Season to Season

February - The Winter Doldrums - Take 2

The Basics of Comfort - If you're dining out and spot chard on the menu, get it. Though somewhat bitter when eaten raw, after being cooked it has a delightful taste, somewhat like spinach. Popular ways to cook it are to flash fry, steam or pan fry it up with some garlic and olive oil for a tasty side dish.

Chard is used in a number of Mediterranean and Arabic recipes, so if you want a twist on the dinner table, do a little homework online and build a menu around the side for some culinary fun.

As you pile through the chard recipes, you'll start to notice leeks appear across a number of them. Leeks are also in season right now, and while they are popular in recipes calling for chard, they're also great when used in soups and there are many that call for them.

It's winter and that's comfort food time. Soups are indeed a source of good healthy comfort food especially when you make them from scratch. One fun trick I've learned is when making a roux for a soup or other dish, rather than use white flour, grind dry whole brown rice in a coffee grinder and use that instead. Better for you and it tastes better, too.

Another roux trick is if you have a juicer and make apple juice, say for the morning smoothie, you can take the fine pulp and use it as a thickener as well

It's Mardi Gras Time - We can celebrate Mardi Gras by whipping up a nice jambalaya or gumbo right at home or heading down to New Orleans in Pioneer Square, Steelhead Diner in the Market or Blueacre Seafood downtown.

If you make a dish at home, make it a good one. Stay away from the quick white rice and instead do a four rice blend using one part each Long Grain, Brown, Pearled Barley and Wheat Berry. The best way to buy these is simply hit the bulk section of finer grocery stores and only buy what you need. For three cooked cups of rice, you'll only need a quarter cup of each dry. Imagine this combo with some red beans and Andouille sausage! Yum!

There are hundreds of recipes around for jambalaya and gumbo. A lot of them would qualify as unhealthy. Do we really need all that bacon grease? One of my favorite things to do is look over a half dozen recipes and formulate my own, substituting healthier ingredients for the not-so-healthy ones (like the rice swap mentioned above).

Andouille sausage is a staple in Southern dishes, but you won't have to go very far to get some locally. Our friend Uli in the Pike Place Market makes up a healthier chicken version right at his shop, or you can order them online or look for them at a higher-end grocery stores.

When making jambalaya, try using frozen okra, rather than fresh. Fresh can be really sticky when cooked into the dish.

Although it seems wildly popular on the west coast to heat up Creole and New Orleans cooking with too much spice, that gets it away from authentic. Good southern cooking has just a tad bit of kick so you can taste all the other wonderful flavors.

Vitamin D - Vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin, is used by the body to process a variety of minerals. You can get it through foods, as a vitamin supplement, or your body will synthesize it using direct sunlight on your skin. Here in the Pacific Northwest the latter only works from April to September becaue the sun does not get high enough in the sky to penetrate the atmosphere with enough UVB rays to cause the synthesis. You could go the pill route or you could add more foods to your diet with Vitamin D in them including fish; fortified breads and cereals; oysters; cavier; soy products; salami, ham and sausages; eggs and mushrooms. Go to work on a combination of any of these to make up a Vitamin D enriched meal to get you through the dark days.

The steelhead run is over, so grab what you can before they're all gone. Another local protein favorite is on its way and I'll discuss it next month.

We're almost out of the winter doldrums, with one really bleak month to go locally, but fear not, I'll do my best to make it a fun robust one as we experience local as well as foods from elsewhere!

Wash you're fruits and veggies well and we'll see you next month.

Tom Mehren/February 2015