Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Gluten Free Raspberry Bars

2 cups oat flour
1 cup brown rice starch
1 cup almond flour/meal
3 teaspoons gluten free baking powder
2 teaspoons guar gum
2 cups coconut sugar
1 cup cold grass fed salted butter, cut into small chunks
Cold Milk
4 cups fresh raspberry preserve or jam
1 cup powdered sugar
1 large lemon, juiced

Preheat oven to 350 F

Combine all the dry ingredients. Cut butter into the dry ingredients until it resembles large crumbs. Add enough cold milk to form a dry dough (about 1/2 to 3/4 cup).  

Press half the dough into a medium size cookie pan and spread the preserve to cover the top. Scatter the rest of the dough over the top and bake for 40 to 50 minutes.

Remove from the oven to cool completely.

Combine powdered sugar and lemon juice to make a frosting and drizzle over the top to set.

Slice into bars. Keep refrigerated in an airtight container.

Bring Back Food Education Where It Belongs -- In Our Schools!

www.huffingtonpost.com - August 21st, 2013
Back in the dark ages (my junior high school years in Baltimore), food education was mandatory for every girl. While the boys were hustled off to shop class and the sublime opportunity to saw off a finger or hammer a nail firmly in their thighs, the girls were ushered into a fully decked-out modern kitchen to cook adult things that gave off heavenly aromas. It sure beat my Easy-Bake Oven! We even had our own aprons -- homemade from sewing class (when I accidently sewed my apron strings together my mother secreted it off to the tailor for repair).

While sewing wasn't everyone's cup of tea, and surely wasn't mine, cooking instruction seemed universally beloved. Sure it was an era of rampant sexism, with society assuming women would handle all household chores while the men pounded away in their garage workshops until they were called for dinner. But I remember that the boys were jealous. Who wouldn't be jealous, learning that half of your classmates had just prepared and eaten chicken potpie while you were sanding a birdfeeder? The boys would have to walk by the home economics kitchen after finishing shop class and the aromas drove them crazy -- apple cobbler, chicken soup, biscuits, beef stew, pancakes and more. Thanks to those blatantly sexist cooking classes, I've always enjoyed cooking -- and pitied the poor boys for missing out. And what I learned from school cooking instruction has served me well for decades as a grocery shopper, a cook and an adventurous eater.
So I couldn't help but cheer when I heard that Jamie Oliver's Food Foundation and the organizers behind Food Day (Oct. 24) are collaborating on a new national initiative to put food education in every school, for every child. Why critical life skills like food education and cooking were ever eliminated from many districts is beyond my comprehension. But it's easy to see the damage wrought, beginning with the fact that a third of our kids are either obese or overweight.


Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Lab-Grown Meat

There's nothing creepy about growing meat in a lab. But there is something more inherently creepy about the way Big Agriculture deal with the animals that we eat. ... They live a horrible life, and they often die quite cruelly. Lab- cultured meat can play an important role in the future: Not only could it help feed the planet, but it could also help solve environmental problems stemming from conventional meat production. So the idea of being able to eliminate some of that is extremely exciting to me.

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