooooooo tiny that I allow myself to eat 6 in place of one orange!






And lemons too!

Grab your defibrillator, it's CVARCI time!!!

There is a special snack eaten in these parts around this time of year that is made from pure pork fat. Yup. Just plain old fat. The snack is called CVARCI (Čvarci pronounced chvartzy) and involves pork fat getting cut into cubes, deep fried, pressed, dried out, then eaten usually at room temperature with a bit of salt. Normally, people add a bit of milk to the hot oil to give the cvarci their golden brown color, but I can't handle the milk, and often can't eat cvarci prepared by others because there's a great chance of gluten cross-contamination due to the incredibly delicious pairing of crusty bread with the cvarci. So, if I want to eat these yummy snacks, I need to make my own (no bread for moi.)

Here's the recipe. Method. And pictures.

Ingredients:
Pork fat

Equipment:
Big pot
Slotted spoon
Potato ricer (also known as a squeezer)
Big bowl lined with paper towel
Large pan lined with paper towel

A special note: DO NOT EAT these in large quantities. There's a seeeeeeerious amount of fat and cholesterol in these babies. One handful is good as a serving. Also, DO NOT add salt to these until you are about to eat them because the salt will make them rather rubbery and kinda mushy. Only add salt to the handful (one handful) that you are eating.

Here's what the pork fat looks like. These pieces weigh about 2 pounds or 1 kg each. I bought 5kg for my session. Make sure that the skin has been removed.



The fat is about 1 inch or about 3cm thick.




Slice the fat into strips about 2 inches or 3 cm across. Then cut those strips into cubes about 2 inches or 3 cm. Don't worry if some are slightly bigger or smaller.




Put all the cubes into a cold, empty big pot. My pot holds 8 litres, and I filled it to the 6 litre line. Don't over-fill because you need to leave quite a bit of room for the fat to render out, and bubble up.




Once you have all your fat cut up into cubes, and you've put all your cubes into your pot, move the pot to your heat source, and put the heat up to about medium. You'll have to watch the heat constantly and adjust accordingly to keep this to a medium heat. Don't let it get too hot or else everything will burn. Using a large spoon or spatula, keep turning the cubes so that they don't stick to the bottom. It'll look like this:



Keep turning them, and after about 15 minutes, you'll be able to see the fat bubbling up like this:




Keep turning the cubes. They will start to brown. And they'll look like this after just another 5 or 6 minutes:



Until finally they will get really golden brown (but not burnt!) and they will float to the top like this.:




Using a slotted spoon, carefully scoop out the cubes and put them into a big bowl that is lined with paper towel to soak up some of the oil.



Now, you've got to scoop 5 or 6 cubes into the squeezer. Hold the squeezer over an empty bowl, and squeeze out as much oil as you can. Be careful because the oil will be very hot.




Then open the squeezer, and using a fork, loosen the flattened cubes, and shake out onto a large pan lined with paper towels. Remember DO NOT salt these.




In batches of 5 or 6 cubes, squeeze the oil out of all the cubes. Shake all your squeezed cubes onto the paper-towel-lined pan, leave the pan out on a table and let everything cool down and dry somewhat. You can eat the cvarci at this point...however, it is best to let them cool right down to room temperature for best results. In about an hour, they'll look like this and be ready to eat:






Once all cooled down (after a couple of hours), put the cvarci in a ziploc bag or in a container and keep them in the refrigerator. I've kept them for 2 weeks in the fridge with no problems.

Enjoy!

New grain mill!!! Polenta!!!!!

Europeans are pretty wild about fresh food. And fresh-ground grain is no exception. I've never heard of counter-top models of grain mills, but they are incredibly popular here, especially in places like Germany and Austria.

I haven't been able to eat any grains over the last few years because most of the commercially prepared ones are processed in places that also process wheat and barley. So I just avoided them altogether because of the chance of cross contamination.

But grains are back on the menu now that I've got my own grain mill!!!! It is the cutest thing you've ever seen. Very heavy. With a serious motor, and two grind stones made of, well, stone! The particular model I got is hand-carved in a beautiful wood, and it all comes from a company called Waldner (http://www.waldner-biotech.at/en/produkte.asp).

I also went to my friendly grain lady at the farmers market and requested some special corn they use for making polenta. She'll have it for me on Tuesday. So in the meantime, she gave me some of her popping corn and I milled that today and cooked it into a creamy, delightful, and unabashedly simple and delicious polenta.

Fresh milled grains must be prepared immediately because the milled grain starts to go bad as soon as it encounters oxygen. So the idea is to mill it, and use it immediately.

Here's a picture of my beautiful mill actually grinding corn.




And here is a picture of the milled corn. I mixed very fine corn flour with a heavier grind.



Then I cooked it the old fashioned way into polenta. Basically I put 1 part corn meal into 3 parts boiling water, then stirred for an hour. Yup. A full hour. The corn gets creamier and creamier. And gives off an aroma that is something like a cross between sunshine and happiness. Comfort food at its best.

Here is the finished polenta. Afterward, I put it all into a dish and let it cool so I could cut it into wedges and then put it into my homemade chicken soup.

Wood-fired pizza

There's a little pizza place with a real wood-burning oven (wood burning inside the oven). And they make pizza all day long. I of course can't eat pizza with all that gluten in it, but my hubby heroically stepped in to help, once again.

Here's a shot of the fire coming out of the oven.




And here's the pizza (about 16 inches/40cm across), which took EXACTLY 2 minutes to bake (and yes, I timed it).

Side of vitamins......

I've been eating these little snack-sized plates of veggies, fruits and cheese. But I think of them as little dishes of vitamins. Tiny tomatoes bursting with taste, dewy grapes from Dalmatia, and tender young apples with a rosy skin. And that ain't cottage cheese. That's fresh cheese, made this morning by the wonderful woman at the market. And that cheese is mixed with that same wonderful woman's fresh sour cream. Then I snipped fresh-picked chives into the mixture and added a pinch of sea salt. You can't beat it with a stick!!!!

I added a fork to the picture to give a sense of size. These are small plates of yumminess. But eaten several times a day.

33C, 43% humidity

It's hot, but dry. So very enjoyable. I've been telling myself I'll get a blog up and running, but there are lots of fresh figs to be eaten, and only so many minutes in a day. Hmmmm: fresh figs vs blogging. That's a tough one. Fresh figs wins every time for me.

Anyways, here are a few pictures of me, and food. Surprise huh?