• I put fresh pineapple with habanero hot sauce into chips at Fresca on Addison.
• I put ten kinds of roasted peppers into kale chips for Camden’s Dogtown Market.

Both were dropped off on January 2nd.

Camden's chips

I’m starting to get feedback that the chips are HOT. And maybe some questions, “Why so hot?” Well, it’s complicated. I want your mouth to remember that you

ate something. I want you to feel the food, not just the roughage, but also the warmth of the spice. Maybe I’ve built up a tolerance to a degree. Kind of like an auto-erotic asphyxiation addict is always trying to make their climax more cathartic, I want my snacks to deliver a punch that you can feel. No one is going to die from a spicy kale chip. You might reach for a cold beer (or in my case, another kale chip), but if you go along for the ride, I think you’ll like it.

Don’t forget that chilis are good medicine, good stimulation… and a good way to start 2013. And yes, I’ll get back to some of my more mild flavors soon: sour cream and onion (vegan) and nacho cheese (vegan), etc.

Often, we only see lists of peppers when we’re looking at that scoleville unit chart to remind us how poblanos compare to jalapenos, or exactly how astronomically hot habenaro peppers are. But, hotness isn’t the difference that matters most. It’s the flavor of the chiles that really matters. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that chiles are a superfood reducing inflammation and digestive issues, and curing headaches, arthritis, and maybe even cancer.

Even though I’ve been thinking about devising kale chip flavors to pair with wine or tea, even dessert varieties… I’m stuck on the chile pepper as its own pairing unto itself. Think of the best hot sauces you’ve had. You put it on everything. But that food already has highs and low notes. The flavor of the peppers lays right on top like a thin coat of varnish that changes the whole overall impression.

This weekend, I whipped up three batches of kale chips, each showcasing different chile pepper profiles.

• Hatch Chile-garlic: Back when Kroger had a pepper roaster out front for a few days, I snatched up some of their hatch chiles from New Mexico. Their flavor is smooth and round and leaves a warm feeling lingering in your mouth. This batch of chips got a lot of hatch chiles (the last I had), so they’re a little bit more sharp.

• Mojo de Arbol: I don’t know why these little red serano-looking peppers aren’t more widely known. When dried or roasted, they deliver a tangy almost sour heat. But there’s this campfire-like roastiness that makes each bite like eating something grilled. This sauce (or mojo) was extra simple. Just cashews, chiles de arbol, garlic and onions and a little vinegar. You might not love these until the finish, which goes on for several minutes.

• Pepper Cream: At the South of the James market a couple weeks back, I spotted a booth selling nothing but peppers, ten types actually. I just asked for some of each (jalapenos, thai chiles, poblanos, scotch bonnets, habaneros, and more). I decided to turn them into a hot sauce. So, I roasted all of them and blended them with tomatoes, caramelized onions, and roasted garlic. The result was so delicious, I had to share. So, I thinned the painful sauce out with cashews, and now it’s just dreamy on a kale chip.

I’ll update this post with details about where these kale chips will be available this week. Stay tuned.

On a rare trip to SotJ farmers market last week, I was tipped off to a greens grower, Brad at Crumptown Farm.  Based in Brunswick County, Brad boasts of supplying the local school system with his produce, especially nutrient-packed dark leafy greens.  I’ll bet that feels pretty good (assuming the kids are eating them).

Did I mention that my youngest son loves to eat kale chips? I may have to plant this seed of thought with Brad when I bring him a sample of my kale chips this weekend.  For the time being, I need to buy a big box of curly kale from him.  And if the price is right, I’ll do it again.  But, as cool as it would be to buy some artisanal greens on a regular basis, there are competing interests at play: economy and efficiency, for starters.

Note that the greens are not allowed to strip.

There is no competing with salvage grocery stores when it comes to prices. It was 8-10lb kale purchases at Fresh to Frozen Grocery Salvage on Midlo that initially got me thinking that I could supply my friends with kale chips. But, it was the next visit there finding no kale chips that made me give up on making kale chips for a couple months. Am I a creature of convenience, or what?

The deal you see in the picture above is the first time I’ve ever seen 28lb bushels offered. At $18, that’s $0.64/lb. As always, F2F advertises their greens coming from Hanover County, which has some cache around here – not just because it’s right around here, but the soil is said contribute great flavor to veggies.

What do you think? Does the source of the kale matter to you with kale chips? If so, would you kindly fetch the foliage from your preferred location and bring them to me? No body has responded to my call for weekly deliveries of kale. And what about prepping? It would be swell if someone would strip, wash and dry the kale for me.

Don’t ask Google. Ask me.
If you look up ‘kale chips’ online, you’ll find loads of recipes, most of which are disgusting, akin to stuffing your face full of the autumn foliage that you rake up under a tree. Those food bloggers are mostly well meaning, though a little confused. If you really want a source for info (besides this blog) check out raw foodist discussion forums. That’s where you’ll find the folks who’ve been through the trial and error process and they’re not just into kale chips for the novelty of it.  They’re in pursuit of a perfect food and you should follow them (at least on this one adventure – not necessarily the giving up bread and cheese thing).

Free market. Expensive filler.
Good kale chips are not for sale. Sure, I’ve put a few bags out there that I’m proud of, but my point is that the real deal is usually a batch that someone made for themselves and their friends. And if they were good, they didn’t last a day and if intended for resale, they probably got eaten on the way to the farmers’ market. Seriously though, the kale chips at healthfood stores are made by people who realize that plain and baked versions are a nasty experience. So, they weigh them down with nuts and zesty spices.  That’s because fiber needs fat and bitter needs brightness. But the store-bought kind are rarely very fresh, and the the flavors are usually less than inspired (note blah blah brand’s ‘American flavor’ – actually kinda genius if it’s a cynical statement on the intersection of consumerism and low-information voters). Anywho, you generally pay $8 for 2.5 ounces of kale chips in the store, but they’re a strange product. The kale is smooshed into what looks like little cow patties, and the bulk of the product is nuts instead of kale making up the weight.

What’s so special?

Real kale chips are dehydrated, not baked. Have you had baked kale chips? Depending on the temperature they were baked at (and the amount of ventilation) you might have decided to never eat them again. Real kale chips are a raw food, meaning they’re dehydrated at less than 119 degrees, so the nutrients don’t break down chemically, due to the heat. This preserves their multivitamin benefits, but it also preserves the flavors of the kale and the other ingredients. With raw kale chips, the flavors will pop with bright freshness.  If raw ingredients like garlic, onions, or ginger were used, you’ll know it and your mouth will remember for minutes after eating a chip. Dehydrating also turns the leaves from tough and chewy to brittle and crunchy. All of this makes them a fun energizing food. But, I’m not a purist. Roasted garlic is sometimes my secret ingredient (not so secret now, I guess). Sauteed onions contribute savory and sweetness, even creaminess. And roasted red and yellow peppers help round out a vegan cheese sauce in ways that most hippies would have never guessed to try. As long as the kale is not cooked, and the coating is relatively light, we’re still talking about ‘raw kale’ chips.  

How do I do it myself?

I don’t know if I can answer that for you succinctly.  The first thing to do is to find a dehydrator.  For ten years, I was happy with my four-tray Excalibur (about $100 on Amazon).  But the idea that it was basically a shoe-box with a fan and a heating element always kinda nagged at me. Alton Brown did a bit on his Good Eats show about turning your oven into a dehydrator without even turning it on. There was a mini-fan involved and an aquarium heater or a light bulb, I think. But what’s stopping you or me from making the same contraption on a larger scale, like say a guest bedroom with an open window, a box fan and a ceramic heater? Part of the answer is geography. The humidity of the south. But, I digress. Just toss some kale in some sauce and stick it in a dehydrator. Eat when crunchy. I guess that could be said succinctly after all.

Last week, my wife brought home a bag of Trader Joe’s Zesty Nacho kale chips. I was excited, because I’d been unimpressed with more expensive store-bought kale chips. Trader Joe’s is one of my favorite stores. Surely they’ve figured out how to do kale chips right. Right?

Well, I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.  Trader Joe’s kale chips are the worst I’ve ever had.  They’re beyond stale. They taste like leftovers with freezer-burn.  On the ingredient list, it looks like the main culprit is the sunflower seeds that bring the essence of mud to each bite.  Regardless, there is nothing zesty about these nachos. Aside from embarrassment and betrayal, I felt challenged to prove that a spicy vegan cheese sauced kale chip was entirely possible.

The key is cashews and nutritional yeast and several other yellow ingredients. Also, a really high powered blender.  With the resulting chips, I even impressed myself.  They’ve got a creamy finish that reminds me of that liquid cheese sauce at 7-11.  Go try the Nachos Kale Grande for yourself at Fresca.  Or get the Kashmiri Curry version at Camden’s and let me know what you think.

labels courtesy of darlingoctopus.com

Since ending this blog, I’ve felt a need for a creative outlet, food-wise.   So many people have pushed me to sell my kale chips, I figured that’s probably the most efficient way to share them.  The kinds you find in stores are exorbitantly expensive, full of cheap fillers, and not so tasty (not the mention the disconcerting presence of a silica pack).   So, I found a few friendly folks who happily put my kale chips on their shelves.

• On Monday, Oct. 8th, I’ll drop off a batch of Kashmiri Curry kale chips at Camden’s Dogtown Market on 7th Street in Manchester.  They’re rich and hearty, heavily spiced with lingering heat. Because I pureed raw cashews into the sauce, there’s a slight creaminess that makes the kale chips kinda saag-y.
• The next batch will be idunno-what and you’ll find them idunno-where nor when exactly (but watch this space).

This is a hobby. My day job and family life come first.  Making a profit and building a brand aren’t high on my priority list.  Just fun with food and hoping a few people enjoy it.  But, it sure would help if someone would bring me a 10lb box of curly kale every week or so.

I'd just run out of these Moo cards. Another sign to give it up.

Man, I’m gonna miss it. This thing has connected me to so many people, media outlets, restaurants, good guys and bad guys, the list is humbling.  It’s really been my window to the world.  What will come of all of my thoughts that percolate up and don’t get captured by my phone?  Or the hot-button questions that need asking, that clearly concern a larger community?  Will I lose my fascination with food if I drop the exhibitionism?  I don’t know. But I do know that, besides the food thing, I have more interests and aspirations than I have time or energy for.  And I pass up on so much, because I let the RVAfoodie priority push possibly more important things into the background.  That’s reason enough to shake things up, redirect my focus, take inventory of the debts that I owe to myself and those close to me, and hopefully rediscover assets that I’ve probably forgotten.

Although I’m being vague about a complicated set of factors that have necessitated this decision, for those looking for a simple explanation, the biggest catalyst is that I’m starting a new day-job situation and need to give it my full attention.  I’ve just ended over 10 years of public sector employment, supporting Virginia’s system of adult education (namely GED and literacy programs).  And I’m going to work for a company providing online learning options toward the same goals of a GED credential and college and career readiness for people of all ages.  My background in distance education and all this experience with social media makes me more than qualified. Now I’ve just got to make it work.  It’s something I believe in, so I think I’m up to the task (contact me at guardjk – @ – gmail if this peaks your interest, or you have connections to pass along).

Yeah.  My motivation is partly economic, as much as it is about trying a different approach to life in pursuit of a fresh perspective. I’m sure I could find time to squeeze in a scaled down amount of blogging and tweeting, but I’d rather not.  I wanna see what life reveals to me while going cold-turkey from the habits (both bad and good) that went along with the extroverted food commentator hobby. It is ironic, though, that my consumer advocacy wound up being so damned consuming.  Too bad I never bothered to monetize it, or make it truly sustainable, or establish any verifiable outcomes for the resume at the very least. Boo hoo hoo.

But don’t think for a second that I’m not proud of what I’ve achieved with this over the years, in part thanks to the participation of the commenters and guest bloggers who’ve contributed here. It’s been a real labor of love trying to balance my curious  palate, the moving target of the public’s interest, and a healthy dose of my own politics.  That’s why I don’t attribute an iota of this decision to a handful of detractors in the restaurant-bar scene, or the supposed alternative media, or the convenient overlap between the two.  I’m okay with leaving a number of accounts unsettled and things on my todo list (though a few might get posted here before January is over). But mostly, I’m comfortable stepping back and letting other voices fill that void. There’s almost 80 food bloggers at EatingRichmond.com (and more on the verge of going public).  So, keep an eye on that space. For anyone looking to pitch in, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna need someone else to step up and help the designer/programmer,  David VanBlaricom, with that food blog aggregator.

This blog grew out of a relatively innocuous impulse, and at the urging of my wife: to try and share a food experience that I didn’t feel worthy of – a wedding present dinner at The Inn at Little Washington in 2006.  I wanted my parents to be able to taste the fruits of their generous gift, if only vicariously. And I kinda felt like the experience would have been kinda wasted on me if I didn’t try to tell the tale. That last part has continued on throughout this blog and tweets. What’s it matter how much I enjoyed or puzzled over that or the subsequent thousands of food experiences, if I don’t find some way to share it?  Just consume and forget?  I guess I’ll be rediscovering that sensation come February, and ironically, my wife will breathe a sign of relief.

Hopefully, this site’s spirit of “frugality and uncouth social action” will find other outlets and spokespeople.

Thanks for reading and participating.

Jason Guard/RVAfoodie

Updated with a last hurrah of tweets on January 31:

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

@

Retiring at midnight! If I can’t be grandiose now, when? (for @HeadPlaygirl)

31 Jan

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that RVAfoodie was bigger than Jesus. I shoulda said, “He is my dark passenger.”

31 Jan

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

@nickdawson if u got @RoosterCart’s rooster banh mi, I dunno where u can go from that apex of vegan deliciousness. Jen is quite capable tho.

31 Jan

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

In all honesty, I have no eff-ing idea where I’ll find my next creative outlet, or where I’ll go vent and/or connect.

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

There’s a pattern between the foodie conclusion and my switching day-jobs. I coulda gone either way, but… gotta follow the opportunities.

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

I can’t even fathom how my relationships with my wife and kids were affected by the food blog hobby. But I can’t wait to see what I missed.

31 Jan

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

It’s hard to believe, but RVAfoodie is older than both of my kids and pretty much conceived on my wedding night! (a month later, actually)

31 Jan

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

This thing has been a big part of my life. Maybe too big. Bigger than Jesus! ;o) (bad Beatles joke) What’s gonna fill that void?

31 Jan

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

The pile of hasty blog entries I posted this month was my attempt at going out with a bang. They inspired a whimper of a response. Fitting.

31 Jan

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

Despite the air of finality, I can be found on Facebook, thru @byrdparkdotnet and the much more talented, @darlingoctopus.

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

I know the foodie thing is just a hobbie, but minimizing it isn’t satisfying for me while trying to balance the day-job and the family.

31 Jan

RVAfoodie RVAfoodie

Essentially, I like food blogging/tweeting too much to continue spinning my wheels. Not enough time in my life to make progress and grow it.

31 Jan

I never meant for my blog to be about restaurants, and maybe wishful thinking here, but I hope it ultimately wasn’t. It’s like that saying, “Great people talk about ideas. Average people talk about things. Small people talk about other people.” Philosophically, I wanted to talk about ideas, but I often settled for ‘things,’ like new places to buy food. The people and their businesses usually weren’t really what I wanted to be involved with. Except, I often liked restaurants (and sometimes the people too) and wanted to spread the word (failing to articulately split hairs here). And in the case of those places listed above, I’ve got a good feeling, or feel some affinity, and I’m sad I won’t get a chance to send the 15 Caramelized OpiNIONS readers out there to follow up on my recommendations.

If there were any justice, all of you would take me to a surprise going away party at Phoenix Garden. But, it looks like it’s just going to be an awkward goodbye, should we hug, okay see ya, kinda thing. I guess that happens when you announce that you’re breaking up and then continue to hang around for a few more weeks. Well, I tried to leave a legacy’s cache of posts as a parting gift. And the gift that’d be a great consolation in return would be if you all would pack Phoenix Garden day and night for the next year. Not because they’re good (I really don’t know yet), but because Richmond needs this dining option: vegan pho and banh mi sandwiches, fake meatball pasta dishes, Happy Family with five kinds of mock meat. Just look at the pictures on their website!

I gave up on Panda Veg back when it was Panda Garden and China Panda long before that. It’s time to support a new kid on the block of tofu. And this one seems like it has the potential to become more Sunflower in Vienna and less Grace Street grease pit, if it can overcome its location across from The Dump and past life as a strip club. The sign on the side is a bad omen, expressing a bit of desperation. Funnel cake might bring some people in, but probably not for the vegan chicken nuggets, and they’ll probably wanna know where the scrippers at.

Bike punx: I double dog dare you to put a PBR in your bike’s water bottle holder and pedal out Brook Road, past Taco Bell and the interstate, and coast to the bottom of a the long hill that leads to Phoenix Garden. Do it weekly. Call it “a noodle ride.” You’ll tell your kids about the days when you kept a weird little restaurant open with your Blue Ribbon beer fueled bike riding.

On the topic of vegan banh mi sandwiches, I’m glad that there’s a new option, but they’re going to have a tough time dethroning Jen Mindell’s version, made famous at the now closed Cafe Gutenberg. Today was Jen’s first day back slingin those subs in her Rooster Cart. It was stationed behind Bandito’s on Patterson, just off Boulevard. She’s switched to bonafide banh mi bread from Catina at Horsepen and Broad. The light and crispy bread, along with the BBQ tofu and picked veg are all totally dialed in perfection. If you missed your chance at one of these in The Bottom, now’s your chance. The Rooster banh mi might actually surpass any of her other sandwiches, by the way (it’s spicy fried mock duck, not actually male chicken, by the way). Maybe someplace like Pasture or Blue Goat will offer a cock’s comb sandwich as restaurant retort (probably already on the menu at Full Kee).

The sandwich you see above made me crave a Vietnamese ice coffee with condensed milk. Something about the spicy wanted sweet, or maybe I just hadn’t had my coffee yet. Then, I thought, someone needs to make that a milkshake flavor, or at least a bubble tea slush drink (not a banh mi milkshake, silly).

Somehow, these impulses and epiphanies sent me straight to RealiTea on Main.* I’d been meaning to buy some loose tea for brewing at home. Of the 60 varieties, I went with one I’d never had, Liquid Jade, a green tea with bergamot oil. It’s delicious. Very adult. With each sip, I feel more mature and full of gratitude. Namas-tea.

*are any local restaurants offering RealiTea’s tea? Get with that, folks. The stuff is not ordinary. It’s a destination drink. Full of flavors, perfect for food pairings, if you’re into that.

The message of a plant-based diet is echoed elsewhere in mainstream media and the marketplace. Healthy, local, and sustainable are all over the media and on everyone’s lips, giving the impression of a paradigm shifting popularity level and a change in society’s consciousness. But part of that new analysis isn’t getting adopted: The specific conclusion that many of our best and brightest food thinkers seem to have reached is that we need to eat less meat, if not abandon animal products all together. The arguments they make are increasingly sane and reasonable, and the prescription is often delicious. And yet, it doesn’t seem like that message has broken the habits of your average diner (or you reading this, or me writing this) and certainly not the food industry which seems to be responding with a rebellious middle finger.

What are we really doing with our mouths when we’re not echoing platitudes about a more politically correct diet? Judging by the latest food buzz, we’re eating piles of fried pigs ears, bacon wrapped sliders topped with foie gras, and a smattering of animal entrails served six ways on small plates. Concept restaurant trends, obscure animal organ obsessed TV chefs, and the lack of really delicious creative healthy food on menus or in deli cases… well, it seems like business as usual to me.

Or maybe the big business of meat eating is being squeezed through a tiny loophole with justifications like “nose to tail,” or “farm to table.”  And along with those slogans returns the common meat-focused diet that wasn’t really going to go anywhere to begin with, no matter how discredited or disreputable it has become.

It’s not a surprise that change is begrudging. After years of my own not too strict and mostly non-dogmatic vegetarianism, I would never have foretasted so many influential people coming forward about the need to shift toward a plant-based diet. And yet, vegetarianism has racked up numerous victories of late.  Maybe we should celebrate with a round of french fries and onion rings (fried in trendy duck fat, of course). In an effort to curtail my own jaded and unhealthy back-sliding, I’m struggling to truly take to heart even the simplest dietary advice. Michael Pollan synopsizes his findings in the Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food as “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” I’ll admit, it doesn’t sound too exciting. I’ve managed the first part, though. His conclusion came from an open question about the environmental and personal health of our country/planet’s industrialized approach to food production. Everywhere you turn, someone is advising that we scale back our carnivorous intake, calling for only one meaty meal per day, or at least one meatless meal per day and/or a single meatless family dinner per week. The efforts to persuade have taken many forms. And still, there isn’t a single vegetarian show on The Food Network. And are there any “Restaurants of the Year” who’ve earned their reputation by providing mostly meatless meals?

I’m linking to Dr. Caldwell’s book again, not so you’ll buy it, but so you can read the fascinating discussions that follow some of the reviews.

• A book called Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer appealed to people who eat meat using his own introspection and reasonable consideration of the facts at hand.

• Mark Bittman issued his How to Cook Everything with a vegetarian version and then a treatise on the problems of our obsession with meat in Food Matters. And throughout, his NYTimes columns documented his shift toward a “vegan til dinner” approach to eating.

• Iron Chef Mario Batali, a modern archetype of gluttonous indulgence in terms of his intake and critter cuisine wizardry in terms of his kitchens’ output, is now making vegetarian food a personal and professional priority. “I’m a vegetarian all day until dinner, and I try to eat no meat whatsoever on Monday and Tuesday,” he told the Detroit Free Press in 2010. “I think overall we’re spending too much of our natural resources on producing beef, and better natural resource management is essential to our future. … So I’m trying to be more responsible..”

• The Food Inc movie came out and featured Virginia’s own Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, with a slightly less nauseating tale of woe than we saw in Fast Food Nation a few years earlier.

• Forks Over Knives delivered a disturbing and riveting result of otherwise dry data that shows animal products to be the chief element in human illnesses and life-span reduction. (Richmond doctor, Nick Dawson found this movie especially motivational in his eating habit conversion)

• Dr. Dean Ornish and the author of Diet for a New America, John Robbins, prescribe a plant-based Food Revolution to “save the world and our lives.”

• Supernatural Cooking went from blog to book form, twice.

• A punk rock home cook went from angry outsider in Vegan with a Vengance to authoritative resource with Veganomicon to full on Martha Stewart mainstream with books on vegan cupcakes, pies, and brunch.

• Even the athletics focused are jumping on board. Brendan Frazier’s Thrive is gaining momentum by emphasizing high performance foods while “considering the amount of each natural resource that goes into food production in exchange for the amount of nutrients that food offers.”

All of this sounds like we’ve undergone some serious societal change. But, looking around the restaurant world and the prepared foods section of your favorite grocery stores, it’s apparent that meat is still the top priority in the American diet. It’s either the centerpiece or the source of flavor. Sure, vegetarian options are an undeniable requirement of doing business (hello portobello burger), but they’re still often forgettable (hello again portobello burger), and certainly not the enlightened focus of many kitchens or the basis of any chef’s repertoire who wants to maintain a steady income.

So, what are we supposed to think when we take in all this information that’s contrary to the food industry all around us? Or rather, what are we supposed to think when the overwhelming majority of food purveyors encourage us to ignore health and environmental wellness. Are businesses afraid to jump on board the veggie bandwagon? Is there no profit there? Or is it customers’ job to lead by example and put our money where our priorities are?  Well, first we’d have to change those priorities.  Ya know, be the change, before the doctor mandates reformed eating habits to save our lives.