Millet madness — millet bowls and millet burgers

Babysitting is fun.

We recently did a whole bunch of baby sitting for our grandkids while their Papa was out of town and their Mama had to play cello in the orchestra for a multi-night high school theater production at the school where she teaches music. One of our "duties" was to attend a talent show sponsored by Miss E's elementary school. Miss E is seven years old, and she is now brave enough to appear on a stage and perform.

The concert had a number of singers, a guitar soloist, lots of dancers, a couple of cheerleaders, and a hula hoop demonstration performed by Miss E and two friends. I'm not saying hula hooping isn't a talent — it certainly is — and we and the rest of the audience were exceedingly entertained by the performance, but something about it triggered an old memory of a performance her papa gave when he was about six.

He was a Suzuki violin student at the University of Wisconsin School of Music, and the recitals we attended for all the children from the youngest to the most accomplished, were impressive. They took place in a beautiful, small concert hall at the school of music. At the time he was learning violin, he was also obsessed with playing harmonica, and asked me if I thought he could play his harmonica at the violin recital. I didn't think so, but told him to ask his teacher, and the lovely Mary Beth Cullitan, after hesitating just a moment, said yes. Her goal was to encourage a love of music in whatever form it presented itself. So, at some point during the recital of classical string music, future-papa brought down the house with a polished and rousing harmonica rendition of Old Joe Clark. It was a weirdly thrilling parenting moment that I'll never forget.

Roasted carrots and chickpeas plus kale and tahini-umeboshi sauce over millet.

I love when a current happening unearths an old treasured memory, and I get to enjoy it again. It's a little like when a recent event, in this case a trip to San Francisco and Santa Cruz, inspires a string of cooking choices that play on memories, and become new favorites, reminding me in turn of the source of their inspiration. We were recently in Santa Cruz and I loved the lunch bowl I had at Café Gratitude so much I couldn't stop thinking about it. The grain in the bowl was millet, and I've become a little obsessed with millet, as you will see. Millet tends to be an overlooked food here, and in fact, most millet grown in the U.S. is grown for bird seed. Millet comes from a group of seeded grasses and is widely used for food in arid and semi-arid areas of the world. I like it a lot.

When we returned home from our trip, I made a millet bowl with roasted carrots and chickpeas, plus kale, topped with green onions and tahini sauce.It was so good it was shortly followed by a similar bowl with sweet potatoes, black beans and kale. The kale for the bowl partly came from a leftover deli container of PCC emerald city salad. There was just a tiny bit of salad left so I added a bunch more green onion and chopped kale to the container, mixed it with the remains, and used it for my bowl. I also warmed it up. Although the emerald city salad is meant to be served raw and cold, it also makes a great warm salad.

When I made the millet bowl, I made extra millet because I wanted to make millet burgers. Millet has a chewy texture that seems just right as a base for burgers, and the patties were wonderful. I wish I had written down a recipe, but I was using up leftovers that were in the refrigerator, adding spices like a mad scientist, and I have no precise memory of what went into the burgers. I think there were a couple of carrots, a few mushrooms, a bit of leftover kale, some chickpeas, perhaps some ground flax seed, half an onion, and other stuff I can't remember. The burgers were browned on the stove, then baked. This is the way I prefer to cook — without recipes — but then when something turns out well, sometimes I wish I could make it again.

Do you ever cook with millet? I've read both pros and cons about its nutritional value, but I guess that's true of most foods these days. Sigh.

A weekend of eating in San Francisco and Santa Cruz part 2

The sky was really that blue.

Usually when we go to San Francisco, we stay in or pretty close to the city — hiking at Land's End, exploring the Marin Farmers Market, wandering through the Botanical Garden in Berkeley, taking in the delights of the city — that sort of thing. But on this trip, I really wanted to see Santa Cruz, so on Sunday morning, we hit the road and headed South. Before we left Seattle, I contacted Amey from Vegan Eats and Treats, to ask what she recommended we see, and working from her suggestions, and some favorite spots of Alison's, we had a full day's worth of places to explore and food to consume. None of the four of us are very good at random shopping — I usually have to be in the exact right mood to enter shops I hadn't been planning to enter — so we just walked the downtown streets soaking up the eclectic atmosphere, ogling the charming shop window displays and working up an appetite for lunch.

There were several places we could have found vegan food, but Café Gratitude seemed like an excellent choice, and we headed there. We'd dined at Café Gratitude in Berkeley, and really liked it. Alison had either a roasted vegetable sandwich or a BLT — can't remember which.

Jordan had his sandwich with a side of tortilla soup, and Ken had a salad with fig balsamic dressing, which he loved. I don't seem to have a photo of the salad, but picture something fresh and green.

The past two nights dinners weren't sitting so well with me, and although I was hungry for lunch, I really wanted something plain and simple — which is not to say tasteless. I found the perfect solution in a basic bowl filled with perfectly cooked and fluffy millet, black beans and baby kale, with tahini dressing. I was so happy!

After lunch, we continued wandering the downtown streets looking for The Penny Ice Creamery, where Amey had told us to get the amazing vegan dark chocolate sorbet. Ahem. If I lived in Santa Cruz, I'd be in danger of eating dark chocolate sorbet at least three times a day. Amazing, yes.

After the ice cream, we went to the Beach Boardwalk — kind of a beachfront amusement park and walking area. It had a similar, somewhat rundown, dive atmosphere that I remember from the old days on the Atlantic City Boardwalk — especially around Steel Pier, if anyone remembers that. There were great views across the beach and across the water, making it lots of fun to take photos.

My three companions on West Cliff Dr. in Santa Cruz.

Our last stop was also my favorite (not counting lunch and sorbet, of course) — West Cliff Drive. What a gorgeous spot to walk and enjoy the view.

It was getting late and we still had one more stop to make on the way back to San Francisco — Mountain Feed and Farm Supply, one of Jordan and Alison's favorite 'garden' stores. Calling this labyrinth of eclectic buildings a Garden Store is like calling Mall of America a shopping center. I mean, it is ... but it isn't. They did have plants, pots and gardening equipment, but also fantastic cooking equipment, pet food and supplies, and everything you'd need for canning, brewing, fermenting, etc., as well as the most helpful and friendly employees I've ever encountered. It took about three seconds for me to loose everyone in our little group, as we each became sucked into the various buildings and departments.

By the time we returned to San Francisco, there was just enough time for a brief rest before we had our last restaurant meal of the trip at Dosa, a South Indian restaurant we are very fond of. It's not a vegan or vegetarian restaurant, but they have a separate vegetarian menu where vegan and gluten-free items are clearly marked. I ordered a traditional masala dosa, a large, rice and lentil crepe filled with spiced potatoes, onions and cashews. It came with coconut and tomato chutneys and sambar, and a spicy soup made with lentils and vegetables. You break off chunks of the dosa and dip it into the chutney, sambar and soup. I've always really loved my dinner at Dosa, but the dosa, which has always been dry in the past, was coated with oil. I ate it but it was way too greasy for me. Our restaurant karma was definitely off on this trip. (It was so dark in Dosa that I didn't take a photo. I found a photo of the same meal from a previous trip, and the dosa definitely doesn't look all slick and shiny like the one I received.)

The next day, Jordan and Alison went to work and Ken and I packed and got organized until it was time to go to the airport for the return flight. It was a short trip, but so much fun!

Other San Francisco Posts:
March 5 2015 
June 23, 2013
June 19, 2013
Jan. 30, 2012

A weekend of eating in San Francisco and Santa Cruz part 1

View from the tower at the top of the de Young Fine Arts Museum

We just spent a terrific weekend in San Francisco with a day trip to Santa Cruz. We mostly explored beautiful spaces and ate, with a few shopping outings thrown in, and had a great, energetic but relaxing, mini-vacation. We arrived late Friday afternoon, and settled into our airbnb in Lower Haight. The small space was comfortable enough, but if I were renting out my place and charging rent plus a cleaning fee, I'd try to make it actually clean.

The stove looked like this, and the oven was 10 times worse — thickly crusted and greasy, as I discovered when I tried to warm up a snack. I scoured the kitchen sink so I could stand to use it — and we had to use it more than you'd think because the bathroom sink didn't drain. My husband wiped down the refrigerator door which was so gross even he noticed. Mostly it was OK, but I wouldn't stay there again.

On Friday evening we went to a new vegan sushi place in the Mission, Shizen Vegan Sushi Bar & Izakaya, and I was very excited to experience a restaurant that served creative vegan sushi, since I'm usually limited to cucumber, avocado, or if I'm lucky, kampyo sushi. We started with a warm garlic-kale-hiziki dish that was extremely delicious.

After the kale we shared two specialty rolls, but I'm really sorry I can't remember what they were. They were both so good I was practically inhaling them. The one above came flaming at one end of the plate, which was exciting.

I can't remember what this one was, either, except that it tasted great. So great, in fact, that we ordered another one, but for some reason the second roll wasn't nearly as good as the first.

My husband and I were sharing gluten-free options while our dining companions ordered with abandon. Imagine, vegans, going to a sushi restaurant and ordering anything on the menu! This roll was one of their choices, and you can see another one of their selections peeking out in the background. (The restaurant was too dark for my camera so I had to rely on my iphone.)

Shizen Vegan Sushi Bar & Izakaya was not without issues. Though I enjoyed eating there, it was impossible not to notice the extremely slow service. I'm talking at least an hour wait before we were seated, another hour wait before the first dish came out, and maybe another hour before we had received and eaten all of our food. Everything was beautiful and delicious, but at least one of my (very hungry) dining companions was rather miffed. And since we ordered two of the same rolls, and the second one was not nearly as good as the first, there might be issues of inconsistency. Still, if you are in San Francisco, you should try Shizen Vegan Sushi Bar & Izakaya. Hopefully they will only get better, if that's even possible. I will certainly go there again no matter how long I have to wait.

My iphone app says I walked more than 12,000 steps on Sunday and even more on Saturday, but now I'm having trouble keeping it all straight. I know we went to the Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park on Saturday, where we strolled through the gorgeous gardens, including the succulent garden, above. I love succulents, though I never can seem to grow the really big ones that I see all over San Francisco in pocket gardens and pots.

After the gardens and a view from the top of a nearby museum tower, we went out to a late lunch at Seed and Salt. Alison and I loved our kale Caesar salads — so fresh, crunchy and tasty, with small squares of crispy, fried black-eyed pea tempeh and toasted sunflower seeds, and I think Jordan enjoyed his eggplant BLT.

But my husband was much less enthusiastic about his beet burger. It was pricey at $14, and kind of small. I was stuffed after my salad but he was still hungry. I really loved Seed and Salt — both the atmosphere and the food, though it was on the expensive side, as you can see if you follow the link and peruse the menu. I'd absolutely go there again.

After lunch we had a little shopping expedition to an enormous athletic store where Alison looked for bike gear for a ride she's going on, and the rest of us just wandered around looking at clothes and stuff. Then we headed to Rainbow Co-op which is the most excellent natural foods store I've ever been in. I wish we had a similar store in Seattle. I could find anything I could possibly want there, no matter how obscure. Alison and Jordan did their grocery shopping, and Ken and I picked up a few provisions for breakfast and the trip home. We bought one of Miyoko's Creamery cheeses as well as a package of chewy and delicious Hodosoy tofu and some Suzie's thin cakes crackers.

My favorite crackers — next to Mary's.

On Saturday night we picked up my niece, and the five of us headed to what used to be one of my favorite restaurants, Gracias Madre, for dinner. You can read about my other visits to Gracias Madre here and here. I say "used to be" because I'm now thinking the food is too heavy, or too oily or too something, because I had an upset stomach after my meal.

Tacos and refried beans at Gracias Madre.

It's so dark in the restaurant that my photos are not very mouthwatering, but I can tell you I had three tacos, one of which was filled with roasted beets, one with asparagus and one with broccoli, and a mound of refried black beans that looked like a big pile of decrepit poop, and which were too salty to eat. I ate some of the soft corn tortillas, all of the tasty vegetables, and none of the beans. Maybe it was an off night, but I wasn't as thrilled with the food as I usually am. Read my other posts for much more positive reviews. My husband had the evening special, and he described it as "OK but not great." On the other hand, Alison thought the same dish was delicious. So there you go.

Dinner was late — there had been a long wait for a table, and by the time we got back to the airbnb, we were ready to do some quiet reading, and fall into a deep sleep.

Giant succulents in a pot in front of our airbnb.