Suggestions Wanted

Lunches. The kids take a lunch to school, and I am running out of ideas. I would love to pack leftovers, but frankly my kids aren't that big of fans of dinner (yet), so mostly I get a resounding "NO" when I ask if they want last nights casserole or pasta. I have broken down and bought turkey (the good kind without all the gunk in it) for sandwiches. And of course they have peanut butter, but they can only eat so much peanut butter before they revolt. I think they have already tired of PBJ and PBH. They take Quesadilla's sometimes. I buy beans and rice from a Mexican deli and they take that sometimes, but they are growing tired of it. It is becoming such a struggle to come up with healthy, good lunch ideas. At today's dr. appointment Lucy had dropped well below normal on weight, which may or may not be a big deal. I can't get her to eat. Sometimes I feel like giving up and letting her eat the crap food she craves. HELP!!!!

Another Link for Another Great Pollan article

This one  "Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch" is about America's obsession with cooking shows, but it's inability to actually spend time cooking.   The more hours a person spends cooking the healthier they are, because of course homemade food, made from scratch is healthier than packaged food and take-out. As always an interesting read. I read it while I thawed a frozen pizza. Let me tell you how guilty I felt! VERY.

Protein from Plants

In Michael Pollan's Eater's Manifesto, which this blog is named after, he talks about how people have been eating natural foods in beneficial combinations for eons.  Until of course industrialized food came along.  

Today I went to a weight class at the gym and my muscles are quivering.  It hurts my shoulders just to type.  The teacher wanted to make sure everyone made sure they went home and ate plenty of protein.  Sadly her suggestions were to go eat manmade bars and drinks.  Anyway that got me thinking about how superior plant protein is.  Scientist keep discovering more and more ways that simple old plants are good for us.  We don't even know all the benefits yet of eating God-given food versus supplement industry food. Of course if you eat beans without rice you aren't getting a complete protein. But the way humans have evolved to eat plant protein and in certain combinations is interesting.

Anyway most of you already know this stuff, but just in case here are some ways to combine plant foods to get complete and perfect proteins:

• Grains plus legumes. Try black beans and rice (the staple diet of a huge number of people). 
• Nuts and seeds plus legumes. Lentil soup with a serving of almonds on the side.  Or Hummus (sesame/chickpea).
• Corn plus legumes. Try pinto beans in a corn tortilla.

Isn't nature a funny old thing?  The way natural foods just seem to provide all the nourishment our bodies need and old-school culture helps combine those foods in ways that suit our dietary needs perfectly?  

Rethinking Breakfast

Another good NYT article about whole grains, breakfast, and expanding horizons.
Click here to read.

Whole grain pasta

We are trying to introduce more whole grains and whole wheat into our diet. This week we tried whole grain pasta. At Harmon's, Barilla was by far the cheapest brand and the ingredients were all natural. Plus it's the brand recommended by Backpacker magazine (woohoo!) I'm a little vague on definitions, though, and hope to glean from the vast amount of knowledge. First of all, I noticed that it is whole grain, with about 50% whole wheat (oats were also listed as ingredients). Is that less nutritional that whole wheat pasta? Also, how much of a difference is there, nutritionally, between whole grain pasta and white pasta? 

I was a little apprehensive, but we used the Barilla whole grain pasta in the Ginger Sesame Noodles with Broccoli recipe and it was fabulous!

Some Good Ideas

This great article in the NYTimes by Mark Bittman has some great ideas for eating fresher and healthier in the winter. He talks about stuff to toss out of your pantry and what fresh ingredients to put in. Here is a sample:
OUT Canned beans (except in emergencies).

IN Dried beans. More economical, better tasting, space saving and available in far more varieties. Cook a pound once a week and you’ll always have them around (you can freeze small amounts in their cooking liquid, or water, indefinitely). If you’re not sold, try this: soak and cook a pound of white beans. Take some and finish with fresh chopped sage, garlic and good olive oil. Purée another cup or so with a boiled potato and lots of garlic. Mix some with a bit of cooking liquid, and add a can of tomatoes; some chopped celery, carrots and onions; cooked pasta; and cheese and call it pasta fagiole or minestrone. If there are any left, mix them with a can of olive-oil-packed tuna or sardines. And that’s just white beans.

or how about this:

OUT Bouillon cubes or powder, or canned stock.

IN Simmer a carrot, a celery stalk and half an onion in a couple of cups of water for 10 minutes and you’re better off; if you have any chicken scraps, even a half-hour of cooking with those same vegetables will give you something 10 times better than any canned stock.

or:
OUT Bottled salad dressing and marinades. The biggest rip-offs imaginable.

IN Take good oil and vinegar or lemon juice, and combine them with salt, pepper, maybe a little Dijon, in a proportion of about three parts oil to one of vinegar. Customize from there, because you may like more vinegar or less, and you undoubtedly will want a little shallot, or balsamic vinegar, or honey, or garlic, or tarragon, or soy sauce. ...

Be sure to read through the article; there are tons of good suggestions.  In fact I am going to try Jennette's lentil soup recipe (a new fav with our family) with some prosciutto instead of bacon as per his suggestion.  

Pasta

This FiberWise pasta is my new find.

It is made with flax flour and pea flour so has tons of fiber, like the name says,

but not that whole wheat pasta taste. My kids didn't even notice a difference.

I have found it only at Harmons so far.

Some Things We Love

I wanted to post about a few of or favorite organic or all natural foods we love. What are some of yours?Weetabix (almost forgot!)

Stretch Island Fruit Leather

Annie's mac and cheese

Kashi

So yummy!

A Great Article

This is a great article with practical ideas on how to cut back on meat consumption.  It is not an article on becoming a vegetarian but rather on just cutting back.  

Genetically Modified Foods

Last night on some news show I heard a blurb about genetically modified foods or GMO's which had me googling this morning to find out more. I knew there were GMO's to be had at the grocery store and although I did not have much specific information about the topic I instinctively knew these were things that I wanted to avoid putting on my family's table. What alarmed me, and many of you probably already knew this, is that in the U.S.the powers that be lobbied so that GMO's do not have to be labled at all in our grocery stores! (Many other countries have strict labeling laws or have banned GMO's altogether). It has been estimated that at least 60% of the U.S. food supply contain GM ingredients. What?! These things that I would avoid are all in my pantry and fridge?

GMO's are food produced from genetically modified organisms which alter the make-up of living organisms. The most common of these being soya, corn, canola, and cotton seed oil. The program last night indicated that most foods (I believe they said up to 90%) on store shelves that have any kind of soy or corn (including high fructose corn syrup) contain GMO's. The less common are peas, potatoes, tomatoes, sweet peppers, lettuce, onions, peanuts, squashes, sugar beets, wheat, and walnuts.There are numerous health reasons to avoid such foods; the transfer of antibiotic-resistance to bacteria in our systems, an increase in occurance of cancer among those who injest such foods, birth defects, allergies, and the Journal of Medicinal Foods did a study which found that GMO's contained lower levels of vital nutrients than their counterparts.

There are also several unforeseen consequences; declines in wild life, insects, and weeds that the previous feed on, this affects both the farmed and wild ecosystems, it also shifts agriculture towards biotechnology companies who then gain more control over food and its production and over the farmers who use their products. These companies say that GMO's help the enviroment by reducing the need for pestisides and herbicides, however it would appear that they are created with just the opposite in mind, they are developed with a "toxin resistance" which means that they can withstand higher doses of pesticides and herbicides. Considering that just like pollen from regular plants, pollen from GMO's can (and will) be carried on the wind and by birds and insects to cross polinate with normal plants it is estimated that the end of organic foods will come as early as 50 years from now.

For Sarah and Maren

Sarah I know you told me that you can't get good produce at your grocery stores (just like the nasty stuff in NE).  I put a link for your local farmers market under the links list.  Sounds like your farmers market is up and running!  Maybe they will have some good produce.

And Maren I found a link for your area too.

Tried Lentils Lately?

Kris has been making lentil soup lately, and it is delicious. Katy brought a recipe for lentil soup with cilantro and tomatoes home from WA. I will post the recipe later. Lentils are super cheap, healthy, and full of protien and can be made into beautiful soups. Best of all, they don't need to be soaked before cooking and they cook quickly.

Whilst in England we had a DELICIOUS Puy Lentil Soup at the Orangery at Kensington Palace. I haven't found puy lentils here yet, but haven't tried SLC or the crazy-guy's import store.


Lentils are good enough to make Esau surrender his birthright to Jacob! (Gen. 25: 29-30, 34) I will post some recipes soon.

D.

Square foot Garden

Here is a link to my friends blog that Anna mentioned in her post. She has a nice post about her garden.

The Flexitarian Table

Today a single family can include staunch vegetarians as well as passionate meat lovers. When company shows up, the situation gets even more complicated. How can you satisfy them all without making two (or three) completely different meals?

In The Flexitarian Table, the award-winning author Peter Berley presents menus that are flexible, exciting, relaxing to prepare -- and that make everyone feel welcome. With The Flexitarian Table, you'll no longer treat vegetarians as afterthoughts by offering them a couple of scanty side dishes, and you'll be able to indulge meat eaters at the same time with abundant, satisfying dishes.

You'll learn how to prepare vegetarian and meat versions simultaneously without going to any extra trouble. Roast a succulent, crisp chicken with lemon and thyme -- and make a tofu version in just minutes. Put some meaty portobello mushroom caps on the grill and, for the carnivore contingent, throw on a steak, then pair them both with a zesty bread crumb salsa. Simmer white beans with carrot and celery and sauté some shrimp, drizzling each with the same rich brown butter sauce with fresh herbs.

You'll find many sumptuous vegetarian dishes as well, including cannelloni with ricotta, Parmesan, and mint or a hearty lasagna with roasted fall vegetables in a sage-scented cheese sauce. Or serve up a selection of easy little dishes and let your guests choose.

You'll get plenty of ideas for get-dinner-quick meals such as winter tomato soup with goat cheese crostini and Spanish-style fried eggs, and for luxurious weekend fare try cumin-spiced lamb croquettes and falafel, served with two traditional Middle Eastern sauces and whole wheat pita bread.

The Flexitarian Table also shows you how to cook with the seasons so you get the most flavor from your ingredients while you enjoy varied, sustainable meals year-round.

Recommend by my friend kmduff

(discription from www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com)

Organics 101

There is a lot of confusion about organic.  Should I buy organic and is it actually worth the cost?  Organic is more expensive and so you have to take the pros and cons and weigh them and decide if organic is for you.

First here are a few reasons that organic is better for you:

Studies are finding that food grown without artificial fertilizers in organic soil are much more nutritious.  They have more flavanoids, carotonoids, vitamins, minerals, etc.  They also tend to be better varieties.  The red delicious apple is a  mealy, tasteless variety grown because it looks pretty in the grocery store and travels in trucks from Washington to New York without looking haggard (but it sure tastes haggard).  Organic varieties tend to taste better.  If you aren't willing to make the switch to organic here is a list of what is called "The Dirty Dozen".  These tend to not just have pesticide residue on them that can be rinsed off, but tend to absorb the pesticides and should be a priority to avoid, if you choose to start down the organic produce path.  They are: potatoes, strawberries, celery, apples, pears, nectarines, peaches, spinach, raspberries, cherries, grapes, bell peppers.  Also any produce grown in latin America tends to be very heavily sprayed and should be avoided.  Why are pesticides bad for you? For one they contain carcinegens.  They are also causing nerve damage in animals that are exposed to them, so it may do the same in us.  There are some veggies and fruits that don't contain high amounts of residue and for health reasons don't need to be totally avoided.  They are: bananas, kiwis, mangos, pineapples, asparagus, brocoli, cauliflower, peas, onions, and corn.  As for milk, and other dairy products, organic is wiser because of the high levels of animal byproducts (since the madcow scare animals are not fed their own byproducts but those of other species to add protein to their diets to make them plumper or faster producers), high levels of antibiotics (the animal production industry is the number one money maker of the pharmaceutical industry) and the growth hormones.  Of course the FDA says these are acceptable practices and so you must use your own judgement and gut instincts on this one.

Beyond health issues their are also ethical and environmental issues to consider when thinking about organic.  For example, bananas of course come from latin America and are very heavily sprayed, and although their is virtually no residue in the part we eat, the heavy spraying is killing songbirds and causing all kinds of health issues for the people living near the farms and especially the workers who are getting cancer and all kinds of diseases from their job.   Another consideration is that the manufacture of chemical fertilizer and pesticides is a very very energy intensive process and produces so much carbon, that to eliminate their use would be a great stride towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Also in order to assure high yeilds farmers tend to overspray their crops and the excess gets into groundwater and streams and rivers and flows to the sea where it is killing ecosystems in a frightening way.  The Gulf of Mexico has so much runoff that huge areas of it have become hypoxic.  The fertilizer causes great beds of kelp to grow (not natural to that environment).  The kelp creates so much oxygen it has killed all the fish.  It is called the dead zone and is growing larger each year.  The same thing is happening in streams and rivers and we don't know yet exactly what the ramifications will be, but in nature we are part of a web and for the whole chain to be healthy each part needs to be healthy. 

Another ethical consideration is the fact that the large producers of commodity crops such as corn and soy (used mainly in the feed of animals and to create processed foods) are extremely heavily subsidized which is leading to very high food prices which is having disastrous results in developing countries where people can no longer afford to buy bread.  I try and opt out entirely of the "industrial food chain" for this reason.  By supporting local farmers you are supporting local farmers world wide, which is a large part of "think globally, act locally."  

Another important consideration is the treatment of animals.  Laying hens are packed into crates so tightly that they never stand.  They are under such stress that their beaks are cut off so they don't peck each other to death in their unnatural surroundings.  Pigs tails are cut off so they don't chew their tails off, due to stress.  And cattle are packed in so tightly and stand in deep piles of feces, becoming terribly ill, hence the common occurrence of unnatural diseases like e coli in our food chain.  (That feces is a huge pollution/carbon problem too). They are fed unnatural diets which cause them pain, and are kept alive to slaughter weight through heavy doses of antibiotics and large doses of growth hormone (without the combo they would certainly die before they became big enough to be made into a Big Mac or Applebee's sirloin).  Dairy cows are given huge amounts of hormones so they can constantly lactate and have high cases of painful mastitis.  The life expectancy of all these animals is low and as far as their quality of life, animals having joy in their sphere of creation, well I don't think they experience this.  I avoid fast food chains at all costs because they are a huge customer for the cruel meat industry.

Another important point is not all organic is great.  I mean, if you buy organic Asparagus from Chile in December, it has been flown and trucked using excessive amounts of fuel and so what is the point.  By eating fruits and vegetables in their seasons, as advised in the Word of Wisdom, you will be able to buy from a much more local producer.  

Also, soon you are going to see organic Coca Cola and organic Otter Pops.  Please.  Organic high fructose corn syrup? Give me a break! Organic processed foods are a joke.  Laugh at the absurdity, but don't buy.

Another consideration is many, many producers have opted out of the government's labeling system altogether.  It is very expensive to get organic certification, and some sustainable farmers aren't willing to pay that fee. When you meet a local producer (whether you are buying grass fed beef, or free range eggs, or peaches at the farmers market) you can ask them how they raised their product and it may be raised far more ethically and organically than anything that bears the organic label.  This movement, the local movement, is sometimes called beyond organic.  The people that eat locally from growers and producers they can talk to face to face are called locavores.

And don't forget, you can grow your own food.  My sister who lives in Arizona, where the soil may actually be worse than the clay in my backyard, told me her friend was trying out square foot gardening in one of those plastic splash pools, and producing quite a bit of food!  Go for it.  At least try a potted tomato and a bit of basil.

So, the biggest obstacle to buying organic is price.  Here are a couple of things to think about.  Because the cost of oil is so high, food prices are rising like mad.  The cost of producing the pesticides and fertilizers is skyrocketing (because they use so much oil in the production and distribution).  The cost of shipping the food across the world and country on refrigerated airplanes and trucks is skyrocketing.  This means that soon the costs are going to be similar between conventional products and organic.  Second, 10 years ago most American households were on a tight budget, just like today, but tight budgets or not, every household has been able to find an extra $100 to add cellular service and tivo to their budget.  The point is, it is a matter of priorities.  If you are cooking with whole, organic foods, the price may even out anyway, because you aren't buying canned and boxed items.  Anyway, it is something to think about.  

Wheat Grinders

First, I want to say thanks to Anna! Great blog topic and I'm really looking forward to some cool collaboration with all of you--and great recipes too.

I was making a comment on the earlier post about wheat in response to Millie's question about wheat grinders when I thought that perhaps it would be better to get some of this information in another post as to not detract from the discussion about finding organic wheat, etc.

Also, because it seems like there are dozens of options out there: from stone grinders with serious horsepower, to grinder attachments for your stand mixer, to simple hand grinders. Depending on your need or interest and budget, there is a lot of information to be sifted. For a basic explanation of the different kinds of grinding options available, I found this website. I haven't done any other serious searching except to find out that the grinder I currently have is just like this one being sold on Ebay. It is a work horse and apparently it can grind more than just wheat, like corn. I hadn't ever thought about stuff like that, but it gets me thinking......

Anyway, this is just to help organize any information found on this topic.

Cookbook

I have a cook book that is called
Quick Cooks' Kitchen
One-Dish Meals
175 Recipes for Maximum Taste in Minimum Time

The publisher is Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. Editor is Anna Horn and its is a Barnes & Noble Books book. It has a ton of simple and really good vegetable dishes and some with a little meat.
I will post recipes from this every now and then, but, if you cant wait...

Whole Wheat Flour

Most of you already know this, but just a little fyi, whole wheat flour goes rancid so it needs to be stored in the fridge or freezer.  If stored in the freezer let it warm up a bit before adding it to a recipe.