HoneyBerry
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Re: Favorite or go to dishes you make?

You sure were lucky to meet that guy about the lentils. Lentils are such a perfect food.
Actually, I do like firm lentils too. It's just that some of the to-go dishes that I used to buy at the deli were inconsistent. Lentil patties with a tasty sauce. They were excellent when the lentils were cooked right. But sometimes the lentils were undercooked and I would be disappointed. I stopped buying them altogether because I couldn't tell ahead of time what I was getting.
I often do choose the bulk red lentils but I also like to try new things so if, for example, I haven't tried the brown lentils with the cool sounding name that are on sale I will choose those. If I do the cooking myself I am comfortable with any lentil because I can control the doneness. My last lentil purchase was brown lentils and they had a cool sounding name but I don't recall what it was. Tomorrow I will check out the yellow varieties and see what my choices are.
Thank you for everything. You have helped me alot. I made some lentil soup today with brown lentils but no spices. It's more like veggie soup with lentils. I am going to get my spices better organised and try some new recipes, Indian to start with.

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rainbowgardener
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re: It would be fun to try growing saffron sometime.

Saffron is the little stamens from certain crocus flowers. You can grow them (I think applestar has grown and harvested some), but each flower has three little strands, so you have to have pretty many flowers ....

I agree that you wouldn't want to waste saffron in a dish with lots of other flavors that will drown it out. Sometimes I think saffron was used more for color, but if you want that use some turmeric instead.

I still have my copy of "Vegetarian Epicure" cook book from 1972 (!) and I still love it. It has a recipe for a version of gulab jamun, a well known Indian sweet. They are little cakes that you soak in a sugar syrup flavored with rosewater, cardamom, and saffron. The syrup is heavenly... The same cookbook has a whole section on curried vegetables. It is excellent. You will not find any curry powder in it. Authentic curries are made with a whole combination of spices -- coriander, cardamom, turmeric, ginger, etc that can't be replicated by throwing in curry powder. So curried veggies, served with lots of condiments , with the gulab jamuns for desert is one of my go-to company dinners.

imafan26
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I can grow holy basil or tulsi, I have vana, kaphrao, and another basil that I cannot remember the name of. Holy basil and african basils do not get downy mildew, so I can grow them. Their flavor is much hotter. Downy mildew is a type of water mold and not really a true fungus and the spores are in the air. I have grown basil in the shade house and it lasts a little longer, but eventually it will get downy mildew there as well. I live in a wet part of the island and basil has a better chance of staying healthy in a drier environment. I can use holy basil and I can get some good leaves from Siam queen basil longer since the disease takes a little longer to progress. African Blue fil actually has a pleasant vanilla aftertaste. Kaphrao is hot basil and a bit more spicy, but is actually the type Thai's prefer.

The weather here is usually nice most of the time. I live at a higher elevation so I am 5-9 degrees cooler than at sea level. It does rain here more than on the Leeward side of the island so the humidity is higher anywhere from a low of 69% all the way up to 100% when it is raining. I am used to 78-80 degrees as long as the trade winds are blowing. It is only uncomfortable when the temperature is above 88 and we have Kona weather where the winds come from the south bringing the vog and no trade winds. Our houses are designed to leak. I have a lot of jealousie windows which provide 100% ventilation and with the front bank of windows, the side windows and the patio door open with the ceiling fan going and pulling in air from the front windows and exiting out the back door, it is very comfortable on most days. I also have tile floors and area rugs so the floor is also cool. In fact in the cooler months the tiles can be downright cold and I wear socks then. I do have a couple of air conditioners, but I rarely use them. The electric bill is prohibitive. The air conditioners are older and not energy efficient. I have not turned one of them on for over 10 years. I turned the smaller one on a couple of months ago. It is a younger air con that replaced the 24 year old frigidaire I had. It is maybe 6-8 years old. The older one is from 1992 so I would be very surprised if it still works. If the temperature goes below 70, I am actually quite cold and I will actually pile on another comforter, sweats, and sleep with a heating pad. On the hottest days, I usually go to the mall or the movies during the hottest part of the day. I can't go swimming anymore because I have a bad rotator cuff.

I don't grow any plants indoors. I don't really know about these cats, but my previous cat would dig out a plant kept in the house overnight, so I just don't bring plants any farther than the lanai.

I tried not growing basil for a couple of years to see if the spore count would diminish. As soon as the basil at Walmart less than a mile away starts getting sick, within a couple of weeks, I have to throw out my basil because of downy mildew. Most of the problem seems to be with the leaf shape. Most of the breeding has been to try to change the shape of the leaf, but the flavor also changes. Eleanor was a cross between thai basil and sweet basil. it is not immune to downy and it does not taste very good. Most of the breeding is traditional not GMO so it will be a long wait for a resistant basil that does not change the taste. It has already been over 10 years. The only other way to control the disease is planting in the drier months and regular sprays. Most of the products registered for basil is not even available to homeowners and much be applied regularly. People continue to buy the sick plants not knowing they are infected and spread the spores around.

HoneyBerry
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Gulab jamun sounds good and certainly would be fun to make. Myself, I prefer bittter and tart flavors over sweet. I sometimes wonder why people are divided in this way. I got in trouble when I was a kid for not wanting any of the sweet candies that were offered to me. My Dad thought that it was rude to refuse them. I really didn't get it at the time. I just thought that adults were weird and that was the real reason why I got yelled at. I didn't even want raspberries and ice cream if the raspberries had sugar on them. I prefer fruit without added sugar. It seems that more people prefer sweet tastes, especially kids, so I guess I am the odd one. I was thrilled to learn later that Chinese medicine doctors divide people this way and that there are others like me. I am a bitter-tart type rather than a sweet type.
I actually did try saffron once. I found it to be rather mild and it didn't seem to be worth the money that I paid for it. I love the color. I guess that I can live without saffron but I would probably use it for fun if it wasn't so expensive.

HoneyBerry
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pepperhead-Dave (are you still following this?)
Listed below are the lentil and dal options that I have at the local health food store. Moong Dal and Chana Dal are more expensive than the bulk lentils. I have tried the Spanish Pardina Brown Lentils and the Red Lentils. Both are good choices. I bought some red lentils today because they are on sale.
I am going to wait for the Moong Dal and Chana Dal to go on sale and then try them.
Today I bought some fresh tumeric. I still need to stock up on spices. One step at a time.
I want to research "zero-tannin" to see what that's about.

BULK:
organic mung bean california grown $2.89/pound
sunrise red zero-tannin lentils $2.05/pound
spanish pardina brown lentils $1.99/pound
organic red lentils split $2.65/pound regular price $2.09/ pound sale price

PACKAGED:
moong dal trikona $7.69 24 ounce package ($5.13/ pound)
chana dal trikona $7.19 24 ounce package ($4.79/ pound)

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applestar
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Are you going to try growing the turmeric? Or did you mean powdered? (Sorry about jumping in OT )

HoneyBerry
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It is fresh tumeric. For now, I'm just going to experiment with it in recipes. I might try to grow it sometime. I need to first do some research. It is a good one, up there with ginger, in my opinion.

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applestar
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HoneyBerry
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Thank you for the link Applestar. A great thread on growing tumeric. I think I would need a greenhouse to grow tumeric or ginger. They are so tropical.
I might build a small greenhouse. I've been considering that for a while.

pepperhead212
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Yes, still following HoneyBerry!

Those packaged lentils are expensive! Some of the others aren't too bad, for a health food store. The ones I get in Indian stores are about half that price, but that is buying 8 lb bags, and they aren't organic.

Those "zero-tannin" lentils, from what I remember, are bred to get a thinner seed coat, as well as one that stores better - some of the compounds that get rancid are not there. When you read some of the info about it, it sounds like GMO food, but it's not - they are just trying to breed certain recessive genes into them, so that they will stay. Here is one link you may find helpful; though it eventually gets complicated, in the beginning it tells the general reasoning behind it all:
https://hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceed ... 2-279.html

I gave up trying to grow turmeric and galangal. The season is just way too long, thus it has to be done in a pot, , and I still didn't get enough to make it worth it; I can get it locally now, so I grow other things I use more. Malaysian cooking uses a lot of fresh turmeric, and this was the cuisine that got me growing curry leaves! It was only later, that I started up on Indian, figuring that I had so much of those leaves, I had to do something with them! lol

Your mention of your preference for sour and bitter made me remember when I was first dabbling in the Indian cooking, and was surprised at all of the dishes that were sour or bitter, with little sweet. In Chinese, and SE Asian, there was always a generous amount of sweet, to balance it, but it wasn't really missed here - maybe it was something to do with the spices. And there are a number of sour ingredients - amchur (powdered green mango), kokum, dried pomegranate seeds, and tamarind. I have never been a fan of a strong vinegar flavor in dishes - the reason that I am not crazy about the hot cuisine of the Philippines. I have often used tamarind to increase the sour in something, to avoid adding more vinegar.

Today I did something that I always do about when fall gets here - I re-stocked my ground spices, since this is the time of year I use them more, and many haven't been touched for months. Most of my spices are whole, but I always have a few ground ones, though I only keep a smaller amount of most of them. Cinnamon, cloves, ginger, allspice, and countless peppers and paprikas. Most I have in vacuum packs in a box in the freezer, which I took out last night, to come to room temp., and I just refill the small jars, and re-seal the bags, with the Foodsaver. The spices keep forever this way, and it's amazing how much more aromatic they are, when I refill them! I also dumped out the last tsp or so of several masalas, and made new batches - the ones I use all the time, and have made recently, are still there, but the rest were either replaced, or I won't be making them again.

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rainbowgardener
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HoneyBerry wrote:Thank you for the link Applestar. A great thread on growing tumeric. I think I would need a greenhouse to grow tumeric or ginger. They are so tropical.
I might build a small greenhouse. I've been considering that for a while.
Alternatively, you can just bring them in for the winter.

HoneyBerry
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Thank you Rainbow. That is a good idea.

There is an Indian store not too far away from where I live. I used to go there to buy Vicco toothepaste. They have a variety of boxed Indian convenience meals. The spices are all ready to go, you just add a few things. I was tempted to try them but I haven't because I can't read the instructions on the packages. I prefer cooking from scratch anyway. The store owner wears a turban and speaks with a strong Indian accent. He talked me into buying some tumeric face cream and some incense. He said that tumeric is very good for the skin. Anti-inflammatory tumeric is healthy in many ways.
Yesterday I bought a jar of Mesa de Vida Creole cooking sauce at the health food store. I will use it to make gumbo or jambalaya sometime. Ingredients: onions, green bell pepper, tomato paste, vinegar, celery, garlic, parsley, lemon juice, spices. The spices are not listed individually.

HoneyBerry
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pepperhead212 wrote:
"Most of my spices are whole, but I always have a few ground ones, though I only keep a smaller amount of most of them. Cinnamon, cloves, ginger, allspice, and countless peppers and paprikas. Most I have in vacuum packs in a box in the freezer, which I took out last night, to come to room temp., and I just refill the small jars, and re-seal the bags, with the Foodsaver."

I like this idea. I have a small freezer that I use alot. I don't have a Foodsaver. I have a mortar & pestel somewhere, for whole spices. That's about as fresh as you can get with spices.

That word fresh reminded me of this woman that I know. She runs the smoothie stand at the farmer's market.
Sometimes she sets up her smoothie table outside right in the middle of a garden. I got a kick out of that. Not sure how she washes the produces. Hose perhaps.



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