Life With….

On Friday I drove from Durham to the the Delray Beach/Boca Raton area for Thanksgiving.  I figured that as long as I was working from home only most days, I could travel by car on a non heavily travel day with the animals and save money.  I did forget to download a book on tape – so I spent most of the trip listening to show-tunes on repeat – which is a story for another day. 800 miles of show-tunes cannot be good for the brain.    (I was only interrupted on the drive by family and a few good friends who called – mostly to talk about my father’s uncle who passed on while I was driving.  He contributed a lot to the heart surgery and therefore helped save many lives, and I know it is making my grandfather more reflective as he has relayed quite a few mentions of my grandmother recently – which is not typical of him.)

What made the drive enjoyable was the lack of traffic or bad weather, the good behavior of the dog, and the cat cuddling when he could.  I was mostly amazed though by the amount of energy i had – it was not until I was less then a hundred miles from Delray that I really began to be aware of how long I had been driving.

I attribute this to the remarkable uptick in pomegranates I have had the past few weeks including some delicious ones here which I have coupled with an exciting vinegar I found at the green market.

Last week I made a variation on beef stew/ burgundy with pomegranates which was delicious.    To make this I took local stew beef, coated it quickly in flour, salt, garlic powder, pepper and fresh rosemary and thyme and then browned it.  To brown it I threw some butter in my slow cooker (a metal one) and placed it onto the stove over medium once melted I put the beef in and cooked till just brown on each side.  I then removed the cooker back onto the slow cooker base.  I threw in 2 stalks of chopped celery and 2 chopped carrots; 3/4 of a white onion and about a 1/2 cup of red wine.  I also added in fresh bay leaf, more thyme and rosemary, some garlic, a shallot, and some basil.  Finally i removed the seeds from a pomegranate, and used a mortar and pestle to juice about 3/4 of them – yielding about a cup of juice and leaving about an 1/8 cup of seeds.  I used the juice instead of chicken or beef stock to add flavor to the stew.   I let the slow cooker cook them for about 4 hours, until the beef was tender, and  I served with mashed sweet potatoes and grilled root vegetables.  It lasted me four nights, and while I varied the sides the stew was always delicious a mixture of classical stew and a sweet tang that worked well together.

When I arrived in  Florida my mother and I went to a green market where we found, in addition to local bread and very small amounts of local produce (Florida exports the vast majority of its produce) a vendor selling oils and aged vinegars.  The vinegars, aged 18 years were infused with different flavors – I particularly enjoyed the raspberry and fig and thought they would go well on a spinach salad with no need for adding olive oil.  Therefore that night with dinner I put enough baby spinach for three, 1/2 white onion cut lengthwise, and seeds from 1/2 a pomegranate into a bowl.  I then mixed and added a drizzle of the vinegar.  Besides the fact that the onion was more potent then expected, it was quite good.

Finding oils at the green market was an unexpected, though welcome surprise and a great addition to my pantry.  More exiting was the unique local hummus and salsa including a wild apple salsa mixed with cilantro and lime, and my brother’s favorite a cilantro, lime and dill hummus which mixes the flavors of hummus with the smoke of salsa in a good way.

I was then stuck with what to do with the remaining seeds – besides snack on them.  I rarely have cereal in the morning.  In fact if I eat at all then it is either the big Sunday eggs  breakfast or it is toast and fruit.    Today, for an unknown reason except for having thoroughly enjoyed some berries in soy milk the other day, I decided to try a cereal in a very small amount of soy.  The cereal was an unsweetened high fiber variety, to which i added two strawberries and a fist full of the pomegranate seeds.  The sweet crunch added unique texture to the soy cereal combination and the flavor overcame the dullness of the high fiber – I highly recommend adding these as a flaovarnt for the eyes and tongue.  As I learned Monday at lunch, thy are also good in a curried chicken salad served over spinach where the pomegranate is mixed in place of onions and grapes to add a bright color and contrasting taste to the salad that is interesting.

Off to lunch with my grandfather, Thanksgiving prep, SYTYCD, Glee, and seeing extended family – Happy Thanksgiving enjoy it.  I am trying to figure out if pomegranates will work well in my favorite Brussels sprout recipe – we shall find out tomorrow!

Enjoy.

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Create Your Badge  All text and copyrights preserved by the author for words and original pictures and may not be used without author's permission. For more information visit http://www.peebesalgy.com Follow me on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/peebesalgy or contact me directly through http://www.peebesalgy.com/blog/contact-me/ Courtney Brown | Create Your Badge