Crisp · Eco-Chick

Browsing all posts tagged with crisp

The Homesteader’s Kitchen Recipe: Apple-Raspberry Crisp for Autumn’s Bounty

I’m totally in love with The Homesteader’s Kitchen, and I was lucky enough to secure a fun-to-try (ad supereasy) recipe from the book. I love that the ingredients for the filling for this crisp are so simple, relying on the fresh sweetness of the apples and raspberries for flavor rather than a bunch of add-ins. Ditto for the crisp topping; I have all these ingredients in my pantry already. This is a great recipe for children or new bakers as it will be very tough to screw up!

Choose organic apples and raspberries (or pick your own) where you can, and remember, a dessert this healthy also makes a wonderful breakfast (try sheep’s milk yogurt instead of a la mode to add a shot of AM protein to the dish).

Apple-Raspberry Crisp

Serves 6-8
Topping:
½ cup unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 –inch pieces
1 cup sucanat or brown sugar
½ cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 tablespoon cinnamon, optional

8 cups sliced firm apples (8 to 10 whole apples or 2 to 3 pounds)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons whole wheat pastry flour or tapioca powder
4 cups fresh raspberries
More »

apples, crisp, dessert, Food, local, recipe

What to Do with Overripe Summer Fruit? Make a Delicious Crisp!

3 Comments

by Starre Vartan · 06/11/09

The crisp with chopped fruit, before oat topping

If you’re like me, and have a crazy-busy life, sometimes you come home after three days of running around, and realize that all that delicious fresh fruit you bought at the farmer’s market is….turning (into compost, slowly, on the counter).

I find this incredibly upsetting. It makes me sad to think about those farmers in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut who went to all that trouble to grow my food, bring it all the way to my town, and then it ends up as compost! Having been raised by my grandma, a born-and-bred Manhattanite who lived through the Depression, I have have not only the guilt about tossing food (that’s the NYC part!), but also the skills to figure out what to do with it! Doris Ross, my grams, always did something with old stuff, even if it became dog “porridge”.

So I stared at the overripe strawberries (just starting to develop a fuzzy layer of mold), the drying-out blueberries (and some ancient frozen ones), the mushy nectarines, and thought about blending them, but was a bit worried about the mold. There was just a bit, and I knew it wouldn’t kill me, but it could be dangerous (I’m not a mold expert) AND even a little mold has a strong flavor. I would have to cook it to kill the mold. OK, baking then. And then all of a sudden I saw it, in my mind’s eye: a perfect, healthy fruit tart to eat for breakfast!

I got to chopping, removing any seriously rotty bits and washing off all the mold. I just threw it all in a glass pie dish (see directions below) and voila! It was extra-sweet since the fruits were overripe so I needed to add only a small bit of sweetener. SO GOOD!

Starre’s Superripe Summer Fruit Crisp

-Enough fruit to come up to edge of baking dish (I used about 3 cups of strawberries, blueberries, figs and nectarines to fill a standard pie dish; I bet old grapes, peaches, pears, apples or any fruit other than melon would work well)
-2 cups oatmeal (I actually used the rest of my Dorset Cereal’s organic meusli)
-handful of organic sultanas (better than raisins as they are quick-dried and retain more flavor)
-handful organic pumpkin seeds (any nut or seed would work, almonds or walnuts, etc.)
-tablespoon of organic flax seeds (for easy Omega-3′s)
-1/3 stick organic butter (I like Kate’s from Maine, which wins butter-yumminess contests all the time)
-2 tablespoons organic light brown sugar
-1 tablespoon agave
-cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
-1/2 teaspoon organic lemon zest

Chop fruit into bite-size chunks (as if you were making a fruit salad) and place in baking dish, mixing with lemon zest and then sprinkle with cinnamon and nutmeg to your liking. I like a bit more cinnamon than nutmeg, but quite a bit of both.

-Top fruit mixture with 1 tablespoon light brown sugar and agave nectar. Fresh ginger would also be a good addition here, but I was out.

In a bowl, mix oats, 1/3 of a stick of butter (melted or at least smooshy), flax seeds, sultanas and pumpkin seeds.

When well blended, spoon on top of fruit and flatten out, covering the fruit with a layer of oat mixture.

Bake in a 400-degree oven for 35-40 minutes (prepare for your house to smell amazing!!)

Oh, the beauty! And it was really, really delicious, which is why I’m compelled to share it with you!

Serving suggestion: Sheep’s milk yogurt tastes GREAT with this crisp scooped on top of it. I like Old Chatham Sheepherding Company’s, which is made in upstate New York and available at Whole Foods in Westport, Connecticut near where I live.

crisp, Food, fruit, summer

Tsi~La Organics

6 Comments

by Kimberly Jordan Allen · 05/20/08

Tsi~la Organics is a line of body products and fragrances that use no preservatives, alcohol, additives, coloring, or other nasty synthetic chemicals that many other perfumes contain. Pronounced “chee-la,” the name is Cherokee for ‘flower.’ The Tsi~La fragrances seek to combine exotic notes of ylang ylang, citrus, bergamot, lavender, vanilla, lime, amber and various spices to generate unique scents that transcend the traditional “natural” or organic perfumes that can tend to be simplistic or unoriginal.

There are a number of different formulations that Annie Morton, former model, and her sister-in-law, Natalie Szapowalo, have combined. All of the fragrances are very wearable.

My favorites are Saqui: a very clean, warm scent of ginger, clove, nutmeg mingling with tangy citrus; Kesu: warm woods and slightly smoky incense mixed with lime create a unisex blend; Fleur Savage: jasmine and neroli are tempered with notes of tuberose; Kizes: reminds me of biting into a kumkwat – very fresh and tart. They are all lovely. If I had to choose just one, it’d be Saqui. The scent is warm and hearty but crisp. Tsi~La wears well for hours, mingling with your own body’s chemistry. Because they come in small, roll-on bottles, you can control the quantity of perfume you wish to wear, without being inundated with a cloud of chemical haze, as is so common in today’s factory-generated commercial fragrances that come in spray bottles.

alcohol, crisp, farm, formula, Lavender, model, Organic, Outdoors, scents, wood

Ecospot Winners!

2 Comments

by Starre Vartan · 11/24/07

Current TV and The Alliance for Climate Protection have just announced the winners of their “60 Seconds to Save the Earth Ecospot contest”, which was open to everyone.

A panel of celebrity judges including George Clooney, Cameron Diaz, Orlando Bloom and Rihanna, as well as Alex Bogusky of leading ad agency Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, legendary advertising director Joe Pytka and founding CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection Cathy Zoi, selected the 23 semi-finalists from more than 500 entries. Current viewers voted for their favorite ecospot, leading to the selection of Schlafman as the grand prize winner.

These are great! Check them out…..

First-place winner

Second-place winner (My favorite line? “Who’s Responsible for saving the environment? Hippies!”)

Third-place winner (I think this one is my favorite)

contest, crisp, spa, tv, Vote

A Bottle of No Thanks, Please

12 Comments

by Craig Platt · 10/09/07

Bottled water is so easy. It’s water, in a bottle, genius! I remember when it was chic and served in the finest restaurants. Then one morning I woke up and my mother told me we were getting a water bottle for the house. No longer was the tap good enough. After another five years or so she didn’t want to wait for the Poland Spring man to deliver our weekly allotment of water, so there it was: bottles upon shimmering bottles in our refrigerator. People come to our office for a meeting or you head off to a job interview and what to they offer? A bottle of water. It’s like an angel on your shoulder wishing you the safest and most comforting taste of pure H2O.

Never once did I ask myself, “What’s wrong with bottled water?” Not until I realized how many bottles collected into my recycling bin. Trash is a funny thing, one moment it’s in your kitchen and the next it vanishes. Presumably we trust that our trash goes…Well, I don’t really know where I thought my trash went.

I recently read the book, The World Without Us, which contained an entire chapter dedicated to the evils of plastic. It turns out that all the plastic we use and love, (hey I have to admit that it’s nice when you can drop a bottle without it shattering all over the floor), ends up in our oceans, and takes about a gajillion years to decompose (maybe I’m exaggerating, but I doubt it). The impact it has on the fish, mollusks, birds and plant life of the sea is completely shocking and promises to change the ecosystem as we know it. There really is no known half-life for plastic. It breaks into little pellets sure, but how does it react with the natural world, and what does it become as it degenerates?

One of the big offenders is the bottled water industry. We’ve become as addicted to bottled water in recent years as stockbrokers in the 80s were to cocaine. In fact every restaurant I enter now offers bottled water both flat and sparkling, and then almost disdainfully, they mention that tap is available too. They make you feel like an idiot if you order the tap water. They make you feel cheap, plebian. I always answer, Los Angeles’ finest.

Tap water was important when I was a kid, not just to stay hydrated, but because the water supply contained fluoride. Many bottled waters don’t contain fluoride and this is leading to children with unhealthy teeth. The reason being…You guessed it, bottled water. Fluoridated water is free from our taps, and makes your kids’ teeth happy. Most bottled water does not contain fluoride.

Lewis Black, the comedian, sums this entire bottled water thing up quite hysterically by saying we’ve sullied even our most ample and free resource. About 70% of the planet is covered in ocean and 2% of the earth’s water is fresh water. To put that in perspective, there are roughly 326 million trillion gallons of water on planet earth and 2% is fresh. That’s a lot of fresh water. And somehow we’ve agreed to pay our hard earned money for this gift of nature.

And, upon agreeing to buy this water we’ve also created a cost that nature must pay…We pitch in 38 billion bottles of water a year, roughly $1 billion worth of plastic.

But, enough with the depressing stuff. On with the progress!

There are restaurants rebelling against these industries and while blindly voting with your dollar is not advised, supporting the fight is. In San Francisco, there is a new trend: high end restaurants serving carafes of filtered tap water. In some cases they even carbonate the water themselves.Glass carafes served into glasses of water equals much less waste. So we applaud these restaurants and suggest that you demand the same from your restaurant in your neighborhood.

So, find out what restaurants in your area do this. If your favorite one doesn’t, then urge them to. We can make a change, I think. We just have to want to. And if anyone tells you bottled water is better, tell them they’re wrong. Free, clean, healthy water is a privilege. In some countries it’s impossible to find. Save the money you spend on water to buy something that can actually help you save those pure, crystalline springs they harvest all that clean crisp water from.