How to Make Tempeh [Homemade] - Easy Method

Your Garden

Food prices seem to always go up. Food safety is often a concern. Produce from your own garden is flavorful and healthy. It's organic if you use no chemicals. Nothing is more local than your own garden.

Shojin Cooking

Shojin cooking is vegetarian, which, in Japan, includes certain sea plants. The word shojin is composed of the characters for "spirit" and "to progress" and originally had the meaning of zeal or assiduity in progressing along the path to salvation. In concrete terms, shojin cooking is a discipline meant to improve one's training in and practice of the Buddhist faith. through the consumption of only the simplest foods.

~Soei Yoneda,

before her death

in 1984

Abbess of Sanko-in Temple

Garlic

Garlic has a long history in Italian cuisine, but its use is not as abundant as Italian restaurants outside of Italy might lead you to believe. In Italy, mostly in the South, garlic is used but always in moderation. It adds flavor to a dish, but it is mostly subtle and well integrated with the rest of the ingredients, never overpowering the dish. It can be used raw, sauteed (in sauces), or cooked for a long time in stews, where it becomes sweet and mild..

In Italian-American cooking and Italian cooking outside of Italy more generally, garlic is used with abandon often in ways that can overpower the other delicate flavors. For a more authentic Italian garlic flavor, use garlic in moderation to add flavor without overpowering a dish. Some Italian cooks add a whole clove of garlic to the olive oil, warm it up to release some of the flavor into the oil, and then take the clove out, thus avoiding the overpowering flavor of garlic in the finished dish.

Bread and Allium Soup

Allium is the botanical family name for shallots, garlic, onions, and leeks. Any one of them will work in this bread-thickened peasant soup. What allium is used, as well as the optional dairy garnish, depends entirely on what you have on hand.

6 slices of firm or stale white bread (preferably made without sugar), crusts removed and broken into pieces, or 2 cups of cubed dry French or Italian bread, crusts removed
2 cups of whole milk
2 tablespoons of butter
1 cup of coarsely chopped shallots; or 10 large garlic cloves, coarsely chopped; or 1 1/2 cups of coarsely chopped onions or leaks, or a combination of onions and leeks to equal 1 1/2 cups
2 cups of vegetable broth
Salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Freshly grated nutmeg to taste
Optional garnish of 1 cup (more or less) of milk, yogurt, sour cream, heavy cream

Combine the bread and the 2 cups of whole milk. Set this aside to soak.

In a proper size saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the allium of choice and saute until the are wilted, 3 to 6 minutes, depending what vegetable you used. If using garlic, saute for 1 minute, no more.

Add the vegetable broth and bring it to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, with a wooden spoon, mash the bread into even smaller pieces.

Add the bread and the milk to the saucepan and stir frequently with a wire whisk or wooden spoon while bringing the mixture to a simmer.

Cover and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the bread has dissolved and the soup has thickened.

You may have to do a little stirring or whisking, as the soup should be very smooth without lumps.

Season with a very small amount of salt, a generous amount of pepper, and a careful amount of nutmeg. (If you have not used nutmeg in your cooking, perhaps leave it out. It can go from a great enhancer to an overpowering bitterness very easily.)

If the soup is too thick for your liking, thin it with one of the optional dairy garnishes.

Serve the soup hot with a peppermill at hand. This soup and pepper go well together.

A sprinkling of chopped fresh chives is a very nice garnish to add after each bowl is filled.

Food

Food can be delicious without using the flesh of animals.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

Think Vegan

Life

Life

There is enough in the world for everyone's need; there is not enough for everyone's greed.

---Gandhi---

The Heat of the Chili

In 1912, the American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville devised the Scovill Organoleptic Test (now simply referred to as the Scoville Scale) to measure the piquancy, or hotness, of chilies. The heat of a chili comes from the active component capsaicin.

The Scoville Scale measures how much capsaicin in present in any given chili.

Although technology has advanced in the 100 and 14 years since Scoville devised his method, his principles remain. Chilies are still measured according to Scoville's scale.



Chile Types                                    Scoville Heat Units

Pimento, Pepperoncini                                              100 - 1,000

Pasilla, Anaheim, Ancho,                                         1,000 - 1,5000
Espanola

Sandia, Cascabel                                                       1,500 - 2,500

Jalapeno, Mirasol, Chipotle,                                     2,500 - 5,000
Poblano

Yellow Wax, Serrano                                                5,000 - 15,000

Chile de Arbol                                                          15,000 - 30,000

Cayenne, Tabasco, Pequin,                                       30,000 - 50,000
Aji

Santaka, Chiltecpin, Peri Peri,                                  50,000 - 100,000
Thai Chili

Habanero, Scotch Bonnet,                                         100,000 - 350,000
Datil

Red Savina Habanero,                                               350,000 - 855,000
Indian Tezpur

Naga Viper, Infinity,                                                   855,000 - 1,463,700
Bhut Jolokia

Trinidad Moruga Scorpion                                         1,500,000 - 2,100,000
(This is the hottest known
chili in the world.)

Baker's Yeast

Baker's yeast is a microscopic fungus, which as a by-product of its existence, makes bread rise.

Waiting-on-yeast is to feed, keep house, keep it warm, clean its air, empty its garbage, and cater to its whims. Getting angry at its failings does not help. To provide patient loving care and food for growth does. Begin by dissolving the dry yeast in lukewarm water 90 to 105º F. At temperatures much higher than 105º, the yeast becomes very frantically active and soon exhausts itself; at lower temperatures it lives a more dormant existence, until below freezing, it barely respirates.

Yeast needs oxygen to breathe and simple sugars to eat. Though some simple sugars are present in flour, due to action of enzymes on complexer starch molecules, generally some sweetening is added for the yeast to dine on. Treat it to molasses: mild or a little blackstrap; honey: avocado, buckwheat, tupolo, or choice fancy; brown or white sugars; corn syrup. Living yeast turns oxygen and sugars into carbon dioxide and alcohols. (Brewers' yeast is an even better alcohol producer.) The carbon dioxide becoming trapped in the glutenous network of dough is what makes the bread rise. 

Take care that the carbon dioxide and the alcohols do not build up extensively enough that the yeast suffocates and generally expires in its own wastes. Punching down the dough or otherwise working with it releases gaseous by-products of the yeast existence and freshens its air. Bake the bread and the yeast dies. Slice it, butter it, eat it. Be thankful.

---The Tassajara Bread Book---

Preparing a Meal

Love is not only the most important ingredient: it is the only ingredient which really matters.

---From a Cookbook by a British Chef---

The Nature of Tea

The fundamental nature of tea is unpretentiousness.

---Lu Yu---

Tea and Teeth

That cup of after-dinner green tea does more than soothe your mind and belly: it fights cavities, too.

Tea is rich in fluoride—In fact, fluoride is the only mineral found in significant quantities in tea. That's the reason it's added to municipal water supplies and to toothpastes and mouthwashes. Fluoridated water usually contains between 0.7 and 1.2 parts per million (ppm), while green tea naturally contains between 1.32 and 4.18 ppm. And there's no danger of fluoride toxicity when you drink tea. (Just don't add sugar—that would defeat the purpose!)

The benefits of tea on oral health were demonstrated in a Japanese study published in a dental research magazine in 1994. Thirty-five volunteers age 18 to 29 were asked to refrain from brushing or flossing their teeth for four days. Instead, they rinsed their mouths with a solution of tea polyphenols after each meal and before bedtime. In 34 of the volunteers, bacterial counts and plaque were significantly deceased.

Tea has other beneficial effects on oral health. In lab tests, the catechins in all kinds of tea—black, green, Oolong, and pu-erh—have been shown to inhibit or even destroy the bacteria that cause dental plaque. Even a single cup of tea produced this protective effect.

---The Republic of Tea---

How Do You Take Your Tea?

Tea is often referred to as the Buddhist drink. 

Tea is a universal beverage, consumed worldwide in greater quantity than any other drink except water.

But “tea” means different things in different places.

In Britain and Ireland tea is black and hearty, usually made with leaves from Sri Lanka and India. It's served with milk (poured into the cup before the tea) and sugar.

In China, tea may be made from long, flat Oolong leaves and served in a covered cup.

Ask for tea in Japan, and you'll get green tea—and green tea only.

A cup of Indian “chai” may be made with spices and canned milk.

If you order tea in the United States, you'll have to modify your request: iced or hot.

Tea leaves are eaten as food in Myanmar (Burma), where they are steamed or pickled to make salads.

Archaeological evidence indicates more than 500,000 years ago, in Southeast Asia where tea bushes grow wild, Homo erectus pekinensis was boiling water and eating tea leaves.

---Information gleaned from the book Tea Chings, by The Republic of Tea---

Diet and Health

Life

yams turn ripe from summertime sun
their flavor doesn't come from the stove

---Stonehouse---

Proverb

Money talks, chocolate sings.

Pesto

Linguine and Pesto

In Genoa, where what we know as pesto is said to have originated, pesto is made simply by grinding together fresh basil, olive oil, garlic, nuts, and a strong country cheese. It is served exclusively on pasta.

Pesto is traditionally prepared in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle. First, garlic and pine nuts are placed in the mortar and reduced to a cream, then the washed and dried basil leaves are added with coarse salt and ground to a creamy consistency. Only then is a mix of Parmigiano-Reggiano and Pecorino added. To help incorporate the cheese a little extra-virgin olive oil is added.

Basil is a notoriously delicate herb, prone to wilting, or turning black, or simply losing its deliciously aromatic character, if roughly handled. If you can make pesto in a mortar, it is perhaps the best method.