Weekend Culinary Adventures, Daktari-style

This past weekend, I did some lifestyle rearranging. Starting with my pantry. I had to get the no-no food out of my line of sight so I could actually see what good foods I had to work with. There wasn't much after all was said and done. It appears I've been hoarding an extraordinary amount of jams and jellies, and there was dried fruit in there that I didn't even remember buying. Oh how my heart broke when I saw that unopened bag of dried banana chips. (And thank God the package had never been opened. I'm not sure my willpower would have held out that long.) Once the rearranging was done, I saw that I had an abundance of tomato products and beans. So time to try out some new recipes. Diet and lactose intolerance are often two very difficult masters to serve. Put them together and things can get tough. Either the food is high fat or the food tastes bad. So after a few hours of food blog and internet browsing, I bookmarked some interesting, low calorie, dairy-free recipes. Here's the first one I tried.

Creamy tomato-basil-tofu soup. I give it 4.5 stars on a 5 star scale.

Assemble the ingredients. Amazingly simple. Oh, add an onion to this mix. I always forget one ingredient.

So you dice the onion and sweat it in a pan with a tablespoon of vegetable oil. Then you add the can of tomatoes and one or two cloves of chopped garlic. After this has heated, you add a half teaspoon of white pepper, half teaspoon of salt, and it was supposed to be a tablespoon of fresh basil leaves, but it's wintertime so I used dried leaves and added two tablespoons. I think you are supposed to add less dried spice and not more, but I remembered this concept too late. Don't worry, it turned out ok.

Ok, after heating the tomato-onion-garlic mixture for a minute or two, I added a cup and a half of plain, unsweetened soy milk. You know, the stuff you DO NOT want to make the mistake of drinking, but it is only good for cooking with. That stuff tastes AWFUL all by itself. Turn the heat off and let it all cool for a few minutes and then add 1 lb. of silken tofu. I used organic tofu by Nasoya. (See J? I'm trying.) Put all in a blender and puree. You can eat this hot or cold.


I ate it hot. It was completely yummy. Notice all those bubbles? Pureeing in the blender adds air. So it was especially light tasting. I assume that after it rests in the fridge for a day, those bubbles will burst and it won't have that wonderful light, dancing on your tongue action and just be regular old tomato soup. But one can dream.

So this recipe makes six 1-cup servings. According to my calculations, it has, per cup, only 110 calories, 5 grams of fat, 11 grams of carbs, 5 grams of protein, and thankfully only 413 milligrams of sodium. That's about half or less the salt you'd find in a can of Campbell's soup. It doesn't taste like salt and it doesn't taste like soy. It tastes like a very light, very fresh cup of tomato soup. The color is a little pale by most tomato soup standards, and it's not the wintertime go-to soup for when you've just come in after shoveling snow. I sort of liken this to cold cucumber soup I've tried before. I really do think it would be great cold and I may try it out like that this week. I actually think the extra basil made is taste more....well summertimeish, if you know what I mean. But. It was really great. And I'd bet your grandma would love it. If I was a grandma, I'd love it. Hell, I'm not a grandma and I love it.

So there it is. My new lactose friendly, semi-organic, reasonably salted tomato soup recipe. Not a bad find.

Becoming Environmentally Aware

So those of you who know me in my day-to-day life probably know that I have taken on a challenge this semester. I was given a gift by a professor. I was given freedom. I was told when given my teaching assignment to "do whatever you want." And I have.

The class is called Environmental Issues. The one-hour discussion lab used to require the students to purchase a book that had point-counter point essays on pressing and not-so-pressing environmental issues. Many of the essays assumed a higher level of understanding about politics, world issues, and general awareness than many of my students possess at their age. They were expected to read the text and come prepared to debate the issue. I think you can imagine what happened. The class arrived not having read the material. No one was able to make a meaningful point about the material they hadn't read and the lab instructor (me) had to lead them through it. Tiring for me. Dull for them. It wasn't anyone's favorite class.

I am of the firm opinion that the point of science education is to arm students, most of whom are not pursuing science careers, with the tools they need to adequately assess and process science information that they will encounter once they leave school. I decided that over-their-heads environmental debates was not the best way to achieve this. The only way to engage students is to make the subject matter exciting. If I'm not excited about the material, how can I expect them to be? I decided to do something radically different.

OK, in week one, they HAD to do an assignment on how to find scientific sources in the library and using internet resources for a term paper they were going to do. At least they didn't have to show up to that lab prepared.

But since then, I've asked them to inventory every electrical appliance in their homes and to analyze where their energy dollars are going. We used this cool "Kill A Watt" reader I purchased for the class to compare televisions, VCRs, lights, compters, microwaves and so forth. We did the math to demonstrate how much money they could save by switching all their light bulbs from incandescent to compact fluorescents and by switching from washing clothes in hot water to cold water. I defied them to fnd a difference. I made them determine their carbon footprint and to compare their lifestyle (in terms of energy use) to that of someone from a developing country. We talked about human population growth and then I gave them assignment to try to get some grasp of "what is a billion". I gave them assignment to spend a half an hour researching an environmental issue of their choosing (Kyoto Protocal, 2000 watt society, hybrid vs. internal combustion cars, etc.) and to write a page on what they learned and what they thought about it. Wow! Did that assignment work out well. I think they actually enjoyed it. This week, I'm requiring them to keep track of every single item they throw away and to analyze it and think about how they might reduce their waste generation. I'm doing this with them, and I have decided to take this one step further. I'm going to create a blog entry of sorts on an "environmental weekend". I'm going to talk about what I did, what I bought, what I threw away and then I'm going to consider the environmental impact of my actions. I'm going to detail the thought processes I went through in making those decisions. I'm going to share with them things that I could have done differently. Ultimately, I'm going to ask them for ideas on how I might lessen my own environmental impact.

I think this could be interesting. I'll likely share it with you.

I'm pretty psyched about the class. At least I can communicate my excitement about the material to them. Surely, that has to be something.