Guilt and the CSA

So, I’m lying in bed on a Saturday morning, thinking how nice it is not to have to get up at the crack of dawn. Suddenly, this little voice inside my head starts whispering,

“The cabbage is wilting! The kale is limp! Don’t let them go bad. Get up! Get up!”

So much for sleeping late. Soon, I am padding through the kitchen chopping kale and shredding cabbage. The sun is barely up.

I’ve heard of Catholic Guilt, Jewish Guilt, and Protestant Guilt (can we assume that guilt is largely non-denominational?). But, I actually suffer from CSA Guilt.

I’ve seen what it requires to plant and nurture the seedlings. At times, I’ve even worked in the fields. I know what it takes to grow good food. So if it rots - because I was lazy or let it go to waste - I feel the pain.

I did cook the turnips, but somehow, they've now migrated to the back of the refrigerator. I barely manage to save the newly-harvested garlic from a creepy mold attack …

The greens – like Kale – are particularly problematic. “Nutrition guilt” is perhaps even more ruthless. “I can’t let the Kale rot. It’s good for me.”

The digital pressure cooker is a pretty good guilt buster.

A full bunch of kale can go from guilt laden …

…to cooked and ready to be frozen, in about 6 minutes (not counting chopping). No guilt there. I’ll dine on greens all winter.

I am particularly proud of how quickly I deal with the Japanese Eggplant.

I mean, what do you do with these things?

But, within thirty minutes, I’ve managed to dice these suckers into uniform disks …

Pop it all into the pressure cooker …

And, ZAM!!!! Instant Ratatouille! It's almost like an episode of Bewitched (Sam is late preparing dinner and has to resort to witchcraft to put the Ratatouille on the table). There are plenty of servings for lunch so I don’t have to feel guilty about spending a fortune for a salad in New York City.

So, thanks to the lightening-quick pressure cooker, my conscience feels a little lighter when it comes to the produce from Restoration Farm.

Although, I have to admit, I still don’t call my parents enough…

©2010 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved

No Pressure

It was the culinary bogeyman of my mother’s kitchen when I was growing up. It would hiss like a demon and often appeared on the verge of exploding. And, there was usually some strange orange substance hidden in its bowels.

Beware the dreaded pressure cooker!

Some years have passed, and one would hope I have shed my fears of kitchen gremlins and foods that are a good source of Vitamin A. For the most part I have, but old habits die hard. Although I’ve been intrigued by the promise of lightning-fast preparation of food, the classic pressure cooker that I picked up at a tag sale sits idle (and depowered) in my basement.

All I need is a good suggestion to take action (the power of suggestion may be my Achilles heel), so when I read a post by Debby at Feast for the Eyes that mentioned her electronic, programmable pressure cooker, it was enough to inspire some online research and a purchase. About a minute-and-a-half transpired and I was the proud owner of a Cuisinart Electric Pressure Cooker.

In my defense, this was not a typical impulse purchase. I have been considering the idea of pressure cooking for years, and I even read the Consumer Reports product evaluations online before purchasing. So it was a well-informed, lightning-fast purchase. And, it was on sale.

So what might you expect if “Kid Flash” joins your culinary team?

Imagine fresh lentil soup in about 15 minutes, where the lentils are tender but firm and you can taste the flavor of the carrots:

Homemade chicken stock is produced in about 90 minutes on a weeknight:

Various recipes using beans and legumes – like this hearty “Chili Con Chickpea” come together quickly. The beans require no pre-soaking:

White rice comes out sticky and firm like the takeout variety, and brown rice takes only about twenty minutes. Vegetables, like butternut squash (which I now actually like) cook in about 3 minutes. Cannellini beans for a White Chicken Chili can be made the day before, in just under 45 minutes, and stored in the refrigerator until it’s time to prepare the dish.

The best news is that the device is programmable, so everything cooks according to the exact time needed. The lid locks into place during the cooking sequence, so the possibility of a Mount Vesuvius -style eruption is unlikely.

It’s kind of become my go-to kitchen pot, which is weird, since I just had a new gas stove installed (a behemoth - more on that later).

And, with the time I’ve saved in cooking, I’m already feeling a lot less pressure. Although on occasion, I still peek under the bed before I go to sleep at night.

©2010 T.W. Barritt all Rights Reserved