Hello from Sunshine & Microbes | Bye to Ziploc Bags | Summer Salad Recipe
our first issue!
Welcome to the first edition of Sunshine + Microbes!
I participated in my first-ever family reunion last weekend. Fifty of us descended on my hometown of Stuart, Fla. It was super fun and super LOUD. My role in the family dynamic is the one with hairy armpits who has a lot of opinions and does food stuff. So the assumption is that I’m some sort of clean eating guru who wants to talk preservatives and GMOs and what’s the latest juice cleanse to try. And I DO want to talk about all of that, but for different reasons than you (or my second cousins) might expect.
When we see what we eat only as a tool to control or fix our bodies or our health, we are ignoring the vast majority of our eating experience. Sure, food is carbs and fat and sugar and vitamins, but it is also pleasure and connection and history and metaphor and identity. The latter is what I want Sunshine + Microbes to explore — how we can enjoy and examine our fare in Florida and elsewhere in the age of influencers and climate change (and maybe we can smash the wellness industry while we’re at it too).
Instead of focusing on how food and diet impacts us as individuals, I want to explore how it connects us to the world around us. How our food choices define our history and identity, how they illustrate important social, political, and economic policies and trends, and how our food production and consumption choices are impacting our planet, and contributing to its changing climate.
So welcome to Sunshine + Microbes, and thanks for reading! Check out some fun and fascinating food content below, plus a recipe for a hearty summer salad that hits all the right notes for a sweaty beach picnic.
love,
Jackie
Jackie’s Hot Kitchen Tip
Do I need to sweat my eggplants?
I wouldn’t worry about all that jazz with salting eggplants and letting them sit in a colander for hours to sweat, which is supposed to leach out bitterness. Modern varieties of eggplant have had the bitterness bred out of them, so unless you’re time traveling, this step shouldn’t be necessary. However, many varieties of veggies we buy in the supermarket are bred for size and storage capability, not flavor. Eggplant included. So if you find that the big honkers you’re buying at the supermarket taste bitter, sweating it before cooking couldn’t hurt. But maybe just find yourself some tastier eggplant. Heirlooms aren’t just for tomatoes.
Reduce, Reuse, Replace
Plastic Bags ➡ Etee Food Bags
Plastic is taking over the universe, and I completely understand how it happened. It's an extremely versatile material! Personally, I am addicted to ziploc bags in the kitchen. They are useful AF. But seeing as how we're drowning in plastic, and it's Plastic Free July, I've recently made an effort to go cold turkey on my ziploc habit. I've replaced them with these reusable, biodegradable bad boys and so far, so good!
*In case you’re wondering, we don’t receive any payment or perks (besides helping the environment) for anything we recommend here.
Fresh Links
Smash the Wellness Industry | New York Times
Instead of wellness, which teaches you to hate your body — try “intuitive eating.”
I called this poisonous relationship between a body I was indoctrinated to hate and food I had been taught to fear “wellness.” This was before I could recognize wellness culture for what it was — a dangerous con that seduces smart women with pseudoscientific claims of increasing energy, reducing inflammation, lowering the risk of cancer and healing skin, gut and fertility problems. But at its core, “wellness” is about weight loss. It demonizes calorically dense and delicious foods, preserving a vicious fallacy: Thin is healthy and healthy is thin.
Drinking Too Much Water Will Kill Me, and I Don’t Care | The Outline
Jameson Rich recounts his rare medical condition… but also it’s a metaphor.
An Interview with Amanda Little, author of The Fate of Food | Wired
The author delves into questions about lab-grown duck meat, GMOs and whether technology can save us from climate change (Spoiler: Not alone, it can’t).
So, Should We Recycle? | Planet Money
America’s favorite environmentally friendly habit might not be worth it these days. Learn why your recyclables might not actually be getting recycled — and why that might not be a bad thing in the long run.
(This is a podcast. If you’ve never listened to a podcast before, ask us for help. They’re great!)
Other things we liked this week: Fired Over Too Much Tupac? A Rap-Loving 66-Year-Old Bureaucrat From Iowa Hopes Not (NPR); Have you consumed these trendy millennial foods and drinks? (Twitter); Is it okay to laugh at Florida Man? (Washington Post)
RECIPE: Curried eggplant, mango and chickpea salad
This recipe is a mashup of two different recipes by deli counter artiste and king of my heart, Yotam Ottolenghi. If you’re looking to bulk up your cookbook collection, start with one of his exquisite tomes like Plenty or Sweet!
You’ll see I’m not too keen on exact measurements. And that’s because they’re a waste of time, and they’ll ultimately hold you back from learning the ropes, trusting your senses, and cooking with confidence. Obviously if you’re cooking for yourself you shouldn’t use 20 eggplants and 1 whole head of garlic. Didn’t add enough salt or vinegar? Taste it and add more! Start with conservative quantities, especially of condiments and spices, and continuously taste as you go. And if you do use a bit too much of something, A. it’s probably not inedible and B. what a great learning opportunity to think critically, develop your sense of taste, and adapt for next time!
Serves 1 as a main, 2-3 as a side
Ingredients:
1 or 2 cups of chickpeas (dried or canned)
1 ripe mango, cut into smallish chunks
1 handful of small eggplant or maybe half of a big one
Some combo of fresh, bright herbs like basil, cilantro, parsley, mint, and chives
Whatever salad greens seem nice (lettuce, arugula, kale, collards)
1/4 of an onion
A few cloves of garlic, minced
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Salt
Curry powder of your choosing (recipe to make your own follows)
Maybe some seeds and nuts to top, like black sesame and pistachios!
Step-by-step
Cook the chickpeas
If using dried chickpeas, soak them in water the night before you plan to use them. Make sure there is enough space in the container and water for them to expand to two or three times their size and still be covered in water. Add a palmful of salt, swish it all around, loosely cover and leave out on the counter. Skip this step at your peril! Soaking the chickpeas helps breakdown some of the harder-to-digest carbohydrates, relieving pressure on your gut and significantly decreasing farting!
To cook, drain and rinse your chickpeas, throw them in a pot with plenty of water, maybe a bit more salt if you weren’t generous enough last night, and bring it to a boil. Cook until chickpeas are soft but not mushy, maybe 45 minutes. Just keep tasting. You’ll know when they’re done. You can also do this in a pressure cooker much faster! 10 minutes on high pressure. Drain your chickpeas and let them cool on the counter.
If using canned chickpeas, simply drain and rinse all that goo off. I think the slimy stuff tastes like farts.
Roast the eggplant
Preheat oven to 375F. Chop up your eggplant into chunks. Just toss the eggplant with plenty of salt and lots of olive oil. Like more olive oil then you think seems correct. There should be a thin but noticeable coating on the bottom of the pan. Roast in the oven until the eggplant are super duper soft, about 30 minutes.
Thinly slice your onion and let the pieces sit in lemon juice for 15 minutes or so. It takes away the bite.
Roughly chop your herbs. Be sure to include the stems of parsley and cilantro, unless they are very woody.
Combine chickpeas, mango, eggplant, herbs, greens, onions and garlic, and seeds or nuts in a bowl. Splash on a couple glugs of olive oil, the onion-y lemon juice, two or three big (use all five fingers) pinches of curry powder, and mix. Add salt too. Enough so that the food tastes bright and exciting and zings on your tongue. Maybe start with a small palmful and go from there.
BONUS RECIPE: Homemade Curry Powder
Ingredients
A big pinch:
Chili pepper
Black pepper
Cumin
Cardamom seeds (not the green husk, but what’s inside)
Turmeric
Mustard seeds
Salt
Curry leaf (if you can find it)
A smaller pinch:
Cloves
Nutmeg
Cinnamon
Fenugreek
Just add a pinch of everything and grind it up with a spice grinder or a mortar and pestle. If you want to add more, less, or none of one thing or another, that’s perfectly fine. No rules! If you are using whole spices, you can choose to toast them in a dry pan first just until they start to pop and smell nice. Let this be an opportunity for improvisation, as it’s hard to mess up. If you are feeling really fancy, you could blend up fresh garlic, ginger, and turmeric, mix in your dry spice blend, and store it in the fridge.
Make it happen, Disney.
Talk to Us
Send in your comments, mailbag questions or suggest a seasonally-appropriate veggie you'd love to see us put in a recipe: sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com. Also do us a favor and follow our Sunshine + Microbes Instagram page!
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Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is the current Chef-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment, and community.
Matt Levin is a freelance reporter based in Colombia. He contributes editing and other scraps to Sunshine + Microbes.