WetFoods

WetLeather is my motorcycle family. WetLeather is what you get when you ride your moto in the rain. WetLeather is a cocktail party disguised as a motorcycle group. WetLeather is a food group with a motorcycle problem - so much so that they formed WetFoods for all of the foodies to discuss recipes. I went up to WetFoods to ask about anti-inflammatory recipes. The responses are still coming in!

So far:

• http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/11/roasted-butternut-squash-and-red-onion-with-t.html Doesn't have the exact recipe, likely due to copyright, but it's pretty
  obvious. The Tahini-sauce is just tahini with lemon to taste, thinned with
  water. I don't add garlic and don't remember that from the actual recipe --
  I have the book. I do sprinkle with parsley for additional green stuff, and
  if you don't have za'atar, you can skip it. It's still very good.
• This time of year look for hot spinach salads, salads with broccoli, etc.
  Look for vegetarian cookbooks
• To eat more fruit with whole grains, consider Brown Betties with most of
  the sweetener left out. (Try mixing some chopped dried fruit into the
  oatmeal etc. for sweetening.) Make dried fruit compote to put on whole
  cooked grain like oatmeal.
• To replace the red meat umami, try Shitake mushrooms. Go to an Asian market
  where you can get them cheaper and fresh, then fry them. Discard the tough
  stems (or use for broth).
• Mint tea (check that it has no black tea!) comes in a variety of tasty
  flavors, ginger mint is one of the best. As far as the deep dark rich comfy feeling, hot chocolate. Or for something completely different, limeade with steeped mint and
  lavender, filled out with sparkling water.
• Coffee =Acids.  There's issues with coffee besides just the caffeine.  I got around
  it with my girlfriend when she gave up coffee by making a drink using
  baking cocoa, milk, and sugar with vanilla and cinnamon.  Some good
  anti-inflammatory ingredients in there, a nice rich dark flavored drink
  like coffee, and much lower in the more troublesome acids and other
  coffee-problems.
• There's something out there called "Choffee"; a tisane made from spent cocoa
  beans.  Several of my friends are mad about it, saying that it covers their
  urge for that dark, good feeling from coffee.  I'm sure you can find it on
  the web somewhere (http://www.drinkchoffy.com)
  

  • Nice stuff, pleasant to drink.  You have to brew it in a coffee press or a
    metal cone filter because the cocoa butter clogs paper filters.  No luck so
    far getting it to work as an espresso. It's sold by pyramid scheme.  I picked up a small bag of it at a weird privately-run indoor farmer's market on Sandy in Portland.
•  Vegetarian times is a wonderful magazine full of great ideas and
  inspiration. We cook a meal at least twice a month for wendy out of the
  mag. Wendy eats seafood in her diet, so we sub fish or seafood for the
  protein (usually tofu) and it turns out great. She takes the leftovers for
  her lunches. I will happily send along our enhanced recipes.
  Trader Joe's sells a fine soy chorizo, usually in the fresh veggy section
  that will happily enhance stews,chilies, soups, jambalayas, gravies...its
  just great. Risottos are a wonderful way to extend and enhance veggies, and
  seafoods. "better-than-bullion" makes a marvelous selection of veggy, fish,
  and meat pastes over in the soup section usually. Buy veggy stock and
  enhance them with additional herbs and spices to give them pizzazz. Quinoa
  and mixed rice/grain mixtures you will find in the stores and Costco. I use
  rice flour in place of wheat in my cornbread recipe from "Cook's
  Illustrated". Robynn has made a number of "gluten-free" mixes from "bob'
  red mill" just outside of Portland, with tasty success
  Teas...
  I stopped drinking coffee years ago. I love the smell, the taste, but not
  the jitters or the acid stomach. Black teas are less caffeine and you may
  have to experiment with which one cause flare ups. I have two favorite
  sites for tea...".Strand tea" in Sandy, oregon (yes, just a few miles from
  you), they carry a large selection of black, green, oolong, and blends. My
  second is "upton tea", they publish every quarter, a booklet of available
  teas. Both have easy to use websites and are fast to your doorstep with
  their products. I love them both.
  Where to start...if I remember Portland, there are a few tea houses
  downtown, where you can taste test teas. Google their locations and go play




To do:
- go find choffy
- find vegetarian times magazine
- investigate brown betties and dried fruit compotes