Category Archive

The Oregonian this week ran an interesting article about Community Supported Kitchens. I’ve heard of Community Supported Agriculture, but kitchens? Turns out it works like this: Volunteers come to an outfitted kitchen to roast, chop and stew. They receive cooking education and enjoy the camaraderie of fellow cooks while preparing the limited menu. Meals are ordered weekly and paid for in advance.

This is another brilliant way of educating the community, providing healthy meals for those who can’t or won’t cook and providing cooks a space—like an artist’s studio—where the consumer can use professional knives, cookware and appliances and hone their craft.

The CSK profiled in The Oregonian’s story featured high end products like a quart of elk short ribs with plum and wild mushrooms for $15; a pint of rosy pink, peppercorn-flecked sauerkraut for $7; and quart of summer squash soup with coconut for $10. But take a look at what else is cooking:

Salt, Fire & Time is gaining ground in the Portland food scene in part because the kitchen is preparing lacto-fermented foods, the ancient practice of naturally preserving vegetables and beverages with natural lactobacilli cultures. Lacto-fermenting has become a hot trend among Portland’s DIY urban homesteader set as a method for preserving seasonal foods. It’s also popular with some health-conscious people who believe that the probiotics made available by lacto-fermentation provide health benefits, including better digestion and gut health.

Yellig prepares familiar fermented foods such as sauerkraut and cucumber pickles, but also makes other fare that isn’t as common — fermented sauces such as ketchup and crème fraiche, soaked bean and whole grain dishes and lacto beverages such as mushroom-based kombucha, and kvass, an effervescent beet drink. She also cooks “nutrient-rich” meats into bone broths, soups, casseroles and stews made with local grass-fed beef and lamb from Highland Oak Farm and SuDan Farm.

Makes me want to move back to Oregon!

I salute this great idea whose time has most definitely come. The idea doesn’t need to be confined to the well-to-do who can easily afford a $10 quart of soup. Many families already participate in once a month “cooking parties” where meals are assembled at a single home and brought back to stock the freezers of several families. By using traditional, seasonal foods and preparation methods, and based on a volunteer-for-discounted-price model, even those of moderate means could benefit.

I know I’d dearly love a couple hours a week in a professional kitchen, learning proper skills and new techniques. That in itself would be worth the price!

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

Two of my favorite Truckers

Let me introduce you to my favorite Nashville store: The Turnip Truck.

Owner John Dyke opened the store in 2001, selling produce only. At that time, the East Nashville was in need of some serious renovation. A tornado had hit the area in 1998 and many of the buildings were damaged, including the partially built LP field where the Tennessee Titans now play. But, John saw potential and was instrumental in leading the charge to revitalize the East Nashville area. A new sense of pride has sprung up in the area and many residents sport bumper stickers like “37206: Over the river and through the hood…”

John started the East Nashville Farmer’s Market just after the terrorist attacks on our country in September of 2001. Sensing a need for the community to gather seems to come naturally for John who says, “I happen to own the store but it belongs to the neighborhood.” What started as a monthly get-together has grown into a vital meeting place for farmers, consumers, musicians and artists.

The store itself is cozy but not cramped and filled with a good variety of foods both from local farms and not-so-local producers. You won’t find the 150,000 items you’ll find at Kroger, but you will find almost everything a from-scratch organic cook would need. There is a supplements section with knowledgeable help. Grassfed meats, pastured eggs, and local dairy are abundant in the refrigerated case. Frozen prepared meals are also available along with ingredients for special diets. The beautiful local artisan cheese case includes many varieties of goat’s milk cheese and raw cheese. When you’re done shopping, you can scoop up a cup of fresh soup to enjoy at their outdoor tables. My friends who work there are patient (I know this because they don’t run and hide when they see me coming with kids in tow,) friendly and helpful. If you see an item and are baffled by it, just ask a “Trucker.” They have great ideas for all the seasonal produce they carry, supplements and even books and candles!

I like to visit the Farmer’s Market first to put money in my farmer’s hands and meet my food providers, but for the rest of my shopping list, The Turnip Truck is always my next stop. They currently have 4 stars on Yelp.com, 4 1/2 on Happy Cow.net, but personally, they are 5 stars in my book. If you find yourself in Nashville, please stop by my very favorite shop!

The Turnip Truck is located at 970 Woodland St., Nashville, TN 37206 They are open 8 AM to 8 PM Monday thru Saturday and 10 AM to 7 PM Sunday. If you can, try to come to the East Nashville Farmer’s Market, just up the road every Wednesday from 3:30 to 6:30 PM April through October.

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays hosted by Food Renegade (a Foodbuzz Blog Award nominee!) because nothing says Sustainable, Organic, Local and Ethical like a grocer who really does “get it.”

The coolest vegetable I’ve ever seen came in my CSA box this week. It was a big blue Hubbard squash. Here’s a photo of it cut in half:

I would have no idea what to do with this thing if I hadn’t listened to the farmer who grew it. She passed along a recipe that I adapted for our family. It was delicious, and I must be honest: even my non-squash-eating husband came back for seconds.

According to the farmer who grew it, “Hubbard squash was brought to New England in the late eighteenth century by a sea captain returning from the West Indies and South America. This large squash is wonderful either baked or used as a substitute for sweet potato in pies.  Hubbard Squash can weigh up to 10 pounds or more.”

Hubbard Squash Casserole

2 lbs. Hubbard squash, peeled and diced
1/2 cup soaked and cooked brown rice
1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
4 tablespoons bulghur flour
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
5 tbsp fresh thyme, finely chopped
salt and pepper
4 oz. fresh bread crumbs
coconut oil

Toss all the ingredients except the bread crumbs and oil until the squash is well coated. Put in a well-oiled casserole dish and cover with breadcrumbs. Drizzle with oil and bake at 325 degrees until deep caramel brown, about 30 minutes.

This post is part of Pennywise Platter Thursdays, hosted by Nourishing Gourmet, Make it from Scratch blog carnival and Tuesday Twister over at Gnowfglins.

Froot Loops Cereal Straws: American Junk Food by Greencolander, on Flickr

I found this article on a Canadian newswire today (emphasis formatted thus is mine):

Retailers and food manufacturers in the U.S. launched a national effort on Monday aimed at helping to reduce obesity, especially in children, by 2015.

More than 40 retailers and companies aim to encourage consumers in the marketplace, at work and in school to achieve a healthy weight.

The project is focused on helping children and adults achieve better energy balance between calories taken in from a healthy diet and calories that go out from physical activity, said David Mackay, president and chief executive officer of Kellogg Company, and chairman of the board of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation.

Members have so far committed $20 million US to raise awareness about the importance of this balance, particularly among children aged six to 11 and their parents and caregivers, including a national public education campaign that is set to launch soon.

The three parts of the campaign include:

• Marketplace: Product changes, smaller portions, redesigned packaging and labels, placing calorie information on the front of packages, providing consumers with information, and in-store promotion of the project.
• Workplace: Calorie information and healthier options in cafeterias and vending machines, access to exercise and weight management programs at work, implementing health-risk appraisals to track performance.
• Schools: Expanding a program that integrates nutrition education and physical education through a school-based curriculum to help children develop lifelong healthy habits.

Some of the companies participating include Campbell Soup Company, ConAgra Foods, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Nestlé USA, PepsiCo, Sara Lee, Coca-Cola, Hershey and Unilever.

The project is currently focused on the U.S., said Scott Openshaw, director of communications for the Washington, D.C.-based Grocery Manufacturers Association.

In 2007, many of these companies also pledged to use half of their advertising funds to promote healthy eating and active living among children in Canada.

Okay. First, let me stop laughing because this is so hypocritical it just isn’t even funny. The companies who make the worst foods for our children are going to get together and pay someone to write a curriculum to teach healthy eating in our schools. Oh yes, that will work out just fine. (I don’t suppose anyone has heard the “follow the money” paradigm of blame assignment?)

And they’re going to focus on eating calories in and exercising calories out: the same formula that has helped millions worldwide not lose weight. Uh huh. (Gary Taubes, we need you to be even LOUDER in this nation.)

The hypocrisy that really pushed me over the edge, though, was that this wasn’t announced in the United States media, only Canada’s. A few US bloggers, tweeters and commentators have picked it up, but you’d think with such a great, important announcement, these companies would be all over our press. No? No, I think they know better. I think they are looking to boost Canadian sales and hope to slip this past the US media for fear of being heckled for this ridonculous move.

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

I got a kick out of this article in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper yesterday:

We are eating a lot of butter at the moment, melted, over vegetables mostly. It brings out all that is nice about food, pushing any nasty tones into the background. I am not sure I would ever have got a bean or a cabbage leaf into a child’s mouth without using butter as its agent. It invades a green bean, and out escapes the best of the flavour. Once melted butter has curled its way seductively around a shred of brassica, any nasty sulphurous tones are gone, and you are left only with rich sweetness. October vegetables have a special identification with butter. The first larger-size ‘maincrop’ potatoes clamour for it, boiled in their skins and served slightly broken; gem squash, cut in half, baked, seeds removed and a blob of butter put back, is a little supper dish on its own.

If any health officials have read this far, I know I am in trouble. But remember that with butter, a little goes a long way – such are its talents as a flavour enhancer. It is worth knowing also that while it is a saturated fat, not everything about it is bad. Butter contains natural antibacterial and antiviral properties, important for fighting those autumn colds and coughs. Each time I credit butter with the fact that I catch very few colds – nor do the children, for that matter – back comes a mailbag filled with notes of agreement. Old wives’ tales, maybe; anecdotal stuff distrusted by scientists. But in this case, who cares? I’ll still be facing the onset of autumn and its great wealth of produce, enjoying my first slice of roasted mallard or pheasant, alongside a mouthful of buttered greens.

Yes! You go, Rose Prince, and keep “spreading” the news!

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.