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

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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Grilled Thai Chicken

t's all about outdoor grilling during the summer months for my family and I. Grilled Thai Chicken is a favorite. Use your favorite brand of Thai paste and be aware that they vary greatly especially in heat factor. Do you have a summer favorite?

4 boneless chicken thighs 

3 tablespoons Thai red curry paste 

1 large lime, juice only 

1/2 cup coconut cream 

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil 

Sea salt and black pepper

Combine all the wet ingredients. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Marinade chicken in room temperature for up to 30 minutes.

Preheat outdoor grill to medium high

Arrange chicken in a single layer and brush with extra marinade. Grill for 8 to 10 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. Serve immediately with fresh herbs and extra olive oil over the top.

Did You Know?

Did you know that Ice cream was once a delectable and nutritious dessert food, made from unpasteurized milk and cream? Now it contains pasteurized milk, agar-agar for thickening, mono- and di-glycerides for emulsifying, calcium carbonate for neutralizing, sodium citrate as a buffer, hydrogen peroxide as a bacteriacide, oat gum as an antioxidant, and various other chemicals for flavoring, such as amylacetate for banana and vanilidene kectone for vanilla.

What Are We Really Eating?

Squirrel Feeding study GMO corn vs Organic corn

This was an actual real life experiment conducted on a farm in the fall of 2012 to see if animals really can tell the difference between GMO corn versus organic (non-GMO) corn. This picture is one of the five experiments that was conducted and every single time the squirrel always preferred the organic corn over the GMO corn. The squirrel always ate the organic corn up first then went to go eat on GMO corn last. They also used different varieties of both organic and GMO corn every time just to rule out the possibility that maybe the squirrel was getting to liking one variety over the other but to their complete disbelief he still always preferred to eat on the organic corn more! The results even surprised me.

What You Don't Know About Processed Food

www.huffingtonpost.com - May 1st, 2013

You've heard of pink slime. You know trans fats are cardiovascular atrocities. You're well aware that store-bought orange juice is essentially a scam. But, no matter how great of a processed-food sleuth you are, chances are you've never set food inside a processing plant to see how many of these products are actually made.

The term "processed food" is ubiquitous these days. The food industry has attempted to co-opt it by claiming canned beans, baby carrots, and frozen vegetables are "processed foods." Can you help explain why a Pop-Tart is years away from a "processed food" like hummus?

You have to ask yourself, could I make a Pop-Tart or Hot Pocket at home, with all those same ingredients listed on the package? I don't know anyone who could do that in their home kitchen. How would you even go about procuring distilled monoglycerides and BHT, for instance? These are highly-processed food products loaded up with sugar and sodium, subjected to abusive processing conditions, and assembled with a litany of additives, many of which nobody ever consumed prior to a hundred years ago.

Yet it is possible to make your own black beans at home by soaking and then cooking them. You could even attempt a rudimentary canning operation to preserve them. You can also make hummus by grinding chickpeas with a few other ingredients like lemon juice. The same goes for frozen vegetables and even baby carrots, though homemade baby carrots wouldn't look as pretty as the ones you buy at the store. The "processing" these foods go through is minimal and not disfiguring. The end result still looks like a food that once grew on a farm.

Many people are put at ease when government agencies and the food industry state that controversial substances are "generally recognized as safe." Why is this not as comforting as it sounds?

The idea of something "generally recognized as safe" seems so reassuring, but the more you know about the U.S. system of food ingredient regulation the less cause there is for comfort.

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Gluten Free Mini Blackberry Crumbles

Serves: 4

6 cups fresh blackberries

1 large Meyer lemon, juice and zest

1 cup coconut sugar or sweetener of your choice

1 cup almond flour

1 cup oat flour

1/2 cup oatmeal

4 tablespoons cold grass fed salted butter, cut into chunks

Preheat oven to 350 F

Combine berries, lemon juice and zest, and half the sugar. Divide into four mini flan dishes. In a food processor, pulse butter, flour, sugar, and oatmeal until it starts to resemble crumbs. Scatter over the top of the mini crumbles.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until the topping is crispy.

Open-Faced Ham, Egg, and Avocado Sandwich

Yields: 4

4 thick slices of your favorite artisan bread, toasted

4 poached eggs

4 thick slices ham or Canadian bacon

2 large ripened avocados

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Sea salt and black pepper

Toast bread and assemble your open faced sandwich while the bread is still warm. Season lightly with sea salt and black pepper. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over the top and garnish with your favorite fresh herbs. Serve immediately.

Perfect Poached Eggs:

4 large very fresh eggs

Break eggs into a bowl. Heat about 2" of water in a deep sided skillet on medium heat. When bubbles cover the bottom of the pan and sides, gently pour eggs into the water. Lower the heat to the lowest setting so the water does not boil. Leave the eggs to cook uninterrupted for 4 to 5 minutes. You will know that the egg is cooked when the whites are set and the yolks begin to thicken. Remove from the water, set on a paper towel, and gently dry. Place atop other sandwich ingredients as seen in the picture and garnish however you see fit.

Gluten Free Shrimp Cakes with Creamy Horseradish Mustard Sauce

Yield: 18

1 cup chopped cooked shrimp 

1 cup chopped raw kale, stems removed 

1 large chopped shallot 

2 large room temperature eggs 

1 cup cooked brown rice 

1 cup almond flour 

2 tablespoons freshly chopped dill 

2 tablespoons chopped roasted red peppers (optional) 

Sea salt and black pepper

Combine all the ingredients (add more flour if it's not binding). Season to your preference with sea salt and black pepper. Drop tablespoonfuls into the palm of your hands (wet hands in cold water to prevent sticking). Form into balls. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Cover the bottom of a large deep sided skillet with extra virgin olive oil or a good quality veggie oil on medium heat. When hot, add 6 cakes(don'tflatten),leaving plenty of room in between. Fry on one side until golden brown and crispy (about 3 to 4 minutes). Flip over for a further three minutes (flatten top slightly). Remove and drain on a paper towel. Serve warm with Horseradish Mustard Sauce on the side.

Horseradish Mustard Sauce:

1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt 

1 tablespoon French mustard

 1 teaspoon prepared horseradish 

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 

2 tablespoons raw honey 

Sea salt and black pepper

Blend all the ingredients until creamy. Season to your preference with sea salt and black pepper. Serve chilled.

Whole Foods, Trader Joe's And Others Vow Not To Sell GMO Fish

www.huffingtonpost.com - March 21st, 2013

Whole Foods Market Inc, Trader Joe's and other food retailers representing more than 2,000 U.S. stores have vowed not to sell genetically engineered seafood if it is approved in the United States, a new advocacy group said on Wednesday.

The announcement from the Campaign for Genetically Engineered-Free Seafood comes as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration appears close to approving genetically engineered salmon from Massachusetts-based AquaBounty Technologies.

If it gets final approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the salmon would be the first genetically engineered animal to enter this country's human food supply. The United States already is the world's largest market for foods made with genetically altered plant ingredients.AquaBounty says its "AquAdvantage Salmon" can grow to market size in half the time of conventional salmon, saving time and resources. The fish is essentially Atlantic salmon with a Pacific salmon gene for faster growth and a gene from the eel-like ocean pout that promotes year-round growth.

Critics say such genetically modified products are not sufficiently tested for safety, carry allergy risks and should be labeled. Proponents disagree and say the products are safe.Discount grocer Aldi, regional chains such as Marsh Supermarkets, PCC Natural Markets and co-ops in Minnesota, New York, California and Kansas also signed the commitment to avoid selling genetically-engineered fish.

"We won't sell genetically engineered fish because we don't believe it is sustainable or healthy," said Trudy Bialic from PCC Natural Markets in Washington State.

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Smoked Paprika Garlic Lamb

Lamb:

1 lb grass fed lamb, cut into large chunks 

2 tablespoons tomato paste 

2 tablespoons smoked paprika 

6 large garlic cloves, crushed

1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped 

1 large lemon, juice 

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 

Sea salt and black pepper to taste

Combine the first 6 ingredients. Season to taste with sea salt and black pepper.Add 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil to a large deep sided skillet on high heat. When hot, arrange lamb chunks in a single layer and cook for 2 minutes on the first side. Turn them over and cook a further 2 minutes.

Serve them hot on a bed of sauteed eggplants.

Sauteed Eggplant:

2 large eggplants, cut into large chunks 

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive 

Sea salt and black pepper to taste

Add olive oil to a large pan. When hot saute eggplants, turning them over occasionally until they are done (about 3 to 4 minutes). Season to your taste with sea salt and black pepper.

America Spends Less on Food Than Any Other Country

www.motherjones.com - February 19th, 2013

Of course, this kind of logic is completely insane to most people in the world, for the simple and obvious fact that food is the most important thing to budget for. It's only because I live in a rich country where having enough to eat isn't really an issue that I can be so clueless about my food spending habits; as demonstrated by the chart below, the higher a country's average income, the smaller the percentage of income spent on food. 

Like Kiera—and, I'm sure, many of the readers of her article—I was a bit shocked when I calculated how much I spend on food. I like to think I'm thrifty in my food spending habits—I cook a lot and usually eat out only on the weekends—but I don't usually add up my food costs and rarely make serious estimates for food spending when I make a budget, instead assuming that I'll manage to make do with whatever's left after I cut a check for rent, buy a bus pass, and pay my utility bills.

On some level, this is pretty intuitive—food is a basic need, and there's only so much you can eat, no matter how much money you have. But even among developed countries, our food spending is ultra-low:People in most European countries spend over 10 percent of their incomes on food. In fact, Americans spend less on food than people in any other country in the world. Even we Americans didn't always expect our food to be so cheap, though: Back in 1963, when Molly Orshansky, an employee of the Social Security Administration, created the nation's first poverty threshold, she simply tripled the cost of the FDA's "thrifty" food plan, since at the time most families spent about a third of their incomes on food. So how'd we end up spending just a fraction of that four decades later?

To find the answer, we have to go back four decades to the 1970s, when rising food prices and technological developments led to a host of transformative changes in the US food system whose effects still determine the way many Americans eat. In response to rising food costs and growing demand amongst the expanding middle class, Nixon's secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz, turned the country's agricultural subsidy program—originally instituted to help stabilize food supply and farmers' incomes after the volatility of the Great Depression—into a support mechanism for the industrial production of corn and soy. Butz's policy of "get big or get out"—made possible by advancements in industrial food production, including technological developments and an abundance of cheap fossil fuels used to make fertilizer and pesticides—encouraged the consolidation of small farmers' plots into gigantic holdings and led to the rise of agribusiness in place of the family farm.

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Mini Lime Chili Chicken Chalupas

1 large boneless chicken breast 

1 tablespoon tequila (optional) 

1/4 cup fresh lime juice

 2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon chili powder 

1 tablespoon fresh crushed garlic 

Sea salt and black pepper to taste 

8 fresh corn tortillas, room temperature 

1 large ripe avocado, sliced 

1 large ripe tomato, diced

Preheat oven to 400 F

Line a large cooking sheet with parchment paper. Fold corn tortilla in half and half again and arrange in a single layer. Brush with olive oil and bake for about 6 to 10 minutes turning over frequently until hard and crispy. Set aside to cool. This can be done ahead of time and store in an airtight container.

Cut chicken into 8 bite size pieces. Combine lime juice, tequila (optional), olive oil, chili powder, and garlic. Season to your preference with sea salt and black pepper. Divide marinade in half. Use one half to marinade chicken for 40 minutes.

Heat grill on medium to high heat. When hot, add chicken pieces, basting constantly with the marinade that you set aside. Grill for about 4 to 5 minutes, turning over halfway until crispy and golden brown.

Assemble your Chalupas (refer to picture). Drizzle some of the marinade over the top and serve immediately.

Food and Mood: Is What You're Eating, Eating You?

www.huffingtonpost.com - January 18th, 2013

Some of the simplest and healthiest habits in life are the most difficult for us to maintain. For years, medical professionals shrugged off this simple truth, but recently more and more of us are acknowledging our responsibility in this realm. It takes time to sit down with each patient and tease out where they need help, but we know a simple, quick lecture to "eat plenty of fruits and vegetables" just doesn't work.

Eating, breathing, and exercising are some of the most basic things we do to keep our bodies functioning well, or not. Over time, our occasional unhealthy behaviors can become habits, and we feel like we're doing it all wrong. I cannot count how my times I've personally had to start again with eating healthier, meditating/breathing, and exercising more regularly. As much as I wish I could be a shining beacon of health, one who never wavers, I'm just like my patients. I too need reminders and have to start with the basics.

Walking through the park today, I saw two men standing on stilts. Then I noticed they were juggling, tossing the juggling clubs back and forth to each other. I learned something: Try as they might, they couldn't learn this feat without some help. They'd brought someone else along as an assistant, and every time they dropped a club, their assistant would hand it back. Though this post isn't about juggling, the image of the jugglers is relevant.

Learning to do new things on our own requires assistance in the beginning, and when we're struggling. I find this to be especially true for some of the easiest things in life, like eating, breathing, and exercising. We know how to do these things, kind of. Many of us are struggling. And we may not know where or why we're struggling, which is exactly why outside assistance could help.

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Artisan Pesto Kielbasa Pear Sandwich

Whatever happened to well-designed and stylishly presented sandwiches? Somewhere with the introduction of focaccia and panini this mainstay has exited stage left! Fresh artisan bread delicately spread with fresh pesto, fresh pear, and kielbasa is hearty and delicious!

4 thick slices of fresh Artisan Sourdough Bread 

2 links Polish Kielbasa (pre-cooked and chilled) 

2 slices of aged cheddar cheese 

1 large very ripe anjou pear, sliced length-wise Fresh Basil Pesto

Green Olives (optional) 

Sea salt and black pepper

Spread a thick layer of fresh pesto over two of the bread slices. Cut sausages in half length-wise and place on top of bread. Arrange sandwich ingredients on top. Mildly season with sea salt and black pepper to taste and close with remaining two bread slices. Serve at room temperature.

Why Caring About Food Isn't An Option

http://www.huffingtonpost.com - Octobr 9th, 2012

"Food is life."

I have been known to say a similar thing, but when it came from the mouth of a Ugandan farmer, the words were more powerful than I could ever make them.

Sitting to the right of Constance Okollet on a panel titled Food Anthropology at SXSW Eco in Austin last week, I was humbled as she emphasized what food meant to her and her community. Okollet is  peasant farmer from Osukuru subcounty, Tororo district in eastern Uganda, Africa and a mother of seven. As if that wasn't enough, she's the Chairperson of Osukuru United Women Network, working on agriculture  health and the environment,  and a founding member of Climate Wise Women, traveling the world advocating against climate change and its effects on the communities around her.

During the course of our panel, we learned about her community's reduced access to food -- the effects of climate change have reduced the growing season and in turn the diversity of produce that can be grown. As she talked I became acutely aware of my privilege in even having access to some of the most basic food products.

The goal with the panel was to talk about whether or not our heightened awareness and discussion of food is having an effect on the people that need it the most. Does our Instagramming and food blogging really mean that people are eating better here at home and abroad? When you look at the case of Okollet and other subsistent farming communities around the world, it's easy to come up with a resounding "no." While we're busy perfectly placing a stalk of rosemary next to the batch of homemade muffins so that the picture with a filter to subdue the colors will look a little more quaint, there are millions of people around the world, and here at home, going hungry.

You simply can't argue your way out of that one.

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Strawberry Scones

2 cups unbleached wheat flour

1/3 cup raw sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons frozen, unsalted butter

1/3 cup chopped, orange peel

11/2 cup thickly sliced strawberries

1/2 cup greek yogurt (full cream)

2 tablespoons cream

1 large egg

1/3 cup orange marmalade

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly oil a baking sheet or line with parchment paper.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Using a pastry knife, cut butter into the dry ingredients until mixture is crumbly. Set aside.

Mix cream, yogurt, and egg in a separate bowl. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Mix in the strawberries and orange peel.

Pat out dough onto a lightly floured surface and form it into a 1-inch thick rectangle (about 9 inches long and 3 inches wide). Use a large knife to slice the dough twice through the width, making three equal squares. Cut those three slices diagonally so that you have 6 triangular slices of dough. Place on prepared baking sheet. Brush lightly with melted butter.

Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Glaze with the orange marmalade. Place on wire rack to cool. 

(This is a "kid friendly" recipe made for my daughter's school lunch. Due to it's low sugar content, it's only mildly sweet.  If you prefer a sweeter taste, double the amount of sugar.)