Le Marais Chocolat Has Arrived!

So I know it has been FOREVER since I blogged, but my dears, I want to share some exciting news - I started a chocolate truffle company! 

First of all, some of you are responsible, because all the positive feedback you gave during my year of scratch cooking (which has mostly continued for the last few years!) made me think I could actually do this!

The company is Le Marais Chocolat and we make chocolate truffles using organic (of course) Fair Trade (of course!) chocolate! I've had a blast developing signature flavors like blood orange, black walnut (hat tip to a certain former GOP candidate. He was right about one thing, black walnuts are delish!), and the very unique Le Petit Prince truffle made with baobab (actual baobab fruit!) and roses. To those of you that have read The Little Prince, you know that baobab trees and roses are featured very prominently. A portion of proceeds goes to charity (of course), right now that is the BLU MOON Foundation Haiti Orphanage Adoption Program (HOAP).

I also just launched a Kickstarter page to raise money for our Fair Trade Certification so that we can become a member and use the Fair Trade logo on the box. 

Would love all of your help getting the word out about the truffles and the Kickstarter project!

xoxoxo - Leslie, aka Going Green, aka Scratch Cooking Maven

Scratch Cooking Continued Sept. 2nd

So although it has been three weeks, I still cannot get myself to buy anything packaged. It just feels wrong!

The last few weeks have had a lot of sadness. Mallaury's dad died a couple weeks ago and she called me from France right after. I feel so sad for her and her family, but so grateful that she went home early and had a chance to see him. Losing a parent at any time is bad, but as a teenager, it seems particularly bad. I imagine that at 17, grief is coupled with guilt over every time you were nasty or rude. I don't know if children realize how quickly parents forget those moments. And I feel for her mother who has to deal with her own grief while helping her children through theirs. It's all very heart breaking.

I also had to find a new family for Robin's dog. He bit our dog a few weeks ago and it seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. We found a great place for him with a family with two young kids, but it feels like one more tie that's gone. I dreamt about Robin for days leading up to it. Ah, guilt!

Some of the things I have made over the last few weeks - chocolate macarons with vanilla buttercream filling, devilled eggs, tacos with fresh beans, buttermilk ice cream and lavender honey ice cream.

Here's some of the recipes:

The devilled eggs were really simple since I don't like mayonnaise - mix six egg yolks with a big heaping tablespoon of mustard, salt, pepper and a little olive oil. Spoon back into the egg whites and sprinkle with chopped scallions and paprika.

The fresh beans for the tacos were fresh black eyed peas and some other kind of bean that was similar. I sauteed them with a whole chopped onion in olive oil until the onions were soft and beginning to carmelize. Then I added about 1 cup of white wine and cooked at high heat until the wine was absorbed. They were fabulous! We made some guacamole and piled it on home made tortillas with a little white cheddar.

The ice cream recipes were the same as I have been using with some slight modifications. For the Buttermilk Ice Cream, heat up 2 cups of cream until hot but not boiling. Mix 4 egg yolks with 3/4 cup of sugar. Add the hot cream and put in pan over heat, stirring constantly until starting to thicken (will coat the back of a spoon). Take off heat and add 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk and a pinch of salt. Chill and then run through ice cream maker. It is absolutely lemony and delicious!

For the Lavender Honey Ice Cream, heat 1 1/2 cups of milk with 2 tablespoons of fresh or dried (edible) lavender. When hot, cover and let steep for 30 minutes. Remove lavender and re-heat milk. Mix 4 egg yolks with 2/3 cup honey. Add hot milk and then heat mixture until thickened. Remove from heat and add 2 cups cream and a pinch of salt. Chill and run through ice cream maker.

Nina is having a clam back on Monday, so these ice creams will be among the desserts that we bring. Stay tuned for  others!

Consider this the first installation of scratch cooking, year 2!

Scratch Cooking August 11th

So it looks like our one year anniversary of the scratch cooking project is going to pass with a whimper rather than a bang. That's because I am on a business trip to Springfield, IL. So instead of cooking tonight, I went on the Lincoln's Ghost Tour of Springfield during which we visited historic sites and heard about various Lincoln seances and hauntings. The guy who led the tour was pure camp, but it was pretty entertaining.

We did do a typical southern California dinner for Mallaury's last night in the U.S. Monday night - Mexican food! All her favorites - guacamole, fresh tortillas, corn on the cob, rice and I made a dish with leeks and fresh black eyed peas. I sauteed a small sliced leek with about a cup of fresh, shelled black-eyed peas, salt and pepper in olive oil. Dessert was home-made chocolate ice cream with fresh raspberries.

So much has happened since we started this project with a wild hare and a cross-country road trip. Literally, life and death have been brought into stark relief in our lives. We lost a dear friend and gained many dear friends. We helped others and were helped in return. We were forced to confront fears and let down defences. We traveled and hosted friends and became more comfortable in our lives. And through it all, we cooked. And in the cooking found solace, found creativity, found community, found family, found ourselves and grew closer. We discovered the joys of cream and butter and egg yolks. We made sour cream and cheese and cream cheese and creme fraiche. We dropped pounds while eating dessert. The kitchen and dinner table became places for conversation and connection. We ate a lot of chocolate. We had a lot of fun!

I "met" all of you, and every time I wondered why I was doing this, you were there to remind me that it actually mattered. And you all became my friends and my inspiration.

So after a year of losing the convenience of packaged food but gaining all of that, why would we give it up? Cans and boxes and plastic bags of frozen foods? SCRATCH THAT!

Scratch Cooking August 4

What a difference a week makes! Mallaury cried again tonight, but this time because she's going home on Tuesday and she doesn't want to leave! She turned to my daughter tonight and said in English "you are my American sister!" It was very sweet!

After all the stress, I am a little sad she is leaving, too, but my instincts tell me that it is the right thing for her to do. I just have that feeling that her dad doesn't have much time left and that she needs to be home with her family. As I keep telling her, California will still be here when she is ready to come back.

We had a little impromptu dinner party with an old friend of my daughter, her mother and their French house guest. It was nice to catch up and I hope the girls will reconnect during the school year.

Dinner was salmon and corn on the grill, a chickpea mash, a caprese salad, green salad, ceviche and a cheese plate.

The chickpea mash was about 2 cups of cooked chick peas pureed with 1/3 cup browned butter (just heat butter over a high flame until brown and fragrant), seasoned salt, juice of 1/2 lemon, 1/4 cup ver jus and 1/2 cup water.

The ceviche was a pound of bay scallops, one small chopped onion, 1/3 cup cilantro, juice of 3 limes, 1 1/2 tablespoons sea salt and 1/2 teaspoon ancho chile powder. Mix all together and let sit for 2 hours until the lime juice "cooks" the scallops.

For the caprese salad, I used a cup of cherry tomatoes, 1/4 cup chopped basil leaves and one big round of chopped fresh buffalo mozzerella. I mixed the whole thing with a drizzle of olive oil.

For dessert the girls made brownies and we ate them with the apricot ice cream from the other night.

One week left to go and we will have gone an entire year without buying packaged foods!!

Back in Haiti

So this week, I was back in Haiti doing our first orphanage renovation. Here are some pictures of before, during and after. I think they speak for themselves. It was an amazing experience and I can't wait to do it again! Anyone that would like to contribute to the next one, please go to www.haitineedsourhelp.org

Life in Haiti

Help with food and water drops by donating to www.haitineedsourhelp.org and we will document for you how your funds are being used.

Blogger Action Day; Mission Climate Change

Today is blogger action day. And the topic? Climate change. It's funny, since I write about climate a lot, so I want to make today a little different. So let's move from climate blogger action to climate action, shall we? Starting with 9 days from now, October 24th, being climate action day.

More than 3000 events to choose from in 158 countries, come on sign up! There are actions in Europe, Africa, South America, Asia and North America. So let's pick a place and do it! What do you say we all meet in Senegal? How about Paris? Istanbul? Or we could save the carbon emissions and each represent in the place we live.

The idea is to incorporate the number 350 at an iconic place in your community, and then upload a photo of the event to 350.org website. Why 350? That's the level of global carbon emissions we need to get to in order to prevent more than 2 degrees warming in global temperatures. Right now we are at 387 and climbing.

Here’s another thing you can do. Call your Congress critter and your Senators and tell them to quit listening to corporate lobbyists and start listening to scientists – and real scientists, not the ones bought and paid for by Exxon – and pass climate and energy legislation that will get us to the reductions we need. Oh, and while you’re on the phone, tell them this; no offshore drilling, quit subsidizing coal and let the EPA do its darn job and regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act.

Talk to your friends, neighbors, family, colleagues about why you support strong climate and energy legislation with aggressive reduction targets. Talk to them about the money to be saved, and incentives, for energy efficiency. Talk to them about the money to be made in innovation and new technologies. Talk to them about the cost, trillions, of doing nothing about climate change. Talk to them about the number of illnesses caused by coal and exhaust pollution, the same pollutants that cause climate change. Or the emissions from an agricultural system that is making us sick. Talk to them about clean, domestic energy sources that improve our national security and create good American jobs.

Pick something you are going to do differently to waste less, use less and lower your carbon footprint. After you pick that thing, pick another. Then encourage a friend to pick one. Pick another. The more you pick, the more your friend has to pick. Oh, and by the way, your friend also needs to encourage their friends to pick and keep picking the behavioral changes we are all going to make to do our part in the battle to stop catastrophic climate change. See where I’m going with this?

And the next time someone denies that climate change is real, or caused by human activity, ask them this; do you REALLY think you’re smarter than a rocket scientist? Then direct them to the NASA site on climate change.  

Now, if you are still in need of more blogger action, I give you for your reading pleasure some super wonky climate stuff, presented in what I think is a humorous manner, (but maybe I’ve been reading this stuff too long!) check out the CROC Blog (it’s a little inside baseball here but essentially Greenpeace issued a report today saying that a project in Bolivia that the Nature Conservancy has held up as an example of how forest offsets can be successful is actually an example of how they don’t work) and How CBO Budget Scoring Devalues Efficiency – With Puppies!

Happy Blogger Action Day ’09. Let’s get this thing done!

About Going Green

This site is about how to live a more sustainable, environmentally friendly lifestyle, and how to do it without breaking the bank or suggesting such a drastic change in the way you live that it seems impossible to accomplish. The thing about going green is that it should be a win-win; it should make your life easier, more fulfilling, more pleasurable, healthier and more fun, while taking care of the health and well being of our planet and the millions of folks that share it. It will feature green tips and suggestions, as well as resources for anyone and everyone. I welcome questions, comments and suggestions.

Leslie Berliant