The Paleo Diet Is More Than A Fad: “The lifestyle captures a certain discontent with modernity”

www.salon.com - Friday, April 29th 2016

Today, Paleo is one of the most influential dietary trends in the country, with as many as three million followers and a disproportionate cultural influence. And while it’s easy to mock Paleo as the retrograde fantasy of Patagonia-jacketed professionals who buy fifty-dollar grass-fed steaks and imagine themselves loping across a Paleolithic savannah as they strain through a CrossFit workout, the lifestyle does capture a certain discontent with modernity.

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Gluten Free Avocado Pesto Pasta Salad

1 packet rice penne pasta 

1 cup cherry tomatoes, cut in half 

1 large ripe avocado, peel and dice 

1/2 small red onion, chopped 

1 large lemon, juiced 

1/4 cup sliced almonds 

4 tablespoons fresh pesto 

Sea salt and black pepper

Cook pasta according to the instructions on the packet.

Drain the pasta and add to the rest of the ingredients. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Mix well to combine and serve at room temperature.

What is Miso Paste Anyway, and How Do I Use It? Help!

www.huffingtonpost.com - Wednesday April 27th, 2016

If you haven’t been cooking with miso, then you’ve been seriously missing out. The salty paste can amp up just about any boring dish, and it’s also quite good for you. Here’s what you need to know:

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Roasted Sweet Pepper Cheddar Cheese Salad

2 pounds mini sweet peppers

3 cups mixed salad greens

10 garlic cloves, peeled

1/2 cup sharp cheddar cheese, shavings

Salt and black pepper

Preheat oven to 500 F.

Arrange peppers and garlic cloves on a baking sheet and drizzle generously with extra virgin olive oil. Season with salt and black pepper.  Bake for 20 minutes, turning vegetables over halfway during cooking.

Remove from oven and set aside to reach room temperature( about 2 hours). Cover the bottom of a large serving platter with the mixed salad greens. Season with salt and black pepper. Arrange sweet peppers and garlic on top (refer to picture) and drizzle generously with any fruit flavoured balsamic vinaigrette of your choice. 

I used raspberry balsamic vinaigrette.

You Want To Order A 'Natural,' 'Organic,' 'Free-Range' Meal, But You Don't Know What That Means

http://www.huffingtonpost.com - January19th, 2015

More trendy restaurants are serving food that seems easier on the environment, but customers often aren't quite sure what they're getting. Does a "grass-fed" steak differ from "pasture-raised"? Can seafood really be described as "organic"?

We've broken down some common terms associated with most popular entree items below.

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The Increasing Threat of Factory Farms

www.huffingtonpost.com - Monday September 25th, 2014

Rarely do we as Americans reflect on the fact that 10 billion land animals are slaughtered each year for our food system or that over 90 percent are raised in CAFOs, better known as factory farms. Since profit is the driving force, living, breathing creatures are treated as a commodity with the goal to produce the highest volume of meat and dairy on the smallest amount of feed, taking up the least amount of square footage. These animals are crowded in cages or pens with no vegetation, restricted fresh air and movement, and are fed a disease-inducing diet that betrays what each species has evolved to eat over thousands of years. For example, as we know, cows are herbivores and they're designed to thrive on fresh grass. In the common industrialized system though, they're forced to eat GMO corn, plastic pellets (to compensate for a lack of fiber), and pulverized animal parts, which creates acidification and inflammation in their bodies. Crammed in feedlots, often standing in thick, muddy fecal matter or breathing in "fecal dust" they're subjected to high stress from birth to slaughter. It's no wonder then that the need for antibiotics has increased!

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Vegan Ice Cream

4-5 very ripe bananas

1 large avocado

2 tablespoons smooth, salted peanut butter

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

Peel bananas and avocado. Cut into small chunks. Separate to two airtight containers and freeze until solid (preferably overnight). 

Add frozen bananas and avocados to a food processor and blend until smooth and creamy (be sure to scrape down the sides of the food processor as needed). The mixture will go through different stages: crumbled, oatmeal-like texture, gooey to finally creamy. At this point, add the rest of the ingredients to combine.

You can enjoy this right away. For best result, freeze until set. Will keep for up to two days.

Dill-Cured Salmon

1 1/2 - 2 lbs wild salmon

1 cup kosher salt

1 cup sugar

1/2 bunch of fresh dill

Rinse salmon and remove pin bones the same direction they face with a tweezer.

Cut salmon into two equal pieces.

Mix the salt and sugar in a bowl. On a plate or in a shallow dish, pile half of the mixture onto each half of the salmon. It will seem like there is extra mixture, but just pile it on. The salmon will absorb the mixture during the curing process. Next, place the dill on top. Sandwich the two pieces of fish together and wrap tightly with plastic wrap.

Place the fish into a gallon-sized ziploc bag and push out all of the air. Now place in a shallow dish.

Refrigerate, with weights on top, which is crucial. 

The salmon will take 2-3 days to cure. At the end of each day, drain any liquid that has been extracted from the salmon and flip the salmon over, so that both sides are evenly weighed down. You can begin tasting it after 2 days. When it is cured to the desired taste, remove fish from plastic and rinse well.

To eat, slice thin on a bias, leaving the skin behind. 

PB&J Isn't Cutting It...Here Are 6 Tricks For More Inspired School Lunches

http://www.huffingtonpost.com - Tuesday September 2nd, 2014

We’ve all been there—that carefully planned, painstakingly executed lunch sent to school with the kids comes back smushed and uneaten. If your darlings are rejecting what's packed in their lunchbox, know that you're not alone. Even food professionals get maddening results. I spent years learning how to make lunches for little ones as a personal chef with a specialty in cooking for kids. I remember when a family of young boys I cooked for found out I was sneaking vegetables into mini meatloaves sent for lunch. After that, they started shredding apart cupcakes for veggie inspection as well! I would introduce a variety of foods for afternoon snacks, so I could see first-hand what was devoured quickly. I learned that when there's a hit--work it. Of course every kid has his or her likes and dislikes, but here are a few foolproof tricks I discovered over the years for making bag lunches a little more fun:

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Coloring Easter Eggs with Natural Dyes

http://www.livescience.com - Thursday April 17th, 2014

Easter is the time of year when many of us do something special with our breakfast food. In this experiment, we are going to use science to color eggs using natural dyes. While using natural dyes is a bit more time consuming than those little tablets you buy at the store, gathering and preparing them can be an interesting alternative.

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4 Nutritional Powerhouses You're Already Eating

www.huffingtonpost.com - April 15th, 2014

Lately there's been so much focus on newcomers like acai and kale that less glamorous fruits and vegetables are sometimes treated like second-class citizens. But researchers are discovering new reasons to get excited about the old standbys.

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Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food!

Fruits and vegetables grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today. The main culprit in this disturbing nutritional trend is soil depletion: Modern intensive agricultural methods have stripped increasing amounts of nutrients from the soil in which the food we eat grows. The solution is to purchase local, organic food from farmers that value their soil. Know your farmer, know your food! 

Lemon Mascarpone Layer Cake

2 cups superfine sugar

3 cups cake flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup salted butter (room temperature)

1 cup whole milk (room temperature)

4 large eggs (room temperature)

1 teaspoon pure vanilla paste

1/2 cup lemon curd

1 large lemon (zest and juice)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour 2 round cake tins. Line the bottom with parchment paper.

Sift flour and baking powder. Combine milk and lemon juice. Set aside. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add lemon curd, and zest to combine followed by eggs one at a time, beating well in between. 

Add flour and milk mixture, alternately to the batter, making sure to start with flour end with flour.

Divide the batter evenly between the pans. Bake for 45 to 60 minutes or until a stick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool for 10 minutes. Remove from the pans to cool completely. 

Mascarpone Lemon Frosting:

2 small tubs mascarpone cream (room temperature)

1 cup fresh lemon curd

1 32 oz bag powdered sugar

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat mascarpone and lemon curd until pale and creamy, about 2 minutes. Reduce speed to medium. Add powdered sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl as needed; after every two additions, raise speed to high and beat 10 seconds to aerate frosting, then return to medium-high. This process should take about 5 minutes. Frosting will be very pale and fluffy.

Slice each layer in half. Place one cake layer (golden side down) on a cake platter. Spread a third of the filling evenly over the layer, leaving the outer edge of the cake bare. Repeat with another cake layer (again, golden side down), applying just a bit of pressure so the layers adhere, and then spread on another third of the filling. Repeat the process until you get to the final layer. Cover the cake in frosting. Enjoy!

Fish Kale Kebabs

1 lb wild caught firm white fish, cut into large chunks

1 large red onion

2 large yellow peppers/capsicum

1 large bunch of kale

1 small garlic, minced

2 tablespoons lemongrass paste

1 large lime, juiced

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt and black pepper

You will also need 8 skewers and aluminum foil. 

In a small mixing bowl, combine extra virgin olive oil, fresh garlic, lime juice and lemongrass paste. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Wash mahi-mahi and dry. Rub 1/2 the lemongrass and extra virgin olive oil mixture generously on the fish. Set aside to marinade for 1 hour.

Cut yellow peppers/capsicum and onion into equal size large chunks to ensure even cooking. Remove the hard rib off the kale. Cut fish into equal size large chunks.  

Assemble kebabs (refer to the picture). Brush generously with the remaining lemongrass oil (leave some aside for serving). Season with sea salt and black pepper. Place on a sheet of aluminum foil. Place a single kebab on the foil and wrap tightly so that the juices don't leak out when it's on the grill.

Preheat barbecue to 400 F on medium heat. Place kebabs on the barbecue and cook for 10 minutes. Open up a small portion of the aluminum foil to make sure everything is cooked to your liking.

Remove from the barbecue. Serve hot.

Kale Cranberry Pine Nut Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

Salad:

1 bunch of fresh kale

1 cup chopped dried cranberries

1/2 cup roasted pine nuts

1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Sea salt and black pepper

Remove the hard stem off kale leaves and finely chopped. Combine all the ingredients in a large salad bowl. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Keep chilled.

Vinaigrette:

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt and black pepper

Blend lemon zest, juice, and mustard to combine. With the blender running. drizzle in olive oil until vinaigrette is thick and creamy. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Drizzle some over chilled salad and serve immediately with the rest of the dressing on the side.

What's Your Favorite Way to Eat Fresh Summer Tomatoes?

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.

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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.

The Amazing Kale