June 1st, 2010
Memorial Day weekend is the kickoff of the grilling season… that unmistakable smell of charcoal smoldering and meats blackening, the plumes of smoke, and the gathering of friends and family. We have a love affair with grilling, and given the opportunity, many of us will gladly cook and eat all our meals outdoors. Men in particular have an attraction to grilling that comes almost second to none. But it makes sense, if you really think about it: cooking with fire is how it all started, and as men where traditionally the hunters (with women being the gatherers), they were also responsible for taking apart and cooking the animals they’d killed. Their place at the fire pit (or modern day grill) was cemented.
We’ve come a long way from our hunter/gatherer days, but the lure of the fire still draws us in. Read the rest of this entry »
May 24th, 2010
“Buyer beware? What gives? They’re just strawberries!!” That’s what you’d think, right? But if you’re buying conventionally grown strawberries from California (and if you’re buying strawberries from your grocery store there’s a 9 in 10 chance that you are), then you’ll be consuming some highly toxic pesticides along with your berries. Yum. The Department of Pesticide Regulation in California (CDPR) recently approved the use of super-toxic methyl-iodide as a pesticide on food crops as a replacement for the slightly less toxic methyl bromide which is highly ozone polluting. Good thing that they’re trying to protect the ozone layer and everything, but here’s the problem: methyl iodide is so consistently and potently carcinogenic that it’s often used in cancer experiments to cause cancer in lab rats. Lab technicians deck themselves out in highly protective gear just to handle minute amounts of this stuff! Read the rest of this entry »
May 11th, 2010
A few weeks ago I went to my friend Lucy’s house for a loose sort of pot-luck thing (I brought stuff for guacamole, and a chickpea & eggplant spread). Lucy is like me… concerned about the state of food in our country and due to some allergies of her own decided a while back to clean up her diet. She took out wheat because it didn’t really agree with her, something I know can be a very difficult and challenging task, especially if you’re still shopping at conventional markets. But my girl Lucy is a champ, and a good cook, and on that slightly chilly Saturday evening she introduced me to grilled flatbreads. You might think that someone cutting wheat out of their diet would have said farewell to breads long ago, but this is not your ordinary bread. It was extra-ordinary!
Making these flatbreads couldn’t be easier, and since that evening, I’ve been experimenting with making my own. I don’t have a big fancy grill like she does (sorry, like her husband does. That this is all Mike.), but my cast iron skillet makes a great substitute. I’d asked her how she made hers but could only remember snippets, so I set to find my own way. While she used two non-gluten containing flours, I ended up throwing some in mine, but really it’s good either way. We both started with Quinoa flour which, thanks to my coffee grinder (reserved solely for grinding grain and spices), gets whizzed up in about 8-10 seconds. My first attempt at a flatbread was pretty good, but not great. I paired garbanzo bean flour with the quinoa flour, some salt, herbs, oil, and water, and while the texture was nice and crisp, the flavor was a little too beany for me.
So I played around some more, and came up with the recipe below. The beauty of these kinds of breads is that they don’t need to rise, and they take about 5-10 minutes to grill up, which means you can whip it up while the rest of your dinner is cooking, or when guests are on the way over. These flatbreads go with just about any spreads, from hummus and tapenade, to guacamole or just a plain olive oil. You can use these flatbreads to make a grilled pizza, or an open-faced sandwich… really anything. As a bonus if you use quinoa and/or chickpea flour you’ll be packing a huge protein punch in a whole new way!
Ingredients
1/2 cup quinoa flour
1/4 cup garbanzo bean flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon olive oil
3-5 tablespoons water
fresh or dried herbs (optional)
Preparation:
1. Heat grill, or cast iron skillet over medium high heat.
2. In a bowl combine all the dry ingredients and whisk to combine. Add the oil and 3 tablespoons of water to start. Mix the dough using a wooden spoon, and add more water if necessary. If the dough becomes to wet or sticky, simply add more flour.
3. Turn the ball of dough onto a floured surface and knead a few times to smooth it out. Add more flour to prevent sticking. Flatten the dough out using your hands to a rough circle about 1/4 inch thick.
4. Place dough directly on an oil grill or oiled cast iron skillet and cook about 3-5 minutes on each side until golden brown.
5. Break apart, or cut into strips and serve.
May 5th, 2010
You’ve probably heard the term “mindless eating” before. Sitting at your desk munching on Hershey’s Kisses while you work, and WHOA, I ate the WHOLE BAG?! Or watching a movie in the theater while crunching a large sized popcorn, and then realizing that you’ve managed to eat HALF THE TUB and the previews aren’t even over yet! This has happened to everyone I know, myself included (barring Hershey Kisses - an abomination of chocolate!).
There are dozens of books on mindless eating, how to curb your cravings, and how to learn to listen to your bodies hunger and satiety cues. These can be great tools in learning how to stop mindless eating which can ultimately lead to excess weight, and is often associated with guilt (”Oh my god, I can’t believe I ate that!”) But what I want to talk about is not so much mindless eating as mindful eating.
Mindful eating has many layers and can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it. I encourage people to go big and wide with the scope and complexity of their mindfulness around food, and here’s why: Read the rest of this entry »
May 5th, 2010
When speaking of mindfulness and “awareness” garlic certainly has it’s place!! Nothing like eating a nice garlic rich lunch only to be reminded of it the rest of the afternoon. But aside from adding a familiar flavor to our most loved dishes, (and the dreaded “garlic breath” after), garlic is known the world round for not only it’s versatility as a food, but as a healing medicinal ingredient.
We all know garlic for it’s ability to ward of Vampires and demons, but did you also know that some Christian Myths believe that garlic and onions arose out of the footprints of Satan after leaving the Garden of Eden?! If that’s the case, then I’m with Satan because I LOVE garlic! Read the rest of this entry »
May 5th, 2010
While the idea of eating 4 heads of raw garlic sounds insane, eating a puree of 4 roasted heads of garlic is pure heaven! Roasting garlic sweetens and mellows it’s otherwise pungent flavor, and makes an incredible puree perfect for crusty bread, salad dressings, or a robust soup.
Ingredients
4 whole heads of good quality fresh garlic
a little olive oil
sea salt
Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Remove any extra loose paper from the heads of garlic. Using a sharp knife, chop the top 1/3rd off, and discard.
2. Drizzle a little olive oil over each head, and wrap, cut side up, in a foil pouch. Roast for 45 minutes until garlic is completely soft and browned.
3. To serve, squeeze out each clove of garlic into a small dish and mash with the back of a spoon. Season with a little sea salt and enjoy smeared across a toasted baguette. Thin with a little extra olive oil and swirl into soups for a rich flavor boost.
May 3rd, 2010
In what seems to be a mindblowingly disgusting corporate decision, both Kentucky Fried Chicken and the International House Of Pancakes (a misnomer, since this “food establishment” exists only outside the United States in Canada and Mexico. Why is everyone else smarter than us?) have come out with two of the most horrible, fat, salt, and sugar laden foods ever conceived.
KFC recently introduced it’s “Double Down Chicken Sandwich”, where the cheese and bacon filling is no longer held together with bread, but with TWO fried chicken breasts. Really. Read the rest of this entry »
April 27th, 2010
My posting has been a little erratic lately, I know. All apologies. But with good reason! I’ve been busy getting my garden bed ready, and planted (so far, so good!) and have been laying the groundwork for an exciting new project that should be ready to launch later this year. I’m staying mum for now, but I’ll give you this teaser…
Part of this new project has to do with food (shock!) and I’ve been busy in my kitchen tinkering away, tweaking, and tasting. Since I used to post my “weekends in the kitchen” series semi-regularly, and I’ve not posted much in the way of recipes for a while, I thought I was long overdue. At one time I was impressed by big fancy and ornate meals, but have, in the past year become far more smitten with simple dishes that allow the beauty of each ingredient to shine. I think back on all the “special meals” I’ve had prepared for me in restaurants where nothing on the menu was even remotely vegetarian. Even in very high-class restaurants, with high-class chefs, I’ve been profoundly disappointed by my meals. When faced with the challenge of not using meat or dairy and relying only on vegetables and grains, most chefs buckle and end up serving something as bland as an unseasoned, heavily steamed plate of vegetables! To me, the test of a true chef is a) the ability to cook vegetables well, and b) someone who’s always up for a challenge, however far it stretches them out of their comfort zone of meat, eggs, and cream.
So in the spirit of simple (and seasonal), I present you with this: Polenta with Fresh Asparagus & Peas! Read the rest of this entry »
April 23rd, 2010
In what sort of feels like a conciliatory gesture on the part of the USDA, small organic garden plots have sprung up all over their offices nationwide. Run by volunteer USDA employees and college interns, the whopping 225 organic “People’s Gardens” as they call them, grew almost 30,000 pounds of produce last year - all of it donated to local soup kitchens and food pantries. Amazing. Even if this is simply a pacifying gesture, it’s the greatest and most considerate one I’ve seen yet!
According the the Washington Post article where I read about this, volunteers were actually being turned away from the program, Read the rest of this entry »
April 21st, 2010
Sorry internet, for being gone for a full week and neglecting you! I promise I’ve been out trying to make the world a better place. So too have so many people out there that my head is just spinning… I can barely keep track of all the amazing projects, and amazing people out there fighting the good fight. It seems that with every day that passes I hear about some new campaign or book or film about our country’s struggle with food, nutrition and health. And this news is inspiring, heartwarming, and hopeful! Just yesterday I read about two young enterprising men who have developed a totally natural, mushroom derived alternative to Styrofoam, that fully biodegrades and takes something like half the amount of energy to produce at equal cost as that nasty earth enemy, polystyrene. Amazing!! Check out their company, Ecovative Design and spread the word!
And only two days ago, I found out about yet another documentary film about our current (and bleak) food crisis, this one focusing solely on school lunch and the National School Lunch Program. Also on Kickstarter (along with Fooditude that I posted about earlier this month), this project is called LUNCH LINE, and looks Read the rest of this entry »
