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By Todd, on May 17th, 2012 
There’s something about orange-colored soups that really does it for me. I’m not sure what it is, but many of the soups I find myself liking more and more have tended to be orange-ish, like the carrot-parsnip soup we’ve been making lately, or squash soups, or this sweet potato and celery root soup. My irrational conclusion is that there must be something high-quality about the color orange in food.
It’s actually a little disappointing that it’s hard to portray the uniqueness of such similar dishes. Sure, they’re usually some kind of root or tough winter squash, and they all look like runny baby food in a bowl if you think too hard about it, but each one has its own qualities that make it a truly distinct dining experience. Carrots have their bitter parsley sweetness, squash have a rustic, understated quality, sweet potatoes are smooth and inviting. I definitely encourage you to try some new orange soups.
…starting with this one, I guess! I found this randomly on foodgawker (original soup recipe linked here) and it just jumped out at me as a great idea. I’ve actually never tried celeriac, but a friend assured me it was awesome, so I went for it. You may have to search around to find one; only one store in my town sold them. Totally worth it.
What made this soup great is that the earthiness of the sweet potato and the brightness of the celeriac complemented each other fantastically, and the coconut and ginger add a subtle richness and perfume that brings everything together nicely. Despite the less common ingredients, this is actually pretty easy and quick to . . . → read more: sweet potato celeriac soup
By Todd, on May 14th, 2012 
I wanted to just take a minute today and share another fun aspect of our quest toward simpler living: the garden. Rachel and I are self-proclaimed gardening novices; last year we shoved some last-minute plants in the ground that did pretty well, and we have very little idea why that happened. This year, we had the chance to prepare a little more ahead of time, and the blessing of a lot more space to work with, but we’re still pretty clueless.
What we have going in our favor is that we are easily excited by projects and new ideas, so we’re tackling the garden with gusto. What we lack in experience, we make up for in spirit: our methods are sometimes chaotic, and we probably bit off more than we can chew with all the different kinds of plants we’re growing, but at least our hearts are in the right place, right?.We ordered some pretty cool seeds, including some great heirloom varieties that I’ll hopefully get the chance to show off later in the summer. The lettuce in the picture above is our first “harvest” of the season. It’s been growing pretty ambitiously, which is great because it helps appease our short attention spans as we wait for the slower vegetables to do their thing.
Here’s some pictures of our garden earlier this year when we cleared it. At the moment, everything you see as beautiful empty soil below is now covered in weeds (and the occasional vegetable), so as we wage our war against them I’ll post more pictures. The peas and some of the beans are next in line for harvest at some point, and we . . . → read more: first from the garden 2012
By Todd, on May 10th, 2012 
Just wanted to share this with you all. In our adventures of trying to live more simply, we’re always on the lookout for 1) things that substitute well for meat and 2) things that a moderately reasonable person would cook on the grill. As it turns out, portabella mushrooms are both. I’ve had some pretty awesome portabella mushrooms at restaurants, but never had made any serious attempt to grill them myself. So Rachel and I decided to try it out, and make a great pita wrap/sandwich situation out of the results.
The results, by the way, were delicious. Something about the dry, smoky heat from the grill in particular did amazing things to the texture of the mushrooms: firm and almost crispy on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside. With some onions, peppers, and a yogurt sauce and wrapped in a pita, this was a seriously satisfying sandwich.
You don’t need a recipe for this, I’ll just give some direction on what worked well for us. Mushrooms absorb liquid and flavor really well, so I soaked them in a marinade before cooking. Something with a good balance of acid, oil, salt, and sweet (along with good strong herbs or spices) will lend a lot of personality to the portabellas.
I took the leftover marinade and mixed it with the onions and peppers in a foil pack that I threw on the grill as well. They steamed in the juices and got some of the flavor as well, which was awesome.
In terms of cooking the mushrooms, I prefer a charcoal grill with pretty . . . → read more: portabella pita wrap
By Todd, on May 7th, 2012 
Flatbread! I’m a big fan of bread in general, but one of my favorite of its manifestations by far is flatbread. Why? Well, for one, it’s a great vehicle for both wrapping and dipping, which are my two favorite ways to eat food. Beyond that, there’s also just a homey, rustic, down-to-earth joy in eating bread in one of its simplest and ancient of forms. Anyone who knows their world cuisines will know that flatbread is a pretty common element in pretty much all of them: pitas, tortillas, won-tons, injera, matzo… the list goes on and on, and most are as diverse and unique as the cultures who invented them. It is just a great food that speaks to the heart of our humanity and cultural history. Today I want talk about how to make some.
This approach is for a general pita or naan style flatbread; soft, wheat-based and usually leavened, relatively thick (compared to a tortilla) and often round in shape. In some form or other it’s a pretty important staple of India and the Middle East (or at least it’s one of my favorite things to eat at restaurants from those places) and it’s freaking delicious. If you’ve never had fresh pita or tandoori-cooked naan, you need to go try some before you make this recipe so you know what you’re shooting for. The bland big-brand pita that sits on supermarket shelves is nothing compared to hot, fresh flatbread from an oven near you.
But wait! There’s more! Over the course of my illustrious career as a home baker, I’ve learned a few different ways to make flatbread, all of which have their pros . . . → read more: 3 ways to make homemade flatbread
By Todd, on May 3rd, 2012 
I’ve enjoyed caesar salad (especially chicken caesar salad) forever, but had never thought much of making my own dressing for it. It seems like a shame though, once you think about it: here’s this great, fresh, light, perfect-for-summer-evenings meal, and after you assemble a bunch of fresh and fresh-cooked ingredients into happy harmony, you open a bottle of dressing from the store and dump it right on there. Not the end of the world, obviously, since there are some great caesar dressings out there, but the situation just cries out (to me at least) to have a homemade touch from start to finish. So for a few minutes, I’m taking it upon myself to share my thoughts on what can take the classic caesar salad to a new level.
To me, the qualities that make chicken caesar salad such a nicely balanced meal are subtlety and freshness. We’ve all had versions that are basically a pile of lettuce drowned to sogginess in gobs of mayonnaise-y dressing. I’ve also seen quite a few salads that bordered on too much of a good thing: a few shreds of romaine buried beneath a pile of chicken, hard-boiled eggs, bacon, and unsustainable quantities of parmesan cheese. I won’t deny that those salads still tasted pretty good, but at the same time I think they lost a little of their true personality in the process.
So let’s shoot for subtle and fresh. On the fresh side, you can obviously use some great, fresh lettuce. Romaine keeps pretty well, so that shouldn’t be an issue. It also makes a big difference to let the rest of the ingredients be homemade and recently cooked as . . . → read more: chicken caesar salad with homemade dressing
By Todd, on April 30th, 2012 
For some reason, I’ve been subconsciously avoiding the task of figuring out how to create some fantastic soft pretzels. Sure, I’ve taken a stab at pretzel rolls, but those were mostly just rolls in a pretzel-y shape. In fact, the reason I even thought of making pretzel rolls was because my first attempt at soft pretzels ended up puffy and round rather than lanky and chewy like they should be. So I guess I fell off the pretzel horse for awhile, and I’ve been overdue to get back on it. (Don’t worry, I did, there’s a recipe soon).
One of the reasons I have such a deep-set perfectionism about pretzels is because I happened to spend a good part of my life in the 30% of Pennsylvania that likes to think it’s Philadelphia. As a result, I have a few deep and confusing instincts that prompt me to be extremely opinionated about some things, in particular cheesesteaks and soft pretzels (and sometimes sports teams, and New Jersey). If you haven’t had a pretzel from Philly or New York, then you’re destined to read a lot of snotty blog posts from the rest of us who have, and you’re also missing out on an amazing bready experience you can’t find elsewhere.
The pretzels I have here aren’t shaped quite like the giant rows of squished ovals you can find in Philly, and I won’t claim that they’re quite as good as the real deal, but they’re fantastic and about as good as you can get from your own kitchen. They’re what a pretzel should be: dense with a firm and almost crispy skin, yet soft and chewy inside, . . . → read more: philly-style soft pretzels
By Todd, on April 25th, 2012 
Pumpernickel bread is weird, in a strangely appealing and fascinating way. When I was a kid it was just the wrong kind of bread: dark, bitter, dense, and intense (why would you do that to perfectly good bread?). Now though, in my mature grownup years, I’m starting to develop a taste for it. Pumpernickel’s quirks and intensity make it a bread with character and personality; something interesting and noteworthy in a sea of fluffy white plainness. It’s also a fun challenge to bake, and it’s becoming one of my favorite breads in my arsenal, for the moment.
The chocolate-brown rye bread we’re all used to from deli sandwiches and bread bowls is actually the American adaptation of the original German pumpernickel, which apparently is even more intense. It’s made from almost completely 100% rye (including whole rye berries in many cases) and because of the lack of gluten is cooked in forms. The color comes mainly from the ridiculously long cooking process (16-24 hours) at a lower temperature, which results in a super dense, dark loaf. The American version (like we’re making in this recipe) is a mixture of wheat and rye flours to help the loaves have enough gluten to hold some shape, and the color comes from other ingredients like cocoa and caramel coloring. So technically, this bread is just a dark rye bread and not a “true” pumpernickel, but I think it’s gained enough status as its own bread to give it some credit.
A few important notes before we get started:
Gluten – like I said, this bread uses higher-gluten flours to make up for what rye lacks. I additionally added some vital wheat gluten to help things along even . . . → read more: pumpernickel bread
By Todd, on April 23rd, 2012 
Are you part of your community? It’s a question I’ve been thinking a lot about over the past few years, and the answer isn’t as simple as I thought it would be. Without thinking about it, we’d all assume we’re part of one community or another almost by default. We refer to being involved in our “local community” or our “church community”, and we often describe groups or populations the same way: the Latino community, the working-class community, the chess lovers community. But are those really communities?
Defining a Community
I had to do a paper for a grad class last year that asked the same thing. I thought it was a pretty simple question, until we sat there in class and picked apart everything I thought I knew about communities (because what else are grad classes for?).
The problem is that we invented the word “community” in the first place to describe some kind of voluntary, relational, uplifting, interdependent way of living among other people. But most of those examples of the word use it basically as a synonym for “group” or “population”. It seems like it would make sense to describe someone as part of their “local community”, but what if they don’t feel like they’re part of it? What if they don’t want to be part of it?
Can you really just be “lumped in” to a community? And if so, does that mean your membership is automatically meaningful? I think instinctively we’d all say “no” to both, even though it’s hard to really describe why. We know that a community is supposed to be meaningful and relationally uplifting and mutually involved . . . → read more: are you really part of a community?
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what’s this all about? Foodie's Arsenal is all about cooking our way to simpler lives. Learning about what we eat and how to make it better helps us get a grip on not just our menu, but our health, habits, and relationships as well.
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the author 
Todd Van Patter does the writing, photography, and design for the site.
He also cooks (and eats) most of the food.
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