Wednesday Potpourri

I’ve been a fan of “Jeopardy!” for as long as I can remember. I’ve even taken the test to be a contestant three times (but never passed it - it’s hard!). I learned the word “potpourri” from “Jeopardy!” I knew it as a word that means ‘a little of this and that’ (it’s the catch-all category on “Jeopardy!” that features questions answers on anything and everything) long before I knew it was a collection of dried flowers, fruits, and twigs that grandmothers put in their bathrooms so they smell nice.

I got a bunch of topics to cover in this post, so welcome to Wednesday Potpourri! Let’s get started, shall we?

Squid Salad

Yep, you heard me.

SQUID SALAD.

It’s what I had for lunch yesterday. Yep, I took pictures. Yep, I’m gonna share them. So sit back and relax, because this post is all about…

SQUID SALAD.

Fiddlehead Fern Fail

I like to bring home new things that I find in the produce aisle and experiment in my kitchen, and this post is about an unsuccessful experiment. They can’t all yield gold. Sometimes they yield… um… mud. Brackish swamp water? coal? Not quite sure how to finish that analogy.

We’ll get to my kitchen fiasco shortly. First: a few things to catch up on:

Giveaway. Have you entered my Edible Arrangements giveaway yet? Tsk tsk if you haven’t! I’m giving away $68 of fruit (!) to one lucky winner, and you can’t win if you don’t enter! Click here for the details.

Produce Haul. Yesterday morning, the only fruit in my kitchen was some frozen strawberries and half of a lemon, and my veggie supply was also running low. Whole Foods to the rescue! Here’s what I brought home from the store:

From left-to-right and down each column, we have: 4 navel oranges, pre-cut broccoli and cauliflower, a honeydew, a sweet onion, 2 kiwis, a head of celery, a red spring onion (more on this guy later), baby carrots, 2 zucchini, 3 red peppers, 1 cucumber, 4 Rainier apples, 1 package mushrooms, 4 red bartlett pears, 1 bag red grapes, 1 package baby heirloom tomatoes, 1 Anaheim pepper, 1 head napa cabbage, and pre-trimmed green beans.

Lots of healthy options is always a good thing!

Foot. It’s been about a week since I mysteriously injured my left foot, and I’m happy to announce that it’s felt wonderful for about 4 days now. Postponing my big 163-story stair climb challenge was the right thing to do (now I’m doing it on 5/5/12 – donate here!), because I’m going to take the time to make sure it’s all healed and I’m fully prepared instead of rushing into anything.

That said, after taking it easy for the past week, I’ve been jonesing for some StairMaster. Because I didn’t want to aggravate my injury if it wasn’t fully healed, I decided yesterday to give the StairMaster a try, but with some parameters: I wouldn’t go for over 10 minutes, and I wouldn’t exceed 60 steps per minute, which is my warm-up speed. I stuck to my rules, and after those 10 minutes, I was feeling the burn in my legs. I’m eager to get full-force back into my stair-climb training, but I know I gotta work my way up.

Ten minutes on the StairMaster was a good start. In those 10 minutes, I climbed 37 stories, which means it’s time to add a new building to my Skyscraper Collection!

Meet the AEGON Center, the tallest building in Kentucky. This Louisville skyscraper is 35 stories, and it’s the first building in my collection that is topped with a dome (it’s 80 feet high). You can’t see it that well in the picture, but out front of the AEGON Center is a statue of Alysheba, a well-known racehorse that won the Kentucky Derby in 1987. He’s also quite the stud: he fathered eleven other champion racehorses. I’d say Keep It Up to Alysheba, but he passed in 2009.

Now on to the main event!

FIDDLEHEAD FAIL. I was ecstatic last week when I saw, at the store, fiddlehead ferns. I don’t think I’ve seen them since I was in college, but I was a poor college kid back then, and much less inclined to spend money on food items I’ve never tried before.

I think fiddlehead ferns are one of the coolest-looking things I’ve ever seen in a supermarket (right up there with dragon fruit and romanesco broccoli).

I’m reminded of the poster for the 1993 movie “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Maybe Jack Skellington is actually walking on a giant fiddlehead fern?

Fiddlehead ferns are quite literally curled up baby fern fronds. Once they grow bigger and unfurl, they’re no longer edible, so these are harvested out in the woods (they’re not farmed) for a few weeks each spring. Fiddlehead doesn’t refer to an actual species of fern, it refers to the shape of them, since they look like the top of a string instrument. Fiddlehead ferns can actually be any number of different fern species, and in the US, they’re mostly Bracken, Ostrich, or Cinnamon ferns, which grow throughout the northeast and northwest.

Fiddleheads are good sources of potassium, fiber, antioxidants, and Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids. On the flip side, there is evidence that they may contain trace amounts of carcinogenics, so I wouldn’t make them a staple of your diet.

I thoroughly washed and dried my ferns, and washed them again for good measure. I decided to make a big stir-fry, so I chopped up a bunch of other veggies:

That’s cauliflower, baby eggplant, brussel sprouts, and yellow zucchini. I also added in a second new-to-me vegetable: a red spring onion. I saw these at the store a few minutes after finding the fiddleheads, and one immediately ended up in my cart. They’re pretty.

Even though I hadn’t bought one before, I was familiar with them – I think because I saw them on the Food Network or something. Basically, you cut off the dark green tops, and use the rest in any way you would use scallions. I chopped it into matchsticks (and was a little bummed it was only red on the outermost layer).

The fiddleheads went into the skillet (which I had coated with non-stick spray) first – I had read that they needed a good long 12-15 minutes to cook. Soon, I added the rest of the veggies. For a sauce, I cracked open a bottle of cilantro and lime dressing that I had in my cupboard. I like both cilantro and lime, and had read that citrus goes well with fiddleheads, so it seemed like a good fit. Plus, it’s oil-free, fat-free, and is only 5 calories a tablespoon – so I added about a quarter-cup.

For protein, I chopped up two veggie burger patties and added them in to the skillet. It was a lot of food – good for two meals, at least.

Fifteen minutes after the fiddleheads first hit the heat, I had a finished meal.

Looks tasty, right?

It tasted gross.

The fiddleheads were bitter little buggers – they had the bite and the texture of asparagus, but bitter. The dressing I used as sauce was extraordinarily acidic and sour (it has listed among the ingredients lime juice, lemon juice, and vinegar – so that’s why). Bitter + Sour = not very good.

I’m curious if any of you have had experience with fiddlehead ferns, and if so, what worked for you? Any tips or tricks?

I’m not one to give up after a single attempt (although given the fiddleheads’ short harvesting season, I may not get another attempt until next spring). I’ve already looked at a bunch of fiddlehead recipes, a lot of which call for steaming or boiling them, so maybe I’ll try one of those next time.

Even though this attempt wasn’t nearly as successful as previous ones, I’m proud that I give new things a whirl, and look forward to my next produce aisle find!

Keep it up, David!

What’s in the RediSetGo? Part Twenty-Two

It’s been a while since I’ve done a RediSetGo post. This was pointed out to me recently, when my buddy Ryan said, in a Facebook comment, that “we’re due for a What’s in the RediSetGo post. Just sayin’.”

I hear you loud and clear, Ryan!

This is only the second What’s in the RediSetGo post of 2012 (click here to see Part Twenty-One, which I posted in Mid-Janaury), but historically speaking, I’ve done a helluva lot of these posts, and you can see all of them on the My Favorite Posts page. In fact, I suggest you click through and check a couple of them out… you’ll need to brush up, because these posts are games, after all, and I wouldn’t want you to be rusty. And, if you’ve only started reading this blog recently, then definitely check out the archives at the above link, so you can learn how the game is played.

Eh, who am I kidding? The game is easy enough. You’ll pick it up quickly. And you’ll pick it upright now, because it’s time to play!

What’s in the RediSetGo?

A HALIBUT STEAK AND GREEN BEANS are in the RediSetGo!

I probably should have started this post by mentioning, for the sake of any newcomers, that the RediSetGo is my favorite informercial product out there (hence this being my twenty-second blog post about it). It bakes and cooks and roasts and broils, and, generally speaking, it’s easy to use and easy to clean. I’ve had my issues with the RediSetGo, but it still comes in handy for quick meals, and that’s exactly what I used it for the other day.

My dinner had four ingredients:

Ingredient #1: Halibut Steak. I picked these up at Whole Foods a while ago, and they were just sitting there, in my freezer:

The day before, I had tossed one of the steaks into the fridge to defrost. Easy peasy. So the halibut steak went into one side of the RediSetGo, and I covered it with…

Ingredient #2: Dill. A very liberal amount of dried dill, to be precise.

Ingredient #3: Green Beans. Or, if you’re feeling fancy and international, you can call them Haricot Vert, which is French for… Anyone? Anyone?Green beans. I bought them washed and trimmed and neatly packaged:

I piled up the other half of the RediSetGo with the green beans, and then poured on a couple tablespoons of…

Ingredient #4: Apricot Dijon Tarragon Sauce. I first cracked this open for a delicious lunch a few weeks ago, and I really liked it, so I thought it would be a good addition to the beans. And it’s fat-free and only 15 calories per tablespoon!

Ten minutes of RediSetGo magic, and my dinner was ready! The fish was flaky and delicious, the beans were tender, and the sauce had thinned and coated all of them.

Healthy? Check!

Easy? Check!

Quick? Check!

Keep it up, David!

 

March Produce Haul

Do you mind if I start with a couple housekeeping items?

Fundraising. My fundraising is off to a fantastic start! I’m raising money for two causes: The American Lung Association, sponsor of the skyscraper climb that I’m participating in at the end of the month, and I’ve also turned my own fitness goal into a fundraiser for Whaley’s Children Center, an amazing organization in Michigan. A number of you have already generously donated cash – about $300! I’d like to raise $700 between the two drives, so there’s still some ground to cover! Learn about both fundraising drives here, and if you’re able, click here to donate to the ALA, or here to donate to Whaley. Thank you so much!

Slimmons Video. I mentioned yesterday that Michele, who works with Richard Simmons, may have gotten video of the two of us dancing in class the other night… and she did! Michele is the best – she edited together this little montage from Tuesday night’s class: first, footage of when Richard pulled me into the big circle to dance with him, and, after that, footage of him leading the entire class as they all sang “Happy Birthday” to me. Thank you so much, Michele, for your help – this is fantastic! Watch below (or click here to watch on YouTube):

Speaking of videos, way back in January, I blogged about how I got to feed a 5-foot nurse shark while in Curacao. I wanted to share the video of it, but I couldn’t get it to properly upload. Well, I just figured it out. Better late than never! Read the blog post about the shark encounter, and then click here to see the feeding (it’s short – 36 seconds!).

Let’s move on, shall we?

I had a fun time at the store yesterday picking up a whole lotta new produce! Here’s my haul:

What have we got here? From left to right and top to bottom (roughly): rainbow carrots, two containers of strawberries (on sale!), a bag of washed and trimmed green beans, green onions, blueberries, pre-cut broccoli, comice pears, red bell peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, bananas, celery, 2 blood oranges, and baby carrots.

I was excited to see these guys at Whole Foods…

…watermelon radishes! To be honest, I had kinda sorta completely forgotten about their existence until I saw them in the salad at the surprise party I went to last week. They are a tasty and vibrant variety of radish (see pictures here), and I happily snapped up two of them when I saw them at the store.

Lastly, I came across an intriguing produce item that I never heard of before, and you know what I like to do when that happens, right? I like to BUY IT, and then I like to EAT IT. This week’s victim is called a Sumo Tangerine:

It’s the largest tangerine I’ve ever seen (the size of a small grapefruit), so I suppose Sumo is a very fitting name. I don’t know anything about Sumo Tangerines (I’ll do my research, don’t you fret), but if you’re familiar and have any helpful info or tips, than please share in the comments section!

As I type this, I realize that I never shared what happened with the stunningly drop-dead beautiful Romanesco Broccoli that I shared in my last produce haul post. Seriously, drop everything and click here to see pictures of one of the most gorgeous pieces of produce I’ve ever seen. Long story short: I ate it. It was delicious. And I was a bad blogger that day because I didn’t photograph any of it. My bad.

So, I owe you one Romanesco Broccoli blog post. I even made myself a reminder note so I wouldn’t forget:

Now I just gotta find another Romanesco Broccoli! The West Hollywood Whole Foods that I was at yesterday didn’t have them. I bought the first one at the Glendale Whole Foods, so maybe I’ll head back there.

In the meantime, I got all sorts of fantastic produce to munch on.

KEEP IT UP, DAVID!

A New Spin on Salad

I don’t own a salad spinner, and I don’t want one. It’s not because I don’t like them. In fact, the opposite it true – I think they’re nifty, fantastic gadgets. Who doesn’t love a hand-powered gizmo that uses centrifugal force (yep, I remember something from my high school physics class) to separate water from lettuce? It’s a great little party trick: just put soaking wet salad greens in this ordinary-looking device, put this ordinary-looking lid on it, turn a ordinary-looking crank, and SHAZAM! Your greens are dry and ready for any salad you could possibly dream up!

Unfortunately, I have a kitchen with very limited space, and I wouldn’t use a salad spinner nearly enough to justify the storage space it would take up (waffle irons and immersion blenders fall in the same category). I’ve lived on my own for over a decade now, and have never even considered buying a salad spinner. Granted, for most of those years, I wasn’t making many salads at home. But salads have been a dietary staple during the past two years, and even now, I don’t ever walk by a salad spinner display at the store and get tempted, with lust in my eyes, to pick one out for purchase.

I can thank the supermarket for squashing any desire I might have for salad spinner possession, because pre-washed, pre-chopped greens are so readily available, and in so many varieties. Even my favorite greens vendor at the farmers market pre-washes their merchandise – according to their signage, they triple-wash it (which I think is excessive, but I still buy it). Any type of lettuce or lettuce mix I could want is available ready-to-eat.

Even though a salad spinner just doesn’t fit into my life, I still enjoy a gadget, and I had a little ‘drop-everything’ moment when I came across this product a few weeks ago:

What’s this? A bag that spins salad? I was instantly hooked. I bought a package. Here’s what a Spin’n Stor bag looks like:

Yesterday, I tried out one of the bags for the first time. On Tuesday, I bought some lettuce as part of my produce haul from Whole Foods. What I learned, as I perused the lettuce section at Whole Foods, is that I know jackshit about lettuce. The problem with eating pre-washed “mixed baby greens” or “spring mix” is that I never bothered to learn what the individual greens were. I know a few varieties, like iceberg, romaine, and spinach, but there’s a whole world of lettuces out there, with names like escarole, Boston, mache, and frisee, that I know I’ve eaten hundreds of times but couldn’t pick out of a line-up if my life depended on it. Further complicating matters was that the lettuce section at Whole Foods was terribly confusing. I wasn’t certain if the signs were referring to the lettuces on the shelf above or below, and some piles of lettuce had two signs. I’m not exactly sure what I came home with, but here it is – I picked it out because it was pretty, and if you can identify it, please do so in the comments section:

I cut out the core, gave it a rough chop and washed it in my sink:

Then I loaded the lettuce into the bag:

And then I spun it. I spun it like a crazy person, in big loops with my arm fully extended, like a softball pitcher. The bag worked! The water drained into a reservoir at the bottom. Look how much water it collected!

(Yep, I’m watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while making lunch)

The cool thing about the bag is that there’s another panel, called the turbo drain, that allows you to drain the water out of the reservoir without it touching the lettuce. Then, you can twist-tie the bag, and store the lettuce until you’re ready to use it, or, if you’re like me and have no patience, you can make a salad immediately:

I added tomato, scallion, zucchini, green pepper, cucumber, and some fake bacon bits. I also used a nonfat vinaigrette, but I didn’t add that until after I photographed it.

Oh, and the bags are reusable. The package contained 4 of them, and each can be used 8-10 times. I foresee a lot of salad in my future!

Keep it up, David!

Produce, Produce, Produce!

Yesterday, I had a fruits and veggies situation – I was running out of them. It wasn’t quite as dire for veggies, but I was precariously low on fruit. I was down to two oranges in my fruit bowl, and I picked one up yesterday and discovered this on the underside:

GROSS. I hate throwing away food, but I had no other option. That left me 1 other orange, which looks mold-free, but I will examine it thoroughly tomorrow morning before I make it part of my breakfast.

It was time to go to the store. In recent months, I’ve begun frequenting the Whole Foods in Beverly Hills. There are three or four other Whole Foods (at least) that are technically closer to my house, but this location is literally blocks from Slimmons, and I’ve gotten in the habit of stopping by after leaving Richard Simmons’ classes. And that’s what I did last night.

My produce procurement actually started at Slimmons. Before class started, my friend Joanne offered me a couple oranges from the tree in her backyard. I love backyard produce! She had brought in a big bag of oranges to share, and I got the last two (next time I’ll have to arrive earlier, I guess!):

Thanks, Joanne!

It was a fun class – my dear friend Vikki, whom I haven’t seen in forever, came for the first time and had a ball. Afterward, I threw a hoodie over my sweaty workout clothes and went to market. Curious what a Richard Simmons’ aerobics class is like? Read this recent post.

I kinda like the Beverly Hills Whole Foods. It’s not a huge store, but their produce section (my favorite section) is sizable. Plus, it’s never that crowded, and parking is a breeze (maybe because I’ve only gone on Tuesday or Thursday night around 8pm).

Sometimes I breeze through the produce section, filling my cart and moving on, and sometimes I linger and really examine the offerings. I’m not afraid to fondle the melons, stroke a banana, caress a peach, or tickle some plums. Sorry, couldn’t resist! (But please note I’m an equal opportunity molester.) Today I must have wandered around each display 2 or 3 times, because it seemed like I was in that produce section forever – and that’s a feeling that I don’t mind at all!

Here’s what I came home with:

• Top Row: mushrooms, bananas, baby carrots, blackberries, green beans.
• Middle Row: lettuce (more on this in tomorrow’s post), zucchini, a container of pre-cut celery, yellow cherry tomatoes, comice pears, black seedless grapes, kiwis, apples (a variety called Lady Alice, which I’ve heard of before).
• Bottow Row: pineapple, baby bell peppers, broccoli florets.

This is where this post will sound like an informercial, because that’s not all! I also picked up a few other things, including…

Rainbow Carrots! I’ve bought them a few times before – here’s my favorite post about them – but I’ve never bought them with the greens attached. Pretty, aren’t they? They makes me want to eat them Bugs-Bunny-style, which I suppose would be pulling them out of my pocket, chewing with my mouth open, and asking “What’s up, Doc?”

I also bought…

Starfruit! It’s been nearly a year since I’ve had one of these suckers, and even though they weren’t my favorite fruit, I thought I’d give it another go.

Lastly, I stumbled upon a vegetable that is so stunning that it quite literally makes me weak in the knees. I’ve seen them before, at farmers markets, but I’m pretty sure I never bought one before. Ladies and gentlemen, take a look at this:

It’s called romanesco broccoli, and I could stare at it all day. It looks like it shouldn’t belong on this planet – like aliens left it behind when they left behind E.T., or built the pyramids, or covered the planet with all those thetans. I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with it, but in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy looking at it. Is it not the coolest produce item you’ve ever seen?

I seriously can’t stop looking at it. I’ve opened my fridge twice in the past half hour just to stare! Once I do eat it, I’ll be sure to share the pictures with you.

And, in my next post, I’m going to be quite literally putting a new spin on salad!

KEEP IT UP, DAVID!

A Fantastic Friday Lunch

In a recent post, I mentioned that on Friday, my dear friend Kristy Hanson came over and we hit the gym and had a killer workout. Then she came over and we made lunch. What I didn’t share in that post what we had for lunch… but that’s what this post is for! It was a delicious meal, and I took pictures.

In addition to being delicious, this meal was quite noteworthy because there was a lot of experimenting going on. You know how much I love trying new things, right? Well, this meal involved not one, not two, not three, but FOUR new things! FOUR! I was in hog heaven.

Enough procrastinating, David – get on with it! The whole meal was built around the idea of using…

NEW ITEM #1. About a year ago, I started noticing vegetables in all sorts of strange colors. Naturally, I bought every oddly-colored vegetable I could find! I was diligent about blogging about them, too – so click these links for pictures of rainbow carrots (and more rainbow carrots here and here), Easter egg radishes, black radishes, orange cauliflower, purple bell pepper, and white eggplant.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen an oddly-colored vegetable. Until the other day, when I picked this up. It’s a purple cauliflower!

Isn’t it beautiful? And it’s loaded with antioxidants that white cauliflowers don’t have – hence the purple color. And, contrary to popular belief (or at least my own), purple cauliflower isn’t the result of breeding or genetic manipulation – it’s a naturally occurring heritage variety that can be traced back to either Italy or South Africa. It’s still beautiful once you hack it into florets:

Kristy and I decided to make a big veggie stir-fry, with the purple cauliflower as the star. I also cut up onion, red bell pepper, mushrooms, yellow squash, and zucchini. Meanwhile, Kristy cut two chicken breasts into chunks:

We cooked the chicken in one skillet, and the veggies in another, because we ended up trying two new sauces, one on each component. And that brings me to…

NEW ITEM #2. I bought this bottle of garlic sauce on the island of St. Maarten, when I was the on a cruise in December, and I’ve been dying to bust it open:

I charged Kristy with photographing the bottle, and she opted to create a floating bottle illusion, which I love! The sauce is a super concentrated garlic puree – it smells incredible! There’s only five listed ingredients: garlic, onion, vinegar, salt, and spices, and one serving (a teaspoon) has no calories and no fat.  We added about a tablespoon to a skillet slicked with non-stick spray, and added the chicken to it.

Meanwhile, in the other, bigger skillet, we slicked it with non-stick spray and got the veggies going  – first, the onion, so it would get nice and soft, then we added the cauliflower, since it might need a few more minutes to cook, and then we added the rest of the veggies. After they had been cooking for a while, we added a different sauce to that pan, and that sauce is…

NEW ITEM #3. This caught my eye when I was wandering at Whole Foods:

When Kristy’s photography ends up in a museum somewhere, this photograph will be called “Sauce with School Bus.”

I bought it because I like apricots and I like dijon mustard, but I’ve never had the two of them together. And with 15 calories and 0 fat per tablespoon, it was a lot healthier than a lot of the other sauces on the shelf. When the veggies were mostly cooked, we added about 1/3 of a cup (5 servings) to the skillet – enough to coat all the veggies (and there were a lot of veggies), but only enough to coat them lightly. We also added…

NEW ITEM #4. Fake pasta!

I’ve been seeing this item at Whole Foods for a while now, and finally gave in and bought some. It’s a tofu-based pasta alternative – this variety is spinach fettuccini – and that entire bag (2 servings) has 50 calories and 0 grams of fat (it’s zero Weight Watchers points, for those of you that do Weight Watchers). It’s super easy to prepare: cut open the bag, drain it, rinse it, and heat it up – either in hot water, or you can do what I did, and clear a space in the veggie skillet, and add it in. Be warned: the fettuccini strands tend to clump together, so use a fork or something to tease them out a little bit before you add them.

The cooking of the entire meal was quick – about 10-15 minutes in two side-by-side skillets (I would’ve taken photos but my stove is in the dark corner of my kitchen). Then we plated it up, and dug in!

The final result:

It was delicious. The garlic-sauced-chicken was flavorful, and the veggies were perfect. The apricot dijon sauce was a little sweet and had a great mustard kick. The fake pasta was good – I don’t think you could be fooled into believing it was real pasta, but Kristy pointed out it was very similar to texture and taste to sobu noodles, which are often used in Vietnamese and Thai dishes. The pasta helped round out the dish, and absorbed the sauce nicely.

The best part? Kristy and I each ate a big plate of food, and there was enough leftover for a big, tasty dinner.

KEEP IT UP, DAVID!

PS – If you didn’t have time to visit Keep It Up, David over the weekend, than you missed out! I blogged both days over the weekend, so click on these links to read about an unexpected run and the new skyscraper I added to my collection!

GOBO!

Last week, I brought home a completely new-to-me food item after giving my motivational speech at Whole Foods Pasadena (I actually used this item during the speech as an example of how I love trying new produce items). I present to you… gobo root!

They’re ugly little fellas, and exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to pull out a mound of dirt. Last night, I decided it was time to eat them. Because I had no idea what they were, this involved a little research. There was learning to be done! While gobo from the produce section is new to me, I do know the word ‘gobo’ from another application: in the theatrical lighting world, a gobo is a stencil-like thing that you slide in front of a lamp to change the shape of the light that’s emitted. And, I can’t look at the word ‘gobo’ without thinking of downtown Detroit, which is home to Cobo, a big convention center. Yeah, yeah, they’re completely different words, but I look at gobo and think of Cobo. Probably because they both end in ‘obo.’

Gobo the produce item is known by another name, burdock – although this is no help to me; I’ve never heard of burdock, either. It’s a root, and the burdock plant is a type of thistle that grows burrs that get stuck in your clothing. I remember picking burrs out of my hair and clothes after playing out back when I was a kid – I wonder if there’s wild burdock behind my childhood home?

Gobo is starchy and dense, like a potato or a turnip, although more woody than either of those. It’s high in iron, potassium, and fiber, and low in calories. It’s been used for centuries in folk and traditional medicine all around the world: in Europe, burdock oil is used as a scalp treatment (burdock and dandelion are a traditional soft drink blend in England, too!) , and in Asian cultures, it’s used as a diuretic and a blood-purifying agent. But that’s not all, folks! The more I looked into gobo, the more benefits I uncovered:

• It’s a good source of anti-oxidants, which can help prevent and fight off a myriad of diseases.
• It’s a good source of inulin, which helps lower blood sugar and cholesterol, and is a natural laxative (yippee!).
• Burdock seeds can be used for throat and chest ailments.
• Burdock leaves can be used for pain management and to speed healing of burns.
• Burdock helps with skin problems like eczema and psoriasis (which may explain why burdock oil is rubbed onto European scalps?).

It’s a wonder food/herb/plant! What I get from all this info is that I should be eating more gobo. We all should be eating more gobo. But how?

I didn’t research tons of gobo recipes, because my friend Debbie (an expert on all things Japanese) left me a link to a recipe for kinpira gobo, a popular Japanese gobo dish. It seemed like an easy-enough dish to pull off – it’s basically braised gobo and carrots – but I did look up a few other kinpira gobo recipes just to see how they differ. They’re all basically the same, and involve a sauce containing, among other things, mirin (a Japanese cooking wine), sake (a rice wine), and sesame seeds – all of which I don’t have, and didn’t intend to buy.

So, naturally, I altered the recipe, as I’m known to do.

First things first: prepping the gobo. I peeled it, and even though I have an awesome vegetable peeler, it was still a pain in the ass. Very fibrous. But I did it:

Turns out these buggers oxidize quickly (which I learned the hard way), so I should’ve kept them in water instead of leaving them lying around while I putzed with my camera. Oh well, next time.

The recipes I based this dish on all suggest using shredded gobo, but the gobo was too tough for my box grater, and I wasn’t in the mood to slice it into planks, and cut the planks into matchsticks, or do any of that nonsense… so I sliced the gobo into thin rounds. It’s easy to hack away a lot of the gobo with the peeler, like I did, so I only ended up with a yield of a few handfuls:

Makes me glad I was cooking this only for myself, instead of for a dinner party!

Next ingredient: carrots. Carrots can easily get worked through a box grater, so I shredded two of them:

Even though none of the recipes called for it, I also shredded a zucchini. Why? Because I had a zucchini, and I like zucchini, and they shred easily, and I was having fun shredding.

I got out my skillet, slicked it down with some non-stick spray, and threw in the gobo first. I thought since it was so tough and starchy, it may need a little more time to cook. After a few minutes (on medium-high heat), I added the carrots and zucchini.

Instead of making a sauce with ingredients I don’t have, I instead opted to use a bottled sauce. Lazy, I know, but you’ve done it, too. I found this bottle of Chef Myron’s Ponzu at Whole Foods:

I’ve had Ponzu tons of times in restaurants, as a dipping sauce for dumplings and sashimi, but I’ve never had it in my house before. This bottle is pretty good, health-wise: a tablespoon has 30 calories, 1.5 grams of fat, and 220mg of sodium. That’s a great number for sodium – many Asian sauces have loaded with salt and have 2 or 3 times that, or more. I didn’t measure it, but I added probably around 2 to 3 tablespoons to the skillet.

Here’s everything cooking away – I removed the skillet from the burner for this picture, because my stove is hard to photograph:

I let it go for 6 or 7 minutes, then tried the gobo, and it definitely wasn’t done yet, so I added a lid to speed up the cooking, and let it go for another 6 or 7 minutes. I probably should’ve let the gobo cook on it’s own for a few more minutes before adding the carrots and zucchini… oh well, I’ll remember that (maybe) for next time.

The finished result:

The gobo was good! It’s kinda crisp like a water chestnut, and bland like a water chestnut, too, and that went well with the carrots and zucchini. The bottled Ponzu was delicious – citrusy and tart and flavorful, especially since I let it cook down a little bit.

Ultimately, I’m torn about gobo. I’d totally eat it again, for both health and taste reasons, but the peeling process was annoying enough to be a deterrent. I’ve heard you can find canned or jarred gobo, so maybe I’ll keep an eye out for that. If I do buy fresh gobo again, I’d do a couple other things differently, thanks to additional research not found until after this gobo was comsumed: I’d let it soak for 10 minutes in water, which leeches out some of the starch; and I’d peel and prep the gobo underwater, which stops the oxidation process.

Eating well and trying new foods is always going to be a learning process! In the meantime, I’m quite happy with my first attempt at gobo.

Are you a gobo fan? Have any gobo-related tips or tricks? Share them below!

Keep it up, David!

Success in Pasadena

I took a little 48-hour blogging break, but I’m back. I spent a lot of time preparing for my Whole Foods talk on Thursday night, tracing my way back through the past two years, and, to be honest, I was kinda tired of thinking and talking about myself. Now I’m ready to be my regular ol’ narcissistic self! And I know that’s why you keep visiting this blog – because I’m such a selfish, arrogant asshole. I’m glad to be back, bitches!

The Whole Foods event on Thursday night went off wonderfully. If you didn’t make it, you missed out! I had been preparing to give my speech in their regular event space – a clearing between the service deli counter and the wine section, and this turned out to be a special night. Thanks to some building renovations, Whole Foods Pasadena had a new classroom/conference room in the back, and my event was the first one that got to use it! How exciting to inaugurate a new space! It was great because I didn’t need to use a microphone, and I didn’t need to compete with the sounds of squeaky carts, register dings, and the other noises that a functioning supermarket provides.

That’s me and my poster at the front of the store. I’m looking off to the side, because I was talking to a customer who had just complimented me! I tried to persuade her to stick around for the presentation, but she couldn’t – I did, however, give her a card.

The room filled up. I think every available chair was taken. Heather had printed out a bunch of “Before” photos, so I had visual aids to refer to.  I was prepared – I had my notes, and used them as a guideline, but told my story naturally, and I felt more comfortable this time around than when I made my motivational speaking debut at Whole Foods Porter Ranch.

The speech lasted about 30 minutes, and then there was a lively question and answer period that lasted about 20 minutes or so. We raffled off a bag of Whole Foods items, and everyone went on their way. My aunt, uncle, and cousin were there, in the front row, and friends came from all over: Culver City, Calabasas, Hollywood, and Long Beach – and if you’re familiar with southern California geography, none of those places are exactly Pasadena-adjacent, so that meant a lot to me as well, especially since it involved terrible rush-hour traffic. Then, there were a couple blog readers that came out specifically to meet me in person (Hello Chauncy and Christina!), which really touched me, and a bunch of people who were new to me and my story, that I hope had a good time.

I left the evening feeling proud, and also feeling motivated. I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately, and talking about all the steps that I’ve taken since Day 1 reminded me that all the difficulties I’m facing now, about staying focused and goal-oriented, are all difficulties that I’ve faced before, and successfully. It’s important that I don’t dwell in a “but-what-have-I-done-lately” fog or forget about my accomplishments from the past. Because I’ve accomplished a lot. And I’m not done yet.

I also left the evening with some produce. I was at Whole Foods, after all! I just wanted a few things to bring me through the weekend:

Carrots, broccoli, red bell pepper, bananas, nectarines.

I also brought home something I’ve never seen or heard of before. Do you know what this is?

It’s called gobo root, and at this point, I know nothing more about it. That will change, though – I’ll figure out what it is, and how to use it, and I’ll share the end results right here in this blog!

Keep it up, David!