Grocery Shopping

I went grocery shopping to today, the first time I have shopped since we attended Dr Esselstyn's lecture at the Mayfield Regional Library last Saturday. I am thankful that my husband came to the lecture and that he accompanied me grocery shopping. Because he went to the lecture and heard so much about kale, my husband was interested in seeing kale in our local market.

I always grow flowering kale in my yard and have cooked it in the past, only to have to eat it by myself. However, after attending the lecture, my husband not only tasted the kale both raw and cooked, but helped prepare it, by stripping the leafy areas from the stem as Dr. Esselstyne's wife demonstrated.

To strip the kale, take a leaf and hold the stem in your right hand and strip the softer leafy areas, away from the stem in one continuous motion. My husband is actually better at this than I am.

We used the kale tonight as we would have used pasta, the base for a vegetarian bean and barley chili.

Having lived in Cincinnati for 14 years, combining homemade chili with pasta is natural. Substituting cooked and slightly chopped kale for the pasta, was not only delicious, but a way to disguise kale for the non-kale eating world! My husband loved it and so did I!

I used about a cup of dried black beans, 1/2 cup of red pinto beans, and put them in a put, and just covered them with cold water. Per the instructions on the bean package, I boiled them for two minutes and let them sit for about an hour before continuing the cooking process. The directions say that the beans will cook in two hours, but they are always a bit too hard for us at the two-hour stage. I prefer to cook them twice the time stated on the package, add more liquid, about 1 cup of spaghetti sauce, tomato paste, or even sausa taking up too much room in my refrigerator! I had at least a teaspoon of cinnamon, garlic powder, onion powder and ab out a cup of each of chopped onions, celery, and carrots.

I had cooked the kale until tender, the mass of kale barely made two generous servings for the base of a bowl of chili!

Notice how the kale quickly cooked down. I have flowering kale in my yard, but don't want to pick it yet.
I also purchased a huge cabbage and plan to make "stuffed cabbage casserole" without using meat.

We may find ourselves between Dr. Dean Ornish's diet and that of Dr; Esselstyn, but in any case, we were energized to include more crucifers in our diet and hope to make kale a regular visitor at our house!

Have you ever seen such a huge cabbage?

The stripped kale filled up the pot, but watch how it shrinks after cooking.

The kale cooked down in the picture below where it turned from a bright green to a very deep green.

Below is how the kale looked after stripping the leafy areas from the stalks using the method which Dr. Esselstyn's wife showed at the lecture at the Mayfield Regional Library last Saturday.

I took the stems of the stalks and cut them on a slant into bite size pieces which I plan to cook tomorrow for lunch with our left over vegetarian bean and barley chili. Mrs. Ellelstyn mentioned that she cut the stems on a slant, and I think that cutting the stems into equal pieces on a slant, may speed up the cooking process.

Below is the large pot of vegetarian bean and barley chili cooking on the stove. I cooked it for more than four hours. After about three hours I blended some of the bean and barley mixture in the blender and pureed the mixture before putting it back in to the pot.

                               Yum, it is so much better than I expected!

Vegetable - Purple Cabbage

Pictures of the raw and cooked purple cabbage by my dear friend, Gerhard Schlinke, of Merzhausen near Freiburg, Germany

One of my precious cooking memories involves the color purple when I was about three and a half years old. My maternal grandmother and my aunt, baby sat for me while my Mom took care of my father who was not feeling well. I looked out the window at my parents walking down the steep steps and through a courtyard of green plants and stonework.

As they left, I began to smell the most wonderful aroma and noticed the most brilliant purple colored vegetable, I had ever seen, in my grandmother's kitchen. My grandmother started with an object that looked like the ball (cabbage) above, cut it into the
tiniest of slices by hand and turned the purple cabbage into a product whose color and flavor I will never forget. The chopping seemed so effortless for her yet each slice looked perfect to me. My Aunt Lorle (Hannelore) stood beside my dear grandmother tasting each item and adjusting the spices for the most flavorful dish for her beloved nieces, my sister and me.

It was a wonderful afternoon in a cozy warm kitchen with lots of light coming in from the window above the kitchen table. The purple color was as intense as possible in the most comfortable of kitchens. I remember feeling so happy, warm, cuddled and safe in the presence of my grandmother and aunt whose eyes never left us while they prepared a wonderful Sunday dinner.

The final product of my grandmother's efforts was a side dish of sweet and sour purple cabbage whose intense color and flavor I have never again experienced. That Sunday afternoon in Karlsruhe, Germany, was the last meal I remember having with my grandmother and Aunt Lorle before my mother, father, sister, and I departed for D.P. Camp Vegesack, near the port city of Bremen, in anticipation of a trip to the U.S.A. Our parents told us the purpose of the trip was to meet our paternal uncle's kittens. We ate little on the voyage over the ocean in the Navy troop carrier, the General William C. Langfitt. I was seasick and perhaps a bit spoiled by my grandmother and aunt who made the art of cooking colorful and appealing.

The purple cabbage, kohlrabi, and meat was a heavenly meal made with the love of a devoted maternal grandmother and my dear Aunt Lorle. I remember the loving care of my grandmother and the meal she prepared with her youngest daughter, my aunt, as one of my most precious
memories. Whenever I see a purple cabbage, I think of that happy sunny day that I spent "cooking" with my grandmother and aunt. I longed for my grandmother, aunt, and their warm and cozy kitchen on the six week voyage to the U.S.A.

Fifty years later, when my grandmother's buffet and dish cabinet had no where to go, they too went on an incredible voyage by ship over the Atlantic Ocean. After serving as a small part of the cargo on a ship, my grandmother's furniture continued by truck to find a resting place in my home. At my house my mother enjoys her mother's furniture and it has taken me many years to truly understand how courageous and wonderful my mother was and continues to be at almost 91 years young on March 23, 2008.