Fresh Herb Experiments

Hi Everyone,

So since I have been living in an apartment this summer and am on a limited meal plan I have been cooking for myself most meals. Now, I’ve always loved playing around in the kitchen, but at home it was mostly throwing together some of Mom’s leftovers in an interesting way instead of just using the microwave. Here I’ve gotten to go shopping by myself (and realized that groceries are expensive!) , plan an entire meal, and experience food going bad because I didn’t use it soon enough (gross/bummer!).

As part of my cooking adventures I have decided to experiment with some fresh spices. I got the idea because outside of our dining hall is an herb garden that most people don’t know about! It has been mostly taken over by rosemary and mint, but there’s also some thyme, chives, and another spice I have yet to identify with my low level of expertise.

The herb garden outside of dhall.

Fresh picked rosemary, thyme, and chives

For my first exploration with fresh spices I used rosemary three days in a row. The first day I used it to pan fry chicken with olive oil and then added fresh tomato and feta cheese at the end (picture below). Unfortunately I added way too much olive oil and it got a little soupy. However, it was delicious! After that semi-success the next day I use two red potatoes I had purchased and did the same but tried to fry the potatoes with the chicken. This turned out well, but unfortunately I didn’t realize the potatoes needed to be cooked a lot longer than the chicken so they were still a bit raw when I sat down to enjoy my meal. The third night of my rosemary experiment I returned to the chicken and tomatoes with feta because it was just so delicious.

My first rosemary pan fried chicken with tomatoes and feta

After these few days of experimenting it was my birthday, and for my birthday I asked my parents to take me grocery shopping when they visited. I stocked up on some supplies and also purchased a basil plant to try my hand at growing herbs. In addition my parents brought up 3 cucumber and 3 grape tomato plants for my plot in the campus organic garden (I’ll elaborate more on that in a later post).

My basil plant (I lost one of the big stems repotting it)

And this brings me to my most recently culinary experiment. Using this recipie as a base I created a garlic chicken with egg noodles dish. I used rosemary from the herb garden to pan fry the chicken in the garlic butter sauce and added chives from the garden at the end as the recipe suggests. I also added Parmesan cheese. It turned out wonderfully. Next time I make it (and I will make it again) I will probably use more butter than olive oil to give it more of a butter taste and possibly add a bit of garlic (as I’m garlic crazy).

Garlic chicken and egg noodles

Overall I have been very satisfied by my culinary adventures so far. There is something intensly satisfying about taking the time to prepare a meal and then tasting the fruits of your success. And even if you’re not successful, you have learned an important lesson for next time.

McDonalds Farm to Fork?

So my last post was about fast food chain Chipotle who is doing some really awesome stuff with organic and locally grown foods.Their commitment to creating a healthier agriculture and food system makes me a bit angry when I think about McDonald’s new greenwashing campaign. The guys over at Grist first turned me on to this new campaign. Check out a couple of the videos and read their article:

Grist already tackled the potatoes video, so I figured I’d give my opinion on their beef supplier. Let me start by saying that these commercials are very well done. Not quite as good as the Chipotle video I love, but still very well done. They make it seem like all their beef comes from this nice family run farm where the grandfather teaches his grandsons the family business and your cows roam free and are as happy as can be well until they go into your burger at least. I do believe that this farm supplies McDonalds, but I highly doubt all of their beef suppliers are similar to this. As Grist points out most of the carbon content of fast-food beef comes from corn (check out this Scientific American article). So I suppose documentaries like King Corn and Food Inc. might not be unfair attacks on the fast-food industry.

My problem with this is that McDonalds is basically insulting everything Chipotle is doing by pretending to care about more than the bottom line. Although, it seems like customers aren’t tricked into loving McDonalds after their recent Twitter backlash where the company was abused after trying to create a positive trending topic. Perhaps they got what they deserved, we’re not stupid.