A Meal in Honor of the Protestors in Iran

From Dianasaur — Blog by Diana Johnson

July 9, 2009

Last week I decided to make a Persian inspired dish in honor of the people of Iran fighting and dying for freedom. I say Persian inspired because I used Panko instead of regular bread crumbs, not traditional in Iranian cooking but I love them so much! I’ve had several meals cooked for me by my friend’s Iranian mother before, but I still did some research before planning my meal. Oh man was it worth it! First we had Salad-e shirazi, a salad of tomato, cucumber and red onion with lime juice and mint. I remember being told this is a favorite summertime dish and I can see why. I didn’t go as traditional as making my own flat bread either, instead getting some pita at the store. I made my favorite hummus recipe, and then came the kebabs. Talk about flavorful! These are Kabab Kubideh, which can be made with beef or lamb, I used beef since we’re trying out some ground beef from a local farm and I really wanted to use it in a recipe where the beef flavor shines through. The secret to these kebabs...

Saffron butter!

I have always been fascinated by the Middle East and the beautiful people there. I can clearly remember a night when I was in the 4th grade, laying in bed and sobbing for the children of the middle east. It was during Desert Storm and we lived on base in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. We were very fortunate that my dad had changed positions and didn’t have to go overseas, but many of my friends’ fathers were. I saw all the wonderful things being done to take care of and support the American children while their fathers were away fighting, and I asked my teacher what was being done for the Arab children. She laughed and said “How should I know? They’re the enemy.” I was heartbroken, I didn’t see how children (or anyone else for that matter) could be an enemy, so that night I cried out to God asking Him to take care of them if nobody else would. Ever since, I have dreamed of going to the 10/40 window, and have seen that dream realized with disaster relief trips to Sri Lanka and Malaysia, and a mission trip to Senegal where we taught basketball to kids who had never even held one before. My admiration for the dedication of Muslims increased as I witnessed first hand their dedication to their faith. Although my belief system is very different, I often pray for that kind of determination to obey God.

I have had many Arab and Muslim friends over the years. I never really thought much about the fact that they were either. Hawaii is such a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities that it’s easy to not pay attention to differences unless they’re pointed out to you. When 9/11 happened, I was driving home the day after the attack and saw two teenage Japanese boys walking behind a teenage Arab girl and taunting her. She looked so afraid that I whipped my car around, jumped out and asked the boys what they thought they were doing. They started calling her names, saying “her people” attacked America, that she’s probably a Muslim terrorist. Oh I was FURIOUS! I lit into them right there on the sidewalk in front of a little internet cafe. I asked them how long their family had lived in Hawaii, and when I heard their answer I asked if they thought any of their relatives had been forced to internment camps or faced persecution after Pearl Harbor. One of them hung his head, and said his grandparents had to go to an internment camp. I asked what he thought they’d say about the way he was treating this poor girl, and as his friend tried to protest it was different, he just told him “shut-up” and dragged him away. The poor girl burst into tears and told me she lived in Hawaii all her life, and though she’s Palestinian, she’s a Christian and was tired of being called a terrorist. I was fed up with seeing persecution so the next day, I went with a group of Christian college students to our local mosque, to give the leaders leis and make a public statement of love and support for the Muslims in our community. There was even a reporter there.

As I made this dish, I began thinking of all these people and stories of the Middle East that have touched my life, and it was really a rather emotional cooking experience. The salad is pretty self explanatory, each bite is like taking a bite out of summer, so fresh and bright. The kebabs were a new experience for me. Basically it’s ground beef and chopped onions with just a few seasonings (so use good quality beef with lots of flavor). The really special thing about them is the saffron butter I brushed over them, my friend’s mom called that her meat secret. I made mine in the oven because we’re out of briquets, but these would be great grilled. Just don’t make the rookie mistake I did and forget to soak your skewers. That why you don’t see any in my picture, because they burnt down like incense sticks and smelled like fireworks! We ate this by scooping up salad and hummus with the bread and topping it with a piece of the beef. You can also lay down a piece of the bread, spread it with hummus, lay on two kebabs (sticks removed) and top with salad and another bread to eat it like a sandwich. Either way, it’s delicious. Thank you people of Iran, for showing the world what it means to fight for freedom.

Salad-e Shirazi
serves 4
Ingredients
1 firm tomato
1/2 english cucumber
1/2 red onion
juice of 1/2 lime
1 TBS olive oil
4 leaves fresh mint chopped
1 clove finely minced garlic
2 TBS crumbled feta
kosher salt and pepper to taste

Instructions
Chop your tomato, cucumber and onion into small bits. Add remaining ingredients and toss well. Add more lime juice, salt or pepper as needed.

Kabab Kubideh
makes 5-6 kebabs
Ingredients
1 small onion
3/4 lb beef
pinch of sea salt
dash of pepper
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp paprika
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup panko
small pinch of saffron
1 TBS butter
5-6 bamboo skewers soaked for 30 minutes

Instructions
Turn on your broiler. Chop onion finely in a food processor (I used the bulb and some greens from an onion from our CSA). Add beef to food processor and pulse until onion is incorporated. Add salt, pepper, turmeric, paprika, egg yolk and panko. Pulse until well mixed.

Toast saffron in a dry skillet on high heat for about 30 seconds. Add butter and melt. Remove from heat and use a spatula to smash the saffron a little and release fragrance and yellow color.

Form meat mixture into sausage shape around soaked skewers. Lay on a foil lined pan and brush tops with saffron butter, then flip and brush the other side. WASH food processor WELL!

Place under broiler 8 minutes, then flip over and broil the other side 6 minutes or less if getting really brown.

Approximate cost/serving: This felt a little pricier because we used grass fed, free range beef for the first time (worth the price!). The amount of beef total was $2. Also I bought pita which is kinda expensive ($2.50 for five). But the rest was cheap and made up for it. The salad was only 75 cents total. All in all the whole meal comes out to about 60 cents for 2 kebabs, 19 cents for a serving of salad, 50 cents for one pita, and 30 cents for hummus or only $1.50 per serving!

Vegetarian/Gluten Free: The salad and hummus are vegetarian. For Gluten free substitute rice flakes or another bread crumb sub, and use maybe a gluten free tortilla rather than pita bread.

Our first CSA

And why we’re neo-hippies

From Dianasaur — Blog by Diana Johnson

July 9, 2009

It’s quite possible that if a year ago you’d asked my husband Eric and I what a CSA was, we would have thought it to be some kind of government organization, school group, or something to do with the miltary (they have thousands of acronyms!). I really don’t know, because we didn’t even know about CSAs until about six months ago. I love food, and I love learning, so I read a lot of blogs and do a lot of research about food culture. I kept coming across people mentioning their CSAs, or farms getting ready for their CSA and finally had to google it. That’s how I found out that CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and means that any average joe can give a designated amount of money to a farm near them, then pick up their share of produce from the farm each week. I got so excited and knew we had to be a part of that. I began researching CSAs in our area, but most were too expensive for us. Then friends from church e-mailed us about wanting to sell 4 shares of their little farm for a really resonable price, and we quickly signed up for our very first CSA.

My husband has dubbed us neo-hippies. We believe in sustainable agriculture, in humane treatment for animals that are raised for food, in not putting chemicals or other food additives into our bodies, and in using our money to make a difference rather than accumulate “stuff”. We even have names on our future baby name list like Arwen, Corban, and Saffron. I previously thought a lot of our ideas were normal and common sense, but by the shock on people’s faces when we mention we’re no longer buying meat from the grocery store, I realize that our ideas aren’t so normal and certainly aren’t common. I’ve had several conversations with different friends and family members about this over the past few days, and am realizing that we’re very different from a lot of society.

I think it has to do with the fact that we are people of action. We’re the ones who call 911 when we see someone beating someone else in the street, or a man chasing a pregnant woman and screaming at her outside the motel behind our apartment building at one in the morning. We talk to strangers in line at the store and ask people who look like they’ve been crying if they’re okay or if we can help them. We tell kids that they need to report being bullied and then help them do it. We get in the middle of unfair fights. It’s not because we enjoy conflict, far from it! When I know a potential conflict is on the horizon, I get knots in my stomach and can’t sleep at night. But when I see an injustice, I can’t just stand by and do nothing. I’ve been a victim of injustice, and usually people have stood there and watched, or pretended not to. But once, when a strange man crazed by drugs was chasing me with a knife, someone got involved. People on the sidewalk were shouting at him not to, that it wasn’t worth the risk. But he stayed by my side until the police came, and even though I don’t know his name or where he’s from (or if he was really an angel!), I will be grateful to that man for the rest of my life. So yes, we’re people of action, and have found that the gratefulness of people we’ve been able to help or encourage far outweighs the moments of awkwardness or fear.

I’ve realized this week that we tend to have the same attitude towards the environment and food. We pick up litter, stay on the trail when hiking, don’t feed wild animals, and pull up invasive plant species when signs ask us to. I have to admit that I used to live in quite a protective bubble about where my food came from. I honestly don’t know what I was exposed to previously about what’s in our food, or how livestock is actually treated, but somehow whenever I thought of farms I thought of things like Old McDonald. You know, lots of animals roaming about in a blissful existance until “harvest” time. Yes, I know it’s really slaughter time, but harvest sounds less scary.

Or sometimes I thought of Field of Dreams, oceans of beautiful perfect corn that was just used for human consumption. But back in January of this year, I was traumatized by an episode of Dirty Jobs that showed a pig farm. I watched little piglets squeal in terror as their teeth and tails were clipped off and they were injected with antibiotics. I saw giant, beautiful pigs kept in little tiny pens, climbing on top of each other because there wasn’t enough room for all of them. My farmland eutopian vision was shattered and I knew I had to learn more, and see what I could do.

The more I’ve read the more horrified I’ve become. In my naive world view, I couldn’t believe that companies, restaurants or grocery stores would LIE about where there food came from. Eric laughed at how shocked I was people would lie, but I guess I just thought there would be higher standards. I didn’t understand how companies could knowingly let us fill our bodies with so many things that aren’t actually food. For years I thought I was allergic to pork, but lately I’ve learned that I don’t have any kind of allergic reaction to organic pork that’s not pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. In the past I had an idealistic attitude of not needing to eat organic because “they” wouldn’t let us put things in our body that are actually harmful. How bad can it be? But now my eyes are open and getting wider every day. I can no longer pretend my food choices don’t matter. I want to make a difference, and how difficult is it really to change my buying habits?

We started small, eating vegetarian 3-5 times a week to reduce our meat consumption, easier on our bodies, bank account, and the environment. We’ve noticed a difference in our bodies, healthy food makes us feel good, too much meat, grease or sugar makes us feel sick. We also stopped buying meat. No, we’re not vegetarians, but we decided that we will only purchase local, organic meat and until we find a place we can afford to do that, we’re rationing what’s left in our freezer.

Last week was the first pick up for our CSA, and I have to say, the excitement I felt walking through the little farm and looking at tiny shoots of green that will soon produce food for us to eat, well it was contagious. Eric and I both left our first pick up day with dopey grins our faces and two bags of leafy greens, baby radishes and rhubarb. There’s something special about having a relationship with the people who are growing our food, knowing exactly what dirt it came from, and knowing what’s going into our bodies is just food. Best of all, organic produce tastes better, plain and simple! Isn’t that what food is all about?

Yesterday we went and toured another local farm, just down the road from our CSA. I found them through Craigslist while looking for organic chicken and beef. As the farm manager walked us around, we saw chickens strutting around like they each owned the land, lots of little duck butts wiggling in the air as they dove in the pond, giant pigs wallowing gleefully in the dirt, and I felt a sense of peace. We promised Kelli we’d be back, pulled out of the driveway, and I immediately began singing the “We Got Chickens” song, yes I made it up. It just felt so good to actually see where the chickens came from, what they ate, and how they lived. I haven’t tasted it yet, we’re too busy until next week, but I’ve heard organic chicken tastes so much better, and I’m excited to find out for myself! Hopefully we can find a place to get beef soon, a half a cow is way too much for us.

Well, in the words of my father “Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now. What do you think?” How informed are you about the food industry? In what ways do you try to make a difference?