Monthly Archive

Seder Plate by Eliya, on Flickr

Our first assignment is just a fun chat at the dinner table.

When families get together for the holidays, there’s almost always a meal involved. Do you have special foods for Christmas? Passover? Birthdays? Fourth of July? Some families have a special meal that’s prepared for a family reunion. Others have food traditions like, “Aunt Sally brought her yellow potato salad to the picnic again.” Tonight, at the dinner table, talk about some of your family’s food traditions. What foods “taste like Thanksgiving” to you? Have every family member fill in these blanks with their own thoughts: “It wouldn’t feel like _______________ without _________.” (For example, “It wouldn’t feel like New Years Day without chili and cornbread,” or “It wouldn’t feel like Labor Day without steaks on the grill.” This discussion might take several meals if you get into the “remember the time…” stories. This oral tradition of passing down your family’s history is fun and can involve everyone no matter what age.

If you have a teenager who will be leaving home in a few years, they might want to write down those special foods. If the time comes that your teen can’t get home to celebrate with you, they can have a piece of home by enjoying their family’s traditional foods with their friends.

Day 91 - Roast Chicken Wrapped in Bacon by JoeGray, on Flickr

The more I read about what’s ailing our country’s farming, marketing, health care, food processing and purchasing economies, the more I hear the same refrain: “No one is teaching our children how to cook.” I think it goes deeper than that. Parents are busy to the point of outsourcing the food preparation which many never learned themselves. How are we going to transfer skills to the next generation that might be dormant in ourselves? This isn’t something we can send the kids to school to learn, either. The state of the overburdened school system and failure of the school lunch program is proof enough for me that nutritional education is not going to happen in the schoolroom.

We are a homeschooling family. For the last 19 years we’ve taught our children at home. It’s a full-time job and ministry, to be sure, and I’m not convinced that it’s something every family could or should undertake. But, to some degree, all families homeschool. If you’ve potty-trained a child, you’ve taught them. If they speak the language spoken in your home, they probably learned most of that from you. Why not spend a few minutes at mealtime encouraging your children toward a healthy lifestyle?

To make it as easy as possible for you, I’m starting a new section of my blog dedicated to “lessons” your family can do together. Some will take a couple minutes, others will be longer and more involved. Some will include worksheets, labs, discussion points, games and other fun things to do. I plan to take a multi-disciplinary approach, including work in math, science, literature, social studies, geography, history and art. Some will be obviously simple, others more complex.

But, I want to warn you: this is a blog, not a textbook! Your input will be what really makes this project work. What do you want to teach? Learn? Do? Check back later this week for Lesson 1: Tastes Like a Holiday.

One-upmanship by Paul Robert Lloyd, on Flickr

An Advertising Age Magazine article this week informs us that Jared is about to overtake Ronald in the race to become the largest fast food chain in the world in number of locations. (It’s fascinating being a blogger and reading so much from so many diverse sources!)

Now, before you get all excited, let’s remember a couple things. First, Subway is still fast food. It’s still processed to within an inch of its life. Hot subs are still microwaved. Chicken is still fried (not onsite, but fried elsewhere and shipped frozen). Breads are still full of flour bleached white and hard to digest. The meats are still full of MSG and too much dead, white salt. The typical side orders of cookies, chips and soda are nutritionally no better than McDonald’s parfaits, fries and soda.

Last month I reread Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. He does a fascinating piece about people’s tendencies to under- or over-estimate what they eat based on their assumptions. For example, when a Subway meal and a McDonald’s meal are placed side by side before them, people will often “healthwash” the Subway meal, underestimating fat and calorie counts by 10% or more. One person when interviewed said, “I saw a sign that this sub has only 7 calories, that’s why I got it.” Tip: it was 7 grams of fat, didn’t include the sauces and was for a six-inch sub, not the monster footlong the customer was eating.

Just a reminder, nutritional information is available online at the Subway site. By all means, enjoy a good meal out on special occasions. But know what it is you are fueling your one and only body with! Not all food is real food, after all.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted by Cheeseslave.

Ghostbusters Patch by JD Hancock, on Flickr

There’s a brand new drug
Here to save the day,
Who you gonna call?
Ghostwriters!
If want thumbs-up
From the FDA,
Who you gonna call
Ghostwriters!

Company develops new drug. Company sends drug out for independent safety and efficacy testing. Researchers who complete the testing write up safety and efficacy information. If proven safe and effective, researcher sends article to appropriate medical journal for publication. FDA uses researcher’s report to rule on acceptance of drug.

What, that’s not how it works?

In a recent article from the NYT, the process was sketched out a little more clearly for those of us who are clueless (like me.) Now, I’m the wife of a publishing professional and am well acquainted with the practice of ghostwriting. It’s not evil, it’s not done for illicit purposes or to deceive, at least not in the world of novels. When someone wants a letter of recommendation from an employer upon leaving a job, it is customary in many industries to write your own for the employer to sign. That’s just how it’s done.

But ghostwriting in medical research is a far more insidious practice. Medical ghostwriting involves authors working at drug companies (read: employed by or paid by) crafting the documentation. Words are chosen to describe the testing in the most positive light to maximize sales. The funding is never revealed, and the resulting sales pitch is not unlike the drug ads you see on television. The major difference is that these sales pitches are being used as “evidence” in the decision making process by the FDA and the prescribing process by your doctor.

Once the pitch is written, prominent doctors and universities are approached to become the author of record on the article before its publication in major medical journals. “Just three days ago, I got a request to be the author of a ghostwritten article about the effectiveness of a cholesterol-lowering drug,” Dr. James H. Stein, professor of cardiology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, said this month. “This happens all the time.” He declined and the drug pushers company looked elsewhere for an “author.”

There are entire companies that exist for the purpose of ghostwriting medical research. Internal documents at one such company indicates that the maker of a hormone replacement therapy drug asked the emphasis of the report to de-emphasize the danger of breast cancer to those who take that particular drug. This skewed “research” was quoted for eight years in various medical journals.

These journals are how practicing physicians stay current on research and advances in their field. Running ghostwritten sales pitches there is, in my opinion, about equivalent to Domino Sugar rewriting elementary history textbooks with a more “sugar-industry friendly” version of slavery, complete with advertisements and recipes.

It is no wonder there is a trust gap. So much money changes hands between researchers, the drug companies, medical journals, the FDA and NIH that the process can’t possibly be without corruption. My best ammunition while the powers-that-be duke it out is avoidance. I’ve cleaned up my diet, my environment, my lifestyle. I’ve gotten off all lifestyle medications that I possibly can, especially those that cause cascading failures in other body systems. Of course, I did this only with a doctor’s supervision, but I also asked questions. Do research. Don’t accept the line from the advertisement, “It’s FDA approved, so I know it’s safe” at face value.

As we move closer to a system of national health care, it will become increasingly important to have sound information and trusted sources. Your own knowledge could become as important as your doctor’s. It’s time to start taking those first steps toward health independence now.

I was reading an interesting piece today about how there is a positive correlation between waist circumference (an indicator of obesity) and “price sensitivity.” That is, when money is tight and we try to cut back on our food budget, we run the risk of weight gain. A long period of price sensitivity, therefore, can be detrimental to our health. How much of the price difference is actual and how much is perceived is a subject for great debate. I was formulating some thoughts on that for this blog post when this article about a possible upcoming tax on soda caught my eye. The diabetic man in New York City featured in Food, Inc. who lost so much weight from doing nothing but skipping soda leaped to mind, as did the family shopping for food on a very limited budget.

When hubby and I were first married, we were a two-income family. Money was no problem, there was plenty for private school, three square meals cooked at home and weekend mini-vacations. After we had been married nine years, I started staying home with the children and we had to manage on one income. There have been three periods of extreme financial crisis in our marriage: one when hubby and I were both unable to work due to illness and injury and two caused by extended periods of unemployment. The number of years we spent with “enough” money to pay the bills and eat well are far outnumbered by the years we spent with enough to cover the bills with little left over for food or other needs.

One of the ways I stretched our food budget was clipping coupons and shopping at multiple stores weekly (as many as five in one week) to get the most for my dollar. I got pretty good at it: I rarely had a shopping trip that I saved less than $20 after coupons were deducted and my average was closer to $50. But if you’ve browsed coupon slicks and store circulars, you know the savings did not come from meats, vegetables, fruits and dairy. Even the few specials on these items were not for the foods we eat these days, but for the cheapest of the feedlot meats, the most processed of the dairy, and the furthest trucked-in produce. Still, my priority was filling the empty tummies.

I’m not proud of this, but share it with you now because I want you to know there is another way: There were weeks on end that the only appliances turned on in my kitchen were the microwave and coffee pot. Months went by where the only beverage to cross my lips, other than the occasional sip of water, was Coke, and that in great quantity. Shopping days came and went when we had to eat a half gallon of ice cream right away to make room for all the frozen entrees.

What I didn’t understand then was the difference between calorie-dense and nutrient-dense foods. Calorie-dense foods can be nutrient-dense as well, but the worst of the calorie-dense foods are just calories with no nutrition. Soda falls into this category. It is also addictive. The sweetness, the energy boost, these are things our bodies tell us they need frequently. It’s outdated information, programmed in when food was much more scarce. I was choosing the most calorie-dense foods in the market, thinking that those calories were about the same as any other calorie, something to stuff in hungry mouths to stave them off a few more hours.

Would a soda tax cut back on consumption, especially among price-sensitive individuals? Probably, unless Coke and Pepsi really bite the bullet and print lots and lots of high-value coupons. But, will those price-sensitive individuals just shift to other non-nutritive drinks? Probably, and that could be even worse for our health care crisis than calorie dense soda. More efficient than penalizing the consumer might be the removal of artificial government supports that prop up a failed food supply system. Take the subsidized corn out of the foods it doesn’t belong in before you ask the consumer at large to do without, please.

The best of the nutrient-dense foods are not expensive. I know you are rolling your eyes and shaking your head and probably muttering, “Prove it” under your breath. Fellow blogger The Nourishing Gourmet does just that (and beautifully) in her $5 Dishes and $10 Main categories. Kelly the Kitchen Kop also has a great category for ideas on how to eat very well on a budget. Organic and Thrifty is an entire blog devoted to the best food at the least cost.

Some of us eat more organ and less muscle meat, some make homemade kefir “soda pop” instead of buying the industrial version, some garden and keep chickens. The point is that you can eat well on a budget. You do not need to resort to eating the worst the store has to offer because times are tight. I have lived it for a while now, and seen my per person/per day food costs drop considerably by taking advantage of CSA programs, farmer’s markets and home cooking. That’s right: I’m paying less for food now than I did when I bought processed foods at the grocery store. And I know we are healthier because our medical bills also have gone down.

Resources like those I’ve listed above are available online. Tips abound. Start small, find something that works for you and share that tip with others, especially those who insist that eating healthily is too expensive.  If you can’t find anywhere to share, tell me! We know what ails us, let’s start working on solutions.

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays, hosted by Food Renegade.

Return to the local farmer's market, Aug 2009 - 37 from Flickr

Vilsack and Merrigan announced that this week will be “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” week. They apparently have $65 million set aside for various programs and will be rolling those out in the next few days. While I’m all in favor of the general idea, at this point I’m on the “wait and see” side of the fence. Why?

It’s easy for government to step in and say, “Hey, look at us! We’re good guys!” when they have money they want to throw at a problem that has caught the public’s attention. Safe food, local eating, sustainable farming, all the buzzwords that have filled the air and airwaves this summer have caught the USDA’s attention. That’s good. But will they hear the cattleman who brings legitimate argument against food safety bills which would force him out of business and put hundreds or thousands of consumers one step further from safe food instead of closer? Are they listening to the lies about raw milk being dangerous perpetrated by big dairy? Do they hear the whole argument about the importance of removing government subsidies from corn and other food products to restore balance to the marketplace or only the part Big Ag’s lobbyists have the power and money to push?

Think I’m just being skeptical without reason? Let’s do a quick comparison of three tiny blurbs from today’s press release:

“Reconnecting consumers and institutions with local producers will stimulate economies in rural communities, improve access to healthy, nutritious food for our families, and decrease the amount of resources to transport our food.”

Sounds good, Secretary Vilsack. Decrease amount of resources to transport our food. Looks like you’re advocating local food supply.

“‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ seeks to focus that conversation on supporting local and regional food systems to strengthen American agriculture by promoting sustainable agricultural practices and spurring economic opportunity in rural communities.”

Lovely! Deputy Secretary Merrigan agrees. But wait…

“USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service proposed regulations to implement a new voluntary cooperative program under which select state-inspected establishments will be eligible to ship meat and poultry products in interstate commerce. The new program was created in the 2008 Farm Bill and will provide new economic opportunities for small meat and poultry establishments, whose markets are currently limited.”

Oh. So, here we see not the acceptance of small and local establishments as being valuable and viable within their own locality, but an expansion of shipping across state lines. Funny, that sounds an awful lot like more of the same “get big or get out” line to me. I thought we were trying to support local and regional food, not send my local and regional food two or three states away. But maybe I’m confused. Symbolic rhetoric solely for the sake of public adulation does that to me sometimes.

But, in the meantime, consumers (that’s you and me, folks) can make of this week what we choose. So, go to the Farmer’s Market. You know you’ve been meaning to, but the parking, and the summer heat, and well…

Start here. Find your market. Then, just go. Be bold. Introduce yourself. Ask about those bumpy aqua-colored squash. Find out how to cook okra so it doesn’t get slimy. Hear about the purple and white spotted green beans that turn light green when they are “done” cooking. As Michael Pollan says, “Shake the hand that feeds you.” Buy something. Bring it home and eat it. Know your farmer and know your food. You’ll learn something about yourself. And when you do, come back here and share!

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted this week by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

When red bell peppers reach the height of their availability in late summer, they are inexpensive, delicious and sweet. But, it’s nearly impossible to eat them all before they start to go squishy! Lacto-fermenting is a great way to preserve these gems. Allowing the peppers to soak in whey encourages the growth of healthful bacteria which supports your immune system and digestion. The sea salt discourages bad bacteria from taking over while the good bacteria flourishes.

A slice of these peppers on a sandwich or in a salad is wonderful. I love them on a slice of bread with butter. They are also delicious added to casseroles (after baking so the good bacteria isn’t killed off before it gets to you!) or blended into a sauce to pour over fish. It’s a simple process, but I’ve taken photos to walk you through it.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Olive oil to rub on the peppers
4 Tablespoons whey
A clean, wide-mouthed quart canning jar and lid
1 Tablespoon sea salt
Roasting pan
Red bell peppers
paper sack or two

Rub the bell peppers with olive oil while your broiler heats up. Set them in the glass baking dish.

Put the glass dish in the broiler and turn the peppers as the skin darkens on each side. If you have a gas stove, it works just as well to hold the pepper with tongs over the flame until each side gets blackened. You don’t want the peppers to cook, just darken, so use high heat and cook fast.

Drop the peppers into paper sacks and close them up.

The steam they create will loosen the peels, which then you just peel off with your fingers.

Cut the peppers open and scoop out the seeds, then cut them into strips. Drop the strips into your clean jar adding a little of the salt after each “layer”. Add whey. When I separate whey, I freeze it into ice cubes of 2T each. Then when I need some, I just take out the number of cubes I need and let them defrost.

Push down gently on the peppers to release their juices and get the all under the liquid. (I understand there’s a special tool for this, but my meat hammer works just as well.)

If there isn’t enough liquid, add a little clean, filtered water to the jar. It’s very important all the pepper strips be covered in liquid. You also want the top of the peppers to be about an inch below the top of the jar because they will expand a little while they ferment.

Put the lid on the jar and label it. Leave your jar undisturbed for three or four days (much depends on the temperature of your house and tasting will be your best judge of “doneness.”) Then refrigerate the jar until you are ready to use them.

I wish I could tell you exactly how long these last. I have had comments to my blog that they last six weeks, others say closer to three months. They never last here that long because we eat them up so fast!

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival, hosted by GNOWFGLINS.

An Associated Press release yesterday (September 8, 2009) states that two California produce shippers have recalled thousands of cases of green onions supplied by an onion farm in Mexicali, Mexico, over fears the onions could be contaminated with salmonella. Department of Agriculture inspectors found salmonella in a routine test taken last month. No illnesses have been reported. Officials notified the shipper, Steinbeck Country Produce. The company issued a voluntary recall for 3,360 cartons. The shipper Ocean Mist Farms recalled 1,746 cases as well, after realizing they came from the same lot.

It’s not the onions, people, it’s the number of hands and chemical “inputs” on the onions that make the difference. As Michael Pollan says, “Shake the hand that feeds you.” If your produce comes from three thousand miles away and takes half an army to get it to you, that’s a lot of hands touching what you put in your mouth. Buy local and support your neighborhood farm. If you don’t know where it is, click the “Local Harvest” button on the left side of the page and find out!

Oh, one more note: did you notice that the test turned up positive in August, but the recall wasn’t issued until September? Let’s be careful out there!