New year, new food

We have been venturing out of the traditional foodways of my family for a while now. Once upon a time, this was just an attempt to discover new tastes and sample the delights of the world. Some of those dishes and foods were adopted as things we wanted to continue eating, so My Prince and I already dine on a diet of foods that would be alien to most of my family.

Lately I've been actively seeking healthier foods to add better nutrition to our diet. I've particularly been looking for lower carbohydrate foods that are higher in fiber. Over the past year, three new foods have made an impression: quinoa (see "Return to Central Market"), edamame (see both posts on edamame here), and jicama (see my jicama posts here). Only the latter two have really stuck in our diet. Quinoa is harder to find here in Austin and impossible in our regular shopping haunts in Houston. (Yes, I could drive 20 miles out of the way to get it, but I tend not to do that for anything except raspberry tea.) Edemame and jicama, however, are on our plates at least once a week, sometimes more.

I have three more new foods ready for review right now. One is really an herb: rosemary. I know I've tasted rosemary before, but I have never cooked with it. Now I have the promised rosemary bush and am making my first efforts to incorporate it into my cooking. Fennel can be used as both a vegetable and an herb. Haven't tried it yet, but look forward to trying. Pumpkin is not exactly new. I've had pumpkin pie all my life. I've even made a couple. I've never tried fresh pumpkin, though. I'm going to try my hands at cooking the seeds and making a couple of dishes from the fresh pumpkin that have nothing to do with pies.

Thinking about Christmas

There's a quite a bit of thinking yet to be done about our Christmas celebration this year even though I haven't finished thinking through our Thanksgiving celebration. However, I was just doing my round of blog reading (this is mostly how I get my news these days) and ran across yet another discussion of the economy's effect on Christmas. That made me think about my birthday. LOL!

The discussion included some thoughts about giving less for Christmas, commiserating with those that would have little or nothing to spare for Christmas in this economy, and the joys of giving homemade gifts. I've been making many of my gifts for years since I make jewelry and seem to be able to please most of my female relatives with my creations. Indeed, the stand out presents for my birthday this year were a trip to my favorite bead shop sponsored by (and shared with) My Prince and a kick ass pile of beads from Big Kid Cousin. I am delirious with all the fun I will have with these treasures.

I did, however, get the biggest laugh out of a present that a couple of family friends gave me, since it was most peculiar to reach into the tissue-stuffed bags and feel . . . limes. Once I got through mugging about those, I began pulling out a half dozen limes, a large jicama, and not one but two bottles of hot sauce: Del Primo Green Sauce and La Costena Taquera Salsa Hot. This has to be one of my most memorable presents. The occasion and the company surely helped make it so, but I was also struck both by its simplicity and it rightness. The gift will be used (indeed it has already been partially consumed). The gift will be appreciated (I love spicy jicama and know that I will enjoy these sauces). The gift will not be a burden (it's not something that will take up space for years to come). I do have to recycle the bottles that the sauce came in, but otherwise there is minimal waste from this gift. (There would be less, of course, if I could compost, but that ain't gonna happen at Mama's house. My Prince is not too fond of the idea either. *sigh*)

Just to re-emphasize the value of this sort of gift, BKC did her own version of hitting the sweet spot. Not only did she give me the beads with which to make what will become one of my favorite necklaces (once I get it made), she had some chopsticks sticking up of her bag. I was delighted, of course. I love to eat with chopsticks, especially well formed ones that don't threaten me with splinters. These were lovely to look at and will be lovely to use. They are also a renewable resource, being made of bamboo. Maybe BKC should be MGC (my green cousin)! Down in the bottom of the bag, there was yet one more present to be discovered: Red Monkey Organic Cayenne Pepper. I may carry this one in my purse, diguised as "medicine," to sprinkle on my food whenever the need arises. :) As BKC knows, I already set a bottle of it out on my table along with the regular seasonings.

So, yes, I had a fine birthday and, yes, I got some wonderful presents. These were not cheap presents, especially in combination. Groceries are not such a bargain these days. But I'm thinking that this is both the season and the time to start looking at food gifts as a way to lower the cost, the wasteful consumerism, and general greed of Christmas in the US. I will, no doubt, tell myself that a girl just can't have too much handmade jewelry, but the truth is, she can't have too many spices either. We may not have time (or, in my case, skill) to do the carb-laden baking that some will do this season. We may not be able to sew or make jewelry or do carpentry or any of the many other skills that would allow us to make a special present for those on our gift list, but we could, I think, figure out something that will make good eating better.

Another use of jicama

Friday night is party night at Mama's house. It's been that way since I was a teenager and had my own crowd of friends (four or five teenagers is a plenty big crowd!) come over for pizza and talk-talk-talk. Nowadays, Big Kid Cousin and Little Sister make up the "usual crowd," but this past Friday added a young(ish) couple from Mama's church to the group.

While the menu didn't start out as pot luck, it sure ended up that way. The young(ish) bride brought chile con queso, with ground beef and mild flavoring. Little Sister brought big slices of jicama with a couple of dressings for dipping sauces. Neither of her dressings were the traditional lime and cayenne flavors, but they held up well for giving the jicama a little taste.

Toward the end of the evening, I was nibbling around and just dipped a slice of jicama in the queso. Wowee zowee! Nice flavor combination. I'll certainly try that again. A low-carb, high-fiber substitute for chips is a good discovery any time.

Jicama for fiber!

I have been searching for fiber lately. Soluble fiber turns out to be one of your best friends in this life. It absorbs cholesterol. Eat enough soluble fiber, and your cholesterol levels will (probably) make your doctor happy. Insoluble fiber, on the other hand, is what makes good food good to eat--because you can subtract the insoluble fiber content from the carbohydrate content and get a guilt-free number.

You could, of course, get your fiber in a pill or a drink, but where's the fun in that? Better to find it in food, I say.

So I'm looking for fiber and what did I find? Jicama!

A cup of this Mexican root veggie has 6 grams of fiber out of 11 grams of carbs overall. It's not exactly a free food, but one cup of jicama can go a long way--which makes it the next best thing to a free food. (The fiber appears to be about evenly balanced between soluble and insoluble.)

Finding recipes for jicama is easier said than done, however. Most of what I've run across involves eating it raw, using it in a salad, or using it as a substitute for water chestnuts.

• Slice, julienne, or coarsely dice the jicama; douse it with lime juice; sprinkle salt and powdered cayenne over it; eat. Great snack. (Easy on the cayenne until you know how much you can handle.)
  
• Finely dice or julienne the jicama and put it in whatever salad floats your boat. The jicama will pick up flavors from the surrounding foods and add crunch to the salad.
• Slice, julienne, or finely dice the jicama and toss it in your stir-fried veggies. It absorbs surrounding flavors and crunches just like water chestnuts.

I'm not doing so well with finding recipes for jicama as a cooked vegetable or side dish. Maybe it is not used that way in traditional Mexican cooking or in its new international role (jjicama is apparently quite popular in Australia!). It looks like some kitchen experimentation is called for if I want to see what else jicama can do besides crunch. Not that crunchy is a bad thing. It's just that I wonder what will happen when I boil jicama . . . or roast it . . . or toss it in the crock pot.

In the meantime, I now buy jicama every time I buy fresh veggies. At Mama's home, my first errand is going to the grocery store for fresh vegetables--and jicama. Now my cousin and her running buddy are hooked on jicama. Maybe enough people will start buying it that the price will come down from its current 89 - 99 cents per pound; maybe enough people will start demanding it that more stores will sell it.