Gastronicity

Tasting Winter

2012-01-17T12:05:00.000-08:00

We're finally tasting winter here in sunny California, now that the car windows are frosted up in the mornings and I have to wear my toeless toesocks to yoga class. My lunchtime mainstay, the giant salad, seems less appealing now and I'm packing a thermos of soup instead. But to really warm yourself to the bone in the dark season is to braise something meaty, for a long time, on the bone. Using bone broth in its preparation gives you and extra dose of mineral power, and is considered strengthening to the kidney energy, the organ system most important to support at this time of year. The following is a recipe I developed last winter for Real Food All Year (finally coming in March to a bookstore near you!), and we enjoyed it many times while I perfected it, feeling both warm and nourished to the core. You can take a peek at the cover of the book on Amazon here.
Five Spice Short Ribs
Braising on the bone with warming spices epitomizes winter meat preparation. You can use oxtail, lamb or beef shank, or similar on-the-bone meat cuts with this recipe to delicious effect. Go ahead and use water if you don’t have any broth or stock on hand, but be sure to stash the leftover bones in your freezer for a future batch of bone broth. Serve with rice and kimchi, alongside roasted root vegetables, or with a simple purée of cauliflower.

Makes 3 or 4 servings

1 tablespoon pastured lard, bacon grease, Ghee, or olive oil

2 pounds beef short ribs, preferably grassfed and grass-finished

1 onion or large leek, diced

2 stalks celery, diced, or 3/4 cup diced celery root

2 carrots or parsnips, scrubbed and diced

3 cloves garlic, crushed, or 2 stalks green garlic, sliced

5 quarter-sized slices fresh gingerroot

1/2 teaspoon Chinese five spice powder

2 cups bone broth or meat stock, vegetable stock, or water

3 tablespoons tamari or fermented fish sauce, or a combination

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1 teaspoon rice vinegar

Zest and juice of 1 orange

In a large, heavy pot such as a Dutch oven, heat the fat, and brown the ribs on all sides; this will take at least 10 to 15 minutes. Add the onions, lower the heat to medium, and continue to cook and stir until the onions begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Stir in the celery, carrots, garlic, and ginger and continue to sauté for 2 minutes. Add the five spice powder, broth, tamari, maple syrup, and vinegar, and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook on low for 1 to 2 hours, until the meat is very tender and beginning to fall off of the bones.

Remove the ribs to a plate, add the orange zest and juice to the sauce, and turn up the heat again to high to reduce the liquid, stirring occasionally, until the liquid reduces by a third and begins to thicken and turn glossy, about 10 to 15 minutes. Add the ribs back to the pot and heat thoroughly, and then serve with the sauce.

In Praise of Pungent

2011-10-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

A stroll through the farmers' market this week reminded me that chili season is in full swing. While I enjoy a taste of spice at any time of year, only now can I find fresh hot chilies grown on local farms, and such delights as fully red, ripe jalapenos, singing to be slipped into that big batch of Curtido I'm making this week to ward off fall's colds and flus. I'm also stocking up on local chilies to dry to help keep my spices local through the winter.

Chilies and most other spices are categorized as having a pungent flavor in Chinese medicine, and this taste is noted for its ability to keep energy moving in the body, easing digestion, strengthening the lungs, and stimulating the body out of stagnancy. It the the basis of action the herbal carminatives, which reduce gas and aid digestion (think peppermint or fennel seed tea) and one reason why all culinary traditions use herbs and spices--they not only make food taste better but help us digest it smoothly. The pungent flavor is said to benefit, open and stimulate the lungs--think of how wasabi opens your sinuses, or frying chiles in hot oil can make the whole house cough. Pungents can support both digestion and immunity. Some vegetables are classed as having a pungent flavor, as well, and many of these are being harvested now: onions, garlic, leeks, shallots, turnips, and all types of radishes.

Chinese nutritional energetics suggests incorporating more sour flavored foods, which have an astringent action, into your diet in the fall to support mental focus and ease the transition to darker days. Seasonal foods like tart apples, late plums, grapes, leeks, as well as lemons or limes in areas where they grow, and year-round foods like sourdough bread (both wheat and rye), pickles, vinegar, olives, and cultured dairy foods such as yogurt and cheese will help consolidate your body’s energy and encourage vitality in the cooler months ahead. Many of these foods are soured by fermentation, adding the further benefit of probiotics.

Traditional wisdom encourages the balancing of the contractive action of sour flavors with the expansive, stimulating effects of pungent and mildly spicy flavors. Mildly spicy foods and herbs will encourage circulation and keep the contraction of fall from becoming too restrictive. If you are having a hard time slowing from the busyness of summer, and need support for mental focus, choose sour flavored foods like those above. On the other hand, if you tend toward winter blues, or are feeling overly sluggish as the season progresses, incorporating more pungent foods can help.

Curtido

This is an immune-enhancing Salvadoran-inspired condiment, similar to sauerkraut that tastes great with dishes with a New World flavor profile. Try it with scrambled eggs and black beans for breakfast. Inspired by a recipe from http://vanessabarrington.com/. Check out Vanessa's recent blog post featuring Harissa, a wonderful chili-based condiment she inspired me to add to my repetoire.
1 medium head green cabbage, sliced thinly
½ bunch scallions, sliced thinly

2-3 carrots, grated
1 bunch red radishes, thinly sliced or left whole if they are really small
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 jalapenos, cut in quarters lengthwise, seeded and sliced thinly
½ teaspoon dried Mexican oregano, crushed, or 1 teaspoon fresh oregano, chopped

Place the cabbage, onion, and carrots in a large bowl. Add the salt and massage the vegetables with your clean hands, squeezing and tossing until they begin to release their liquid. Add the jalapenos and oregano and mix to distribute. Pack the mixture tightly into a 1 quart, wide-mouthed Mason jar, pushing down the vegetables until the liquid rises above the level of the cabbage. Put a smaller jar inside the mouth of the jar to keep the curtido submerged. Cover with a clean tea towel and secure with a rubber band. Leave out at room temperature for 3-5 days or more, tasting each day until it is sour enough for you. Then fasten the lid on the jar and store in the fridge. The curtido will keep for months.

Savor Summer

2011-08-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

     I can hardly believe it's August already!   Where has the summer gone? When the marine layer hangs thick overhead all day in the grey Bay Area, it's hard to know it even is summer. That is, until I go to the farmers' market--there, the season is undeniable. The market in summer is the largest and busiest of the year. Each week, new varieties of summer produce tempt me: I wander the aisles drinking in the bright, warm hues of the season, sampling everything and indulging in fresh berries, stone fruits such as apricots, cherries, peaches and nectarines, plums, figs, melons and celebrate the return of local apples, the Pink Pearls, Gravensteins and Galas. The vegetable array is dizzying, too: summer’s darlings such as sweet corn, green beans, basil, summer squash, garlic, okra, cucumbers, avocadoes, tomatillos and this year's late crop of blushing local tomatoes. Many crops consumed year round are harvested in summer, and reach a flavor peak now, such as onions, garlic, and new potatoes (a lot less starchy and more nutritive than storage potatoes).
     Herbs are reaching their maximum growth and it is a great time to indulge in bunches of fresh herbs from the market or your garden, seasoning your food generously and drying what you don’t use to bring flavor and nutrition to the cooler seasons. I had an epiphany the other day when I was at the store about to buy a box of peppermint tea. What I am doing buying something that is all over my and the neighbor's garden?   I've been harvesting and drying herbs for the winter like crazy since then. Another trick is to make big batches of pesto with assorted herbs and freeze them to brighten winter's soups and stews.
     Summer's abundance can make it challenging to decide what to eat.   While it is appropriate to eat more raw food in summer, and focus your diet on fresh produce, this is best balanced by a steady stream of warm, cooked foods. Dahl is a summer staple in our house, as it can be consumed for almost any meal, incorporate most of summer's best produce, and makes a great complement to salads and raw veggies.  I like to top it with a dollop of yogurt or sauerkraut to add a dose of probiotics. It allows me to cook once, eat twice (or more times), a cardinal rule for saving time in the kitchen. I always freeze a serving or two for another day, too. The recipe will appear in my forthcoming book Real Food All Year, to be released this coming spring by New Harbinger Press.

Red Lentil Dahl with Sweet Corn

In Chinese medicine, red lentils are classified as having a slightly bitter taste, which makes them particularly beneficial to the heart, the organ most important to nourish in the summertime. Dahl is a staple food in India and Nepal, and can be enjoyed for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It can also be used as the basis of a seasonal fast, traditionally used at the beginning of summer or as a transition to autumn. The recipe can be easily varied by the addition of almost any seasonal vegetable. A bunch of chopped arugula, stirred in the last few minutes of cooking, is particularly tasty.
Makes 4 to 6 servings.

6 cups water

1 cup red lentils

1 6” strip kombu seaweed

1 tablespoon olive oil, ghee or coconut oil

1 medium onion, diced small

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 tablespoon curry powder, or a mixture of 1 teaspoon each of cumin, coriander and turmeric

2 carrots , cut in ¼” thick rounds

3 celery stalks, diced

2 ears sweet corn, kernels removed from the cob

1-2 lemons, juiced

1 small ginger root, grated (about 3 tablespoons)

Sea salt

Chopped cilantro, for serving

Fill a large pot with the water and add the lentils, soaking overnight if possible. Bring to a boil and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes, skimming off any foam that rises to the surface. Add the kombu to the pot, cover and turn the heat down low. Meanwhile, heat the oil or ghee in a skillet, add the onion, and sauté for 5 minutes or so, until it begins to turn clear. Add the mustard seeds and curry powder, and stir occasionally until the spices give off their fragrance. Now add the carrots and celery and continue to cook a few minutes more. Scrape the carrots, celery onions and spices from the skillet into the soup pot. Add the corn kernels, cover and simmer until the lentils are soft and creamy, 10-30 minutes more. Squeeze the ginger and lemon juice into the pot, and add sea salt to taste. Serve garnished with cilantro.

Cherry Soup Season

2011-06-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

One of my beloved annual food rituals is cherry soup. Every year, in the brief and glorious season of cherries, around the summer solstice, I make a batch and it never fails to elicit moans of delight from anyone who is lucky enough to try it (once I managed to make enough to feed a wedding party, and most recently had the supreme thrill of eating it in a cave). I would have never thought of such a thing on my own (it's a French idea, of course) but I found it in one of my most influential early cookbooks, Anna Thomas' The Vegetarian Epicure, Book Two. This Sunday the Chronicle ran a recipe in the food section, calling for a whole bottle of white wine and lemongrass, but I prefer the simpler version below.

In Chinese medicine, cherries are described as warming and sweet, are said to strengthen the spleen qi and heart blood, "prevent involuntary seminal emission," and are a remedy for arthritis and gout. They just might help you sleep a little better around the solstice when the long days make us want to stay up late. Their deep red color indicates the presence of iron and lots of antioxidants, needed right now when the sun is so high, and the color is certainly a big part of the appeal of this soup, especially when you drizzle it with creme fraiche and garnish it with a few yellow and pink Rainier cherries for contrast.

Cold Cherry Soup
Adapted from The Vegetarian Epicure, Book 2 by Anna Thomas (1980).

2 1/2 lbs. sweet dark cherries
5 cups water
2-4 tablespoons evaporated cane juice
1/3 cup white wine
juice of 2 lemons
dash sea salt
creme fraiche, for serving (make your own for extra brownie points)

Pit the cherries and put them in a large soup pot along with the sugar and the water. Bring to a boil and simmer about 15-20 minutes. Remove from heat and puree with an immersion blender, or allow to cool and puree in a regular blender. Add the wine, lemon juice and salt. Chill the soup. Serve dolloped with creme fraiche, as a first course or dessert.

Real Food All Year

2011-06-10T11:41:00.000-07:00

We’re popping champagne at my house in celebrating turning in the completed manuscript of my book Real Food All Year: Eating Seasonal Whole Foods for Optimal Health and All-Day Energy. It’ll be released in April 2012 by New Harbinger Press. The past two months have been a flurry of writing and cooking. Somehow it ended up that I was finishing up both the winter and summer chapters this spring. It worked in some ways, as spring in the Bay Area is a kind of vacillation between winter and summer.

The irony of writing a book on seasonal eating at a time in history when the weather and even the seasons are becoming unstable did not escape me. Climate scientists report that most parts of the world are experiencing warmer winters and earlier springs. According to Stanford professor David Lobell, there has been about a 5% decline in production of corn and wheat worldwide, (except in North America), along with a 6% rise in prices of these crucial foodstuffs over the past 30 years, due to the changing climate (Lobell, Schlenker et al. 2011). Other research reported in a The New York Times article a couple of days ago showed that declining global harvests have been affected by adverse weather events, such as floods and hurricanes, linked to climate change. Of course, industrial agriculture is a huge culprit in driving these changes, as it is responsible for up to 37% of greenhouse gas emissions globally according to Michael Pollan. More reasons to escape and transform the industrial food system.

Writing a cookbook sure gets you to eat well. We sat down to a lovely meal of 5 Spice Braised Lamb Shank and Kale Caesar the other night, testing a winter and a spring recipe, which warmed us well on one of those chilly spring nights.

Five Spice Lamb Shank

Braising on the bone with warming spices epitomizes winter meat preparation. You can use lamb or beef shank, oxtail, short ribs, or similar on-the-bone meat cuts with this recipe to delicious effect. Most commercially available lamb is pasture-raised, but check with your butcher to be sure. Have it cut into a few pieces to expose the nourishing marrow. Go ahead and use water if you don’t have any broth or stock on hand, but be sure to stash the leftover bones in your freezer for a future batch of bone broth. Makes 3-4 servings
1 tablespoon pastured lard, bacon grease, ghee or olive oil
1 1/2-2 pounds lamb shank
1 onion or 1 large leek, diced
2 stalks celery, diced, or ¾ cup diced celery root
2 carrots or parsnips, diced
3 cloves garlic, crushed, or 2 stalks green garlic, sliced
5 quarter sized slices fresh ginger
½ teaspoon Chinese five spice powder
2 cups Bone Broth , Savory Vegetable Broth or water
3 tablespoons tamari, fish sauce or a combination
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
Zest and juice of 1 orange

In a large, heavy pot such as a Dutch oven, heat the fat, and brown the shank on all sides; this will take at least 10-15 minutes. Add the onions, lower the heat to medium, and continue to cook and stir until they begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Stir in the celery, carrots, and garlic and ginger and continue to sauté for 2 minutes. Add all the remaining ingredients, and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook on low for 1-2 hours until the meat is very tender and beginning to fall off of the bone.

Remove the shank to a plate, add the orange zest and juice to the sauce, and turn up the heat again to high to reduce the liquid, stirring occasionally, until it begins to thicken and turn glossy, about 10-15 minutes. Add the shank back to the pot and heat thoroughly, and then serve with the sauce.

Kale Caesar Salad
I make this salad when I tire of the my usual boil and saute kale preparations. Using kale instead of Romaine gives the old standby salad a nutritional and flavor boost. I've seen this dish popping up on a few restaurant menus recently. The easy to grow Lacinato variety, also known as dinosaur kale because of its hide-like texture, gives a tender bite in this dish. Unlike lettuce salads, this one keeps well for a day or two.
Serves 4-6
1 bunch kale
1/2 cup Caesar salad dressing (see NOTE)
¼ cup Parmesan cheese, shaved with a vegetable peeler into strips or grated
Freshly ground black pepper
Wash the kale, and strip the leaves off of their tough stems. Arrange the leaves in a pile on a cutting board, and chop into 1/4” strips. Place in a large salad bowl, and add the dressing. Combine thoroughly, and let sit for an hour or more to soften the kale. Just before serving, toss in the Parmesan cheese and top with freshly ground pepper.

NOTE: For the dressing, combine 1 teaspoon prepared mustard, 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil,1 raw pastured or organic egg yolk, the juice of 1 lemon, 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan and 2 anchovy fillets and blend with an immersion blender or food processor until smooth.

Mung Bean Dahl--a Food for Spring

2011-03-28T14:15:00.000-07:00

By popular demand, I'm posting my recipe for Mung Bean Dahl, a dish for spring and summer known for its detoxifying qualities and ability to move stuck liver energy. You know your liver energy is a bit stuck if you feel irritable, restless, or angry, not uncommon at this time of year. Source your kombu carefully. I get mine from the darling folks at Pacific Wildcraft, who harvest it from the relatively pristine waters of the Mendocino coast. Cooking beans with kombu increases their digestability, adds nutrients, and shortens cooking time. Plus it's a great way to work more sea vegetables into your life. The seaweed-shy won't even know it's in there. Visit this post for more exciting sea vegetable recipes.

Mung Bean Dahl
Mung beans are cooling and detoxifying, benefit the liver and gall bladder, and are easy to digest when soaked or sprouted (see this post for how- and why-to sprout your beans before cooking). Cooking them with warming spices helps prevent them from over-cooling the body. Dahl is one of those versatile dishes that can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner, as is often done in its native India and Nepal. Ayurvedic healers often prescribe a short cleanse on this dahl alone for spring detoxification.

1 cup dried mung beans, soaked overnight or sprouted for 2-3 days
5 cups water 1 6" strip kombu
1 onion or 3 spring onions, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 stalks celery or small fennel bulbs, diced
2 tablespoons ghee, coconut oil or lard from a pasture-raised pig
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon each cumin, coriander and turmeric
sea salt to taste
3 tablespoons coarsely grated ginger root
juice of 2 lemons
1/2 cup minced parsley

Place the beans in a medium soup pot, add the water and kombu, and bring to a boil. Cover and lower the heat to a simmer. Heat the fat in a saucepan over medium heat for a few minutes until it begins to shimmer, then stir in the mustard seeds an spices. Stir for a moment until fragrant, then quickly add the onion and saute until it begins to turn translucent. Add the carrots and celery or fennel and saute for a few more minutes. Add the vegetables and spices to the pot of simmering beans, and simmer the dahl until the beans are tender, about 1 hour total. Squeeze the ginger over the dahl, adding its juic, and season with the lemon juice and salt to taste. Serve garnished with a parsley or cilantro. I like to eat it with a big dollop of full fat yogurt on top.

Spring Fling

2011-03-03T10:49:00.000-08:00

Although the Gregorian calendar starts spring on the equinox around March 21st, in lunar traditions such as the Chinese, it is well underway. It sure feels like it when I stroll through the farmers' market here in northern California, where the first asparagus appeared a couple of weeks ago. Now is the time to celebrate all that is fresh and new, and pick up lovely spring onions, green garlic and the tender greens of spring which are a bit more pungent than winter's sturdy leaves. That said, there's still time to revel in any cold-season delights you've missed, such as psychedelic celery root and Romesco, or, my favorite citrus, kumquats, the jalapeno poppers of fruit, which linger still to brighten up a salad or just blow your taste buds in a shock of sweet skin and bitter juice. This time of year I make a few batches of spring green soup to celebrate the goodness of the green things at the market, and like to top it with homemade creme fraiche. Go ahead, broaden your fermentation repetoire by culturing a batch, capturing the freshness of spring dairy, made more vitamin-rich by the rapidly growing green grass your local pastured cows are eating now.

Spring Green Soup
This soup evokes spring in color and taste, and eating it for breakfast, lunch or dinner can make you feel a sense of spring within. I like to eat it with a big spoonful of sauerkraut, green pesto, or crème fraiche (below) and a slice of sourdough rye bread and butter for a quick and easy spring meal. Leftovers freeze well. Add a big handful of chopped greens to freshen it when you reheat it. Makes 4-6 servings.

2 tablespoons ghee, lard, coconut oil or olive oil
1 bunch spring or green onions, white and green parts, coarsely chopped
½ cup coarsely chopped fennel or celery
1 quart chicken, pork or vegetable stock or water
2 small potatoes or turnips, diced into ½ inch cubes
1 bunch leafy greens, coarsely chopped (about 2 cups), see NOTE
1 teaspoon fresh or dried dill
2 tablespoons chickpea or white miso
1 lemon, juiced

Heat the ghee or other fat in a medium soup pot on over moderate heat. When the fat just begins to liquefy, add the onions, and sauté until their edges begin to turn golden, two to three minutes. Add the celery or fennel and sauté a few minutes more. Add the stock or water and turnips, turn the heat to high, and bring the soup to a boil. Cover, and reduce the heat to simmer for 15 minutes. Add the greens and continue to simmer until all the vegetables are tender, five to fifteen minutes more depending on the which varieties of greens you choose. Turn off the heat, and stir in the dill and the miso. Puree the soup with an immersion blender, or allow to cool and puree in batches in a blender or food processor. Stir in the lemon juice, and taste the soup. You’re looking for a balance of bitter, tart, salty and aromatic flavors. Adjust the seasonings as needed.

NOTE: Most varieties of leafy greens, such as spinach, kale, turnip and mustard greens, arugula, nettles or a combination of these, work well in this soup. You’ll want to adjust your cooking time, depending on how thick or fibrous the greens you choose.

Crème Fraiche
This easily made cultured cream has a wonderful mild flavor and will add probiotics, beneficial fats and enzymes to any dish calling for cream, milk, yogurt or sour cream. It can also be whipped and used as a dessert topping, or drained as in making yogurt cheese to make your own mascarpone. Be sure to source your cream from cows that have been fed on pasture, and enjoy it in the spring for the biggest concentration of fat-soluble vitamins such as A and D.

1 tablespoon buttermilk, crème fraiche, or plain yogurt
1 ½ cups organic whipping cream
Place the buttermilk in a pint jar, and add the cream. Gently stir together, cap, and allow to ferment in a warm place such as on top of the refrigerator for 1-2 days until the crème fraiche begins to firm. Store in the refrigerator, and consume within 1-2 weeks.

Not Your Usual Chocolate Truffles

2011-02-14T11:18:00.000-08:00

Herbal Chocolate Truffles
If Vday is just a marketing ploy for chocolate companies, at least we can choose sustainable chocolate to get that fix. I'll take any excuse to celebrate love, and like to gift my loved ones with tokens such as these. Chocolate is a great gateway drug for getting other good things into people, like high-antioxidant dried fruits and nuts, immune-stimulating coconut oil and powdered herbs, such as maca, siberian ginseng and various Chinese herb formulas. I've also made them with carob powder for my loved ones who don't indulge in chocolate. These nutrient-dense delights can be a dessert or snack, and will induce a lovely chocolate high without the usual subsequent crash and cravings. I make 'em bitter, spicy and just a bit sweet, so the taste of chocolate shines through.

1 cup almonds, walnuts, pecans or other nuts of your choice
½ cup goji berries, raisins or prunes
¼ cup coconut oil or coconut ghee
½ cup Fair Trade cocoa powder (raw if you like)
1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Dash sea salt
½ teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
2-4 tablespoon s of a granule Chinese herb formula of your choice, or powdered herbs such as astralagus, maca or Siberian ginseng (optional)

Soak the nuts overnight, or for several hours if possible, in filtered water. Add the dried fruit to the soaking nuts an hour or two before you plan to make the truffles. Drain the nuts and fruit and place into a food processor, grinding into a paste. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until smooth. Roll into small balls, coating with more carob or cocoa powder, shredded coconut or cocoa nibs if you like. Store the truffles in the fridge, and bring to room temperature for serving.

Sprouting Spring

2011-02-01T13:39:00.000-08:00

Lunar calendars indicate that spring is coming soon. It certainly feels like it here in the Bay Area. The Chinese classics teach that a feeling of restlessness, of impetuousness, naturally arises at this time. The energy is like that of a seed just starting to sprout--but remember it is still tender and needs protection. Winter may not be over yet. It's a great time of year to do some sprouting in the kitchen.

Soaking and spouting are used around the world in the preparation of mature seed foods, which include grains, beans and nuts and seeds. Mature seed foods, especially grains, can be difficult to digest, to the benefit of the plant. Look at it from a plant’s point of view: plants package their seeds in forms which will, ideally, be eaten and excreted but not digested by animals. An undigested seed, deposited by an animal away from the parent plant (encased in a helpful dose of fertilizer), has a chance to grow and propagate the species. Seed foods have hard, difficult to digest coats (the bran of grains which contains most of the fiber), and contain powerful phytochemicals such as phytic acid that bind up and protect their nutrients. Phytic acid is the storage form of phosphorus in plants, and it easily binds with other minerals such as calcium, magnesium zinc and iron, making them unavailable to whatever or whoever eats them. Soaking, sprouting, and other traditional methods of food processing help to neutralize phytic acid and other inhibitory compounds in seed foods. I recommend soaking overnight or sprouting all your grains, beans and nuts and seeds when practical to increase nutritive value and digestibility. Generally, grain and bean sprouts are best eaten cooked or steamed, nut, seed and vegetable sprouts are good raw.

Basic Sprouting Method
You can buy a sprouting screen or sprouting lids for Mason jars, but why not just upcycle that plastic mesh that onions and garlic are often packaged in? A delicious easy sprout to start with is sunflower seeds.

1 qt. wide mouth Mason jar
Sprout screen or plastic mesh cut to fit to cover jar lid

Rinse the beans, grains or seeds and place in jar. Fill the jar with water and allow to soak overnight. Place the screen or mesh and metal rim over jar opening. Drain the water off. Rest the jar at an angle so it will drain. Rinse twice daily or more often with cool, fresh water and allow to drain. Sprouts will be ready in 2-10 days, depending on size and sprouting time desired. If not using immediately, refrigerate in a covered container. Beans and grains should be cooked for best digestibility and nutrition, while seed sprouts may be enjoyed raw or cooked.

Sprouted Garbanzo Bean Hummus
Hummus, that wonderful staple, becomes even more delicious and nutritious when you sprout the beans first, which is likely the way it was traditionally done. Making hummos with miso isn't traditional but adds extra probiotic and enzyme power and wonderful flavor. The strip of kombu will make your beans cook faster and be more easily digested.

2 cups sprouted garbanzo beans
1 6” strip kombu seaweed
½ teaspoon sea salt
3 cloves garlic, peeled
¼ cup tahini
3 tablespoons white or chickpea miso
Juice of 2 large lemons

Place the garbanzo beans in a medium saucepan, cover with water, add the kombu and bring to a boil. Turn the heat to a simmer, cover, and allow to cook for 1-2 hours, until the beans are almost tender, and then stir in the salt. Allow to cook until tender, then drain, reserving the cooking liquid. In a food processor, place the garlic and process until finely chopped. Add the beans, tahini, miso and lemon juice, and process until smooth, adding the garbanzo cooking water if needed to get a texture you like. Let cool and serve as a spread or dip for veggies, crackers, bread or pita. Try adding chopped olives, cumin, roasted red peppers, chopped cilantro, parsley, etc. for flavor variety.

Wheat or Rye Berry Salad
Adapted from a recipe by Elizabeth Linhart Money. Cooking the grains with kombu enhances flavor and adds minerals.

1 cup sprouted wheat or rye berries
1 6” strip kombu
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
½ cup minced parsley or cilantro, or a combination
2 cups fresh seasonal salad greens, such as radicchio and arugula
1 bunch radishes, sliced thinly, or 1 watermelon daikon, cut into thin strips
½ cup sprouted sunflower seeds
Optional: goat cheese, such as chevron or feta, for garnish
Place the wheat berries in a large saucepan, cover with water by a couple of inches, and add the kombu. Bring the pot to a boil, cover, and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer 30-90 minutes, until the berries are tender. Drain and remove the kombu.

For the vinaigrette, grind the green garlic into a paste, either in a food processor, by chopping very fine, or in a mortar and pestle. In a bowl, combine the garlic paste, lemon juice, vinegar. and olive oil with salt and pepper to taste.

Add ¾ of the dressing to the wheat berries, along with the chopped parsley or cilantro. To serve, arrange the salad greens on a plate, and mound the wheat berries on top. Garnish with the radishes, sunflower seeds, and cheese and drizzle the remaining vinaigrette over all.

Winter: What to Eat Now

2011-01-10T13:23:00.000-08:00

I'm resurfacing after a frenzy of working on my book-in-progress, Real Food All Year, to be released in Spring 2012 by New Harbinger Press. I'd appreciate any feedback if you try the recipes below, which I developed as part of the book project.

Midwinter. For most of human history, a challenging time to stay fed. In this era of the seasonless supermarket, you might eat your way through winter without changing your diet at all, but that would not be wise. A stroll through the (happily just reopened in my town) farmers' market will remind you of the warming foods the body thrives on now: storage vegetables, like carrots, parsnips, celery root, cabbage, kale collards, leeks, onions, winter squash, yams, potatoes and such. Seasonal fruit: apples and pears from storage, citrus, and this is the best time to eat dried fruit (resist the siren call of tropical and Southern hemisphere fruit, its too cooling!). And now is the time to dig deep into the freezer and pantry and eat up the last of summer's harvest you squirreled away, cook up grains and beans, and enjoy more of that winter staple, meat. Sustainable meat, I hope. Eat as many parts of the animal as you can manage, including organs and bones. Yes, bones. Easiest to manage in stock, see below.

Cooking styles for winter should be long--roast, stew, braise, bake. Longer cooking brings out nutrients and qualities in food that attune our bodies to the energy of winter. Soup, stew, soup again. And this is the best time of year to deep fry. Say what? Yes, deep fry. We can handle the warming qualities of deep fried food right now (and who doesn't love the occasional dose of fried food?). The big thing is which fat to do it in. The best: saturated. As in lard, bacon grease, duck fat or ghee. The more saturated fats can handle the high temperature you need for a crispy deep fry and not get damaged, minimizing the oxidative stress incurred by eating fried foods. There really aren't good vegetarian alternatives for this. Use peanut oil if you must, or try refined coconut or organic canola oil.

Chinese medicine teaches that winter is the time to focus inward and replenish our kidney energy. I discussed foods and nutritional strategies for doing this in a previous post. Meanwhile, if you're still wondering what to eat, for a challenge check out the following. East Bay dwellers can find whole duck, butchered to your specifications, at Magnani Poultry on Hopkins in Berkeley.

Duck Three Ways
Preparing a duck is a wonderful way to get comfortable working with whole animals. From one or two ducks you can have two great meals for two or a feast for four, plus stock and home rendered fat for cooking. Take the time to scout out a source of sustainably raised duck in your area, and ask your butcher to cut it up for you, saving the fat separately.
Serves 2 to 4

Duck Breast with Balsamic Pomegranate Sauce
2 duck breasts
¼ teaspoon sea salt
Black pepper
½ cup balsamic vinegar
½ cup pomegranate juice
Rub the breasts all over with sea salt and sprinkle with black pepper. If your butcher hasn’t done so already, score the skin side of the breasts with a sharp knife, cutting through the skin but not into the flesh, about 1 inch apart all over.
In a small saucepan, combine the balsamic vinegar and pomegranate juice over medium heat. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to low. Simmer until reduced by two thirds and beginning to thicken, 15-20 minutes. Watch carefully in the last few minutes so that the sauce does not burn. Set aside.
Heat a heavy skillet over medium heat. Place the breasts, skin side down, in the skillet and begin cooking. After 5 minutes, pour off most of the hot fat and reserve for another use (as in braising the duck legs, see below), then continue cooking the breasts until deeply browned on the skin side, about 8-10 minutes. Turn the breasts over and sauté in the hot fat for another few minutes more. You’ll be able to tell when it is done when the meat feels firm when pressed with your finger. Remove from the pan and allow to rest on a plate for a few minutes. To serve, slice into 1/4 inch slices on the diagonal, and drizzle with the sauce. I like to serve additional sauce on the side for dipping, or you can serve the rest as a dip for seasonal fruit for dessert.

Braised Duck Legs with White Beans
Duck legs can be tough unless cooked slowly. Combining them with beans stretches their relatively small amount of meat, making a substantial dish for two or three people.
1 cup flageolet or cannellini beans
1 6 inch strip of kombu
2 tablespoons ghee, lard, olive oil or reserved duck fat, see above
2 duck legs
1 small onion, sliced
2 carrots or parsnips, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 bay leaves
Sea salt
Pepper
2 cups Poultry Stock, vegetable stock, or white wine
Chopped parsley for garnish
Soak the beans overnight in water. In the morning, drain the water, place the beans in a medium saucepan, and cover by 1 inch with cool water. Bring to a boil, add the kombu, cover, turn the heat down to low, and allow to simmer.
In large skillet with a lid, heat the fat over medium heat. Brown the duck legs in the hot fat on both sides, about 6 to 8 minutes per side. Remove to a plate, and add the onion, sautéing it until it begins to turn golden, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the carrots or parsnips, celery, and bay leaves, and sauté for a few minutes more, until the vegetables begin to release their fragrance. Add the browned duck legs to the pot and season with salt and pepper. Add the stock or wine. Drain the beans and add them to the pot, then cover and simmer together on low for 1-1/2 to 2 hours, until the meat and beans are very tender. Serve garnished with chopped parsley.

Poultry Stock
Stock making can be as simple as simmering bones in water with a splash of vinegar. For those who prefer more precision, the following yields a very nourishing, gelatinous stock. This recipe calls for a single duck or chicken carcass, but feel free to save bones in your freezer until you have enough for a larger batch. Meat markets and specialty markets often carry chicken feet by the pound.

1 roasted chicken carcass, meat removed, or the bones from preparing whole duck, as above
Giblets from the bird, if you have them, except the liver, see Note
1/2 pound chicken feet, if available
2 tablespoons apple cider or other mild vinegar
Place the carcass, giblets and chicken feet in a crock pot or large soup pot and cover with filtered water. Add the vinegar and let stand for at least 30 minutes. If you are using a crock pot, turn it to high and allow the stock to come to a simmer. Then turn the heat down to low and let cook, overnight to 24 hours. If you are using the stovetop, bring the stock to a boil, cover, and simmer overnight to 24 hours. Turn off the heat and allow the stock to cool. Drain and discard or compost the bones. Stock will keep for several days in the fridge and several months if frozen. Freezing some of your stock in ice cube trays, then storing these in a bag (be sure to label it!) in the freezer will give you a handy source of nourishing flavor to add to many dishes.
Note: Poultry liver will add a strong taste to the stock. If you have the liver, try sautéing it up with onions, chopping it finely and enjoy it on buttered toast for a cook’s vitamin-rich treat.

Duck Fat
If you’ve gotten a packet of duck fat along with your duck, you can render it at home. Duck fat is especially wonderful used in roasting potatoes, or use it in the duck dishes above.
Simply chop finely as much duck skin and fat as you can find, by hand or in a food processor. Put the fat in a pot with a heavy bottom and simmer on medium heat until the fat renders and the skin browns. Be wary of burning the fat. When the fat is clear and the bits of skin begin to become brown and crisp, take the pot off the heat, cool and strain. The fat will keep in the refrigerator for several months and will freeze indefinitely. The browned bits of skin are delicious eaten as is, or as a salad garnish with a bit of salt.

Holiday Baking Makeovers

2010-12-03T13:54:00.000-08:00

When it gets cold, dark and rainy, my thoughts turn to baking. I use lots of tricks to ensure that what I create has some redeeming social value. Holiday baking doesn’t have to be a nutritional disaster. Here are some proven strategies:

1. Whole-wheat pastry flour can be substituted 1:1 for white or unbleached flour in most recipes (except for yeasted breads requiring a high gluten content). For gluten-free baking, use brown rice flour, buckwheat flour, coconut flour or almond meal, or search for the wonderful recipes on glutenfreegirl.
2. Upgrade your fats. For me this means organic, cultured butter from pastured cows (such as that from Straus family farm), real lard in pie crusts, coconut oil or coconut ghee, and olive oil (yes, in cakes and cookies).
3. Sugar. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it at the holidays. Less refined sugars such as organic, fair trade evaporated cane juice, coconut sugar, palm sugar, maple syrup and molasses will bake up well but improve the nutritional profile of your treats.
4. Spices. As research uncovers the incredible health value of culinary herbs and spices (see http://whfoods.org/ for great articles on the health benefits of individual foods and spices), I’ve been increasing their use in all of my cooking. Holiday treats are traditional showcases for spices—spice it up for extra anti-oxidant power, cancer prevention and more! I usually double the amount of spice called for in recipes.
5. Cinnamon. The queen of holiday spices has been linked to helping curb blood sugar spikes, slow gastric emptying and increasing satiety (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2007 Jun;85(6):1552-6). It works well in almost any holiday recipe.
6. Nuts are another holiday baking staple which are seasonal and high in fiber, beneficial fats, antioxidants and flavor. Work them into baked goods whenever possible, or serve in-shell, roasted or spiced nuts instead of or alongside high-sugar treats.
7. Dried fruit: ditto.
8. Chocolate. Upgrade the health benefits by choosing the darkest (fair trade and organic) chocolate you can. This article gives a nice little recap of the health effects, (especially cardiovascular protection) of chocolate. I like to sub in some carob powder for cocoa powder in recipes for natural sweetness and to reduce the sugar content in recipes, see the following biscotti recipe.
9. Upgrade quality, downplay variety. When confronted with more choices, most people choose more. I focus on making one or two kinds of knockout cookies or candies rather than making many types which tends to encourage sampling them all.

Chocolate Cherry Almond Biscotti
Packing these cookies with flavorful healthy ingredients and baking them twice produces a crunchy treat with great satiety and keeping qualities. The addition of carob powder adds flavor and sweeteners, reducing the need for sugar.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2/3 cup palm or coconut sugar or evaporated cane juice
2 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups whole wheat pastry, white whole wheat flour, or brown rice flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
¼ cup carob powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch salt
2/3 cup coarsely chopped almonds
½ cup dried cherries, chopped
2 tablespoons cacao nibs
3 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
3 oz semisweet baking chocolate
1 tablespoon coconut oil

Cream the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, beat in the eggs one at a time, and then add the almond extract. Mix the flour, cocoa, carob and baking powder, cinnamon and salt together in a separate bowl, and mix into the batter a little at a time. Stir in the almonds, cherries and cacao nibs, by hand if needed, until you have a stiff dough (you can work in a little water at this point if the dough is too crumbly). Place a piece of parchment paper onto each of two cookie sheets and divide the dough in half, forming each into a log about 2” wide and ¾” thick. Place a log on each sheet and bake at 375 degrees about 30 minutes, until beginning to crack slightly on top. Remove from oven. When the logs are cool enough to handle, cut each on the diagonal into 1/2” thick slices, using a serrated knife. Place the slices on the cookie sheets and bake at 250 degrees until completely dry and crisp, turning once, for about 45 minutes. Cool on wire racks. Chop the chocolate in small pieces and melt together with the coconut oil. Spread this on one side of each cookie and allow to harden completely before storage. These will keep several weeks tightly sealed in a cool place.

Berry Good Ideas

2010-11-21T13:06:00.000-08:00

When a foodie friend told me she rarely eats strawberries beyond the first few weeks of their glorious reappearance in the spring at the Farmer’s market, I was surprised. In our area, our local farms bring strawberries (not hothouse) to the farmer's market through November, and strawberries and berries in general are a frequent food in our house. I daresay berries are my favorite food. I try to avoid imported and off-season berries, as well as any (usually heavily pesticided) non-organic berries. Conventionally grown berries consistently show up on the EWG Dirty Dozen list of contaminated produce. We keep the berries going much of the year in many ways, from freezing the annual Ollalieberry UPick bounty from July, to the feral Himalayan blackberries in the garden, to the sweet autumn raspberries that are even still edging over our fence from the neighbor’s yard, and then resort to dried and preserved berries to take us through the winter.

Berries are delicious. And they are super-nutritious. They give great pleasure, and flavor, and tend not to spike blood sugar as much as other sweet foods. The many types of berries typically contain beneficial phytochemical s such as polyphenols (especially anthocyanins), cancer-fighting ellagic acid, vitamins such as A and C, micronutrients and fiber, and recent studies have linked berry consumption to protection from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and vision loss.

Poking through the largest database on antioxidant content in foods, I was reminded that berries generally are higher in antioxidants than most foods, trailing behind only traditional medicines and culinary herbs and spices as a group. That 2010 study is worthy reading for any nutrition geek, yielding such delightful information, as that espresso contains several times the antioxidant content of green tea! A big reason for the phytochemical punch of berries is that they have a high skin to fruit ratio, being small, and the skin is where plants tend to concentrate their antioxidants, in part to protect their precious seeds from the harmful effects of ionizing radiation from the sun.

Traditional Asian medicines suggest that dark-colored foods such as berries are nourishing to the kidney energy, which governs the process of aging. Many of the most powerful tonic foods and herbs are dark in color and very high in antioxidants. The potent anti-oxidant anthocyanins are the pigments which give these vivid purple, blue, black and red colors to foods.

As the warm weather berries fade from the market, they are replaced by our fall favorite, the cranberry (for which I make an exception to the eat local rule), and an honorary berry, the pomegranite. Cranberries are super high in antioxidant power, vitamin C, help prevent and treat UTI's, and have even been shown to help prevent the grwoth of foodborne pathogens. Follow this link for much more detail on the health benefits of cranberries. Does cranberry sauce count? Well, sure, but how about working the real thing into your life? I've been enjoying cranberries in all my salads lately, and finding them pleasantlly tart and not needing sweetener.

Pomegranites receive honorary berry status because their nutritional profile is so similar, and they too have been linked to cardiovascular and cancer prevention. Plus they can function as food and entertainment as your work to liberate the gleaming seeds from their astringent pith (the source of their traditional use in combatting diarrhea). Don't forget that grapes a just big berries, too, and while higher in sugar than most of their cousins, their health benefits and that of moderate wine consumption are considerable. I was excited to learn that Malbec and Pinot Noir usually have the highest antioxidant concentration of wines. And that the health benefits of wine vary widely depending on varietal, region and technique? This article tells all.

There are many fun ways to get more berries into your diet. Dried berries, (a favorite are those kidney-nourishing wonders, goji berries, another locavore exception) can go into trail mix, granola and tea, while frozen berries improve breakast porridge, waffles, muffins etc. and help carry us through the winter months. I infuse the my feral blackberries into apple cider vinegar for extra berry power, and make lactofermented berry sodas and drinks. Berry foraging is possible anytime you are out in nature, once you learn to identify the wild berries of your region. The highlight of a recent trip to Sequoia National Park was the treat of a handful of my all time favorite, thimbleberries (tasting like a super-concentrated raspberry) I found while sunning after skinny dipping in an icy stream. Even berry preserves offer health benefits, as the polyphenols in berries are not destroyed by cooking.

RECIPE: The photo is of my most exciting recent berry experience, celebrating what might be the last local strawberries of 2010. I simmered 1/2 cup organic balsamic vinegar with 1/2 cup of freshly pressed pomegranite juice from the farmer's market for about 25 minutes until it was reduced to 1/3 cup of intense, luscious goodness. I'll venture to say it was a good a dip for strawberries as melted chocolate, which is about as good as it gets. It worked well as a drizzle for roasted sweet potatoes, and, I imagine, could enliven many other things...

What My Grandmothers Taught Me

2010-11-11T10:16:00.000-08:00

I'm re-running a portion of a post from 2008 today in honor of my beloved paternal grandmother, who died yesterday at the age of 92.

This weekend I reflected on the many lessons my two grandmothers taught me about food. They were born early in the 20th century, when America was just beginning to industrialize its food system, and their mothers and grandmothers still knew how to grow, produce and cook their own food.

1. Sit down at the table and eat a real meal. My grandmas would never eat in the car (Americans today report that up to 20% of their “meals” are eaten in cars), or scarf cold food straight from the refrigerator. Snacking was frowned upon. Many fond memories of my childhood stem from extended family meals around those long, dark, polished tables in formal dining rooms where we learned to eat and to converse.
2. Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. A highlight of my annual week at Grandma’s was the lovely, simple lunches we would have together at the picnic table in her garden.
3. Food is always better when eaten outside. My father’s family were big fans of picnics—either in the middle of a hike or as a destination in themselves—and alfresco eating in general. When we finally had a garden of our own, my family immediately got a picnic table to continue the tradition of those wonderful meals out on the back patio.
4. Grow your own food. Both my paternal grandparents grew up on farms. Although they were happy to leave their rural lives behind when they moved to the Bay Area, they put in an apple tree and raspberry and blackberry bushes in their front yard in Piedmont, the source of many wonderful preserves and desserts. And my other set of grandparents always had a vegetable garden and allowed my uncle to keep chickens for his 4H projects. My grandmother can still do a credible imitation of a happy chicken’s “I just laid an egg!” cluck.
5. Get food straight from the farm. My lifelong love of farm stands was nurtured from childhood when a highlight of my weekend visits to Grandmas was stopping at Webb ranch for berries and artichokes. And my other grandma would drive out to the central valley each in early summer for a lug of Santa Rosa plums to be made into that wonderful, easy plum freezer jam she was famous for.
6. Butter is better. I remember my grandmother’s sad recollection of WW2 when they couldn’t get butter. Margarine was white and it came with a yellow food coloring packet which you had to use yourself to dye the butter yellow. No one was fooled! In the giant Nurse’s Health Study, the more margarine nurses ate, the more heart attacks they had. The more butter they ate, the less heart attacks. Hmm….
7. Make it yourself. In general, it will be better. One of my grandmother’s holiday treats was lemon milk sherbet she made at home. Now I make it too, using buttermilk, crème fraiche and maple syrup. I skip the antifreeze and additives used in commercial ice cream.
8. Pasta is not good for you. As grandma would say, “there’s nothing to it.” White flour products, in general, act as antinutrients because you must draw on your own nutritional reserves to metabolize them. Especially mac and cheese(a pet peeve). Forthcoming post : “Mom, please don’t feed me mac and cheese!”
9. Eat 3 green vegetables with your dinner. A standard I aspire to but often fall short. I usually get in one leafy green, one orange-yellow and at least one other.
10. Table salt is not healthy. My maternal grandfather was an early health nut—Jack La Lane style. They used a wonderful VegeSalt at the table (which probably has MSG). I’m confident he would use sea salt if he were alive today. He also introduced me to maple sugar candy, the best candy in the whole wide world.
11. Don’t drink soda. (Except the kind you make at home through lactofermentation).
12. Make your own salad dressing. You can use decent oils and spare yourself ingesting rancid, cancer promoting “vegetable oil” or worse, hydrogenated oil and other chemicals used in commercial salad dressing. Plus, you’ll save a lot of money!
13. There’s nothing wrong with meat. I will add: as long as it comes from an animal raised on a farm, not a factory.
14. Ditto: cream.
15. Soak your pancake batter overnight. Grandpa used to do this with his famous buckwheat pancakes. Now I know that soaking whole grains overnight in a slightly acidic medium, such as buttermilk or sourdough, neutralizes the phytic acid they contain which can block the absorption of calcium and other nutrients. I do the same with oatmeal.
16. Cook and eat at home.
17. Take a walk after dinner.
18. Finally: Eat real food.
19. One from my mother: if you are in a bad mood, chances are it is caused by lack of food or sleep.

Apple Days

2010-11-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

With a sigh I pass by most of autumn's fruit offerings at the farmer's market each year. You see, at home I have an apple tree groaning with fruit. I happily snack on Pink Ladies until nearly May, and gladly support the endangered local Gravenstein in July, but by October I'm on a monogamous diet of Granny Smith. Eating a fresh apple a day is a must from October through December, but that's not nearly enough to assuage my guilt over wasting a single apple. My grandmother instilled in me the belief that it is nearly a crime not to use this abundance, which she lovingly did each fall with her apples, from an unknown and delicious heirloom tree most similar to the delicate Ginger Gold, which, like my Granny Smith, is both a great out-of-hand and a wonderful cooking apple, keeping its texture like a champ when baked.

It's a happy burden, this tree, and I am thankful the humble local apple, said to "strengthen the heart, tonify the qi, alleviate thirst, lubricate the lungs and resolve mucous" in Chinese medicine, is as rich in nutrition as it is in culinary versatility. Most of the nutritional goodies, such as vitamin C, quercetin, Ellagic acid and pectin (all important detoxifiers) are lost when apples are peeled, cooked or commercially processed, and pasteurized apple juice, one of the most commonly consumed "fruit servings" in America, is virtually devoid of nutrition, except calories. Apple consumption has been shown to be consistently associated with reduced risk of heart disease, cancer, asthma and diabetes (The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods, Murray, 2005). For a lot more detail on the health benefits of apples, including the exciting news that they promote the growth of friendly intestinal flora, click here. All bets are off for conventionally grown apples, however, which appear at #4 on the Environmental Working Group's dirty dozen list of produce likely to be contaminated with pesticides (techies check out their iPhone app).

Apple salad, fresh grated apples in muffins and waffle batter, braised cabbage with apples, apple cider, baked apples, roasted apples with root vegetables, apples sauteed in butter as a side dish, apple cabbage slaw, curried chicken apple salad, sauerkraut with apples and juniper berries...we've had them all this fall and have another month of appleness to go. Most exciting was this year's unprocessed Halloween offering, caramel apples--made from scratch without the nasty corn syrup--from this recipe.

On the theory that fermentation makes everything better, my best apple creation yet is a batch of apple chutney. Chutney is another food which was traditionally fermented and now is usually soured with vinegar.

Fermented Apple-Raisin Chutney
Makes about 1 quart. Adapted from a recipe in Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, who warns to eat it within two months. Think of it as a kind of fruit sauerkraut, or fruit kimchi.

3 cups apples, diced
1 Meyer lemon, seeded and diced (with peel)
2 teaspoons sea salt
1/2 cup raisins
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 cup red onion, diced

Mix all of the above in a large bowl. Cover and let sit at room temperature for a few hours, to allow the salt to draw out some of the fruit juices. Stuff into a Mason jar, and find a smaller jar or bottle that will fit inside, allowing you to compact the contents until the liquid rises above the level of the chutney, protecting the fermenting mass from exposure to air. Cover the whole thing with a tea towel, or t-shirt, and secure with a rubber band. Place the jar on a saucer and allow to ferment at room temperature for 2-6 days. I like to taste it each day and see if it has achieved a sourness I like. If you need more liquid, mix a 1/4 tsp of salt in a 1/4 cup of water and add this brine to cover. When you like the taste, you may refrigerate to slow down further fermentation. Serve with curries, rice, lentil dahl, or mix into salmon, tuna, chicken or tempeh salads for a refreshing, and probiotic, kick!

Fall Foods for Immune Enhancement

2010-10-28T15:21:00.000-07:00

One of the hightlights of the annual Hoes Down festival in California's Capay Valley is the mass pumpkin-carving.

Fall is the season which Chinese medicine associates with the metal element, the lung and large intestine organs, and the energy of letting go. The health of these organs is reflected in the health of our sinuses, skin and the ease of elimination. This time of year we prune away the excesses of summer like we prune a fruit tree after it bears, consolidating our energy, focusing on what is most important, and preparing for winter. It is also a time when our lungs are vulnerable, and it is easy to catch a cold or flu.
The seasonal foods we find at the farmer’s market in the autumn are traditionally used to strengthen lungs and large intestine. Many also help our bodies fight the effects of both breathing polluted air and exposure to pathogens. Onions, garlic, and other naturally spicy foods are thought to be protective to the respiratory system. Dr. Irwin Ziment, a professor at UCLA, based on the finding that Hispanics who smoke in the polluted Los Angeles area have a surprisingly low rate of lung cancer, routinely prescribes chilies for respiratory problems. In addition to chilies, radishes, turnips, ginger, cabbage and white pepper are considered mildly spicy in flavor in Chinese medicine and will help strengthen the lungs. Modern research has validated the age-old remedy of chicken soup for fighting respiratory infection and it is even more effective with the addition of garlic and chilies. Many common culinary spices, like turmeric, ginger, fennel and rosemary, have been found to have cancer-fighting properties as well (Aggarwal & Shishodia, 2004). Pears and Asian pears are another traditional remedy for lung irritation from illness or pollution, and can help soothe a dry cough.
While we seek seasonal foods to use in fall cooking, the techniques of cooking should also shift to support our bodies in adapting to the changing climate. Sautéed, baked and roasted foods should begin to replace and complement the raw, steamed or sprouted foods of summer. While mildly spicy foods keep energy moving, we should also seek out sour flavored foods such as sourdough bread, pickles, leeks, umeboshi vinegar, and sour apples, plums and grapes, which will help consolidate the body’s energy, while we should begin to choose more salty and bitter flavors as the season progresses to further internalize our energy. These two recipes feature fall foods and flavors, and make use of the healing powers of seasonal spices. Choose a Sugar Pie pumpkin for your Halloween decor, don't carve it, and enjoy it in soup. If you've already cut into that Halloween monster, pick up a Kabocha, green or red Kuri squash, or butternut. And yes, all squash peels are all edible--whether you do so depends on your intestinal fortitude!

Curried Apple Cabbage Slaw

It's a rare salad that improves with a day or two of aging, as this one does.1 medium head red or Savoy cabbage
2 carrots
1 celery root, strawberry daikon or other fall root vegetable
3-4 tart green apples
½ cup minced parsley or cilantro
¾ tsp sea salt
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon sesame, olive or coconut oil
2 tablespoons fresh ginger cut in tiny matchsticks
2 teaspoons brown mustard seeds
2 tablespoons curry powder

Thinly slice the cabbage, shred the carrots and celery root, and finely dice the apples. Place in a large mixing bowl with the parsley or cilantro, salt and lemon juice. Mix well, and let sit a few hours to soften if you have time. When ready to serve, heat the oil in a small skillet on medium low heat. Drop in the ginger strips and fry gently. As they begin to brown, add the mustard seeds and turmeric. Stir quickly for a moment or two until a fragrance is released. Scrape the toasted spices into the slaw and mix. Correct the seasonings and serve. Additions: many—try toasted coconut, peanuts, soaked almonds, raisins, dried cranberries, red grapes, the list goes on and on. Top with shredded chicken for a meal salad.

Pumpkin-White Bean Soup

Adapted from Love Soup by Anna Thomas. Serves 10, or makes many meals for one or two. Overnight soaking, and cooking the beans with kombu seaweed, will optimize their cooking speed, digestibility, and nutritional value. Would you believe that beans are high in antioxidants?

¾ cup dried navy, baby Lima or cannellini beans
1 teaspoon and 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
½ onion, diced
1 stalk celery, sliced
1 6” strip kombu seaweed
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 medium Sugar Pie pumpkin or similar, or butternut or Kabocha squash
2 large leeks, white and green part, chopped
4-5 cups water or stock
½ bunch Swiss chard, chopped
½ cup cilantro or flat-leaf parsley leaves
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup chickpea or sweet white miso
Juice of 1-2 lemons
¼ tsp or more freshly grated nutmeg

Put the dried beans in a large soup pot and cover by about 2” with water. Soak overnight. Bring the water to a boil. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a sauté pan, and add the onion and celery. Sauté for 5 minutes until beginning to brown, then add to the beans along with the strip of kombu. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and continue to cook until they are tender. When the beans are soft, add a teaspoon of salt.

While the beans are cooking, prepare the pumpkin: split it in half, and place on a cookie sheet. Roast at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until tender when pierced with a fork. Let cool, and remove the seeds and strings (I rinse the seeds clean and roast in the oven with tamari and cayenne for a snack and garnish).
Using a butter knife, remove the peel and coarsely chop the pumpkin flesh.
Heat the remaining tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet and add the leeks, then sauté until they are beginning to brown. Scrape the contents of the skillet into the soup pot with the beans, and add the stock or water, pumpkin pieces and the chopped chard. Simmer together until the chard is tender, and add the cilantro or parsley leaves and garlic. Mix the miso with ½ cup water in a bowl until smooth, and add this to the soup—don’t let the miso boil. Add the lemon juice, and season to taste with black pepper and nutmeg. Serve it with a garnish of fruity olive oil or a big dollop of Parsley-Lacinato Pesto.

Granola Out of the Box

2010-10-08T16:07:00.000-07:00

The following appeared today as my guest post on Eating Rules as part of October's Unprocessed Challenge.

When I pledged to join the Unprocessed Challenge this October, a few of my close friends were amused. “You don’t eat any processed foods,” they said.  Well, that statement is largely true. I’m a holistic healthcare professional, for gosh sakes. Yet there are still a few areas where things sneak in, and, judging by the orders at my local food coop, these areas are common ones where even hardcore locavores, scratch cooks and farmer’s market shoppers sometimes cut corners: Cereal, crackers, mayonnaise (and other condiments) and energy bars.  Sometimes when I work at night or my husband is home alone, I find empty boxes of Annie’s macaroni and cheese and Trader Joe’s shrimp wontons.  Most of these foods can be found in packaged form in relatively less processed states, e.g. our favorite Café Fanny granola only has real ingredients, Mary’s Gone Crackers are actually real food, and Annie’s is a world apart from Kraft, yet in the spirit of October it would be nice to break free of even this dependence.

Sometimes the best way is to just eat a bit lower on the (refined) food chain, as in homemade trail mix instead of energy bars, homemade crostini, otherwise known as (artisanal, unprocessed) bread brushed with olive oil and baked until crispy, or a mini-batch of aioli (whips up quick with a handheld blender) instead of commercial mayonnaise, or hot oatmeal instead of boxed cereal in the morning.

Another huge reason to go unprocessed and try to avoid all food in boxes is that this is one of the few ways to avoid ingesting Genetically Modified (GM) foods.  After extensive research on the topic, I am quite convinced that GM foods are nutritionally inferior to natural foods, are likely to cause harm, carry an increased risk of allergic reactions, and may play a role in the increasing diabetes and obesity rates we see in populations who ingest industrially processed foods, the vast majority of which contain genetically modified ingredients.  Most scary to me is that a single meal containing GM soy was shown to alter the intestinal flora of people who consumed it. The only way to ensure food that you are buying in a box, bag, package or can is GM free is to buy certified organic foods.  But you don’t have to take my word for it.  The best site out there covering the topic is the Institute for Responsible Technology.  You’ll find all the data you need.  It’s a happy coincidence (or is it Gastronicity?) that those folks have also declared October National GMO-Free Month.  Heck, why not take the GMO-Free pledge, too?  Visit to find out more and download GMO-free shopping guides.

Ok, so on those rushed or groggy mornings when no one quite feels like whipping up a hot breakfast, you don’t have to succumb to the siren call of the food industry. Just be sure to bake a batch of homemade granola right now to get you through. Inspired by my pal Vanessa Barrington, author of the newly minted book D.I.Y. Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food from Scratch, I have developed my personal favorite omega-3 granola formula which makes two quarts — one to eat now and one to freeze for later.
DIY granola enables you to have it your way, using the exact ingredients which meet your particular culinary and nutritional needs. Check out my post on 18 Reasons to DIY if you need further inspiration to get you doing it yourself.

Mostly Local Granola

I like to source as many of my ingredients as possible from my own bioregion. In this case, the fat, sweetener, orange zest, fruit and nuts are all from my local farmer’s market. I like it with raw milk or plain full-fat yogurt and chopped Granny Smith apples for breakfast or as a garnish on fruit anytime. For maximum digestibility, mix with yogurt the night before and let it soak. Some folks like to carry little baggies of granola around for a snack, too. Cinnamon helps regulate blood sugar, and may help prevent diabetes. I mix it into all sweet, baked goods to even out the blood sugar roller coaster. Be sure to make as many of your ingredients organic as possible — omit the orange zest if you can’t find an organic orange, as orange peel can be particularly high in pesticides. Adapted from a recipe by Vanessa Barrington, who warns, “honey will produce a sticky granola that clumps together” — you’ll want to scoop it out with a spoon.

1/2 cup melted pastured Butter (such as Straus) or melted Coconut Oil or a combination
1 Tbs. Cinnamon
1/4 tsp. freshly grated Nutmeg
Zest of 1 Orange
4 cups Rolled Oats
1 cup Organic Coconut Flakes (I leave these out for my family, in for myself)
1 cup Coarsely chopped Walnuts
1 cup Coarsely ground or chopped Almonds
1/3 cup Raw, local Honey
1 cup Unsweetened dried Cherries, Raisins, chopped dried Apricots or a combination

Mix everything except the honey and dried fruit thoroughly together in a large bowl.  Spread it in a thin layer on a large baking sheet, and bake at 350° F until evenly browned, 20-25 minutes.
You’ll want to stir it once or twice, and keep a close eye on those coconut flakes.  Remove from the oven, and drizzle the honey over all while it is still warm.  Stir to evenly coat the ingredients.
When the granola is cool, place back in the large bowl, and stir in the dried fruit.  Pack into a couple of Mason jars, lids on tight, and keep in the fridge or freezer to protect those essential fatty acids until serving time.
Note: You can omit the oats and use 3 cups of large coconut flakes if you want to make a paleo-friendly, lower-carb version.  Or try quinoa flakes instead for a gluten-free start to your day. Or skip the sweetener, fat and baking altogether to make muesli, best prepared by soaking in yogurt overnight before serving.
–

Defining Unprocessed

2010-10-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

October 1st--the start of the unprocessed challenge. The unprocessed experiment has already sparked a wave of interest and controversy. How do we define processed food? A favorite of mine is "any food that you can buy in a liquor store or 7-11." Hmm...the exception to this rule occurred once on St.Patrick's day in Ireland, when I concocted a fantastic meal of real cheese, freshly baked bread, Nutella, local rutabega and apples all from a gas station, the only open source of food in a tiny coastal Irish town where all the rest of the residents were celebrating happily in the single pub.

Traditional methods of food processing like soaking, sun-drying, and fermenting, generally increase the digestibility and nutritional value of food, while modern ones, such as making high fructose corn syrup from sugar cane and making packaged foods largely out of derivatives of wheat, corn and soy, usually dramatically decrease food's nutritional value. As one commenter put it "I want to avoid factory-processed food."

Difficulty may arise in evaluating artisinal foods, and foods made industrially, but on a small scale. I would say that a Clif bar is processed food, while an 18 Rabbits bar (locally made with a short list of real food ingredients) is not. Yes, it would be better to make your own fruit and nut bars, or just go with trail mix (the kind that only contains real food, not yogurt-covered peanuts and the like), but finding a local, small scale packaged food might be a great way to meet your goals of best nutrition, sustainability, and the pressures of your busy lifestyle. Andrew Wilder, originator of the Unprocessed October idea, has a great, detailed post on his blog that defines unprocessed here.

In a great example of gastronicity, October has also been declared non GMO month. Choosing unprocessed foods goes a long way toward avoiding GMO's as almost all factory-processed food in the US which is not labeled "organic" contains GMO's, usually in the form of soy, corn or canola. Funny, I remember a previous October which was declared an Eat Local challenge. October is an easy month to focus on eating fresh, local and organic food as it is the peak of harvest time in most areas. An upcoming post will cover the health effects of GMO foods--scary!

Last night's dinner was unprocessed, or rather processed only in the old-school sense. It started with my first harvest of tomatoes and tomatillos of the year (finally!), and a pork shoulder roast from local Clark Summit Farm. After dissatisfaction with my last batch of crock pot carnitas, I stumbled upon a method that retains the flavor of the taqueria-style, lard cooked version while letting me save my precious home-rendered lard for another use. You allow the pork to cook in its own fat rather than substituting stock or beer as is commonly done. I found the luscious recipe here on Serious Eats and was delighted that it includes using the leftover cooking juices as a base for salsa. The bone in the middle of the roast went straight into the crock pot with some pork neck bones and vinegar to be made into bone broth for soup on another day. I roasted my tomatoes, onions, garlic and tomatillos in the oven alongside the pork and also put in some apples to bake, so I felt like I was making good and thrifty use of the oven heat. We served the tacos with a recent batch of homemade curtido (Salvadoran style fermented cabbage slaw) and locally made Primavera corn tortillas (traditionally processed with lime which liberates nutrients) and a side of Romano beans. Local, organic, non-GMO, traditionally processed and satisfying!

UPCOMING CLASS: Learn the art of fermentation, a traditional, health-enhancing way to process foods, with me at Biofuel Oasis on October 17th. We'll cover kraut, kombucha and beyond, including brewing your own bubbles! Visit the Biofuel Oasis site to sign up.

Unprocessed October

2010-09-27T18:03:00.000-07:00

I like a challenge. Especially a food-related challenge. Eating locally, doing a cleanse, eating only yellow foods for a day, I'm usually game in the name of self-experimentation. That's one of many reasons why I'm joining fellow food bloggers and readers in a month-long challenge for October, the Unprocessed Challenge. I met its founder, Andrew Wilder, at the International Food Blogger's Conference up in Seattle. Check out his tasty blog, Eating Rules, and read about or sign up for the challenge here:http://www.eatingrules.com/2010/09/october-unprocessed/. Andrew keeps his eating rules simple: eat only whole grains, no trans fats, and no high-fructose corn syrup. I like it. Just following these will keep you eating real food.

The question is, of course, how do we define unprocessed? The consensus seems to be to eat foods which are made from recognizable ingredients, whether at home or by conscientious producers who use ingredients like those one would use at home. Beer and chocolate make the cut, for example. Bread and granola, yes, if they are made at home or pass the label test. For me, eliminating processed foods won't be a huge shift from our norm. I hope to use the challenge as a spur to try making more foods from scratch, and to eliminate some of the treat/cheat foods that occasionally make it into my diet. Halloween without mass-market candy? I can do it. I try to eat only Fair Trade chocolate now, which eliminates Hershey's and Nestle. And did you know you really can make your own chocolate, from cocoa beans if you can find them or cocoa nibs, which are more widely available? Check out this link to darling video of John Sharffenberger himself making chocolate with a coffee grinder: DIY chocolate.

Speaking of making it yourself, the fermentation season is upon us. Now is the time to preserve the abundant harvest and prepare to have some local foods around in the cooler seasons. Cabbage is an underrated vegetable, with its mild flavor, slight pungency, culinary versatility, cancer-fighting properties and amenability to fermentation. I celebrated the Fall Equinox in part by making a big batch of sauerkraut, some of which will season sausages at the Harvest Fair at my son's elementary school. Simple sauerkraut is a great way to get started in fermentation, create exciting flavors in your kitchen, and boost your digestion and immunity. Check out my previous posts on fermentation if you want a refresher on the health benefits: eleven ways, save the nation.

Simple Sauerkraut
This most basic of vegetable ferments can be varied with many additions. Makes 1 quart.

1 medium size head organic cabbage
1 tablespoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon caraway, fennel or mustard seeds, dill or juniper berries

Shred the cabbage as finely as you can, and place it in a large bowl. Sprinkle the salt over the cabbage and massage it in, squeezing until the cabbage begins to exude some juice. Once it is thoroughly wet, add the spices and combine. Stuff the cabbage into a wide mouth Mason jar, pressing down with your hands so that the cabbage juice rises above the level of the shredded cabbage. Use pickle weights or a smaller jar that will fit inside the mouth of the jar to weight the cabbage as it ferments. Cover the whole thing with a T-shirt or cloth secured with a rubber band and let ferment, for 3 days or more. Check each day to be sure the cabbage is submerged and taste daily to see if it has achieved a flavor you like. You may seal the lid and refrigerate to stop further fermentation. Eat 1-2 teaspoons a day or meal to improve your health!

For answers to all your fermentation questions, visit Sandor Katz' wonderful wild fermentation website. He has a great Q&A section here: http://www.wildfermentation.com/qa.php, plus links to fermentation forums and his amazing book, Wild Fermentation.

UPCOMING CLASS: I'll be teaching the art of fermentation in Oakland on October 17th. Follow this link to find out more and register for the class: http://www.biofueloasis.com/?page_id=7.

18 Reasons to Do It Yourself

2010-09-12T07:37:00.000-07:00

Why making it at home from scratch is worth the time and trouble.

1. Do it better. Homemade everything almost always tastes better (once you get the knack).
2. Do it to your taste. Please your own palate.
3. Do it healthier. Make it whole grain, use sea salt instead of refined salt, soak grains and beans before cooking, sprout grains and beans before cooking, improve the fatty acid profile, use sourdough instead of commercial yeast, upgrade to cultured or raw or organic dairy, or any of those other ways to make your own food more nutritious.
4. Do it without preservatives, additives, artificial flavor, color, and all those other ingredients no one can pronounce.
5. Do it like your grandmother (or great-grandmother, or great-great-grandmother) did.
6. Do it traditionally. Keep ancient human knowledge, such as fermentation and preserving, alive.
7. Do it organic. Protect the environment and avoid ingesting pesticide residues.
8. Do it low carbon. DIY shrinks your food miles.
9. Do it local. Or locally, as the English major in me wants to write. Support farmers and producers in your community, or become one.
10. Do it together. Connect with family and friends over food preparation tasks. There’s nothing like shelling beans or jam making to bring people together.
11. Do it like a farmer. Culinary arts such as fermentation require the care and feeding of thousands of microorganisms.
12. Do it the right way. The food industry takes shortcuts that generally decrease production time, increase shelf life, and dramatically decrease nutritional value. You won’t.
13. Do it slow. What’s the rush?
14. Do it with what you’ve got. Creativity shines when you do without.
15. Do it by hand. That said, the right appliance is sometimes what makes it possible to DIY.
16. Do it for your loved ones. Doing it yourself really says “I care.”
17. Do it against the machine. It’s no surprise that punk has embraced DIY so thoroughly. There’s no better antidote to alienation than doing it yourself.
18. Do it now! What can you make yourself, today?
BONUS: Do it in season, of course!

Ghee, I made it myself.
Yesterday I made ghee for the first time. I knew it was easy, but had never gotten around to it. I simply melted a pound of unsalted organic grassfed butter (from the Straus family in this case) slowly, turned the heat to medium when it was molten, and brought it to a boil. Then I turned the heat down again and let it boil, stirring at times, until after about 10 minutes it turned a light gold, smelled wonderful and seemed to clarify. I skimmed some milk solids from the top (saving them to slip into pancake batter) and poured the golden liquid into a clean glass jar, noting the light brown crust of milk solids on the bottom of the pan, to be scraped out and enjoyed by the cook. There are so many tiny culinary pleasures that no one but the cook knows about, usually involving carmelized something-or-other at the bottom of a pan. I might have cooked it a little too long (as usual I wasn’t hovering by the stove), so my ghee has a deep golden color and a taste almost of brown butter, which is fabulous. I’ve put it on porridge and green beans so far, both to great effect. It keeps forever. I am empowered. For an overblown but inspiring account of ghee’s health benefits, and the recipe I followed, try this link http://www.womens-natural-health.com/gheerecipe.html.

SPEAKING of doing it yourself, I'll be teaching a class on Monday, Sept. 20th at 18 Reasons, the educational arm of the wonderful Bi Rite grocery in San Francisco's Mission District, on brewing your own bubbles. You will learn to brew sustainable sodas and ales from seasonal and local ingredients. Vanessa Barrington (http://vanessabarrington.com/) and I will demonstrate and discuss many ways to get your bubbles on: yeast and lacto-fermenation, whey, ginger "bug" and other starters. You'll put together a batch of soda to ferment at home, and sample a variety of homemade bubblies. Bring: a mason jar with lid. For more info, visit http://18reasons.org/calendar.phpTo reserve your spot, purchase tickets here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/124651.

Allergy Elimination Diet

2010-09-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

It's almost fall, and I've just started an allergy elimination diet. In the last couple of weeks, the light has shifted. Darker shadows, shorter days, and the air has a new bite. The change of season is a good time to refocus on health. Chinese medicine teaches that fall is time to consolidate our energy, let go of the things we no longer need and to attend to the health of our lungs and large intestine. It makes sense to try to bolster our immunity (with real food, not flu shots) and fend off those pesky fall allergies. The couple of weeks before and after the equinox are a wise time to choose a cleansing diet in preparation for the cooler weather.

For me, the crazy wonderful overindulgence of the International Food Blogger's Conference (held in the Theo chocolate factory, with giant trays of chocolate at hand at all times), with its endless, dizzying array small plates, wine at lunch and dinner and my general feeling I had to try to consume it all capped off a summer of, well, moderate overindulgence, and left me feeling bloated, craving a daily dose of coffee, chocolate and red wine, and ready for a cleanse.

The basic principle of dietary cleansing is to eliminate foods that you may be allergic or sensitive to and focus on simple whole foods, allowing the body's detoxification machinery to get to work on its backlog of stored toxins, such as heavy metals, PCB's, BPA, food additives, and the like. You eat this low-allergy, health-supporting diet for two to three weeks, and then gradually reintroduce foods, observing for any sensitivities or reactions. If you've been wondering if wheat, gluten or dairy are really a problem for you, this is a great way to find out. There are many versions of the elimination diet, and various ways to emphasize the cleansing aspect (or not). This is the one I'm following: EAT: all fresh fruit except oranges, gluten-free grains such as rice, millet, quinoa, buckwheat, teff, amaranth, animal protein (wild and low-mercury fish, organic/pastured poultry, grassfed lamb and beef) and/or beans, all vegetables and herbs, only cold pressed olive oil, pastured lard and ghee. AVOID: all dairy, gluten grains like wheat, barley, oats and rye, pork and cured meats, shellfish, soy, corn, other fats and oils, refined sugar and other sweeteners, refined and processed foods, alcohol, caffeine and other drugs. Keep it seasonal by choosing local produce, and favoring more warm, cooked not raw foods and soups when the weather is cool.

I tried a version of this that eliminated all grains in May, and while I felt great, it was not miraculous as some folks in the nutrition world (like, say, Mark Sisson of http://www.marksdailyapple.com/) would have you believe it might be. Again, I think it all comes down to biochemical individuality. Some do well on grains, some don't. Some do well on dairy, meat, wheat, some don't. The interesting thing about a process like the Allergy Elimination Diet is that it is a way to explore what works for you, not the latest nutrition guru. Often, if you do identify a food that seems to cause a reaction (migraine headaches, PMS, bloating, whatever it is..), you can often avoid it for 6 month or so and then reintroduce it to find you don't react any more. Where do these sensitivities come from, anyway? I'd say some are genetic, some created by an imbalance in gut flora, some by changes in the food supply such as GMO's (GMO corn is linked to an increase in allergies, and wheat has been bred to contain even more gluten). I'm using this as a good chance to try out some recipes from the Gluten-Free Girl, who I met at the blog conference, check out her great writing here: http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/.

Day one, I'm feeling good. Titrated down on coffee (I had maxed out in coffee heaven, Seattle, where the ambient coffee quality is even higher than in the Bay Area), switched to green, then white tea. Decided not to eliminate chocolate, if only because it's in my cod-liver oil, for goodness sake (a rightfully discontinued flavor), but I'll fight those afternoon cravings which have been hitting hard every day since I returned from the chocolate factory. I'll keep you updated on how it's going, meanwhile, dear reader, consider what your body and diet might benefit from letting go of, temporarily or permanently?

Do-It-Yourself Delicous

2010-09-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

I
I am blown away by Oaklander Vanessa Barrington’s new book DIY Delicous: Recipes for Simple Food from Scratch (Chronicle 2010). It’s gorgeous, it’s inspiring, it will change your life. I’m a diehard DIY cook and this book has inspired me to take it that much farther by making my own mustard, nut butter, wine vinegar and cultured butter. Vanessa really makes it easy and accessible, and convinces you that these things are worth the effort. Find out more about Vanessa and her books here: http://vanessabarrington.com/. DIY Delicious does what the best cookbooks do: it indoctrinates you into a whole new way of life (full disclosure: Vanessa is a dinner party pal of mine and a probable photo of my hand clutching the best BLT ever appears in the book). Yesterday I made her grainy mustard from the book, using lactofermented pickle juice and sherry vinegar to soak the mustard seeds, and it worked! It's pungent, and probiotic, and mustard is not only delicious but gives you all the health benefits of the other plants in the cabbage family, such as protection from colon cancer. Now I just have to make my own apple cider vinegar from my abundance of apples and I'll even more DIY salad dressing.

This life-changing cookbook reminds me of some others that have changed me. Anna Thomas is a master at this: her New Vegetarian Epicure (one of my top 10 cookbooks of all time, even now that I eat meat), organized by season, evoked a lifestyle of cooking from the garden and farmer’s market in a time when this was still a radical (the root of which is, well, root) idea, and her latest, Love Soup, brings the soup lifestyle home with inimitable style. Others that have shaped me deeply as a cook: Wild Fermentation, Nourishing Traditions, Full Moon Feast, The River Cottage Meat Book...

Without a doubt the soup lifestyle is a big part of my own DIY delicousness: when in doubt, I make soup. When in doubt, I eat soup. Even in summer. Right now we are eating a big batch of gazpacho into which I snuck a few of those proliferative summer squashes, and no one was the wiser.

The ancient wisdom of Traditional Chinese Medicine confirms this strategy. We acupuncturists like to describe the digestive system as a soup pot. All food you eat must be turned into soup: heated to body temperature, pulverized, and liquefied. The closer your food is to soup, the easier it is for your body to digest. Thus you conserve energy for other uses, like immunity, body repair and maintenance, or following your life’s passion for DIY mustard or woodblock printing. In macrobiotics, we often suggest that 5% of the diet be comprised of soup. In my household, we have a soup-based dinner once or twice a week, with enough left over for a couple lunches and a portion for the freezer. The soup lifestyle includes frequent stock- and pesto- making for maximum flavor and nutritional punch. See my post on the 5 elements of soup if you need to get re-inspired on the soup lifestyle here:http://gastronicity.blogspot.com/2009/11/when-in-doubt-make-soup.html.

And if you want to check out more DIY Delicous, follow this link to a recipe for Real Ketchup:http://www.dailycandy.com/san-francisco/article/87636/Real-Ketchup-Recipe-from-DIY-Delicious. Sounds a like a great Labor Day weekend project. Now, how am I going to make this one probiotic?

Seeing Red: the Summer Season

2010-08-06T06:43:00.000-07:00

California’s heirloom tomato crop is lagging this year. As Michael Bauer just reported in the Chronicle food section e-dition, we’ve seen a few tomatoes but the season has yet to reach its peak. Why? It’s also been the coldest summer on record in our area. (No doubt you’ve noticed this further evidence of global weirding).

Tomatoes need heat to reach their peak, as we fog-shrouded Bay Area gardeners know. My crop reached its peak in November last year. But we shouldn’t really be eating tomatoes when the weather is cold anyway. Heirloom tomatoes have regained their place as the queen of summer produce because we are finally returning to seasonality, or rather Gastronicity: “eating the right food at the right time in the right place.” The nightshade family, particularly tomatoes, eggplants, chilies, and peppers, are very cooling vegetables and best eaten primarily when the weather, or your condition, is hot.

My trip to the farmer’s market this week felt like it was finally the first day of summer. I had finished my papers at last, so it was a leisurely stroll, and everywhere I was seeing red. The red of the Early Girl tomatoes, the shy red of the first Gravensteins (get ‘em now and fight grape monocropping in Sonoma county), the creeping red of the yellow peppers starting to turn, the red hearts of a few cut watermelons, the strawberries still singing on from spring, and dazzling bouquets of red dahlias and cosmos.

In the five element theory of Asian medicine, red is associated with the fire element, the summer season, the bitter taste, and the emotion of joy. Now is the time to attend to the health of the heart and small intestine organs. The energy of the natural world is peaking now, and in plants is concentrated in fruits and flowers, where we can find superb nutrition in this season. Science is catching up with traditional medicine in identifying a few of the phytochemicals which are concentrated in the pigments of plants, and red foods are often particularly high in carotenes, such as lycopene, which are potent antioxidants, acting to protect us from cardiovascular disease (and cancer and other diseases). And when might we need an extra dose of antioxidants? How about when exposed to extra solar radiation, a source of oxidative stress, like in summer? At least in most summers, or most summers outside of California.

A couple of recent studies showed that Hibiscus tea, helped lower blood pressure better than a placebo and as well as a common blood-pressure lowering medication (visit http://www.truestarhealth.com/Notes/1033009.htmlto read the article and follow the links to the studies). I wasn’t surprised. Hibiscus is red! I use it in making my famous “red drink,” a lactofermented soda which I created as an alternative to red wine but that I found is just as popular with kids as adults. It’s a probiotic summer cooler and a refreshing thing to sip while you wait for the weather to get a bit warmer so you can make a pitcher of gazpacho or scare up some puff pastry made without hydrogenated oil to finally try one of those Provencal tomato tarts, as I have vowed to do as soon as the heirloom tomato crop peaks.

Hibiscus and Schizandra Soda
Adapted from Full Moon Feast by Jessica Prentice. Schizandra is a tonic herb known to act as liver cleanser, to strengthen the kidneys and lungs, and to support the body in adapting to stress. Hibiscus is high in vitamin C and lycopene and has been shown to help lower elevated blood pressure. Both can be found at herb stores and even your local Whole Foods.

2 quarts filtered water
¼ cup schizandra berries
¼ cup dried hibiscus flowers
½ cup evaporated cane juice, succanat, or Rapadura
½ cup yogurt whey (see NOTE)

Bring the water to a simmer, add the schizandra berries, and simmer gently for 20 minutes. Stir in the sweetener and turn off the heat. Let cool, and then pour into a 2 quart mason jar. Add the hibiscus and whey, and screw on the lid. Let sit in a warm place (like the top of your refrigerator) for 2 days, next strain into two 1 qt bottles (like those that may have housed mineral water) with screw caps and ferment, with the caps tightly closed, for 2 days more. Chill and open carefully (contents may be very fizzy). Enjoy!

NOTE: To make the whey, you need a quart of organic whole milk yogurt. Place a colander over a large bowl. Line it with a tea towel or fine cheesecloth and pour in the yogurt. Cover. Let drain 8-24 hours. When it has achieved a consistency you like, pour the whey into a small jar (you’ll have about a cup, enough for two batches of soda) and scrape the yogurt cheese off the towel into a container. Proceed with recipe. The yogurt cheese is great used like cream cheese—I mix it with sliced cucumbers, toasted cumin seeds and mint for a cooling summer salad.

Tidbits

2010-07-23T06:58:00.000-07:00

I'm in student craziness right now, trying to crank out a couple of term papers at the last minute. So I'm offering just a couple of tidbits for you to chew on:

The China Study. The largest epidemiological nutrition study ever, done in China, was misinterpreted by Colin Campbell and reported on in this popular, and erroneous book. Finally a brilliant researcher has exposed the way the results were skewed to support Campbell's crazy idea that animal protein is the biggest factor promoting chronic disease. It has unfortunately influenced a lot of my fellow nutritionists and practitioners of Chinese medicine. Check out Chris Kesser's insightful post here, or follow his links to the original, long and detailed article: http://thehealthyskeptic.org/?s=china+study

Natural wine. Natural wine is to regular wine what sourdough is to commercially-yeasted bread: more sustainable, complex, better tasting and more nutritious. It's the newest/oldest frontier in fermentation. I enjoyed some over 4th of July weekend and found the taste, and the lack of a hangover, tantalizing. Read more in this article in the latest issue of Edible San Francisco: http://www.ediblecommunities.com/sanfrancisco/index.php?/WayneGarcia/to-nature-or-to-nurture.html

Speaking of fermenting, I'm teaching a couple of fermentation classes on August 1st, at a cancer fundraiser for beloved teacher and qi gong master Dr. Suzanne Friedman at AIMC Berkeley. There's a grown up workshop at 11 with pickle demos and samples, and hands-on pickling for kids 5-12 at 2pm. The event includes music, a BBQ, qi gong, yoga and classes on Chinese medicine for the public, and more. Follow this link for more info: http://www.aimc.edu/suzannefriedmanday.html We'll be asking for donations of $5 or more for the classes.

More Green Herbs: the Mint Family

2010-06-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

Digging around for info on the health benefits of culinary herbs, I was reminded that the vast majority of the green herbs we use are in the Mint or Labiatiae family. Basil, tarragon, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, sage, oregano, and of course, mint, are all closely related. Botanical types know that one of their characteristic features is opposite leaves and square stems. Culinary types know these plants for their their strong flavor and aroma, deriving from a huge number of exciting phytochemicals, such as terpenes, known to have potent anti-cancer, anti-oxidant, digestion enhancing, and anti-bacterial effects. I found a great site with information on the health effects of culinary spices on cancer, dementia, diabetes, obesity and more: http://www.medicinal-herbs-and-spices.com/index.html.

A huge study in 2010 found that culinary herbs are some of the most anti-oxidant rich foods in the diet and provide a significant source of antioxidants when consumed in reasonable dietary amounts. In the same way that fermented foods are "super-raw," I think that herbs and spices are "super vegetables." They pack tons of flavor and nutritional value into tiny packages. A teaspoon of fresh or dried herbs can count as a vegetable serving!

In my neighborhood, rosemary is almost ubiquitous. If you don't have some in your yard, I'll bet your neighbor does. There was a study in 2009 looking at the effect of rosemary on reducing the production of acrylimide in carbohydrate foods cooked at high temperatures. Adding rosemary to bread dough reduced this chemical, strongly linked to breast cancer, by 60%. I make a general practice of adding rosemary to bread dough and roasting potatoes. Plus, it's free. Other fun uses for romemary: traditional hair tonic (make a strong tea and use it as rinse), memory-enhancer in tea or food (I used to bring a rosemary sprig with me into class during exams in acupuncture school), filling the cavity of a roasting chicken with rosemary branches before cooking, and using the twigs as skewers for meat or veggie kabobs.

I'll be teaching a free workshop next Thursday night at the North Berkeley branch of the public library on the seasonal uses of culinary herbs for locavore flavor and health, with a demo on creating herb marinades and condiments. Look here for details: http://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/calendars/index.php. And throughout July, a great selection of my Bay Area food heroines/authors are speaking there as well: my foodie pal Vanessa Barrington http://vanessabarrington.typepad.com/, urban farmer extraordinaire Novella Carpenter http://ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com/and "locavore" coiner Jessica Prentice, http://www.wisefoodways.com/home.php.

Eleven Ways to Get More Fermented Foods into Your Life

2010-06-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

Why do you want to get more fermented foods into your life? In short, they are good and good for you. Fermentation increases the taste and nutritional value of food. It was the main way of preserving food up until the invention of the refrigerator. Humans more or less evolved to be eating fermented foods full of probiotics daily, and many of us have found we do a lot better eating fermented foods with every meal. You can take commercial probiotics, but why not just choose to cultivate a healthy gut flora by consuming good bacteria in your food? If you are not used to fermented foods, go slowly. Like any dietary change, suddenly eating tons of sourkraut can cause, well, a gastric reaction. Start small and work your way up to eating something fermented with every meal.

1. Sauerkraut--in sandwiches, with eggs, in salads, with meat, with nut butter on toast, on top of soup, and so many more...I make it myself but am also a big fan of Cultutred's wonderful krauts and pickles. I consider their stuff pharmaceutical grade. Find Alex slinging sauerkraut at the Berkeley Farmer's market, drop by their pickle shop, or visit their site to find out where else to buy it http://www.culturedpickleshop.com/. Also check out their cool video from Chow on the site.

2. Yogurt--the real kind. That is, full fat, local and unsweetened. Sweeten it yourself if you must, but beware commercial sweetened yogurt. Did you know that a cup of Yoplait lemon yogurt has more sugar than a cup of chocolate Haagen Daz? Yogurt by itself, on top of so many things, for breakfast lunch or dinner. Today I am marinating lamb chops from my local farmer in yogurt with garam marsala, lemon, garlic and cilantro to be grilled on tomorrow's camping cookout and served with Cilantro Chelation Pesto (see last post) under the stars...

3. Creme fraiche. Make your own by stirring 1 tablespoon of buttermilk into 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream and letting it sit out, covered, for 24-36 hours in a warm place. Use as you would sour cream, enjoying it's milder flavor and French sophistication, or whip it to use on desserts. I make cultured ice cream with 1/2 creme fraiche and 1/2 buttermilk, sweetening it with maple syrup and whatever fruit is in season. Divine!

4. Buttermilk. What to do with the rest of the carton after you make creme fraiche? My grandmother used to drink it plain and marinate chicken in it, I prefer it in pancakes, waffles and muffins, combining it the the flour the night before baking to soak overnight, neutrallize the phytic acid in the grains, and render them more digestible and nutritious! Or try it in one of those wacky northern European style fruit soups.

5. Kombucha, kvass, lactofermented sodas, and oh yeah, wine and beer. Extra points if you make your own. I have instrucitons on how to make the kvass and sodas in my previous post here:
http://gastronicity.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-08-07T16%3A15%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=7. Brew your own bubbles!

6. Dill pickles, pickle relish, cornichons, etc. The pickled cucumber is a wonderful thing. I like Bubbie's Pickles if I'm not making my own, they are the real deal. Mix their pickle relish with your creme fraiche for a high-class tartar sauce for fish, asparagus, etc. And that pickle brine must never go to waist. I use it in salad dressings more a health-giving zing. I'll be showing you how to make your own at next Sunday's class, see below.

7. Capers. Get the real deal, salt-cured capers, at a gourmet market, and give them a good soak in water for 10-30 minutes before you strain them and use them to flavor, well, salads, fish, pestos, salad dressing, what-have-you.

8. Fermented fish sauce. I use this to give salt, umami and fermented enzyme power to many curries, stir fries, soups, anything southeast Asian. Doesn't taste fishy when used in small quantities, just flavorful.

9. Miso. Miso soup of course, from the simple stir a teaspoon of miso into hot water style to more elaborate preparations with seaweed, onions and vegetables, but also chickpea miso in pesto, miso in creamy soups, sweet miso spread on the top of halved summer squash and baked until tender, miso as a shortcut to stock and a vegetarian alternative to bone broth. Protects the body from the harmful effects of radiation incurred from mammograms, flying or dental visits or too much sun. Then there are the other soy ferments, tamari, shoyu, tempeh, don't forget those.

10. Anchovies. I get the big ones in bulk at Berkeley Bowl, soak them to remove the excess salt, and make Salade Nicoise or cut slits into lamb and poke in anchovy bits and garlic that no one suspects are the reason behind the roast or chops' wonderful flavor. Or blend into salad dressing for calcium and enzyme power.

11. Learn how to do it yourself! Come and take my class on Basic Fermentation next Sunday June 20th from 1:30-4pm in Berkeley. Follow this link to register: http://www.biofueloasis.com/?page_id=7. See you there!

Perky, Frisky Greens

2010-06-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

"Pursue perky, frisky greens--they're a cheap thrill"(David Tanis, A Platter of Figs). Goodness knows I love a cheap thrill. I've been pursuing greens all spring, with most excitement on a slew of recent camping trips. A huge patch of mild-tasting miner's lettuce was just a few yards from our campsite in the Marin Headlands, and made a wonderful salad with baby lettuces, dressed with a sundried tomato vinaigrette. More often, I'll just chow down on them along the trail. Miner's lettuce is easy to spot--it has a distinct round leaf and central, tiny white flowers. Check out the darling video below for nutrition info and identification tips:

Another green I stalk regularly is dandelion leaf. They are all over the garden, and I add them to my salads regularly. Who says there is no free lunch? Liver cleansing, mineral rich, and excitingly bitter. Susun Weed, herbal elder extraordinaire, says that eating just 2 weed leaves a day will give you way more than the RDA of vitamin C. I only pick my weeds from relatively clean places, as plants are only as healthy as their soil. That said, I seldom bother washing them because I want to ingest some soil-based probiotic organisms.

Speaking of the wonders of greens, I've been doing a little more research on the heavy-metal detoxifying properties of cilantro. The herb’s chelating effect was discovered by accident by an acupuncturist and doctor, Yoshiaki Omura, when he discovered an increase in his urinary mercury after eating a traditional soup with cilantro (Omura & Beckman, 1995). A really exciting thing about this study is that Omura used cilantro in reasonable dietary amounts to assist his patients in detoxifying heavy metals. Based on this finding, a number of recipes for “Cilantro Chelation Pesto” can be found on the web. I’m a big fan of pesto (on anything and everything except pasta), so I’ve tried several recipes and offer my own below.

Cilantro Chelation Pesto
1/3 cup each Brazil nuts, walnuts and pumpkin seeds, soaked overnight and drained
4 cloves garlic or 2 stalks green garlic
2 cups packed fresh cilantro (stems OK!)
2/3 cup organic extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons dulse powder
sea salt to taste

Process the garlic in a food processor until fine. Add the nuts and seeds and chop fine. Add the cilantro and dulse and process until fine. Drizzle in the olive oil with the motor running until a smooth paste forms. Taste and season with salt as desired. 2 teaspoons daily is a good dose. Some sources recommend daily use for at least 3 weeks as an annual fall detox for mercury, lead and aluminum.

Carrot-Almond Salad
Here is a great way to enjoy spring’s darling bunches of baby carrots and consume a number of heavy metal detox supporters at the same time. Adapted from 101Cookbooks.com.
1 cup almonds, ideally soaked overnight and drained, or raw
½ cup cilantro
1 med clove garlic, peeled
½ jalapeno pepper, seeded and deveined
¼ tsp sea salt
1 raw pastured egg yolk (save the white to make coconut macaroons later!)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 bunch baby carrots, cut lengthwise
1 bunch pencil-thin asparagus, stalks trimmed, cut into 2 inch segments
Squeeze of lemon

Toast almonds in a large skillet over medium heat in a splash of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Once deeply golden, remove from heat and set aside. Make dressing by combining cilantro, garlic, jalapeno and salt in food processor or blender. Drizzle in olive oil while pulsing, continuing until dressing is creamy, vibrant green. Bring 1” of water to a boil in a large pot, salt generously and add carrots, wait 15 seconds, and add asparagus. Cook for just 30 more seconds, allowing veggies to retain some bite. Drain and run under cold water to stop cooking. Dry vegetables in a salad spinner or with a kitchen towel. Coarsely chop the almonds. In a large bowl, toss vegetables and almonds with a generous splash of dressing. Taste and adjust seasoning. Add lemon juice, and serve topped with remaining almonds.

Green Herbs, Part 1

2010-05-18T15:24:00.001-07:00

A quick look at my herb patch under the apple tree reveals that it must be high time for some summer herbs--they've doubled in size in the last couple weeks. In the Bay Area, fresh culinary herbs are available year round, but many reach their peak now through summer. And what nutritional powerhouses they are! Culinary herbs and spices are where food and medicine really come together.

Take parsley for an example. The plant is member of the umbelliferea family, along with the culinary aromatic superstars carrots, celery and fennel and its close cousin, cilantro. Parlsey is a very good source of vitamin C, folic acid, iron, magnesium, calcium, potassium and zinc, not to mention chlorophyll carotenes and various cancer-fighting phytochemicals. It's so easy to put parsley into almost any dish, adding fresh flavor, color and nutritional punch. Some of the plant's compounds, such as the polyacetlyenes, (also present in oregano and marjoram) appear to be able to neutralize the cancer-causing benzopyrenes present in cigarette smoke, charcoal grill smoke and fried foods. So marinating your lamb chops with olive oil, cumin, lemon zest and juice, and chopped parsley can neutralize any ill effects from grilling it at your next camp/cookout. Or just serve the chops with a big dollop of parsley pesto.

I've been making pesto with everything lately. What a fun way to eat more leafy herbs and/or greens. The strong tasting herbs, like sage, cilantro, marjoram, etc, do better when mixed half and half with something milder, like parsley or spinach. I usually skip the cheese and use different nuts along with the herbs or greens, and maybe some olives or capers for some bite. Green garlic is in the markets now and adds green power as well as that essential flavor. Finish with sea salt, of course, and extra-virgin olive oil plus somtimes a splash of flax or walnut oil for extra omega 3's. I eat it on soup, meat, as a dip for veggies, as a side with scrambled eggs, on top of beans...you name it. For those of you who like recipes:

Parsley/Lacinato Pesto

1/2 bunch Lacinato (Dinosaur) kale

1/2 cup walnuts or pumpkin seeds, preferably soaked overnight

1 cup parsley (stems OK)

2 stalks green garlic (white and pale green parts only)

1/4 cup kalamata olives, pitted

1/4-1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

sea salt to taste

lemon juice

Strip the center ribs and stems from the kale (I like to juice these later). Bring a large pot with an inch of water in the bottom to a boil, add the kale and cover. Simmer for 10-15 minutes until tender. Drain (drink the water with a touch of lemon for the cook's extra vitamins). Drain the walnuts and add these to a food processor. Grind fine. Add the kale, parsley and olives and pulse until ground. With the motor running, drizzle in the oil until a paste forms. Taste for salt and season. Add lemon if desired for taste or texture. Serve with anything except pasta (too trite).

Upcoming Fermentation Class

2010-05-12T13:37:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be teaching a class on basic vegetable fermentation through the wonderful Biofuel Oasis on June 20th. This link will give you all the details: http://www.biofueloasis.com/?page_id=7#urban_farm_class. Everyone will go home with a jar of kraut, curtido or kimchi and be inspired to do it yourself the next time! In the morning, Novella Carpenter, local personality and author of Farm City, will be teaching Urban Goats 101, assisted by one of her very own goats. Visit her blog at: http://ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com/.

I'm Cooking

2010-04-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to cook now for Friday's annual Open House at the Immune Enhancement Project in San Francisco. It's a great challenge to put together local, healthy, festive party food on a nonprofit's shoestring budget. Come by Friday and sample the results. We'll be featuring Far West Fungi in norimaki made with Massa's brown rice (with Sesame Sea Palm, see my seaweed post) and savory stuffed mushrooms. Check out IEP's website here:http://www.iepclinic.com/.

This weekend I'll be attending and co-presenting a workshop on world traditions in fermentation at the annual conference of the National Association of Nutrition Professionals (they are my kind of nutritionists). My co-conspirator is the wonderful local nutrition educator and chef Sandy Der, check her out at http://taotekitchen.com. Anyone who wants to learn about nutrition is invited to attend. Check out NANP here and the conference here: http://www.nanp.org/. You can tell these people are serious by the fact that they post the menus for the conference lunches on their website. Contrast this with a recent local meeting of the American Dietetic Association in Oakland, at which the lunch was sponsored by McDonalds!

Salad Greens and Green Soups

2010-04-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

Let us first explore the wonderful world of salad greens. The most familiar are the lettuces, which are classified into four categories: iceberg, or crisphead lettuce, the pale, round solid heads which still comprise many an American salad, romaine, with its deep green, long leaves and stronger flavor and texture, butterhead, featuring large, tender leaves forming a loose head (think Boston and Bibb lettuce), and loose leaf, which has broad and curly leaves arranged in a loose, conic head (red leaf, green leaf). In general, as with most leafy greens, the darker and stronger tasting the lettuce, the greater its nutrient content.

All lettuce provides chlorophyll and vitamin K. Romaine is the most nutrient rich of the lettuces, with 10-100x the vitamins and phytonutrients of iceberg. Romaine lettuce is an excellent source of vitamin A, folic acid, vitamins C, B1 and B2, manganese and chromium. Lettuce is primarily water, and commercial lettuce is notorious for high pesticide residues, so go for organic whenever you can. Of course, there are many other tender greens that can be used in salads outside of the lettuce family, like arugula (a favorite of Obama and me), mizuna, frisee, and watercress. Most of these are in the crucifer family (see previous post) and offer superb nutrition as well. See my post “Blameless Salad” for more thoughts on those mixes of salad greens.

Salad, that divine dish. It can be so many things. Almost any food can go into a salad, it is usually served cold, but can be warm. Most are united with a splash of sour dressing, yet that is by no means mandatory. What a wonderful basis for healthy eating a salad can be. And it can go to work or a picnic, dressing in a separate container, and be as fresh and delicious at noon as it was when packed! I try to make most of my lunches based on a large green salad with an assortment of vegetables and beans, nuts, eggs, cheese or meat for protein. And of course, I use plenty of homemade dressing on my salad. Grandmothers and nutritionists will tell you that it’s very important to eat some fat with your greens and vegetables so that you can assimilate all the wonderful nutrients in them.

Salad longs for its mate, soup. Green soups are yet another wonderful way to get more greens into your diet. I categorize these into two basic types: the creamy green puree and the chunky veggie and bean, meat, or grain soup with greens. Right now I am cooking up a pot of cannellini beans with a half onion and a big handful of fresh sage, to be used tonight in a soup with beef bone broth, Tuscan kale and sweet Italian sausage.

Yesterday I whipped up a batch of green soup of the pureed variety, making a quick pea pod broth and simmering in sorrel, spring onions, fennel fronds, some leftover cooked sweet dumpling squash, cilantro, and lemon juice…delicious! When these soups come together, they can taste like the essence of spring, and give a feeling of a spring within. And if, like many of us, spring brings the urge to lose a few pounds, eating more green soups and less of everything else is a great way to do so. Almost any soup can benefit from green herbs, such as parlsey or cilantro, stirred in at the end, or a handful of tender spinach or arugula or cooked chopped kale simmered in for the last few minutes of cooking.

Spring Green Soup
More of a process than a recipe!

Saute 1 bunch coarsely chopped spring or green onions, or leeks in a couple tablespoons olive oil or ghee with a pinch of salt until tender. Add 1 or two coarsely chopped fennel bulbs if you have them, or a couple of stalks of chopped celery, and keep cooking for a few minutes. Now add a 3-4 cups of water, light veggie stock or chicken stock, a chopped potato (or a half cup of leftover cooked rice or oatmeal), and add a bunch of asparagus if you like. Simmer together until the potatoes are tender, and now it is time to add your greens. Almost any type of greens will do. I like sorrel, kale and cilantro. At least one aromatic herb, like basil, parsley, cilantro, fresh dill, mint or arugula really lifts the flavor. Once the greens are tender as well, you may puree the soup with salt or a couple tablespoons of chickpea miso, and season with lemon juice or rice vinegar until you get a taste that evokes the taste of spring.

The Joy of Greens

2010-02-20T07:40:00.000-08:00

We all know greens are good for you. Many reach a sublime height now in winter turning to spring, with the sturdy cooking greens showing a delightful sweetness even as the young, spicy, sour and bitter greens of spring pushing out of the ground to nudge them aside. And if you take a walk in the hills you're dazzled by the sudden appearance of the wild greens, chickweed and nettles and the first miner's lettuces to be sampled along your hike. Or, when you're shocked by the profusion of "weeds" in your garden one Sunday, perhaps finding yourself brave enough to make a salad of dandelions that have sprung big, unbidden, since the last rain.

Greens were likely one of the most reliable foods of humans during our evolution, as they appear in most climates at least part of the year, therefore our systems run well when we munch on a steady supply. They are a very approprate food to eat as spring approaches, as they are supportive to liver function. Greens' natural bitterness stimulates the gallbladder to release bile, aiding in fat and protein digestion, and their high vitamin, mineral and fiber content comes with very few calories. All greens are healthy, but all are not equally nutritious. To sort out their different nutritional and cooking qualities, it helps to think of them in families. The basic groups of greens to be aware of include the cabbage/brassica family, the spinach/chard family (Chenopodiaceae), the lettuces, leafy aromatics (basil, marjoram, cilantro, etc), the umbels (parsley, fennel and celery which all supply delicious greens and roots), plus a few other lesser known types, like the sorrels, the purslanes, and others. I'll delve into all of these and suggest recipes and serving ideas in the next few posts.

First up: the cabbage family. This large family includes no only the familiar cabbages, kale, broccoli, collard greens, watercress and kohlrabi but also radishes, turnips and their greens, mustard greens, and Obama's favorite, arugula. Greens in this family generally provide plenty of vitamin C, potassium, calcium, B6, biotin, magnesium and manganese. They are most famous for their high phytochemical content, which gives them potent anti-cancer, detoxifying effects. Studies have consistently shown that in populations with the highest intake of cabbage family vegetables, you see the lowest cancer rates particularly of colon, prostate, lung and breast cancer. The indole-3-carbinole in these vegetables has been shown to increase the detoxification of estrogen by the liver by nearly 50 percent, and it is used in supplement form as a cancer preventative. Cabbage and its cousins are also high in glutamine, an amino acid used as fuel for the growth and repair of the cells in the lining of the gut. On the side of caution, however, it is known that vegetables in this family contain goitrogens, which can inhibit thyroid hormones, especially in the presence of an iodine-poor diet. Cooking helps inactivate these compounds. If you choose to eat more than four serving of raw cabbage family veggies per week, be sure to include a iodine rich food in your diet, such as seaweed (see previous post).

Another fantastic feature of these veggies is that they are so amenable to fermentation, especially the cabbages and other leafy greens. The probiotic bacteria that live on the greens will happily proliferate when you give them the right conditions, as when you make sauerkraut, kimchi or cortido, increasing the digestibility of your greens, enhancing their flavor, and strengthening your immune system.

Kale is a favorite, versatile, member of the family. It benefits a lot more from braising than steaming. I'll usually cook it until tender in an inch of water with a little pinch of salt, straining the water and drinking it ("pot likker"), while I saute the kale briefly with garlic and/or leeks or onions in olive oil or lard, finishing it with a splash of ume vinegar or tamari. It can be chopped fine and added to most soups for extra beauty and nutritional punch, it can be sliced thin and tossed into a salad (lightly massage it with the dressing for maximum tenderness), or torn into big chunks, tossed with olive oil and salt and roasted for a super treat (add a little brewer's yeast and cayenne, too, for kale "chips"). When I am overwhelmed with how much kale I have, I blanch it, chop it and make it into a frittata with leeks or asparagus, goat cheese and farm fresh eggs. This can be eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Spinach/Chard/Beet Greens: these greens are all from the same family, sharing the qualities of tender mouthfeel and quick cooking. They are generally high in vitamin K, carotenes, vitamin C, and folic acid, and have some manganese, magnesium, iron, and B2. However, they are also high in oxalic acid, which acts as a chelating agent, binding the iron and calcium in the greens so only 5-10% is usable by the body. Also, those suseptable to kidney stones will want to avoid high oxalate foods. Most sources indicate that oxalates are broken down by cooking, but don't specify to what extent. Spinach, chard and beet greens are all high in chlorophyll and carotenes, giving them potent anticancer and detoxifying qualities.

The mild flavor, tender bite, and quick cooking qualities of this greens family render them very useful in the kitchen. One of my favorite dishes is a wilted spinach salad, to which I give a nutritional and flavor boost by using half spinach and half arugula (a good trick in any recipe calling for spinach). I'll saute onions in olive oil or duck fat, sometimes with bacon, until they carmelize, sometimes adding nuts, and toss them, still hot, into a bowl of spinach and arugula. Toss until they start to wilt, then add balsamic, apple cider or red wine vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Fabulous! I use chard in all the ways I might use the cabbage family greens, but I do so less often because it is a little bit less nutritious. Beet greens are like a free vegetable, as they often come attached to your beets. My favorite way with them it to roast the beets in olive oil and salt in a 400 degree oven, while steaming the beet greens. I serve the beets on a bed of their greens with a vinaigrette dressing, sometimes with sliced oranges and/ or feta cheese.

Next post: salad greens and leafy aromatic herbs.

Nourishing Your Kidneys and Aging with Grace

2010-01-22T11:20:00.000-08:00

Ah, winter. It seems to really hit only after the holidays, when the long nights of January march on and the credit card bills come due. The sage consolidates energy in winter, becoming more internally focused, quieter, and listening more. Cooking more, too: long simmered soups and stews, roasting, baking, even a little deep frying (in fresh oil with a high saturated fat content, like lard or coconut oil, of course) are all appropriate to warm our bodies in wintertime. Traditional Asian medicines teach that winter is the time when the energy of the kidneys predominates and it is beneficial to nurture these organs. The kidneys are known not only to govern urination but to be the root and foundation of the body’s energy, showing that the ancients understood the functioning of the endocrine system and recognized the location of the adrenals on top of the kidneys. Kidney energy governs metabolism, reproduction, development, and aging, and weak kidney energy often shows in low back and knee pain, bone problems, frequent urination, and fear.
Kidney nourishing foods include all beans (even string beans!), especially those dark in color, seaweed, parsley, millet, wild rice and other dark grains, walnuts, black sesame seeds, yams, organ meats (only from sustainably raised animals, of course), oysters, clams, crab, lobster, and pork.

The kidney energy governs the deepest forms of internal fire and water in the body. If our internal fire, known as kidney yang, is weakened by chronic stress, overwork, or aging, symptoms such as coldness, pallor, low back and knee pain, impotence/infertility, frequent urination, low libido, edema or asthma might ensue. Kidney fire naturally declines with age, and traditional medicines have many remedies. Foods which nurture the yang include warm spices such as cloves, fenugreek, fennel, anise, black pepper, ginger, cinnamon, rosemary, dill, caraway and cumin, as well as black and aduki beans, lentils, oats, spelt, sweet brown rice and quinoa, citrus peel, dates, cherries and raspberries, walnuts, parsnips, parsley, mustard greens, winter squash, cabbage, kale, onions, garlic, leeks and scallions. Animal foods are powerful yang tonics and people with yang weakness should eat 1-3 servings of high quality animal foods a day, including organic or pastured chicken, organ meats (especially kidneys), lobster or crab, shrimp, wild salmon, trout and lamb.

Our deepest internal water, our yin, can also become depleted by stress, overwork and aging. When our internal coolant gets depleted, we may experience dizziness, ringing in the ears, dry mouth and throat, thirst, low back pain, night sweats, menstrual irregularities, agitation, irritation, nervousness, insecurity and fear. Wheat and wheat germ, bulgur, tempeh, millet, barley, rice and amaranth, beans, asparagus, eggplant, potatoes, and beets, seaweeds, raw cheese, goat cheese and cultured organic dairy products such as yogurt and kefir, shellfish, sardines, organic or pastured eggs, duck, pork, organ meats, and fruit such as apples, berries, lemons, grapes, mulberries and melon are all wonderful kidney yin foods. One should avoid too many warming spices, excessive exercise (especially Bikram yoga!), and stimulants.

An even more esoteric, yet fundamental, aspect of the kidney energy is the storage of the jing. The jing is our deepest essence, akin to the energy savings account of the body. The quality and quantity of our jing determines our health, lifespan and aging process. Our daily energy is drawn from the air we breathe, the food we eat, and, when these are insufficient for our needs, from our reserves of jing. Jing is depleted by stress, fear, overwork, excessive ejaculation or childbearing, toxin exposure, and excessive sweets or protein in the diet. Jing cannot be replaced, but it can be enhanced through meditation, tai qi, qi gong and yoga, and by eating certain foods, many of which are high in essential fatty acids, B12, and vitamins A and D. These include chlorella, spirulina, blue-green algae, barley and wheat grass, fish, liver, cod liver oil, kidney, bone and marrow and the broth made from these, placenta, almonds, raw milk and cheese, ghee, nettles, royal jelly, bee pollen, chicken, mussels, and herbs such as gouji berries, tu ci zi, shu di huang, gui ban, and lu rong (ask your herbalist about these!). Of course, only high-quality, organic or pastured substances will truly nourish the jing. In addition, appropriate jing tonics should be selected based on your constitution and energetic patterns.

Three Treasures Stir Fry
Adapted from Nam Singh, L.Ac. Shitake mushrooms support the immune system, walnuts are nourishing to the kidneys and lungs and are high in omega 3 fatty acids, and gouji berries are high in vitamin A and antioxidants, and nourish the liver, kidneys and eyes. Serves 4 as a main dish.

10 Shitake (black mushrooms, soaked)
1 cup walnuts, soaked overnight if possible
1 cup gouji berries
5 slices fresh ginger root
1 lb. Chinese long beans, string beans, snap peas or snow peas
1 tablespoon coconut oil, pastured lard, sesame or olive oil
¼ cup sake, mirin or white wine
2 tablespoons tamari or shoyu
1 teaspoon kuzu or arrowroot
Toasted or black sesame oil for finishing

Soak the mushrooms in a dish of hot water for 20 minutes, then drain the water and set aside. Remove the stems and slice the mushrooms. Wash and cut the long beans, if using. Toast the walnuts lightly in a toaster oven or dry pan until crispy. Heat the oil in a large sauté pan or wok, then sauté the ginger slices for 1 minute. Add the beans, and sauté for 2-3 minutes depending on toughness. Add the mushrooms, mirin, and allow the vegetables to cook by steaming. Soak the gouji berries in hot water for a minute, and then drain. When the beans and mushrooms are tender, add the gouji berries and shoyu. Dissolve the kuzu or arrowroot in hot water and add to the pan to thicken the sauce. Stir in the walnuts, and finish to taste with sesame oil. Serve hot over rice.

ANNOUNCEMENT: I'll be teaching a class on aging and Chinese medicine this Saturday from 1-3pm at the Immune Enhancement Project in San Francisco. Contact IEP at 415-252-8711 to sign up.

Creamy, Dreamy Soup

2009-12-08T10:35:00.000-08:00

As the temperature in the Bay Area reaches its annual nadir, I have changed my daily lunch salad into a daily lunch soup. One of the quailities most sought after in soup is creaminess. While in the Occidental soup traditions this was often accomplished with butter and cream (which is a fine way to do things) there are so many other ways to make a soup rich, creamy, dreamy.

At the end, stir in crème fraiche, sour cream, yogurt, cream, milk, soy, hemp or almond milk. Raw and/or cultured creams add beneficial enzymes and bacteria to support digestion. Or, uree toasted cashews with soy milk for a super rich cream to stir into a soup. Stir in almond butter, or blend in peanut butter to a yam, winter squash or carrot soup for protein and creamy goodness. Spice this one with pumpkin pie type spices and chili for a take on African groundnut soup.

You can partially puree a chunky soup to give it body. Or puree a handful of cooked rice or oatmeal with part of a chunky soup and add it to the soup as a whole. Cook a handful of rice, barley or rolled oats into a soup. Or add cooked beans of any kind (white beans are nice), whole or blended, to give more thickness.

White miso is mild and sweet and will impart flavor and a hint of creaminess to most soups. Dissolve the miso in cold water, stir into the soup at the end, and don’t let it boil (which kills off the beneficial bacteria and can make it bitter).

Starchy vegetable purees can work well also. Potatoes, rutabagas, celery root or winter squash can go in a soup or be added as a puree to improve the texture. I once had a wonderful cream of rutabaga soup with the root cooked in a light veggie stock and pureed with a cashew cream (see above), salt, nutmeg and white pepper. A humble vegetable turned divine!

The ubiquitous tomato can add flavor and body to the broth of almost any soup. Instead of canned (usually imported) tomatoes, in winter I like to soften locally-produced sun dried tomatoes in water, and blend or chop them to go in soups. But I like to challenge myself to make rich-tasting thick soups without tomatoes.

When in Doubt, Make Soup

2009-11-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

The making of soups and stews is a culinary technique, a health practice, and a way to save time and money in the kitchen. Cooking ingredients together in a watery base makes their nutrients eminently available for the body, maximizing the ease of digestion. A batch of soup can be cooked and will improve over a few days’ time, or can be frozen for future meals. Soup in a thermos is easily transported to work or school and can save you a lot of money on dining out!
My studies and experiments in soup and stew making over the years have led me to discover the five elements of soup. All the elements need not be present in every good soup, yet most good, traditional soup recipes contain at least three. They are:

The high notes:
· Spicy/aromatic: These flavors and aromas brighten the energy of a soup, and hit your palate first. Onions, garlic, pepper, celery, fennel, leeks, spices such as curry, and red and black peppers are aromatics. Sometimes they are cooked into a soup, sometimes they are sprinkled on at the end. (LUNG organ/METAL element in Chinese medicine)
· Bitter: Bitter greens lift and lighten flavors and awaken the appetite. Stir in spinach, arugula, kale, watercress in the last few minutes of cooking, or sprinkle on parsley, cilantro, citrus zest, etc. as a finishing touch. A great way to work more greens into your diet. (HEART/FIRE)
· Sour: Can give a lift, or a kick to the top end of a soup. Lemon, lime, or best yet, ferments like sauerkraut or unpasteurized vinegar, are wonderful here. (LIVER/WOOD)
The middle tones:
· Sweet: the body of the soup. Most likely, the middle tones are whatever you used most of in the soup, carrots, chicken, potatoes, carmelized onions, etc. Many of these foods are complex carbs with a sweet flavor. Or they may be thickeners, such as rice or noodles, which give a broth body and make the soup a meal. (SPLEEN/EARTH)
· Fat: is the carrier of flavor. It may be used in sautéing the ingredients, as in ghee, coconut oil or lard, or it may be used as a finisher, such as crème fraiche or butter swirled in at the end of the process. (LIVER/WOOD)
The baseline:
· Salty/umami: is derived from the flavors of mineral-rich stock or bone broth, miso, tamari, fish sauce or seaweed. It gives depth to the soup, making it satisfy and nourish us, literally, to the bone. (KIDNEY/WATER)

White Bean Kabocha Stew
1 cup Great Northern Beans or other white beans
1 strip kombu seaweed, about 6”
1 onion, coarsely chopped
1 carrot, coarsely chopped
1 stalk celery, coarsely chopped
1 bay leaf
3 tablespoons olive oil, ghee or pastured lard
1 cup coarsely chopped leeks
1 cup tomatoes, coarsely chopped
2 cups Kabocha squash, chopped into 1 1/2” cubes
½ cup coarsely chopped celery leaves
1 tablespoon sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup green beans, trimmed
2 pinches crumbled saffron threads (saffron is a digestive aid, fights inflammation and “seems to convince human cancer cells to induce their own death”)
Garnishes: watercress, cilantro, basil, pesto…

Soak the beans overnight in cool water. Place them into a 2-3 qt. saucepan with the kombu, bay leaf, carrot, celery, and onion, with water to cover by about 1 ½ inches. Bring to a boil and simmer until the beans are almost tender, about 1 to 1 ½ hours. Drain the beans, reserving the cooking liquid, and remove the bay, carrot, celery and kombu. In a heavy soup pot, heat the fat. Add the leeks and sauté until they are beginning to turn golden, then add the tomatoes and cook for a few more minutes. Pour in enough water to cover the vegetables, and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the Kabocha, celery leaves, salt and a few grindings of black pepper, and reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes or so. Now add the green beans, the white beans and their cooking liquid along with the saffron. Simmer for 15 minutes or until all is tender. Correct the seasoning, and serve with the optional garnishes. You can use almost any seasonal vegetables in this dish.

Curried Chicken Coconut Soup

Like many chicken soups, the inclusion of chicken meat in this is totally optional. The really beneficial part of the dish is in the broth, made by long-simmering a chicken carcass in water with a splash of vinegar. Of course, you could use veggie stock for a vegetarian version. In that case, substitute some miso for the fish sauce to get the important umami tones.

2 tablespoons coconut oil, ghee or lard
1 red onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, sliced
2-3 slices ginger, cut in tiny matchsticks
1 cup shitake, maitake or other mushrooms, sliced
1 qt. chicken stock (or Magic mineral broth or other stock)
1 yam, diced
1 daikon radish, sliced
¼-1 tsp Thai curry paste
1 can coconut milk (not lite!)
1-2 teaspoons fish sauce or tamari
1 Nappa cabbage, sliced thin
1 bunch watercress, coarsely chopped
Juice of 1-2 lemons or limes
Garnish: cilantro, basil, chili oil, etc.
Heat the fat in a large soup pot, then add the onion, and begin to sauté until it is turning golden. Stir in the garlic and ginger and cook for a few moments more. Next, add the mushrooms and cook and stir until they begin to slightly brown. Add the stock and bring the soup to a boil. Add the yam and daikon and simmer for 10 minutes or so until they begin to get tender. Meanwhile, dissolve the curry paste in a little of the coconut milk, then add this and the rest of the can to the soup. Simmer 5 minutes more or so, and then add the fish sauce or tamari and cabbage. When the cabbage begins to wilt, taste and correct the seasonings. Stir in the watercress and lime juice at the last minute, serve chopped with any of the optional or other garnishes. Variations? Endless.

Bone Broth

Start by collecting bones. A chicken carcass, the center bone of a lamb roast, small bones from chops, big bones by the bag from the Farmer’s market or your meat CSA, any or all of these will do. Put them in a big plastic bag in your freezer. Whenever you eat sustainable meat or any meat, add those bones to your collection. If you are shy when dining out, tell them the bones are for your dog. When you have enough to fill your crock pot or stock pot ½ to 2/3 full with bones, go ahead and empty your bag into the pot, cover with cold water and add 1-2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. Let it sit at room temperature for an hour, letting the acid begin to bring all those good minerals out of the bones and then bring to a boil and simmer for a really long time. For mostly chicken bones, cook at least 24 hours. For mixed bones or others, 2-3 days is good. Let your stock cool a bit and then strain. Don’t worry if it looks disgusting at first, strain in a fine strainer and then place the stock in a container in the fridge until the fat hardens a bit at the top. Scoop most of it out, as this is not the finest fat from the animal (I give the extra fat to the city for composting) and pour the stock into jars, old yogurt containers or ice cube trays and freeze, labeled for later use. With stock and cooked beans in the freezer I know that soup, the staff of life, is always close at hand.

I'll be co-teaching a soup workshop in December:

Cooking at the CoG: Ways with Soup

Friday Dec. 4th 7pm
Join CoG members and cooking teachers Vanessa Barrington and Nishanga Bliss in an exploration of the many ways of making economical, nourishing, delicious soups. Veggie stocks and bone broths, the wonders of miso, cream soups and bean soups, soups and fermentation, recipes, and much much more! Bring a mug and spoon for tasting. FREE! Visit http://thecog.org/ for more info.

About my co-conspirators: Vanessa Barrington is a writer, a chef, and a CoG member.Read her blog here: vanessabarrington.typepad.com Susan Fleming is a graphic designer, a food enthusiast, and a CoG member.Visit her design studio here: www.adelinedesign.net

Fall Foods to Strengthen the Lungs

2009-11-05T11:12:00.000-08:00

Fall is the season which Chinese medicine associates with the metal element, the lung organ, nad the energy of letting go. This time of year we prune away the excesses of summer like we prune a fruit tree after it bears, consolidating our energy, focusing on what is most important, and preparing for winter. It is also a time of year when our lungs are vulnerable, and it is easy to catch a cold or flu. The flu shot is just one of many ways to protect yourself. I've been eating a lot of the wonderful Shoo Flu sauerkraut our neighbors at Cultured make with star anise and gouji berries for immune enhancement.

Many of the foods we find at the farmer’s market at this time of year help our bodies fight the effects of breathing polluted air and exposure to pathogens. Onions, garlic, and other naturally spicy foods are thought to be protective to the respiratory system. Dr. Irwin Ziment, a professor at UCLA, based on the finding that Hispanics who smoke in the polluted Los Angeles area have a surprisingly low rate of lung cancer, routinely prescribes chilies for respiratory problems (Pitchford, 2002). In addition to chilies, radishes, turnips, ginger, cabbage and white pepper are considered mildly spicy in flavor in Chinese medicine and will help strengthen the lungs. Modern research has validated the age-old remedy of chicken soup for fighting respiratory infection and it is even more effective with the addition of garlic and chilies (Ziment, 2006). Many common culinary spices, like turmeric, ginger, fennel and rosemary, have been found to have cancer-fighting properties as well (Aggarwal & Shishodia, 2004). Pears and Asian pears are another traditional remedy for lung irritation from illness or pollution, and can help soothe a dry cough.

The fall season brings the nut harvest. Fresh nuts are wonderful sources of vitamin E and essential fatty acids. Vitamin E has been shown in numerous studies to help protect the lungs from the ill effects of breathing contaminants. Look for walnuts, almonds, pecans or other nuts that grow in your area, and buy them freshly shelled or shell them yourself to get the most benefit. Soaking nuts overnight before roasting, grinding or cooking them into foods will make them easier to digest and increase their nutrient value. Cold-pressed oils such as sesame, olive and walnut, avocados and freshly ground whole wheat flour (available at the farmer’s market in my area!) are other good sources of vitamin E.

Selenium is an immune-stimulating, cancer protective mineral. It is found in many whole foods, especially those grown in selenium-rich soils. Good sources include whole wheat, liver, butter, lamb, nuts, and brown rice. Ellagic acid, related to flavonoids, blocks the cancer-causing actions of many airborne pollutants, but is destroyed by heat. It is abundant in raspberries and blackberries and also found in other berries, most fruit, and nuts, such as walnuts and pecans. Fiber is found in most whole foods and helps to eliminate some pollutants, although excess fiber, as from fiber supplements, can block mineral absorption. And of course mushrooms of all varieties are well known immune enhancers. Mushroom soup anyone?
Keeping our diets focused on whole foods from quality sources like the farmer’s market will help keep you healthy into the winter months.

Chemical Soup: Exposures in my Average Day

2009-09-28T11:11:00.001-07:00

Product	Contents	EWG Risk	Comments
Tom's of Maine Natural Care Antiplaque Toothpaste	Ingredients from packaging: Calcium Carbonate, Glycerin, Water, Xylitol, Hydrated Silica, Zinc Citrate Trihydrate, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, Peppermint (Mentha Piperita) Oil, Carrageenan (Chondrus Crispus), Sodium Bicarbonate.	2:10	Tom's of Maine is now owned by Colgate/Palmolive. But, the chemical of most concern is peppermint oil, which I'm not worried about.
Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap--Peppermint	Water, Saponified Organic Coconut and Organic Olive Oils, (w/Retained Glycerin), Organic Hemp Oil, Organic Jojoba Oil, Mentha Arvensis Extract, Organic Peppermint Oil, Citric Acid, Vitamin E	2:10
Tom's of Maine Deodorant Stick Unscented	PROPLYENE GLYCOL, WATER, SODIUM STEARATE, ALOE (ALOE BARBADENSIS) GEL, WITCH HAZEL (HAMAMELIS VIRGINANA) WATER, LICHEN (USNEA BARBATA) EXTRACT, GLYCERYL LAURATE, CORIANDER (CORIANDRUM SATIVUM) FRUIT OIL, CHAMOMILE (CHAMOMILLA RECUTITA) FLOWER WATER.	2:10	Chemicals of most concern are propylene glycol and glyceryl laurate, both penetration enhancers which can cause skin irrtiation. All other deodorants in the database have a rating of 2:10 as well.
Alba Botanica Terratint Lip Balm, Blaze	Active Ingredients: zinc oxide 5.1% Ingredients: organic cocos nucifera (coconut) oil, organic olea europaea (olive) fruit oil, euphorbia cerifera (candelilla) wax, organic beeswax, ricinus communis (castor) seed oil, caprylic/capric triglyceride, silica, calcium sodium borosilicate, organic mentha piperita (peppermint) oil, polyhydroxystearic acid, triethoxycaprylylsilane, tocopheryl acetate, extract of calendula officinalis flower and echinacea purpurea. May Contain: mica, iron oxides, titanium dioxide.	3:10	Chemical of highest concern is tocopheryl acetate, an ester of tocopherol and aceitic acid which functions as an antioxidant, but there is "strong evidence" of human skin toxicity.
MAC Amplified Cream Lipstick	RICINUS COMMUNIS (CASTOR) SEED OIL; DIISOSTEARYL MALATE; TRIOCTYLDODECYL CITRATE; LANOLIN OIL; CAPRYLIC/CAPRIC TRIGLYCERIDE; EUPHORBIA CERIFERA (CANDELILLA) WAX; OCTYLDODECANOL; OZOKERITE; SILICA; POLYDECENE; BIS-DIGLYCERYL POLYACYLADIPATE-2; POLYETHYLENE; MICROCRYSTALLINE WAX (CERA MICROCRISTALLINA); TRITICUM VULGARE (WHEAT) GERM EXTRACT; GLYCINE SOJA (SOYBEAN) SEED EXTRACT; HORDEUM VULGARE EXTRACT; ASTROCARYUM MURUMURU BUTTER; TOCOPHERYL ACETATE; SQUALANE; CHOLESTEROL; CERAMIDE 3; ALUMINA; LINOLEIC ACID; VANILLIN; MICA; TITANIUM DIOXIDE (CI 77891); IRON OXIDES (CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499); CARMINE (CI 75470); BLUE 1 LAKE (CI 42090); RED 6 (CI 15850); RED 7 LAKE (CI 15850); RED 28 (CI 45410); RED 30 (CI 73360); RED 33 LAKE (CI 17200); YELLOW 5 LAKE (CI 19140); YELLOW 6 LAKE (CI 15985); YELLOW 10 LAKE (CI 47005)	4:10	Whoa! Long ingredient lists in makeup, as in food, are probably very bad. And to think I eat several tubes of it a year! Time for an upgrade. Biggest concerns: polyethylate, a moderate immune system toxicant, aluminum, FD&C and D&C colors, which I avoid in my foods but here they are in my lipstick!
Yoanna's Earth Minerals Powder Bare Beige	mica, kaolin, magnesium carbonate, zinc stearate, zinc oxide, titanium dioxide, simethicone, dimethicone, isododecane, iron oxide	not in database, but ingredients range from 1-6:10	Most troubling is zinc oxide, widely used as a sunscreen, but with concerns about bioaccumulation and cancer promotion. Last week I had a physical and my doctor recommended daily sunscreen, based on skin damage I already have. But all sunscreens have concerns about human and environmental toxicity. I ordered one that checked out pretty well on Skin Deep.
Earth science Clarifying Facial Wash	ALOE JUICE, GLYCERINE (VEGETABLE), COCO-BETAINE, COCOAMPHOCARBOXYGLYCINATE, PANTHENOL, CUCUMBER EXTRACT, SEA KELP EXTRACT, BIRCH BARK EXTRACT, ROSEMARY EXTRACT, HYALURONIC ACID, ZINC SULFATE, CITRIC ACID, POTASSIUM SORBATE, GRAPEFRUIT SEED EXTRACT, ALLANTOIN, LAVENDER EXTRACT, ASCORBIC ACID, FRAGRANCE.	5:10	The dreaded "fragrance" is the chemical of highest concern here: a vague category that includes lots of endocrine disruptors, cancer promoters and other nastiness. I've since switched to a locally made, chemical free brand which is not listed on the data base.
Ecover Dishwashing Liquid--chamomile and marigold	Plant based anionic and non-ionic tensio-active surfactants, water, milk whey, plant based fragrance, extracts of chamomile and marigold, salt, citic acid and 100% biodegradable preservative	n/a
Biokleen Cleaner and Degreaser	surfactants, water conditioners, and degreaser from coconut, grapefruit seed & pulp extract, orange peel extract, linear sulfonate, filtered spring water	n/a
Seventh Generation Natural Laundry Detergent	Sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium citrate, sodium silicate, zeolites, fatty alcohol ethoxylate, polyglucose, magnesium sulfate, sodium sulfate, sodium chloride, sodium percarbonate, carboxymethyl inulin, carboxymethyl cellulose, protease, cellulase, oleic acid	n/a
water (from ulitility company report)	aluminum, chloramine, fluoride, acrylamide, haloaceitic acids, trihalomethanes, aluminum, chloride, sulfate, boron, chlorate, N-Nitrosodimethlylamine (NDMA), copper, lead, may contain other inorganic, synthetic organic and volatile organic contaminants		From http://ebmud.com/water_&_environment/water_quality/annual_ report/2008_annual_water_quality_report.pdf
water (other possible contaminants)	pharmaceuticals, triclocarban, triclosan, pesticides, etc.		Source: EPA
West Berkeley air	Benzene, 1,3 Butadiene, Ethylene dibromide, acetaldehyde, perchloroethylene, 1.1.2.2.-Tetrachloroethane, naphtahlene, carbon tetrachloride, bis(2-ethylhexylphthalate, p-Dichlorobenzene, ethylidene dichloride, chromium 6, ethyline dichloride, 1,3-Dichloropropene, acrylonitrite, vinyl chloride, arsenic compounds, methylene chloride, propylene dichloride, cadmium compounds, ethylene oxide, nickel compounds, trichloroethylene, lindane, hexachlorobutadiene, benzyl chloride, etc.		This list includes only contaminants linked to increased cancer risk, There may be many others.

Whoa! I consider myself a pretty low maintenance girl. For example, I make my own shampoo. But I do use a few products on my body and in my house most days. And, however green they may appear to be, they contain chemicals. I got the risk data from the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep database, check it out here: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/. I'll be making a few upgrades! The most troubling lists are from my sources of air and water. Hopefully the majority of contaminants are filtered out by my water filter, but the air in my industrial part of town is a problem. Doing an exercise like this makes one wonder how people avoid getting cancer. Increasingly, they don't avoid it. Cancer rates are rising, and it is now estimated that 1 in 3 men and 1 in 4 women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. I was at a Chinese medicine conference over the weekend and I went to a class taught by a seasoned practitioner who works using Chinese herbs for cancer. Her basic message: we all need to be practicing cancer prevention. Diet and lifestyle, along with environmental advocacy, are the major ways to do so. See my post on air pollution for some specific cancer fighting foods. Aside from organic vegetables and fruits, we tend to forget that organic, grass-fed animal products can be a source of many cancer fighting compounds, such as vitamins D and E, omega 3 fatty acids, and conjugated lineoleic acid (CLA). Visit Jo Robinson's excellent site for lots of research on the benefits of these foods here: http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm.

2009-09-28T10:17:00.001-07:00

Eat Your View

2009-09-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

Labor Day is fast approaching, and it is the climax of Slow Food USA's Time for Lunch campaign, when over 200 Eat-Ins will take place across the nation. An Eat-In is "one part picnic and one part sit-in." Picnics and potlucks will happen in every state, with the goal of urging Congress to make big changes in the Child Nutrition Act, up for reauthorization this fall. In the past, the act has ensured that the commodities of industrial agriculture are dumped on our children in the form of yukky school lunches. I believe that is was within this law that ketchup was officially declared a vegetable in the Reagan era. With the winds of change blowing today, we have a chance to make some big changes and get schoolchildren eating real food.

My son started school in Berkeley this week, where local food, school gardens, and an organic salad bar are already in place. Outside the bubble, most of the nation is still eating tater tots for lunch. Imagine what will happen if all the nation's schools start sourcing local food, and all 30 million public school kids get the benefit of eating real food at school.

If you've been paying attention, you've figured out that the Farm Bill (subsidized corn and soy, etc) is one of the major buttresses of the miserable status quo around food and health in our nation. Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack has stated that it can only get changed (reauthorization occurs next year) if there is a mass movement supporting that. I believe the movement is already happening, but it needs to become visible. Shopping the farmer's market is not enough! I say, join every food-related organization you admire and get active. Slow Food is a great place to start. You can join Slow Food in September for a donation of any amount, by following this link: https://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5986/t/6238/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=1166

I'll be at the Eat In in Berkeley on Labor Day. Check out the Time for Lunch campaign site to find one in your area: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/campaign/time_for_lunch/about/. Another cool idea: register your Labor Day picnic, potluck or party with Slow Food and turn it into an Eat In. All you have to do is take a photo and send it to Slow Food.

What to bring to the potluck? A dish I've been loving now grew out of this summer's mighty effort to start liking melon. I was turned off it years ago by those nasty fruit cups with underripe melon balls you get at restaraunts and hospitals. Every summer Full Belly farm has put melons in my CSA box and I've given them away. But this year, I gave it a go. Could I learn to like it? Melon and proscuitto was good, melon chunks with mint and feta pretty nice, but watermelon and tomato salad, on a hot day, I can say I really like. I found this recipe in the wonderful book Seasoned in the South by chef Bill Neal of Crook's Corner, Chapel Hill, where I ate on my summer vacation, "a temple of Southern cooking" and sustainable to boot.

Tomato and Watermelon Salad

5 cups watermelon chunks
1 ½ lbs. very ripe tomatoes
½ t salt

1 T sugar (I use honey)
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
½ cup red wine vinegar
¼ cup strong flavored olive oil

Toss the melons and tomatoes with the sugar and salt. Let sit 15 min. Fold in onions, vinegar and oil. Serve very cold.

Hot Summer Reads

2009-08-07T16:15:00.000-07:00

I am a frequenter of my local library. Of constant interest is anything in the new nonfiction starting with the call number 641...food books. Not everything related to food and nutrition shows up here, but it sure is a good way to keep tabs on what's happening in the world of food. Hot topic: whether, what kind, and how much meat to eat. This perennial debate has been reignited by increased awareness of the evils of factory farming and concern over its impact on climate. Examples include The Compassionate Carnivore: or, how to keep animals happy, save Old MacDonald's Farm, and still eat meat, a lighthearted tract by a newbie sheep farmer, presenting the producers perspective on sustainable meat, shelved next to The Shameless Carnivore: A Manifesto for Meat Lovers, which interestingly hits on many of the same themes as the former volume, encouraging readers to select only meat that has been consciously produced, and to cook and eat it with relish. Righteous Porkchop: finding a life and good food beyond factory farms is a better-than-average expose of the factory farming of meat by environmental lawyer, activist and vegetarian Nicolette Niman encasing the tale of her romance with the grandaddy of the movement for ethical meat in America, Bill Niman, founder of Niman ranch.

Another interesting pair of volumes encourage the reader to eat ethically by eating less meat. Cookbook author and foodie Mark Bittman's latest offering, Food Matters, describes his version of sustainable eating: vegan until dinner (with the happy exception of cream in his coffee). He's got a great collection of real-food recipes which redo gourmet favorites with whole foods, using less and no meat. I really enjoy Mark's recipe writing style: it is loose, descriptive, and could work well both for those who know their way around the kitchen and cooking neophytes. A similar offering from a chef's point of view is The Ethical Gourmet, which similarly adapts even more cheffy recipes, shrinking the meat portion and emphasizing whole grains and vegetables. Good details on the sources of animal products and interesting ideas for cooking.

The ultimate exploration of sustainable meat which has just hit bookstore shelves is by local writer and activist Novella Carpenter, Farm City. Hilarious and often shocking, Novella candidly describes her evolution as an urban farmer in Oakland's Ghost Town, as she manages to not simply garden but raise and kill an menagerie of animals for meat. She admits to reaching rock bottom when she finds herself dumpster diving fish guts in Chinatown to feed her protein hungry pair of pigs. All is redeemed when she transforms one of the pigs into delicious salumi under the mentorship of a local chef. I'll admit that at times I thought she was going too far. It was enough to drive one back to vegetarianism. Yet my only real complaint is the lack of recipes.

Fermentation Can Save the Nation

2009-07-23T16:51:00.000-07:00

The warm weather is a boon to fermentation. It's a great time to try pickling some produce, making sauerkraut, or dabbling in homemade sodas. Of course, adding fermented foods to your diet is a wonderful way to increase the nutrient content of your food, aid digestion, augment your digestive and immune systems, preserve food, express your creativity, and participate in a human tradition dating back thousands of years! I try to eat something fermented with every meal. Fermented drinks aid digestion (unlike most beverages that are often consumed with meals) and can be delicious!

I've been experimenting a lot lately with lactofermentation, a process that introduces beneficial bacteria into a ferment, speeding and stabilizing the process. The most comprehensive book on the subject is Nourishing Traditions (see below). First you need to make the whey, then you use it to ferment all number of things.

Whey and Yogurt Cream Cheese
1 qt. whole milk organic yogurt
Place a colander over a large bowl. Line it with a kitchen towel and pour in the yogurt. Cover. Let drain 8-24 hours. When it has achieved a consistency you like, pour the whey into a small jar and scrape the yogurt cheese off the towel into a container of your choice. Proceed with recipes!

Lactofermented Raita
An especially probiotic, digestable version of the Indian condiment or salad.

3 organic cucumbers, halved, seeded and sliced
1-2 organic tomatoes, diced
2 Tablespoons chopped cilantro and/or mint
2 tablespoons minced scallions
1 t toasted cumin or mustard seeds
Juice of 1 lemon
½ teaspoon sea salt (or 2 tsp. if not using whey)
3 tablespoons yogurt whey (optional)
1-2 cups yogurt cream cheese (see above)
In a bowl, combine the cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, scallions, seeds, lemon, salt and optional whey. Mix well, and transfer to a 1 quart mason jar. Weight the top by placing a smaller jar or bottle inside the jar and pressing down so the liquid rises above the solids. Let sit at room temperature for 1-2 days—I day in hot weather, 2 if it is foggy. Then keep refrigerated until ready to assemble. When you are ready to serve combine the vegetables with the yogurt cheese.

Heirloom Tomato Salsa
I love fresh salsa used to have a hard time eating all of before it went bad until I discovered the art of preservation through lactofermentation!
4 medium tomatoes, diced
2 small red or yellow onions, diced, or 1 bunch scallions, chopped
2 jalapenos, seeded or not and diced fine
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
1 teaspoon dried or 1 tablespoon fresh oregano
Juice of 2 lemons
1 tablespoon sea salt
4 tablespoons yogurt whey
¼ cup, more or less, filtered water
Mix all the ingredients except water in a bowl, and stuff into a 1 quart mason jar. Press down lightly until the liquids cover the solids, adding water if you need to so the salsa is submerged. The top of the veggies should be 1 inch below the bottom of the jar. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for 2 days before storing in the fridge. Keeps for weeks! Try adding fruit, such as peaches, for many delightlful variations.

Hibiscus and Schizandra Soda
Adapted from Full Moon Feast by Jessica Prentice. I've been drinking this with dinner recently, as a liver-supportive alternative to wine. The hibiscus is high in vitamin C and the schizandra is a liver protectant and adaptogenic herb. The flavor is sophisticated.

¼ cup dried hibiscus flowers*
¼ cup schizandra berries (wu wei zi in Chinese)*
½ cup agave nectar or maple syrup
½ cup yogurt whey
½ organic lemon

Place everything into the bottom of a 2 quart mason jar. Fill to the top with filtered water and shake gently to mix. Let sit in a warm place for 2 days, then strain into two 1 qt bottles (like those that may have housed mineral water) with screw caps and ferment for 2 days more. Chill and open carefully (contents may be very fizzy). Enjoy!

*Find these in bulk in the herb section at Whole Foods or Rainbow, or head to Llasa Karnak in Berkeley.

Beet Kvass
Adapted from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. A blood cleansing drink, more medicinal than culinary, but worth trying.

2 large or 3 medium organic beets (chiogga beets give a wonderful color)
1 t. sea salt
¼ cup yogurt whey
Filtered water
Scrub and dice the beets finely. Place in a 2 qt. jar and add the salt and whey. Stir and leave in a warm place (like the top of a refrigerator) for 2 days, then store in the fridge. Drink 1-2 cups a day to support detoxification. When you have about a cup left in the bottom of the jar, you can refill it with water and make a second batch by leaving out at room temperature again. After the second brew, compost the beets. You may reserve some of the liquid as an inoculant (instead of the whey) for the next batch with fresh beets.

Resources:
Fallon, Sally. Nourishing Traditions. New Trends Publishing: Washington, DC (2001).
Katz, Sandor. Wild Fermentation. Chelsea Green: White River Junction, VT (2006).
Prentice, Jesssica. Full Moon Feast. Chelsea Green: White River Junction, VT (2006)
http://kefirlady.com/. Homey website and source for kombucha scobys and kefir grains by mail. You can ferment beverages with kefir grains and they are even more durable probiotics in the gut than the yogurt-based kind. I've just started drinking kefir daily--will report soon on the effects. A well-known candida fighter.

Oxidation and Fermentation

2009-07-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

While I make sure to consume as many blueberries as possible during their brief appearance at the Farmer’s market, not to mention raspberries, blackberries and the current hit around our house, black raspberries, I was recently cheered to hear that humbler (and cheaper) produce like dried red beans, plums and potatoes pack as much or more antioxidant power as the glamorous fruits. Read up on the 2004 USDA study at: http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20040617/antioxidants-found-unexpected-foods. I think of that study, too, when tempted by the wiles of exotic fruits and berries which are touted in my favorite health food stores. Why rely on imported foods to get the benefits of foods which are growing all around you, in the case of blackberries and plums, usually for free?

Many of the super antioxidant foods are in season now, the time of maximum solar energy, and this underscores value of seasonal eating (you are probably experiencing more oxidative damage from sun exposure these days than usual) and suggests that the antioxidants are there because they confer some benefit to the plants themselves, as well. I am no doubt guilty of the sin of nutritionism a la Michael Pollan by suggesting one might eat the summer’s bounty for medical rather than culinary reasons, but such are we in America!

The warm weather is making all my fermentation projects go quickly these days. Currently on top of the fridge are kombucha made with kukicha (the twigs of the tea plant), red wine vinegar, yogurt pastry dough for tonight’s zuchinni quiche, and crème fraiche. On the back porch: umeboshi plums. I was so excited to make the plums and my favorite condiment, ume plum vinegar, when a friend dropped off a surplus of ume plums from his tree!

I’ll be co-teaching another fermentation workshop at the CoG this Saturday. This is from the CoG Log:

Saturday, July 18th 1-2:30 FREE!
Following up on the huge success of the Winter Workshops, Vanessa Barrington and Nishanga Bliss will take us on a further exploration of the wonders of fermentation. They'll demonstrate how to make classic half-sour dills, salvadorean curtido, and kombucha as well as show you how to ferment using whey to create lactofermented raita and homemade sodas, and a myriad of other condiments. As with our other workshops, this course is FREE and open to members and non-members alike! This is a great way to have your friends check out the CoG without obligation. They will also be welcome to shop the shelves at the warehouse after the workshop. Visit thecog.org for more info and location.

Summer Solstice

2009-06-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

I’m saluting the solar max-out by getting my solar oven out of the garage and cooking some cranberry beans for soup and cornbread (with that fabulous Full Belly Farm freshly ground cornmeal and flour) in it for dinner. Traditional Chinese Medicine teaches that this is the most yang time of the year--a time of maximum expansion, activity and growth. The long days and warm weather can stimulate us into greater activity, but if our internal energy is not flowing smoothly, restlessness, anxiety, or insomnia can result. Choosing local, seasonal produce can help attune our bodies to the summertime. Visit a farmer’s market and indulge in oranges, berries, stone fruits such as apricots cherries, peaches and nectarines, plums, figs, melons and the year’s first apple varieties, or pick up vegetables such as corn, green beans, basil, summer squash, garlic, okra, cucumbers, avocadoes, tomatillos and the season’s first local tomatoes (spotted: super sweet Sungolds at the Tuesday Berkeley market).

The higher water content and more cooling nature of summer produce, combined with quicker cooking techniques, like sautéing, stir-frying, steaming and quick pickling are all in harmony with this season and our need to minimize both the time spent in the kitchen and our use of the oven. It’s a great time to experiment with “hypercooking,” where you select dishes that require a minimum of heating time. If I’m using a cast-iron skillet, for example, I’ll turn off the heat before a braised dish is done, and use residual heat to finish cooking. Two new finds at the local library: The Big Green Cookbook by Jackie Newgent and Cooking Green by Kate Hayhoe provoke by offering a myriad of ways to increase your green quotient by not only shopping for sustainable food but preparing it in a way to minimize energy use.

Most of us will do well eating more raw food during these long days, as their cooling effect is beneficial. Not only raw produce, but raw dairy products and animal foods (think ceviche, gravalax, and aioli) offer us a sensual blast of vitamins and enzymes. Those who enjoy strong digestion can eat over half of their foods raw in the summertime. People prone to more digestive challenges will do best with less raw food, but should consider eating more traditionally fermented foods, like raw sauerkraut and pickles, yogurt, buttermilk and crème fraiche, capers, kombucha, kefir and miso. Fermented foods are “super-raw” in terms of their nutritional goodness, in addition to providing immune-enhancing friendly bacteria. The warm temperatures of late are making my fermentation projects go faster than ever (current project: umeboshi plums and vinegar).

I recently had the delicious experience of cooking for a yoga retreat in Pescadero. Picking ollalieberries warmed by the sun and scooping up a couple bags of heirloom beans at Phipp’s Family Farm that weekend was a quintessential summer indulgence. The yoginis were especially fond of this soup, which is a quick-cooking summer staple around our house:

Red Lentil Dahl
In Chinese medicine, red lentils are categorized as having a bitter taste, which makes them particularly beneficial to the heart, the organ most important to nourish in the summertime.

6 cups water
1 cup red lentils
1 6” strip kombu seaweed
1 tablespoon olive oil or ghee
1 medium onion, diced small
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 tablespoon curry powder
2 carrots cut in ¼” thick rounds
3 celery stalks, diced small
1-2 lemons, juiced
1 knob of ginger, grated (about 3 tablespoons)
Sea salt
Chopped cilantro

Fill a large pot with the water and add the lentils, soaking overnight if possible. Bring to a boil and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes, skimming off any foam that rises to the surface. Add the kombu to the pot, cover and turn the heat down low. Meanwhile, heat the oil or ghee in a skillet, and then add the onion. Sauté for 5 minutes or so, until it begins to turn clear. Add the mustard seeds and curry powder, and stir occasionally until the spices give off their fragrance. Now add the carrots and celery and continue to cook a few minutes more. Next, the veggies and spices go into the soup pot. Simmer covered until the lentils are soft and creamy, 10-30 minutes more. Squeeze the ginger and lemon juice into the pot, and add sea salt to taste. Serve garnished, if you like, with cilantro. This soup is amenable to the addition of almost any seasonal vegetable. Later in the summer I’ll add the kernels of a couple ears of corn with the carrots and celery and finish it with a big handful of arugula. You can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner, throw in leftover grains, or top it with a big scoop of yogurt.
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Making It Easy to Eat Local

2009-05-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

The Bay Area foodshed includes a thriving network of farms. Many sell what they grow through Community Supported Agriculture, where you traditionally pay the farmer in advance to subscribe for a month, season, or year’s worth of produce. I have been getting an organic produce box from Full Belly Farm, one of the pioneers of local organic agriculture, for several years. Full Belly is a medium-size family farm in the Capay valley which grows a wonderful array of fruit, veggies, and animals sold through CSA and farmer’s markets. They have trained hundreds of would-be farmers in organic techniques through their internship program, and reach out to thousands of people during their annual Hoes Down Festival, opening the farm to host a “celebration of rural living” with organic food, farm activities, workshops, music, wagon rides through the fields, and more. Another great project of Full Belly has been the reintroduction of wheat growing to our area. Until a few years ago, wheat was no longer grown on a commercial scale in California. All of our wheat came from large farms in the Midwest and Northeast. Inspired in part by the locavore movement (the word was coined by a Richmond author); the farm began cultivating heirloom wheat strains which thrive in our climate. Now there are three organic farms selling locally grown wheat at our Farmer’s markets and you can buy a totally local loaf of bread from artisan baker Eduardo Morel (http://web.me.com/eduardomorell/morellsbread/Home.html.
Visit Full Belly farm’s website at http://www.fullbellyfarm.com/csa.html.

One thing I love about the CSA model is that it keeps me cooking. I walk three blocks to get my veggies every week and we are going to eat them, so matter what. I have been pushed to try things I might not buy of my own accord. When in doubt, I toss it in olive oil and sea salt and roast it at 450 until it gets crispy, or I pickle it. The only time we don't eat everything is in the summer when Full Belly gives us melons every week. My sweetheart and I are two of the few people in the world who hate melons, so we give away what my son can't eat.

CSA’s in San Francisco:
· Eatwell Farms: pay in advance for a month, quarter or year to pick up a wonderful weekly fruit and veggie box with optional pastured eggs at sites all over the Bay Area and beyond. Some sites have wait lists. Visit: http://www.eatwell.com/.
· Farm Fresh to You/ Capay Organic. This family farm will deliver to your door weekly, biweekly or monthly, and you can cancel at anytime. There is no waiting list to get in on a customizable box of fruit, veggies and flowers. Go to: http://farmfreshtoyou.com/index.php.
· Eating with the Seasons is a consortium of local family farms. Subscribe by the month, season, or year and pick up a customizable produce box to which you can add farm products locally roasted fair trade coffee , olive oil, eggs, spices, granola, and conserves. Take a look at: http://eatingwiththeseasons.com/.
· My Farm is an exciting twist on the CSA model: they will come and plant a garden in your backyard, tend it, harvest it and bring you a weekly box of garden grown produce from you and your neighbor’s gardens! Don’t worry, they test the soil for contamination before they plant. If you don’t have space to put in a garden, you can also subscribe to this ultra-local, urban CSA box. Yup, there is a wait list. Learn more at: http://myfarmsf.com/about.html.

...and in the East Bay:
· Grub Box. If I can ever let go of my beloved Full Belly Box, I’ll sign up for this one, which is grown in urban community gardens in Oakland and other sites in Alameda County. They not only take food stamps to pay for subscriptions, they offer a subsidized box to West Oakland residents ($12/wk) as well as sponsorship subscriptions ($24/wk) which allow you to help pay for a box for a needy family. Be inspired at: http://www.peoplesgrocery.org/staticpages/index.php/grub_box

Bay Area Meat CSA’s:
Omnivores who want to get real about eating local, sustainable meat should look into joining a local meat CSA to save money and give local farmers the support they need.
· Marin Sun Farms: Subscribe for six or twelve months and get local pasture-raised beef, lamb, pork, chicken and goat at a 20% or more discount off the prices you’ll pay at the Farmer’s market. Monthly pickups at locations all over the Bay Area. You can opt out of any single species, and choose from a selection of boxes containing roasts, steaks and/or ground meats, plus add-ons like bones and organ meats. $5-17/lb. All the details on their website at: http://www.marinsunfarms.com/meatclub.html.
· Clark Summit Farm Meat Club: I have been a member for several years and really enjoy the pasture-raised beef, pork, eggs, and sometimes chicken and veal from this family farm in Tomales. They have monthly pickups in Marin, SF and the East Bay. Wait list is 6-12 months long. $6-18/lb, plus bargain specials. Go to http://www.clarksummitfarm.com.
· Bay Area Meat CSA (BAMSCA): This was our original local meat CSA. After a few years, the organizers decided to switch from the traditional CSA format to a facilitated model: they provide technical support for members to organize whole animal buys themselves from BAMSCA’s network of local ranchers. Visit the website to join and find a local group who is planning a purchase. This is a great way to get the lowest prices on local meat without having to buy a whole animal directly yourself! Take a look at http://bamcsa.ning.com/.
· Sierra Farms Lamb: One of the ranchers who works with BAMSCA is Mel Thompson, who raises lamb on pasture near Oroville. Whole or half lambs go for $7/lb and you can contact him directly or work through the BAMSCA site if you’d like a smaller share. I have been ordering from Mel since last fall and savoring this tasty lamb at less than supermarket prices. Check out Mel’s page at: http://bamcsa.ning.com/profile/MelThompson.

Spring Cleaning

2009-05-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

Spring is in full force and our thoughts turn to…cleansing? After 6 months of annoying health problems that acupuncture and herbs didn’t seem to help, I reluctantly did a three week cleanse a couple of months ago. My general rule is to eat as healthfully as possible 80-90% of the time (my definition of eating healthfully has changed over the years, of course), and not to worry about the rest. When faced with a dietary restriction, my natural instinct is to rebel. But my symptoms were nagging enough that I was willing to try anything. With motivation high, I spent a week detoxing off of caffeine so the cleanse wouldn’t be too much of a shock to my system. It was easier to follow than I expected, although I had to postpone a dinner invitation or two so I wouldn’t feel too deprived (how could I dine at the house of the Brownie Master [all organic, Fair Trade, cane juice and molasses sweetened brownies, no less]without indulging?).

Well, I am happy to report it worked. In fact, I felt great. My skin was clearer than it had been in years. The only annoying side effect was an increase in gas, which is a really common symptom among cleaners. I plan to follow my own advice and cleanse twice a year—around the equinoxes is an especially fortuitous time. Many annoying symptoms can be cleared with periodic cleanses, and they are a good way to support the body‘s own efforts at detoxification. I don’t recommend fasting as a detox method, as the body’s detox pathways require significant nutrients to function properly. The following it the cleanse I followed. It is food-based and relies on a number of well-known detoxifying foods. If you have specific substances you are trying to remove from the body or specific symptoms you want to treat, seek the advice of a trained acupuncturist, herbalist or other health care practitioner.

Refrain from: alcohol, caffeine, grains (except brown or wild rice and quinoa), nuts and seeds (except flax meal), dairy except for organic ghee, all packaged and refined foods

Choose:
Vegetables: Eat all types, as much as you wish. Raw vegetables are more cleansing, cooked ones are more strengthening. People who are robust and those cleansing in warmer climates can choose more raw foods (50% or more), those who are tired or deficient and those cleansing in cool weather should choose more cooked foods (75% or more).
Detoxifying veggies, eat often: Avocados, artichokes, asparagus, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, burdock, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chives, cucumbers, eggplant, garlic, jicama, kohlrabi, leeks, mushrooms, onions, peppers, rutabaga, radishes, especially daikon and Spanish black radish, sea vegetables, turnips and
Leafy Greens: all, such as arugula, beet , daikon, and turnip greens, dandelion greens, kale and collard greens, mustard greens, Swiss chard, spinach, lettuce of all types, edible flowers
Fruit: Choose any fresh or frozen fruit, except bananas and coconut. Try to eat twice as many vegetables as fruit. No dried or canned fruit.
Fats and Oils: Choose only expeller pressed organic olive oil, unrefined coconut oil or ghee for cooking, and organic expeller pressed flax oil and olive oil for dressing salads. Flax meal may be added to smoothies or sprinkled on other foods.
Beans: One to three servings of organic lentils, mung beans, chickpeas or other beans daily. Avoid unfermented soy (tofu or soy milk), tempeh and shoyu/tamari OK.
Grains: One to three servings of organic brown rice, wild rice or quinoa daily.
Animal Foods: Choose from organic or pastured chicken, beef, lamb, goat or pork and wild-caught, low mercury seafood only. Up to 4 2-3oz. servings per day. Up to 3 organic or pastured eggs daily. Prepare animal products by boiling, baking, roasting or poaching or raw (no raw egg whites). No cured, smoked or preserved meats, but canned salmon, sardines OK if your budget is tight.
Seasonings: natural wheat-free tamari or shoyu, chickpea miso, umeboshi plum, raw apple cider or other raw vinegars, fresh lemon juice, celtic sea salt, real salt or other unprocessed salt, fresh or dried organic herbs and spices, raw honey, nutritional yeast
Fermented foods: raw sauerkraut or lactofermented pickles, ideally with each meal
Beverages: Aim for ½ your body weight in ounces of water a day (average is 8-10 ounces), more if you exercise vigorously. Choose filtered water, herbal teas, kombucha, beet kvass, freshly pressed vegetable juices or dilute freshly pressed fruit juices. I sometimes drank water-processed organic decaf coffee, but that was bending the rules a bit!

Shopping for A Better World

2009-05-05T12:19:00.001-07:00

Week of 4/27/09	Safeway (Castro)	Rainbow Grocery	Farmer's Market (North Berkeley)
Onions	$1.49/lb	$.77/lb	$1.50/lb
Carrots	.99/lb	1.79/lb	2/lb
Sugar Snap Peas	4.99/lb (non-organic)	4.99/lb	4/lb
Radishes	3/$1 (non-organic)	1.99/bunch	1/bunch
Celery	2.19/lb	2.29/lb	2/lb
Garlic	5.33/lb	4.99/lb	5/lb
Cilantro	.59/bunch (non-organic)	1.59/bunch	1.25/bunch
Eggs	3.99-4.49/doz (organic)	4.55/doz (organic) 7.50-8.50/doz (pastured)	4/doz (organic) 6-8/doz (pastured)
Butter	4/lb (non-organic)	6.29/lb	$10/lb (pastured)
Brown Rice	1.89/lb	.97/lb	2/lb
Lentils	1.59/lb	1.61/lb	n/a
Strawberries	4.79/lb	4.59/lb	4/lb
Quinoa	n/a	3.09/lb	n/a
Asparagus	4.79/lb (non-organic)	5.99/lb	5/lb
Green Onions	.79/bunch (non-organic)	.99/bunch	1/bunch
Cauliflower	2.39/head	2.99/head	2/head
Vital Vittles Real Bread	5.19/loaf	4.65/loaf	4/loaf
Broccoli	2.39/bunch	1.39/lb	2/lb
Whole Milk	4.49/ ½ gall	3.70/ ½ gall	n/a
Walnuts	7.49/lb (non-organic)	9.39/lb	8/lb

If our main distinguishing feature as Americans is that we consume far more than our share of the world's resources (and apparently drive the world economy by so doing), is more conscientious shopping the best way we can help save the planet? I hope not the best, but concede that it is important! And shopping is an unavoidable part of post-industrial life. Last week I repeated my comparison shopping experiment, this time adding in a visit to Safeway, the third largest supermarket chain in the nation. The only time I normally shop at a major supermarket is when on a road trip. It had been years since I ventured into the Safeway nearest my office. Things had changed: there were more organic products available than ever, and an interesting grind-your-own nut butter bar had sprung up where there used to be deli items. Are supermarkets taking cues from natural food stores?

I bought all organic except if unavailable as noted. A surprising find was some organic animal products at the supermarket, including organic chicken (2.99/lb for a whole chicken) and ground beef (5.99/lb, comparable to Farmer's market prices), and organic milk (a national brand, inferior to our local Straus) but no butter. However, it should be noted that the produce almost all came from two large producers, Cal Organics and Grimmway, which are basically factory-farmed organic. By contrast, the coop, Rainbow grocery, carries a mix of factory and small farms and the Farmer's market is all smaller farms.

While the prices were variable at each market, the overwhelming difference was in the quality of the food and the entire shopping experience. No matter how many little faux thunderstorms moisten the produce at Safeway each day, the quality will never approach that of food fresh picked the morning of the farmer's market. While I ran through Safeway as quickly as possible, only waving at an acquaintance I met in the aisles, the people-watching at the coop was significantly better, though it was super-crowded as it was coupon day. Research indicates that the average adult does not enjoy grocery shopping. I'm sure the average farmer's market shopper does! My trip started off with a bang when Michael Pollan himself was in line in front of me in line and I actually mustered up the courage to tell him I am a fan. He acknowledged me graciously and ran off to get those fabulous Lucero farms alpine strawberries. I chatted with friends, strangers, farmers and producers, my son played with the other kids in the grassy median, we munched with delight the season's first stone fruit, juicy apriums, and an hour and a half flew by. I was right in line with recent research which indicates that the average Farmer's market shopper has ten times the number of conversations while shopping than the average supermarket shopper.

Another overwhelming difference between the supermarket and the coop and farmer's market was that the latter sell real food, while the former mostly sells frankenfood. This is highlighted by the issue of GMO's. Jeffery Weeks, GMO expert and the founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology, estimates that about 75% of the products at the average supermarket contain GMO's, and this was no doubt true at Safeway, although I believe nothing on my shopping list was contaminated. Since Rainbow carries many processed foods, there are no doubt GMO foods on the shelves there, although their high rate of organic products and no-high fructose corn syrup policies certainly limit the amounts. Check out this post on GMO products you are likely still using: http://www.alittlebitofgreen.com/2009/04/27/7-gmo-products-i-bet-you-are-still-using/. I was happy to note that Dagoba organic chocolate is labeled as containing non-GMO soy lecithin!

My efforts to avoid GMO's were mostly successful this week, with the exception of a pre-half-marathon spaghetti feed hosted by the Weott volunteer fire department which was no doubt made with corn, soy and canola if not more. While I was happy to see the bottled salad dressing didn't contain partially hydrogenated oil, it was made with soy and/or canola and wasn't organic. Why have we forgotten the simple art of making salad dressing? How can even self-respecting conscious people bring bottled salad dressing to potlucks? It's vastly better, cheaper and healthier than the commercial stuff…I see that this is becoming a pet peeve. See my previous post "Blameless Salad" for a great, non-GMO salad dressing recipe. Happy shopping!

Join the No GMO Challenge

2009-04-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

I was off in the Happiest Place on Earth for my birthday last week and missed the start, Earth Day, of the No GMO challenge. But now I am jumping on board and I urge you to do so, too. Follow this link to read all about it: http://realfoodmedia.com/no-gmo-challenge/.

I have been studying GMO's in depth for a couple of months now and I am convinced that GM foods are the biggest environmental and health threat we face today. There are many documented health threats from GM foods. For example, in a well-designed, double blinded study in the UK in 1996, young rats fed GM potatoes were found to have damage to most organ systems, including the thymus, spleen, brain, liver, and testicles along with potentially cancerous proliferative cell growth in their stomachs and large intestines (Pusztai, 1999). As is typical of the whole GMO story, the potatoes got approved by the UK government anyway. One of the creepiest risks: the potential that transgenes, which are not necessarily broken down by digestive processes as the manufacturers claim, can infect our precious gut bacteria.

GM foods permeate the food supply in the U.S. The major crops include soy, canola, corn, sugar beets and cotton (used in food in cottonseed oil). Most processed foods, if not labelled organic, contain derivatives from one of these crops and are likely to contain GMO's. The website above has great guidelines for how to seek out non-GMO foods and how to spot hidden sources of GMO's. I'll be posting regularly over the next month on my adventures in non-GMO eating and my concerns about their threat to health, food and even herbal medicine! Stay tuned.

Date with the Desert

2009-04-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

I’m freshly back from a week-long sojourn on the East side of our state, down to Death Valley via the most romantic of California highways, 395. It traverses the back side of the Sierras through lovely, hot-spring studded valleys, passing the lower 48’s highest peak, Mt.Whitney, and approaches the lowest spot in the Western hemisphere, Death Valley’s Badwater, at -282 feet. This California is so far from the urban bustle I usually inhabit as to seem to be another state, if not, another planet.

Road trips are a challenge to local and sustainable eaters. Sometimes principles must be sacrificed and you just try to find good food, or failing that, food.

The culinary Mt.Whitney of the trip was dinner on our first night at a Basque restaurant, JT’s, in Garberville, Nevada. Family style dining is almost extinct in the Bay Area, but it lives on in the Basque tradition. You are seated, sometimes at a dramatically long table you’ll share with other diners, and immediately start in on bread and butter (why does restaurant butter always taste so good?), followed by a tureen of soup, in this case, chicken, plain but crisp salad, next beef stew and those wonderful Basque beans before your entrée. We tried tender lamb chops with handfuls of whole roasted garlic cloves, and a platter of my first ever bacon-y sweetbreads (!). All served with French fries, made from potatoes, in-house. Was the meat from the cows and sheep I saw grazing in the fields all around, tended by downy-cheeked Basque shepherds? I didn’t pop the bubble and ask. We made space in our dessert stomachs for the scoop of ice cream and lovely decaf which came next. All this, served with a bottle of house wine for the table, with a cocktail, for 3, came to $51. Western Nevada has a handful of Basque eateries, but JT’s is the finest I have tried.

Any road trip across California or the West will make one wonder what all the fuss about grass-fed beef is about. Throughout the Western states, in the most unlikely places, you find cows, happily munching on grass. No one has been able to figure out how to raise cattle in confinement, so the vast majority are born and live at least the first part of their lives with their mothers, on pasture. While much grazing on public and private lands may be overgrazing, it doesn’t have to be. The problems come with finishing cattle, which is done almost universally on the feedlots and in the CAFO’s which are such environmental and ethical nightmares. Why? Cost, government regulation, and consumer demand. American consumers supposedly prefer the color, taste and texture of grain-finished beef. I hope the rising interest in pastured animal products will drive the abandonment of the CAFO/feedlot system. When I am on the road and don’t have access to truly ethically raised meats, I go vegetarian, look for wild fish, checking my Fish Guide, choose lamb which I've heard is not generally grown on feedlots, or sometimes opt for beef as in the sweetbreads above because these animals at least spent part of their lives on grass.

The culinary Badwater of our trip was Lone Pine, last stop before Death Valley and departure point for trips up Mt. Whitney. Lured by the prospect of a venison burger, we were painfully reminded of how low American coffee-shop food can go. We had taken refuge indoors that night, daunted by the 45-mile an hour winds buffeting the Owens valley. The town redeemed itself in the morning when I found locally-roasted fair trade organic coffee to fuel my run up through the psychedelic and historic Alabama hills with snow-capped Whitney beckoning ahead. I gaze upon that mountain with an inner smile, remembering climbing it as a teenager.

The Holy Grail of desert food has got to be the date shake. Of course mixing dates into a vanilla milkshake is completely over the top! But in the middle of a long hot desert afternoon there is nothing finer. I was sad to discover they are not raising dates commercially in Death Valley anymore. Heading home, after stopping by Tacopa, site of an old-fashioned, sex segregated county-run hot spring, we heard that nearby China Ranch Date farm was worth a stop. And it was well worth drive down their windy dirt driveway through a hallucinogenic canyon to this family farm/oasis/nature preserve for a thick date shake and a stroll along the shady creek and through the cactus nursery.

I do have an emergency box of mac n’cheese and a couple of cans of black beans in our camping supplies, but in general, I relish the chance to cook and eat real food when camping. Our first camping night we had Prather ranch burgers, tucked into airy ciabatta from Schat bakery, a local favorite in Bishop and Mammoth, greened with a handful of Fully Belly farms mizuna doused with vinaigrette. Gazing at the the alpenglow on the stunning backside of the snowy Sierras, I was prompted once again to wonder: Why does a good meal camping taste so much better than the same good meal anywhere else?

Blameless Salad

2009-03-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

What is a salad? A mixture of foods, usually including vegetables, with a bit of crunch and a bit of a sour taste, raw or not.

A salad always seems to be the innocent choice. I make a meal of a salad most every day, usually lunch on one of those glorious days when I can eat it luxuriously on my back deck, ideally while leafing through a luscious cookbook. Mostly it is my choice for brown-bagging it, too, packed into my silly but handy (and regrettably, plastic) Salad Shaker which keeps it cool with an insertable ice pack and crisp due to the clever dressing dispenser in the lid. The best greens are from the garden, the other veggies assorted, and an astonishing variety of leftovers can go into the mix. Always either beans, cheese or nuts to give it staying power. And the dressing is vital. The favorite for months running now I've made with walnut oil, local, expeller-pressed and a significant source of omega-3's.

Trouble in salad-land? Every salad-lover knows the greatest boon to the salad-eater of the last few years has been pre-washed salad greens. Earthbound farms of the Salinas valley popularized them and they are big sellers nationwide. You might remember Micheal Pollan's visit to Earthbound farms in The Omnivore's Dilemma. There are problems with growing salad greens for the nation year-round, organic or no. We've come to expect leafy greens at all times in every climate. But recently, in the aftermath of the great e. coli spinach scare of 2006, even more horrible things have been taking place in the fields where these salads are grown. In the interests of keeping the fields sanitary, a set of guidelines has been established by the buyers of greens grown in California which are based on the idea that a sterile farm is a safe farm. In particular, the goal of these practices is to keep wildlife out of the fields. I read about it at Ethicurean at:http://www.ethicurean.com/2009/02/23/produce-safety-part-ii/. I was first alerted to this in last month's issue of Sierra magazine: http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200903/grapple.aspx. What caught my eye was the heart wrenching quote from Diana Stuart, ag grad student at UCSC: "Do people know when they buy bagged salad, frogs are being poisoned in their ponds?"

OK, what's a salad-lover to do? Bust out the salad spinner, of course. Grow your own, possible all year in our climate. A friend keeps herself in salad with a raised bed in an old bathtub. The shorter the distance from the dirt to your table, the more nutrition your salad contains. And once again, shop the Farmer's market to buy direct from farmers so they don't have to follow these abhorrent practices to satisfy the middlemen.

We seem to be at a crossroads right now with our food supply, as the best way to ensure its safety and sustainability is debated throughout the land.

And another thing, the blameless accompaniment to the blameless salad: tap water. I filter it, hoping to get rid of the drug residues, for one thing, that still plague our generally wonderful water from EBMUD. I have been known to spring for bottles of high-mineral Gerolsteiner on occasion, but I've stopped since recently reading the excellent Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It by Elizabeth Royte. She brings up points I've never pondered before about bottled water, like how it plays into the current trend of hyperindividualism.
“It was becoming normal to pay high prices for things that used to cost little, or nothing….instead of collectively fighting problems—such as bad service or bad quality—we accept them and move on: to the private sector....it lets those who can afford to opt out—whether from public schools, mass transit or tap water—to further isolate themselves, in style” (44-45).

Garolsteiner didn't seem so bad--after all we buy imported wine, is imported water (in a nifty reusable glass bottle) much different? But the book reminded me that water is really part of the commons, something that humanity shares collectively. It is intrinsically wrong to profit off of something that flows from the earth, unlike wine, for example, which takes a great deal of art and science to produce. So I'll stick with tap and get my bubbles from homemade sodas. The Gerolsteiner bottles are great for making these. And my lemon verbena bush is blooming at the same time as the lemon tree is finally rockin' so it looks like a batch of lactofermented lemon soda is in order. Maybe I'll enter it into the fermenting contest at the "Ferment Change," an upcoming benefit for the rad City Slicker Farms at the Humanist hall in Oakland on April 3rd. Find more info on Sandor Katz' blog here: http://www.wildfermentation.com/events.php?id=141, and, while you are at it dig around for some ideas on how to ferment some change for yourself on his site.

Omega-3 Vinaigrette

1 tsp. Dijon-type mustard
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon umeboshi plum vinegar
¼ cup expeller-pressed walnut oil
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons expeller-pressed flax oil

Place the mustard in a 1 pint or larger glass jar. Add the vinegars, put the lid on, and shake to combine. Add the oils and shake again to emulsify. Store in the fridge and use to dress salads of all types.

The Raw and the Cooked

2009-03-10T15:06:00.000-07:00

People often ask me about raw food. Raw food diets enjoy periodic surges in popularity, while traditional diets contain at least some raw foods worldwide. Chinese medicine has traditionally warned against consuming too much cold and raw food, which is said to be weakening to the digestive system. Some portion of this concern no doubt stems from the context in which Chinese medicine evolved—the vast majority of people were subsistence farmers and there were very real concerns about sanitation. The admonishment against eating raw food was no doubt protective against food-borne illness. In TCM, raw food is viewed as cleansing and cooling, which is usually undesirable for undernourished people but often desirable for overnourished people, such as the vast majority of Americans today. In modern America, improved sanitation had reduced the risk of pathogens carried by water, but problematic factory farming practices continue to threaten the safety of the food supply and pose a potential threat to eaters of raw foods. Consider the disturbing thought that the strain of e.coli that sickened many eaters of bagged spinach is one that exists primarily in grain-fed (therefore sick) feedlot cattle.

Current interest in raw foods stems in part from the recognition of their intact enzyme content and the fact that some vitamins are lost in cooking. The cooling and detoxifying effects of raw foods are desirable for many of us, and as the weather warms into spring, it is balancing to begin to incorporate more raw food into the diet, especially for the robust, meat-eating, ruddy, “excess” type of person. Cold, fatigued people with weak digestion or who are prone to diarrhea will do better with less raw food. Everyone can benefit from eating some fermented foods, which are traditionally served as condiments to accompany a meal.

While no traditional diet depended solely on raw foods—even in tropical climates, people consume mostly cooked foods—they include some raw foods, especially fermented foods. Raw animal products are almost universal. Before you say “yuck” to the idea of raw animal foods, remember the concentrated flavor of real parmesan cheese, the tender bite of a good ceviche, or the voluptuousness of steak tartare. Raw animal foods are excellent sources of vitamin B6, which is damaged by cooking. Raw animal products are being demonized in modern America. Sales of raw milk are banned in almost every state (and our right to buy raw milk is in need of constant defense in CA), our access to raw cheese is in jeopardy, and many restaurants are putting warning labels on menus when dishes, such salad dressing, contain raw eggs. I feel confident in eating raw animal products when I know the source, like the friendly farmers at Kaki and Clark Summit farms. Now there is real accountability. If I were to get sick, I would be able to go to the farmers directly.

Grass-fed Steak Tartare

On Valentine's day, we indulged in a sensuous pile of raw grass-fed beef. Raw beef contains lots of vitamin B6 and zinc, known to enhance sexual potency. It worked, too!

1lb. grass-fed ribeye, frozen for 14 days and then thawed for maximum safety
1 t. Spanish paprika
1 T capers, chopped
2 T finely sliced green onions
2 T minced parsley
1 T diced shallot
2 T olive oil
2 T mustard
1 small jar anchovies
1 pastured egg

Chop the steak as finely as possible. Mix in the next 7 ingredients, and season to taste with sea salt and pepper. Mound on a plate and garnish with anchovies, dropping an egg yolk into an indentation in the center of the mound. Serve as a first course with toasted bread.

Feed Kids Real Food!

2009-03-03T10:25:00.000-08:00

This is a salad bar in a public school in San Francisco. Not bad. A lot better than what was offered in the public schools I attended. I brown bagged it, and remember being soundly mocked for my "rabbit food" lunches: tuna curry salad with chopped apple and sprouts on a whole wheat English muffin. In case you missed out workshop on food for kids this weekend, the following is the handout I prepared:

Feeding our children healthfully and teaching them to feed themselves are among a parent’s most important responsibilities. We have a tremendous opportunity to support our children in building vibrant bodies and minds as they grow, to teach them to enjoy a lifetime of healthy cooking and eating, and to shape the world they will grow up into with our conscientious food choices.

Parents’ Top Ten Tips on Eating Better with Your Children
1. Strive to eat as healthfully as possible yourselves, and you are a model for your kids. In general, kids over two can eat what adults eat, in smaller portions and sometimes with simpler preparations.
2. Eat real food. Processed, packaged food comes with the hidden price of additives, colorings, flavorings, GMO’s and more, or even if organic, with an inevitable nutrient loss from processing.
3. Keep trying. According to Marion Nestle, “research consistently shows that a child’s willingness to accept an unfamiliar food depends on the number of times a food is offered. You might have to over a food at 20 meals before a child will taste it.”
4. Kids will eat when they are hungry. Your job is to offer a variety of healthy foods, and your child’s role is to select what and how much they will eat. Take advantage of times of hunger. I like to put out a plate of raw veggies, sometimes with chunks of raw cheese, hummus or nut butter dips, to munch in the late afternoon while making dinner.
5. Vegetables are a common challenge. It can be hard to get kids (and some adults) to eat leafy greens, for example. Be reassured that fruit contains all the vitamins and minerals that vegetables contain, with the exception that most fruit doesn’t contain much calcium. Also, animal foods from animals feeding on grass or seaweed will contain many of the nutrients of the plants they eat. Most kids will happily eat grass-fed raw or whole milk or yogurt, cheese, butter and meats.
6. Stealth is effective. A lot of nutrition can go into a smoothie, vegetables can go into pancakes or muffins, minced parsley can go into anything. Diced vegetables in soups with beans, meat or pasta often go down better than plain veggies
7. Kids need fat. Go for the best possible sources of fat—cold-pressed, organic, grass-fed, and sustainable—as much as you can. Avoid trans fats and fried foods. Getting enough healthy fats in diet can help curb sugar cravings. Many folks in the nutrition community think the USDA advice that kids over 2 should switch to skim milk is very bad advice. Consider raw milk, optimal sources of fat-soluble vitamins, enzymes and probiotics.
8. Sugar. Outright bans seem to backfire. Stick with sweets that have some nutritional value, making your own with maple syrup, honey, succanat, etc. Go back to the idea that treats are a rare treat, not a daily occurrence.
9. Involve kids in shopping, farmer’s market trips, coop shifts, growing and producing food, and meal planning and cooking.
10. Start teaching them to be wise consumers. Children are a market niche. Tremendous amounts of money are spent by the food industry in shaping their tastes.
11. Choose most nutritious versions possible of staple foods. Truly pastured eggs from the Farmer’s market are worth the higher price to me because of the vastly superior nutrition. Lots of families enjoy making their own muffins, granola, breads, etc. for maximum fun, flavor and nutrition.

Websites:
http://www.westonaprice.org/children/diet_children.html Weston Price Foundation’s excellent resources on feeding kids based on the principles of holistic, traditional nutrition. Look for the great article on packing lunch boxes.
http://www.mypyramid.gov/index.html Ultra-mainstream nutrition advice from the USDA, but not entirely worthless.
http://fourfoldhealing.com/category/feeding-our-children/ Nice short article on feeding kids from a holistic MD.

Kid-Tested Recipes:

Zucchini Bread-Muffins
Thanks to Alene Pearson, mother of a finicky kid

3 eggs

1 cup olive oil OR half cup oil and half cup applesauce

1/3 cup white sugar or evaporated cane juice
1/3 cup brown sugar, Rapadura or Succanat

2 cups grated zucchini, or try a mix of carrots, zucchini and apple, etc.

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 cups whole wheat pastry flour, rice flour, or barley flour

3 teaspoons cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon non-aluminum baking powder

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 cup raisins

350 degree oven. Mix wet together. Mix dry together. Mix wet and dry together. Add raisins at end. Don’t over mix.
Can be made into muffins (18) or loaves (2). Line or butter muffin tins/butter loaf pan. Muffins cook for about 30 minutes (check for doneness w/toothpick). Loaves cook for about an hour (check for doneness…)

Ondine Gibbs, foodie mom par excellence, shares these ideas: “One thing I've used a whole lot when talking about nutritious kid-friendly food is this awesome "rainbow pancake" recipe I created for my kids. I start by soaking whole grains overnight (usually buckwheat & millet but there are endless possibilities here. I suppose you could also sub any kind of flour too, but I'm all for less processed if time permits), then in the morning, blending them w/banana, egg (could sub applesauce), baking powder, milk (any type, cow, soy, nut etc) a little melted butter or coco oil, cinnamon & nutmeg & a bit of maple syrup or agave or orange juice & then, the rainbow part comes when you incorporate the colorful veggies--steamed carrots or beets or greens-kale or spinach (you have to do them individually to get the colors--usually I just stick to one color per batch but you could go for the whole rainbow if you have time). You can put most of the batter ingredients in the blender the night before, then just add the soaked grains in the AM & they're actually pretty quick to make. For a while, I would make a whole bunch of mini-cakes and I froze half and used the rest for my kids as snacks, rather than just breakfast...they're awesome for kids who are learning to feed themselves too as they're easy finger food.I actually got interviewed once by Parents Mag on a "Quick and Yummy Power breakfast" for kids article and they published this "rainbow pancake" idea. I didn't give them any recipe, just hinted at what to do, but they came up with their own, and I've never actually tried it w/ their measurements, but I'd assume (and HOPE) that they tested it--and I highly doubt they talk about soaking grains!! You can find it at http://www.parents.com/recipes/cooking/kid-friendly-food/power-breakfasts/?page=6

One more thing that's fun & healthy for my kids is something they can help out making--sushi (GO Nori!!) with more seaweed salad inside, &/or other fillings (possibilities are endless here). I always cook my short grain brown rice with either Amaranth, millet or quinoa to add depth to flavor and nutrition. I usually do 50/50 with whatever grains I'm using. Again, the rainbow concept works here--getting as much color on the plate is my motto when it comes to kids and adults. Rainbows make sense to kids--so I always encourage the "eating the rainbow" concept.

Bliss Balls
Adapted from The Nutrient-Dense Eating Plan by Douglas Margel. Depending on how fancy you get with these, they are a great snack or luscious dessert. You can find expensive versions at Whole Foods and the like.

½ cup almonds, walnuts or sunflower seeds
½ cup raisins, dates or both
¼ cup coconut oil
¼-1/2 cup carob or cocoa powder
Cover nuts or seeds and fruit with water and soak overnight. Drain. Melt the coconut oil over low heat. Grind the nuts in a food processor, next add the raisins/dates, the coconut oil and finally enough carob powder to get a consistency you like. Roll into balls, then finishing by rolling in more carob powder (or coconut?) Season with sea salt, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, etc. if desired. If they aren’t sweet enough for you, try some maple syrup, stevia or agave nectar. Store in the fridge. Lots of variations: add spirulina or bee pollen, dip in melted chocolate, vary the fruits and nuts, etc.

Carrot Salad
Adapted from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food

Grate 1 lb carrots (I never peel carrots--why lose nutrients and fiber?)
Make the vinaigrette by stirring together in a small bowl:
1 tsp. red wine vinegar
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
Sea salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
Whisk in ¼ cup olive oil
Taste and adjust as necessary. Toss the carrots with the dressing and: 2 Tbs. chopped parsley. Serve and enjoy!

Sea Vegetable Fest

2009-02-21T07:17:00.000-08:00

An all-seaweed lunch. I was developing recipes for today's
seaweed class and they all came together for lunch on the patio: wild nori chowder, sesame sea palm, seaweed salad over greens and mandarin-lime kanten. What a joy to bring sea vegeatables into my life in a bigger way.

Seaweed has been a part of the human diet from the beginning. Every coastal and most inland traditional diet has included sea vegetables, such as those of Japan, Korea, China, Iceland, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Denmark, Hawaii and other Pacific Islands. According to noted herbalist Susan Weed, seaweed’s benefits include: “increased longevity, enhanced immune functioning, revitalization of the cardiovascular, endocrine, digestive, and nervous systems, and relief from minor aches and pains.”
Sea vegetables are nutritional powerhouses, high in iron and calcium, and containing B vitamins, vitamin A, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, iodine and trace minerals like selenium, zinc, copper, and molybdenum. As modern agriculture techniques deplete soil minerals, modern diets are increasingly deficient and many of us suffer health problems as a result. They are high in fiber, support water metabolism and elimination, and alkalize the body. The brown seaweeds, including kombu, wakame, arame and hijiki, contain alginic acid, which binds and helps expel heavy metals and radioisotopes. In Traditional Chinese medicine, they are said to soften hardness and promote urination, and are used in this and other traditional healing systems to treat goiter, cysts, hernia, edema, UTI, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, asthma, menstrual and menopausal symptoms and much more.

Sea vegetables are also one of the few sources of wild foods in many people’s diets. They are nutrient dense and practically calorie-free, the opposite of so many modern foods. They provide many of the nutrients available from fish and seafood, notably iodine and calcium, but are more sustainable. Strive to include them in your diet daily. Seaweeds can concentrate toxins from the waters in which they are grown, so know your sources!

Strand seaweeds: arame, hijiki, sea palm—soak and use in salads, veggie dishes, soups
Strip seaweeds: kombu, wakame--soups and broth, soak and cut into strands and use as above
Sheet seaweeds: wild nori, dulse—toast or fry for toppings or sandwiches, soups, scrambles
Kombu: cook with all grains or beans for enhanced flavor and nutrition, faster cooking times for beans
Good as condiments and in trail mix: toasted sea palm, dulse, wakame, nori

Seaweed Salad
1 oz. sea palm, sea whip or arame
3 T. brown rice vinegar
1-2 T maple syrup
Optional additions: toasted sesame oil or seeds, minced garlic minced green onion, etc.
Soak the seaweed in cold water to cover for 5 minutes or more. Drain and use the water for soup stock, grain cooking or at least give it to your plants! Mix the vinegar and maple syrup into the seaweed and season to taste with optional or other additions. Serve over salad greens or plain. Variation: use soaked wakame, with the tough middle rib removed (save for soup stock), cut into thin strips.

Sesame Seaweed
This dish is popular even with seaweed neophytes. The sesame and seaweed together pack a powerful punch of calcium!
1 oz. sea palm, arame or hijiki
1 onion, sliced
1 T. sesame or olive oil
2 T tahini
½ tsp tamari
Dash umeboshi plum vinegar
Soak seaweed in cool water to cover for 10-15 minutes, then drain, saving the water for soup stock, adding to bathwater, or fertilizer. Heat the oil in a skillet and add the onion, sautéing until it begins to color. Add the seaweed and continue to sauté until the seaweed begins to get tender (how long this takes will depend on the type). Stir in the tahini and a splash of water if the tahini is very thick. Keep stirring until the tahini is evenly distributed, then stir in the tamari until all is smooth. Finish with ume vinegar to taste. Serve as a side dish, or use as a pastry or filo dough filling. Variations: add carrots cut in matchsticks after the onions, use almond butter or peanut butter instead of tahini, add garlic with the onions, use lots of whole toasted sesame, sunflower or pumpkin seeds instead of or with the tahini.

Vegetarian Dashi
This is the stock of those classic miso soups, minus the bonito flakes. It goes well with noodles, almost any vegetable, any miso, and can be used in veggie and seafood stews. Since it can be made with mostly dried ingredients, you might be able to whip it up on those days when you want good nourishing food, but haven’t been to the market in a while.
2 6” strips kombu
1 onion or 2 spring onions, sliced
2 slices fresh ginger
6-8 dried shitakes
2 T tamari
Mirin or sake to taste
Seasonal vegetables, chopped
Bring all to a boil in 7 cups of water and simmer, covered for 20-30 minutes. Fish out the mushrooms and the kombu and slice thinly, then return to the pot. Taste and finish with more salt, vinegar, or toasted sesame oil.

Seaweed websites:
http://www.oceanvegetables.com/seaweed-recipes.html Nice collection of recipes, seaweed blog
http://www.herbalremediesinfo.com/seaweed.html Herbalist Susun Weed’s wonderful website
http://www.seaweed.net/ The Mendocino Seaweed Company’s website, and a way to order their book, still the essential guide to seaweed harvest and use.

Wolf Cooking, Part 2

2009-02-18T14:45:00.000-08:00

The nutrition school I attend recently posed a challenge to the students: to try to eat healthfully on a tight budget, specifically the Federal Food and Nutrition services maximum benefit, for one week a month in 2009. The idea arose out of the common complaint of our clients that eating healthy food is too expensive. It truly was a challenge to feed my family of three on $108 a month. I complicated the matter further by striving to meet not only our nutritional but our ethical and political needs as well. I really did not want to buy non-organic anything, or factory-farmed meat. I did choose organic beans, $1-2/lb. which I have found may come from China even if found at your local natural foods store, over local beans at $2-4/lb. We almost succeeded. By Saturday, we were out of milk, which for a preschooler is a no no. I went to the store for more and went back to raw milk which I believe has twice the nutritional value, worth it at twice the price.

This is our shopping list for the week:
Farmer’s Market:
Local pastured eggs: $8/2 dozen
Whole Grain Wheat Bread $4
Local Raw Honey, 1 lb. $7
Organic Apples $2.75
Organic Carrots $2.50
Monterey Market/ Berkeley Bowl:
Organic whole wheat flour $1.59
Organic Yellow Cornmeal $.59
Long Grain Organic Brown Rice $2.00
Green Beans $2.27
Organic Black-Eyed Peas $1.04
Organic Potatoes $.70
Organic Celery $1.79
Local Salted Butter $3.49
Organic Crunchy Peanut Butter $5.99
“Natural” Jack Cheese $5.14
Cherry Tomatoes $1.29
1 gall Organic Whole Milk $7.49
Sale Organic Apples $.99
Sale Cara Cara Organic Navels $.76
Pot Sticker Skins $1.69
Niman Ranch Ground Beef $3.11

Plus $15 (paid a year in advance) for our CSA box, which had: Carrots, oranges, bok choi, red Russian kale, spinach, butternut squash, and fresh onions this week, plus leftover cabbage and Nappa cabbage from last week. We had local, pastured short ribs and ground pork in the freezer from our meat buying club and a can of wild salmon from a local discount warehouse, plus barley from our grain CSA to sprout for soup and salad, $24 in all. Total outlay: $108 for the week, not including the Sunday run for milk. Also, we ate homemade bone broth from the freezer, homegrown and canned apple-blackberry sauce, home-pickled vegetables, and kale, leeks, arugula, sorrel, dandelion greens, green onions, parsley and herbs from the garden. Chocolate, maple syrup and a huge tin of almonds we received as gifts, luxuries that were much appreciated. We contributed back to the gift economy this week by giving away some apple chutney from our fall apple harvest. And we were sure to cash in that coupon for a free loaf of bread from a local collective bakery. I didn’t include our spending on wine and coffee beans, which amounted to about $40 for the week.

We were surprised at how, although we ate well and really not too differently from usual, we felt constrained and at times resentful. It’s incredible how putting up a barrier can do that, even if it is a contrived one. The truth is, we are on a budget although we don’t act like it, and it would be good for us to bring our grocery purchases closer to this level. Next time, I would shop a little more carefully (I could have saved $2 by buying the peanut butter at my coop), and leave more room for spontaneity. I really missed that second trip to the Farmer’s market in the week, but I was out of money. I was impressed how much mental energy was freed up by planning meals a week in advance. I thought a lot less about food than I usually do.

It was strange, too, how the vegetarian meals didn’t feel quite complete. I was vegetarian for 15 years, and a vegan chef—so I should know how to plan a satisfying vegetarian meal. My husband, a Midwesterner, is much happier with meat on the plate, even if it is just a little. This exercise confirmed that animal products, especially sustainable ones, can take up a big piece of a budget, even if you stick to cheaper cuts of meat, like bony cuts and ground meat, and cook the bones into soup, too. I think the meat-as-condiment paradigm is the way to go. One trick that really worked was that baking can do a lot to stretch the budget and add cheer. Black eyed peas with leeks and greens were a lot more exciting with cornbread and honey butter! Another trick was making yogurt at home to save money and increase beneficial bacteria. Beans and grains, of course, are the great budget stretchers, especially because they double in volume when cooked or sprouted.

Having a young child involved in this experiment was another challenge. While he doesn’t eat as much as an adult, he doesn’t have adult tastes. For example, he rarely will eat leafy greens which are easy to grow, inexpensive and appear many of our meals. He loves fruit, dairy and meat, but will eat grains and beans, too. The higher purpose of the experiment is lost on him. It really gave me compassion for families trying to feed children on a tight budget. You want so much to do the best you can for your child, it is painful if you feel you cannot. It’s no surprise that I started him on vitamins this week for the first time…I’m looking forward to trying this again next month.

Growing Resistance

2009-02-17T07:04:00.000-08:00

Spring seems to be coming, all too soon. A girl’s thoughts turn to…gardening. Our weekend project is a new raised bed in the second-sunniest spot in the garden. This week our evenings are consumed with poring over our favorite seed catalog for heirloom veggie and flower seeds. We are fond of Baker Creek Heirloom seeds. Some of the varieties date back to colonial times or farther. Most important, they are heirlooms, and owned by the human race, not Monsanto or Seminis.

I was sad to realize that the seeds sold at my neighborhood garden center are not from a small seed company like Baker Creek, but a formerly small seed company swallowed up by a giant seed, or maybe even biotech, company. Another small way to resist the concentration of the global food supply into the hands of an ever-smaller number of corporations. I’m also getting some seeds from the Ecology Center’s seed library, where they have some very local varieties like tree collards, which are perennial. Perennial vegetables, how brilliant. I have been enjoying the book by the same name from my local library. They are a lazy gardener’s dream.
Our gardening fever has been fueled by our participation in yet another food experiment. My nutrition program has called for us all to take the Frugal challenge this year. For a week a month in 2009, we will limit our food budget to the national Food and Nutrition Services maximum benefit, which for our family is about $106/week. We didn’t quite succeed this time, but more on this in my next post. Suffice it to say here that I have really appreciated the perennial greens I have under the apple tree, the wild arugula and sorrel, punctuated with dandelion greens from throughout the garden, as a big component of several “foraging lunches” which didn’t impact the food bill at all.
The war on GMO’s is heating up, at last, on the national front. The Institute for Responsible Technology has called to make 2009 “the year of the non-GMO tipping point.” According to their managing director, Charles Burkham “consumers are often shocked to find out that about 70% of the foods in your pantry have some level of GMO toxins which carry documented health risks.” You haven’t heard about these health risks? Not surprising, since little research has been done. What has been done has been scary. For example, one animal study showed that transgenes can transfer out of the GMO food into our precious intestinal bacteria after just one GMO meal, according to Claire Hope Cummings in her excellent book Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds.
The main GMO crops are also the processed food giants: soy, corn, cottonseed and canola. Organic food, by definition, must not contain GMO’s, although, in the case of corn, it can be very difficult to be certain that GMO’s have not contaminated the corn crop. Download IRT’s excellent non-GMO shopping guide here: http://www.responsibletechnology.org/GMFree/MediaCenter/index.cfm They are issuing the challenge of eating GMO free for 30 days. I am really excited by their proposal that if only 5% of American consumers conscientiously avoided GMO’s, it would be more than enough to purge GMO’s from our food supply.

UPCOMING: The last two weekends in February I’ll be teaching free workshops at the CoG in Emeryville. Check out their website at thecog.org for details.

Have You Taken Your Cod Liver Oil Today?

2009-01-27T16:09:00.000-08:00

I don’t take vitamins. I make every effort to meet my nutritional needs through eating a wide variety of whole foods. I do my best to make sure those foods are organic or biodynamic and grown in a way that maximizes their nutrient content (25-50% more than conventional foods in many cases). Recently I did an analysis of my diet with a nutrition software program and I found out I am doing pretty well on my quest. There was one glaring vitamin deficiency in my diet analysis: vitamin D. It happened to be a day when I didn’t take my cod liver oil. I ate some butter, and some cream in my decaf, and I got 2.6% of my RDA for vitamin D. Say what? Remember the RDA is the minimum intake to prevent disease, in this case rickets. Recall that vitamin D is essential for the body’s absorption and utilization of calcium. Research keeps turning up demonstrating its importance to every organ system in the body, playing a role in immune enhancement, cancer protection, protection against heart disease, diabetes, obesity, depression and more.

A really cool thing about vitamin D is that you can make it yourself, out of the cholesterol in your skin when it is exposed to sunlight. Most researchers think that you can make enough just from exposing your hands, arms and face or your back to the sun for 10-15 minutes a day 2-7x a week, without sunscreen. I thought I was doing myself a favor a while back by putting on sunscreen every day….Digging around in the scientific literature, I was surprised to find that there is by no means a consensus on sun exposure as the primary cause of skin cancer! North of San Luis Obispo or so, however, you can’t make vitamin D in your skin in the winter months. It’s so important that your body can store it for winter use, if you have enough.

Low vitamin D status is widespread. I’ve had two vegetarian and vegan friends break bones in the past couple of years, and, when their healing went slowly, they were tested and found out they had low vitamin D. Commercial milk is fortified with vitamin D, and so are other processed foods like breakfast cereal and breakfast bars, not generally foods I recommend. I don’t drink fortified milk, I drink raw milk, which still contains natural vitamin D but not a lot. Vitamin D is not well supplied in most diets. It is found in oily fish like sardines, salmon, mackerel, herring and tuna, shellfish, liver and other organ meats, butter, eggs, cheese, raw milk and fortified foods. While I try to include sustainable sources of these foods in my diet frequently, it is hard to meet even the RDA with food alone. Vitamin D2 is found in some mushrooms and small amounts in dark leafy greens, but this form is not easily used by the body.

Many of the vitamin D-rich foods also have cholesterol which has been demonized for so long that a lot of folks habitually avoid them. As I have stated elsewhere at length, cholesterol is not bad, fat is not bad, and indeed, for most people, dietary cholesterol has little effect on blood cholesterol, which is a poor indicator of heart disease risk anyway. The vitamin D foods have been considered sacred foods in many cultures around the world. In many places, landlocked peoples have traditionally gone to great lengths to obtain foods from the sea, rich in nutrients and rich in vitamin D.

For disease prevention and general health, the only supplement I take is high vitamin cod liver oil. I mail order it from a very conscientious company. Cod fisheries, as far as I have been able to find out, are abundant and well managed. From a Chinese medicine perspective, cod liver oil is a powerful kidney and liver yin tonic. It also contains those wonderful omega 3 fatty acids. Watch out, there is a lot of lesser quality cod and fish liver oil on the market, for example, the stuff sold at your average drug store. Look for a good balance of vitamins A and D, which work synergistically, while each protects against the toxicity of the other. Most important, I give it to my 5 year old. There is good reason why this is a traditional supplement for kids. A 2004 study found that daily cod liver oil and a multivitamin significantly reduced upper respiratory-related doctor’s office visits by urban kids. Read the abstract here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15562899?ordinalpos=16&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

You can supplement with vitamin D in other ways, as well. D3 always comes from animal sources, but there are supplements made from lanolin, which might be OK with vegetarians. D2 can come from non-animal sources, but you’ll need to take 3 times as much. The RDA for D is just 400 IU for adults, but many scientists believe that is far too low. In 2008, a group of prominent researchers on vitamin D founded a grassroots campaign to improve vitamin D status nationwide and thereby decrease rates of cancer and other diseases associated with low vitamin D. They recommend universal intake for adults of 2000 IU/day. You can join the campaign and enroll in a 5 year study on vitamin D and test your vitamin D status at home with their test kits. Visit http://grassrootshealth.net/ for all the details. You can also ask your doctor to test your vitamin D levels. Meanwhile, I’ll be taking my cod liver oil.

Bad Air Blues

2009-01-02T11:07:00.000-08:00

My world is abuzz with news of a new report condemning the air quality in West Berkeley. It seems that Pacific Steel, one of several polluters in my neighborhood, is increasingly releasing lead, manganese, nickel and other contaminants at a rate significant enough to affect the health of all of Berkeley. Check out the USA Today (who knew they could be so relevant?) study on toxic air in schools, with a searchable national database, here: http://content.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/smokestack/index. This is an excellent article by a researcher at UC Berkeley discussing the problem including the public health consequences of the polluted air: http://www.berkeleycitizen.org/monitoring/monitor24.html. He makes the disturbing point that, for many reasons, children are especially vulnerable to the effects of chronic toxin exposure. While manganese and nickel are considered essential nutrients, the amounts needed by the body are very small, and their airborne forms are carcinogenic. Excess manganese is linked to neurological disorders and learning disabilities, and airborne manganese is more likely to be taken up by the brain. Check out this article on MMT, an additive in gasoline that is a source of airborne manganese: http://www.crimetimes.org/96b/w96bp4.htm.

And I thought that all those previous generations of activists in my town had already taken care of these things! I declare 2009 the year of community organizing, inspired by Obama, but by no means depending on him to fix the problems we face. While we are organizing, what can we do to protect ourselves and our children from some of the most polluted air in the Bay Area?

It turns out that nutritional status is a major factor affecting the absorption of toxins. Sufficient macro-and micronutrient intake can protect us from absorbing environmental toxins, and can assist the immune system in recognizing and removing them from our bodies. When the body is depleted of minerals, for example, toxic metals are more likely to be taken up and incorporated into cells. Low calcium intake has been shown to correlate with increased magnesium uptake in lab animals. Nutrients that have been shown to reduce the absorption of potentially toxic metals include calcium, vitamins A and D, iron and magnesium. C, E and B vitamins assist in toxic metal elimination.

Of course, many of us, especially anyone on the SAD (Standard American Diet), are deficient in vitamins and minerals. Industrial agriculture depletes the soils and has resulted in lower nutritional value of most crops over the last 50 years. Refined sugar, flour and oils, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and drugs and food additives of all types act to deplete the body’s vitamin and mineral stores and overburden our natural detoxification systems. While we work to reduce environmental contamination, it makes sense to choose to avoid substances like these which are known nutrient depleters. Unfortunately, so much typical “kid food” falls in the category of nutrient-depleting foods. It takes a sincere and steady effort to keep our children (and ourselves) on a diet of whole foods.

While West Berkeley houses some major toxin emitters, we also host a hotbed of detoxification every Tuesday: the farmer’s market. Our market is abundant in foods which can assist in detoxification, like organic apples, great sources of pectin which binds heavy metals, and wildcrafted seaweed, both super-high in minerals and source of algin which helps us eliminate metals. The small farmers who sell at the market work to replenish soil nutrients, producing food that is superior in nutritional value to anything you can find at the supermarket . Multiple studies have shown that organic food contains higher amounts of vitamins and minerals than conventionally grown food.

Our market has avocado, walnuts, grapefruits, spinach and tomatoes which are just a few of the many whole foods sources of glutathione, used to convert fat-soluable toxins into water-soluable compounds for excretion. Glutathione requires sufficient B6, riboflavin and selenium to be effective. One of the major detoxification systems used by the liver requires sulfur, abundant in beans, eggs, cabbage family vegetables and meat. Selenium is an immune-stimulating mineral and blood and tissue levels are strongly inversely correlated with cancer rates. It is found in many whole foods, especially those grown in selenium rich soils. Good sources include whole wheat, liver, butter, lamb, nuts, and brown rice, all for sale at our market now. Ellagic acid, related to flavinoids, blocks the cancer-causing actions of many airborne pollutants, and is destroyed by heat. It is abundant in raspberries and blackberries and also found in other berries, most fruit and nuts such as walnuts and pecans. Fiber is found in most whole foods and helps to eliminate metals as well, although excess fiber, as from fiber supplements, can block mineral absorption. Keeping our diets focused on whole foods from quality sources like the farmer’s market will go a long way to protecting us from toxicity while we fight its causes.

See my previous post “Fight Cancer in Your Kitchen” for more on detoxifying foods, and look for future posts on detoxification, especially of airborne pollutants.

Carob-Almond-Molasses Milk Shake

My son and I enjoy this delicious smoothie which is high in detoxifying B vitamins, calcium, magnesium and trace minerals.

1 handful raw almonds (Riverdog farm has great ones)
1 ½ cups filtered water
1 T carob powder
1 T blackstrap molasses (this contains all the nutrients processed out of refined sugar)
1T nutritional yeast
Pinch unrefined sea salt

Soak the almonds in filtered water for at least 7 hours or overnight. Puree in a blender or with an immersion blender until smooth, then add the rest of the ingredients and blend. Enjoy! You can add raw egg yolk, coconut butter, bee pollen, etc. for even more health benefits.

UPCOMING: Winter Workshops at the CoG, 1450 67th St, Emeryville (corner of Hollis) FREE to all members and prospective members. $5 suggested donation to cover food costs. Bring a chair!

Saturday, Jan 24th 2 – 4 pm Fermentation with Vanessa Barrington & Susan Fleming

Hands-on Class--You bring the vegetables you want to ferment, and we’ll bring recipes for a simple kraut and a kimchi, along with the salt and aromatics needed. You can do free-form if you want or follow the recipes. If you want to make kimchi according to the recipe, bring a head of Napa Cabbage. For basic sauerkraut, bring a head of green cabbage. But you’re welcome to ferment anything you want from kale, to carrots, to cauliflower. Please also bring a glass jar to take home your ferment and your own knife and cutting board.For prospective new members we’ll be playing a Price is Right game so you can see how joining The Cog can help you save money on groceries.

Saturday, Feb 7th 2-4 pm Beans with Vanessa Barrington

Demonstration Class—Vanessa will show you easy ways to include more healthful, ecological, and delicious dried beans in your diet and help you fit bean cooking into your lifestyle. She’ll bring cooked beans and show you how to use them as a base to create quick meals. Class includes tastes of two different dishes from recipes in her book, Heirloom Beans, that she coauthored with Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo. Simple bean recipes also included. Keep it green. Bring a small plate and eating utensil for tasting the dishes. We’d like to avoid using disposables.

Saturday, Feb 21 2-4pm Sea Vegetables with Nishanga Bliss

Demonstration class--Sea veggies are nutritional powerhouses, delicious and easy to cook. Learn how to incorporate them into your life, and sample some tasty dishes. Bring a small plate and eating utensil for tasting.

Saturday, Feb 28 2-4pm Healthy Food for Kids with Nishanga Bliss
Discussion--Too much mac and cheese? Tired of cooking separate meals for kids and adults? Learn and share strategies for why and how to feed kids healthfully. Bring favorite cookbooks, recipes or resources for show and tell.

Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit

2008-12-19T06:39:00.000-08:00

...they don't have to make you toot. Best Holiday present of 2008 that I'll most likely end up giving to myself because no one on my list will appreciate it as much as I will: a copy of Heirloom Beans by Rancho Gordo's Steve Sando and my fellow cog-er and food blogger, Vanessa Barrington, and a couple of pounds of heirloom beans. I was interested when I heard about the book but when I met Vanessa while shopping at the cog, the East Bay's up and coming new food coop, I added this book to my acquire list. Which is saying a lot because I was a macrobiotic chef for 8 years and cooked a lot of beans. A lot.

Beans are the original health food. High fiber, protein, phytonutrients, naturally fat-free (but of course fat is not bad), they have their own delicious flavors but are amenable to taking on the flavors you add while cooking. A lot of folks are a little bit afraid of cooking beans, unfortunately, because they don't know how, think it is too much trouble or are afraid of the aforementioned musical qualities. I will now dispel these myths and fears:

1. Beans are good for you, even if canned. But cans leach Bisphenol A and who knows what else into the beans, so try too keep canned beans around as emergency backup or earthquake food only. Eden lines its cans with ceramic instead of plastic, so try theirs in cans.

2. The secret to cooking beans: start in advance. All beans benefit from soaking the night before or longer. You don't technically have to with beans black bean size or smaller, but go ahead and you will enjoy increased nutrition and digestibility.

3. Traditional bean eating cultures actually sprouted and/or fermented beans for optimal digestion. I have been trying it, soaking over night and then sprouting the beans for a day or two and have won rave reviews for my hummos and other bean dishes prepared by sprouting. The indigestible starches at the heart of the bean that tend to give us gas are transformed during sprouting, so you virtually eliminate the gas issue by doing this.

4. Once you have soaked the beans, pour off the soaking water, place in a large pot with lots of water and 1 6" strip of kombu seaweed, bring to a boil, cover and cook on a bare simmer until tender. The kombu isn't mandatory, but it speeds cooking (by 20% in my recent study) and improves flavor and digestibility. I add sea salt when the beans are almost done. How long do they take? That depends on the size and variety and how old the beans are. Last year's crop takes a lot longer than this year's. Even easier: cook in a crock pot on low overnight. Forget the recipes which suggest adding baking soda--it makes the beans mushy.

5. Yes, you must plan in advance. Or just make beans regularly as a matter of course, you'll have no shortage of ways to use them when you're done. As a side dish, in soup or stew, in salad, pureed into a dip...And always freeze a cup or two for a rainy day. Then you can avoid canned beans except for emergencies.

6. To get complete protein, beans should be eaten with grains or sprinkled with cheese or sour cream, or pureed with sesame seeds as in tahini, or eaten with meat or fish. In truth, though, your body can store amino acids for a few days so as long as you eat these other foods in the vicinity, you'll get plenty of protein. Frances Lappe overstated her case about protein complementarity in Diet for a Small Planet, she has admitted now, because she thought Americans were so obsessed by protein they'd need a system to help convince them to be vegetarians.

7. Seek out local beans. They'll be fresher, often, and, well, local food is good. You'll find that it is hard to source organic local beans, except from Full Belly, Dirty Girl and a few others. Rancho Gordo beans are fabulous, grown locally on small farms, but not organic. And the organic beans you get in bulk at the store might be from anywhere, including China. I have been working on bean sourcing for the cog (haven't you joined yet? Check it out at http://thecog.org/) and discovered that the beans from our distributor, which distributes to Rainbow and many stores in the area, sends us organic garbanzos from China. Argh. We need to create a demand for organic local beans.

8. Get fresh shelling beans when you can. They are a fabulous treat, superior in flavor. One of my food heroes, Georgeanne Brennan, had a great article in the Chronicle on shelling beans a while back: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/06/FDC211VB23.DTL&hw=shelling+beans&sn=001&sc=1000. I went to a holiday party at the Mission Beach cafe this week and had an excellent (sustainable) pork chop served over a bed of cranberry beans and braised Brussels sprouts, fantastic.

9. Grow your own. Apparently several kinds of fresh beans will be perennial in our climate, too. I'll report back in the spring on my bean growing efforts.

10. According to Chinese Medicine, beans have a drying quality. For most of us, this is great, but for the thin, dry, nervous person it can be unbalancing. Moderate this effect by cooking and serving beans with more fat, in the form of olive oil or cheese or sour cream on top, or cooking with bacon. Beans are considered to be nourishing to our kidney energy and are especially appropriate for wintertime.

11. Beans, tortillas and maybe eggs for breakfast, beans as the kid default food instead of mac n'cheese, beans and greens, black eyed peas and greens for good luck on New Year's day, marinated beans on salad, a twenty-five pound bag of beans in the garage for true food security, soaked cannelini beans and chopped leeks, celery, and tomatoes with wine and a lamb shank in the crockpot all day for supper, beans beans beans....

Best Hummos Ever

Adding the chickpea miso makes for great flavor, plus you get the benefits of the good bacteria in the miso and the enzymes you need to help digest the garbonzos.

2 cups organic garbanzo beans

1-6" strip kombu seaweed

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 cup tahini

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

3 garlic gloves, mashed

2 Tablespoons chickpea miso

Place your beans into a quart size Mason jar. Cover with water and soak overnight. In the morning, drain off the water. Now get a piece of plastic mesh by cutting open one of those produce socks you might get onions or garlic in. Make a square a bit bigger than the Mason jar lid, place it over the top of the jar and screw the metal band on over the top. You now have a sprouting jar. Place it upside down in a bowl to drain. Sprout the beans for a day or three. Twice a day, rinse the sprouts by filling the jar with water and then draining it.

When ready to cook, put your beans in a large pot with the kombu and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 1 or more hours until tender. Add the salt when the beans are almost done. Drain but reserve some of the cooking water. Place the beans in a food processor with the other ingredients and blend until smooth. Or put all into a bowl and blend with a handblender.

If hummos is too thick, thin it out with some of the cooking water. Enjoy! You never need to buy hummos at the store again.

Dear Readers: I added a new widget, gadget or whatever to the site--you can let me know you are out there by signing on as a follower of the blog. I would love it and it will inspire me to new culinary, nutritional and political heights....Thanks!

Eat Real Food: Seeking Sustainable Meat

2008-12-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

I have been keeping a low profile over the last couple weeks while finishing assignments and a term paper for a nutrition program I am doing. No time for blogging. I thought I'd post a handout on animal products I put together for my clients. One great thing about being a post-vegetarian: the prices of sustainable meat don't faze me because I'm new to meat buying altogether. I belong to the Clark Summit Farm meat CSA. The photos of their animals tell the whole story.

Animal products are an important part of a healthy diet for most people. Yet many of us have concerns about the safety, sustainability and source of animal foods. A basic rule of thumb when choosing animal products: “You are what you eat eats.” The better the diet and life of an animal, the more nutritious are its meat, milk or eggs. Let’s look at different types of farming and labels found on foods:

Animal Feedlot Operation/AFO: the fancy term for “feedlot,” this is how the vast majority of America’s beef and dairy cattle, pork and chickens are raised. They live in stalls and are fed grain, often supplemented with industrial by-products to cut costs, including processed municipal garbage, stale gum in the wrapper, malformed jelly beans, poultry litter, newspaper, and more. This diet is augmented by a steady stream of hormones and antibiotics used to treat and prevent the health problems caused by crowding and unnatural diets. In the U.S., just four companies produce 81 percent of cows, 73 percent of sheep, 57 percent of pigs and 50 percent of chickens. This type of "farming" plays a huge role in many of the crises of our day and I reccomend everyone avoid eating factory-farmed meat altogether.

Naturally raised, Natural: The technical definition of these has been under discussion at the USDA for years. At minimum, it means that the meat is free of hormones and antibiotics and that no animal byproducts were fed to the animals. This will reduce your chances of being affected by the hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals used in most industrial meat production. However, most meat with this label still comes from feedlots.

Cage free: Used by some chicken farmers. No legal meaning, but some farmers think the term is less misleading than "free range.” Ask your farmer for details.

Free range, free roaming: According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, this means: "Producers must demonstrate to the USDA that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside." This means there has to be a door, and it has to be open at least part of the time. However, this does not mean the chickens have to go outside and studies from the UK have shown that only about 15% of them ever do.

Organic: The label “organic” means that the food is free of pesticide residues, synthetic hormones, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s) and many additives. However, most organic producers feed their animals grain, which is not an appropriate diet. Two recent studies showed that organic animal products had the same nutritional value as beef and eggs from CAFO’s. On the plus side, organic animal products are becoming more widely available in supermarkets.

Free Farmed, American Humane Certified: This is an independent certification by the American Humane Society. The AHC website explains that it means that the animals were raised under humane conditions, according to their website, including “freedom from unnecessary fear and distress, pain, injury and disease, hunger and thirst, have ready access to fresh water and a diet that maintains full health by enabling the expression of normal behaviors, and by providing sufficient space.” This is a far cry from the CFO experience. These products are not necessarily organic, but largely come from small family farms.

Grass-Fed: no legal definition has been agreed upon. This term implies that the animals have been fed grass, a more natural diet than grain; however, most cattle begin their lives on grass and are transferred to feedlots later in life. A better term to look for is “grass-fed and finished. Also, the terms grass-raised, range-fed, Argentine style or New Zealand style may indicate pasture feeding.

Pastured, grass-farmed: Not legally defined by the USDA, but the preferred term by advocates of sustainable farming. Means that animals are raised and finished on pasture, their natural diet, and allowed to graze freely, which greatly enhances the nutritional value of their products. Generally, pastured meats, eggs and dairy are lower in fat and higher in vitamins than their confined counterparts. They contain are rich in omega 3 fatty acids which are anti-inflammatory and protective against heart disease, cancer, diabetes, weight gain and depression, to name a just a few benefits. They also contain conjugated linoleic acids, or CLA’s, which have been found to be potent cancer fighters. Conscientious grass farming can actually fight global warming through carbon sequestration in healthy grasslands. Animals can be raised, and have been for most of the agricultural era, on land that is unsuited for raising crops because it is too steep or rocky. According to Michael Pollan, "Grass farming is the closest thing to a near zero sum form of agriculture in that it takes very little out of the earth"(April 2007). For much more on the health and environmental benefits of pastured animal products, visit http://eatwild.com/ or see one of the many books on the topic (see Further Reading, below).

In general, as with other animal food, the better a fish’s diet, the more nutritious it is. Currently, the world’s fish stocks are in imminent danger of collapse from overfishing and environmental destruction. Fish is a highly nutritious food, in part because all fish contains omega 3 fatty acids, but the exact amount of these and other nutrients it contains varies with the season, species and diet of the fish. Most fish also contain mercury, but it is particularly concentrated in the flesh of carnivorous and larger fish and those from more contaminated environments. Many farmed fish have been found to contain contaminants and industrial pollutants, and they are often fed a very poor diet. The conscientious fish eater should focus on fish from sustainable fisheries, and also be sure to seek omega 3 fatty acids from a diversity of sources, such as pastured meats and dairy products. An excellent resource on mercury in fish is http://gotmercury.org/. The Blue Ocean institute publishes a regional, seasonal guide to sustainable fish. Download it at http://www.blueocean.org/. You can also text “FISH” and the species name to 30644 and they will text you right back with sustainability info.

Where to find it:

Dairy: Clover-Stornetta, Straus, Spring Hill, Organic Pastures and Cloverdale all pasture their cows and Redwood Hill Farms sells pastured goat products. Most supermarkets and health food stores carry these, and raw milk is available at Rainbow Grocery, Whole Foods and Bi-Rite market in SF, and at Monterey market and Berkeley Natural and Berkeley Bowl in the East Bay.

Eggs: Truly pastured eggs are sold by Marin Sun Farms, Clark Summit Farms, TLC Ranch (SF farmer’s markets, Rainbow and Bi-Rite) and by Kaki farms, Eatwell farms and others at the Berkeley and Oakland farmer’s markets and Monterey market and Magnani Poultry in the East Bay. You'll never want to go back to supermarket eggs after eating farm-fresh eggs.

Meats: Locally raised pastured meats are available at the Marin Sun farms and Prather Ranch stands at the SF farmer’s markets, and Bi-Rite grocery. In the East Bay, try Highland hills farm at Berkeley’s farmer’s markets and Prather ranch at Oakland’s. Organic meats are found at many markets, including Trader Joe’s. Niman Ranch meats are generally naturally raised on small farms and are found in many markets and restaurants around the Bay Area.

Fish: My favorite is Monterey Fish Market, owned by the guy who literally wrote the book on sustainable fish (Fish Forever), Paul Johnson. And Andronico's, Bi-Rite and Whole Foods are posting sustainability info at their fish counters. It's really fun to go to the Berkeley marina and buy crab at the bait shop there fresh off the boat. Get it while you can.

Fight Cancer in Your Kitchen

2008-11-23T21:07:00.000-08:00

The following is a handout I prepared for a workshop I recently gave to a group of women living with breast cancer. Everyone went home smiling with a bag of ingredients for herbal shampoo.
In 1900 3% of deaths in the US were from cancer, while currently it is about 33%. What happened? During the 20th century, there were two massive changes in American society that had a direct impact on cancer rates. The first is a complete transformation of the American diet, from nutrient-dense foods produced on family farms to processed food produced by industrial agriculture. The US National Research Council states that 35-70% of all US cancer deaths are related to diet and that 60% of cancer incidence in women is diet related. The second factor increasing the cancer rate is the introduction into the environment of upwards of 80,000 different chemicals, most of which have received minimal safety testing and many of which have been proven to cause cancer.
When the chemical industry wants to bring a new product on the market, it must get approval from the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA relies, in large part, on data from the company itself to determine the safety of a chemical. This testing focuses on the effects of a single high dose of a chemical and examines its toxicity. Yet the most of the exposure risk of these chemicals comes from low dose exposure over time. And testing of multiple chemicals is almost never done by industry or the EPA—yet independent research has shown that most toxins have a synergistic effect. Independent research on the “body burden” of average Americans has shown that most of us carry around 700 different synthetic chemicals in our bodies.

Major Groups of Toxins:
· Volatile Organic Compounds (Solvents): found in bleach, acetone, formaldehyde, press/particleboard, flea treatments, paint, glue, baby wipes, oven cleaner, etc. Many known to cause cancer, birth defects, blood, immune system and neurological disease and organ damage.
· Pesticides/Herbicides: Most are known carcinogens, also disrupt hormones, can cause ADD, asthma, etc. A conventionally grown apple can contain up to 17 different pesticides.
· Plastics: ubiquitous! Leaches into food especially with heat and microwaving. Act as endocrine disruptors (usually estrogenic), linked to increasing obesity and diabetes, younger puberty, cancer, autism, ADD, etc.
1. Phthalates: softens plastic, used in cosmetics, personal care products, other consumer products, vinyl, most “fragrances.”
2. Bisphenol A: found in linings of canned foods, baby bottles, sippy cups, plastic water bottles, etc.
3. What you can do about plastics: avoid products with “fragrance,” avoid using plastic in cooking or microwaves, remove cling wrap before cooking, use glass, ceramic or metal containers for food, avoid plastic bottled water, bring your own take home containers to restaurants.
·Heavy Metals: toxic to nervous system, harm developing organisms, carcinogenic
1. Lead: found in water, soil, paint, pottery, fumes, batteries, hair dye and cosmetics
2. Arsenic: power plant emissions, foundries, pesticides, factory farmed chicken and pork, cigarette smoke, fish, shellfish from contaminated areas.
3. Mercury: fish, coal burning power plants, industry, fluorescent lights, thermometers, dental fillings, pesticides, paints, vaccines, etc.
4. Cadmium: cigarette smoke, mining, burning coal, batteries, pigments, contaminated water, etc.

Top Ten Detoxifying Foods
These foods are particularly helpful in assisting the body in getting rid of heavy metals. To work well for detoxification, they must be organic.
Coconut Oil—specific for chelating mecury and methylmercury, removing it from the body
Apples
Beef/ Buffalo from grass-fed animals
Yogurt (whole milk)
Butter (Straus or Clover Stornetta are good local brands)
Fermented foods: raw sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles
Broths made with bones
Greens: all leafy greens, especially kale, collards, cabbage
Cilantro
Oats
Foods which help prevent recurrence of cancer: apples, burdock, carrots, dark leafy greens, dried beans, garlic, seaweeds, soy products, sweet potatoes, turmeric (in curry powder), dried beans and lentils, deep green and orange foods (high in beta-carotenes) in general, meat and dairy from grass-fed animals
In one study, eating beans 5 times a week was as successful as chemotherapy in preventing breast cancer recurrence.

Easy Herbal Hair and Body Shampoo
Makes about 1 quart

¾ cup mixed dry herbs, or
2 cups fresh herbs, or
A combination of the above
3 ½ cups water (rainwater is nice!)
1 cup liquid castile soap (such as Doctor Bronner’s)
10-20 drops of tea tree oil (optional)
10-20 drops lavender or essential oil of your choice
2-5 Tablespoons olive oil, jojoba oil, coconut oil or other oil
Juice of 1 fresh lemon (light hair) or 1 T apple cider vinegar (dark hair)
First, make your “shampoo stew.” Combine the herbs and water in a glass or enamel pot, and bring to a simmer. Cover and simmer for 5-10 minutes, then turn off the heat and let the herbs steep for at least 20 minutes to overnight. Strain and compost those herbs! Add the rest of the ingredients and whisk to combine. Transfer to clean bottles. To use, shake to emulsify and enjoy!
Herbs for shampoo: Comfrey, echinacea leaves. Mexican sage, lemon verbena, rosemary, scented geraniums, calendula, chamomile, orange peel, peppermint, nettle, red clover, sage, and many more!
Sage: good for oily hair, lemon: oily hair or to lighten hair, rosemary: general hair tonic, moisturizer, lavender: soothes nerves, good for light hair, tea tree: anti-dandruff, refreshing, almond oil: for oily or damaged hair, smells great.

Save money and protect your family and the environment by using these safe and simple ingredients to clean your home (source: oregonmetro.gov).
Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
Absorbs odors and is a mild abrasive. Found in the baking section of the grocery store.
Glycerin
Found in pharmacies or health food stores, this water-loving liquid has antiseptic qualities and moisturizes the skin.
Hydrogen peroxide
Disinfectant. Use the household concentration (3 percent) typically found in pharmacies.

Liquid soap
Vegetable-oil-based soap sometimes referred to as castile soap. Found in most health food stores. Dr. Bronner's is a popular one.
Liquid detergent
Most dishwashing liquids are detergents. Try purchasing vegetable-oil-based soaps, which are more environmentally friendly than petroleum-based products. Vegetable-oil-based soaps can be found in health food stores. Petroleum is a limited resource (unlike vegetable oils) and its extraction and refining causes pollution.
Vinegar
Removes soap scum, grease and mineral deposits and acts as a deodorizer. Use only white distilled vinegar for most of these recipes. You can try apple cider vinegar for windows, since it has a more pleasant scent.
Washing soda (sodium carbonate)
It is slightly caustic and a great grease cutter. Don't use it on waxed floors (unless you want to remove the wax), fiberglass or aluminum. Found in the laundry section, made by Arm & Hammer.
Borax
Effective cleaner. This is a strong alkaline that is non-toxic in the quantities needed for these cleaning recipes but may be toxic in its concentrated form. Keep all borax-containing cleaners out of the reach of children. Found in the laundry section of the grocery store, it is sold as 20 Mule Team Borax.
Essential oils
Mostly used for deodorizing or scenting cleaners. Essential oils, such as mint, eucalyptus, lavender, lemon and tea tree, can be found in health food stores or herbal supply shops. Tea tree oil is currently in the process of being registered as a disinfectant in this country. Non-toxic in small quantities, this oil may be toxic in concentrated forms. Keep out of the reach of children.
Tip: Be sure to put all mixtures in clearly marked containers.
All-purpose cleaners
Mix ingredients for each recipe in a spray bottle. Use for cleaning countertops, floors, walls, carpet and upholstery.
1. Dissolve 4 tablespoons baking soda in one quart of warm water.
2. Add 1/2 cup vinegar to between 1 cup and 1 quart of warm water.
3. Combine 1/4 cup distilled white vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil-based liquid soap and 3/4 cup warm water. Shake to blend. For really big jobs, combine 1/2 cup distilled white vinegar, 1/4 cup vegetable oil-based liquid soap and 2 gallons of warm water in a pail and stir to blend.
For an abrasive cleaner, use baking soda or a non-chlorinated scouring powder such as Bon Ami.
Grease cleaner
Mix vinegar and salt together for a good surface cleaner. This mixture will remove grease if the vinegar is at full strength.
Disinfectants
For kitchen cutting boards and bathroom fixtures, use a spray of distilled white vinegar followed by a 3 percent peroxide spray. Wipe clean.
Rubbing alcohol also is a disinfectant. It is extremely flammable; use in a well-ventilated area far from possible sources of ignition. Wear nitrile gloves. Apply with a sponge and allow to dry.
Glass cleaner
Combine 1 quart warm water with 1/4 cup white vinegar or 2 tablespoons lemon juice (use both vinegar and lemon if you want the cleaning abilities of vinegar with the scent of lemons).
Mix ingredients and store in a spray bottle. Use as you would any glass cleaner (add a drop or two of essential oil for a pleasant scent).
Tip: Invest in a squeegee. It is a great tool for cleaning windows. A razor blade also is a good tool for scraping off dirt or paint before cleaning.
All-purpose cleaner
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 teaspoon borax or washing soda
2 cups hot water
1/4 cup vegetable oil-based liquid soap
Mix everything but soap in a spray bottle and shake. Add soap last. Mix gently. Apply and wipe clean. Good for counter-tops, woodwork, appliances, etc.
Dish soap
Use non-phosphate soap. Phosphates act as fertilizer – when they go down the drain, they are discharged into waterways and can cause a rapid growth of algae, which pollutes water. Tip: Use half the amount suggested for your automatic dishwasher.
Scouring powder
Pour baking soda into a shaker and sprinkle in sink or on pans. Scrub with a rough pad and rinse.
To make a heavy-duty scouring powder, combine 1/2 cup each baking soda and washing soda. This formula may scratch fiberglass. Use gloves; washing soda is caustic.
Scouring paste
Mix 2/3 cup baking soda, 1/2 cup liquid soap and enough water to make a paste. Add 2 tablespoons vinegar and stir. Keep paste in a tub at the kitchen sink for scouring pots and pans or the kitchen sink itself.
Stain remover
Sprinkle surface with salt and squeeze lemon or lime juice over the area. Let sit and rub out. This can even remove rust if allowed to sit a few hours.
Tip: Use a wet pumice stone to remove tough stains from porcelain or enamel without scratching.
Drain cleaner
Pour 1/2 cup baking soda down the drain, followed by 1/2 cup vinegar. To create pressure, immediately cover the drain and let it sit for 15 minutes. Follow with a kettle of boiling water (about 2 quarts). Use this treatment regularly to prevent clogged drains and keep them smelling fresh.
For stubborn clogs, use a mechanical snake.
Kitchen sink disposal freshener
To freshen the disposal in your kitchen sink, drop in a few wedges of lemon and flip the switch. Instant good smell.
Cutting board deodorizer
Rub cut lemon onto the washed cutting board to eliminate lingering odors.
Garbage pail deodorizer
Mix 1 cup baking soda with 1 teaspoon tea tree oil. Work out all lumps with a fork. Sprinkle in bottom of pail after liner is removed. Periodically rinse pail with vinegar and dry in the sun.
Oven cleaners
Make a paste by mixing equal parts salt, baking soda and water. Apply to walls of oven. Let stand five minutes, then wipe clean with a damp cloth. Use a brush on heavy spills. Do not allow baking soda to touch heating elements or wiring.
For heavier cleaning, sprinkle the bottom of the oven with baking soda to cover. Spray with water until very damp and keep moist by spraying every few hours. Let it set overnight. In the morning, scoop out the baking soda – all the grime will be loosened; rinse the oven well. Washing soda can be substituted for 1/2 the baking soda for really tough jobs, but requires more rinsing and is more caustic (wear gloves).
Or use a non-chlorinated scouring powder such as Bon Ami, a pumice stick or a copper or steel wool scrubbing pad. A blunt knife is useful for prying up large crusty materials.
Tip: Prevention is the key to a clean oven. Line your oven with foil or an aluminum oven liner found in the baking section of grocery stores.

Everything Old is New Again, or What My Grandmothers Knew

2008-11-14T11:43:00.000-08:00

I spent an inspiring weekend at the Weston A. Price Foundation’s annual conference. Held for the first time this year on the west coast, it was a fantastic celebration of food, organic farming, holistic health, rigorous if maverick science and controversial ideas. Weston A. Price was a dentist in Cleveland in the 1930’s who set out to discover why his patients had such poor health. He found that poor dental health was highly correlated with poor health in general. He had heard that remote populations, untouched by the foods of Western civilization, had excellent teeth. He travelled and found 14 populations around the globe who only ate local foods they grew, gathered or hunted themselves and they all had perfectly straight teeth and virtually no tooth decay. What were they eating? Their diets varied widely by climate and region, but they had some commonalities. A big one was that all the food was nutrient dense, unlike the vast majority of food in the modern diet which has been stripped of nutrients through processing. There were no total vegetarians among these groups although Price looked hard for them. In some areas, people ate very little animal food and in others they ate a lot. There are some key nutrients only found in animal food, such as vitamins A and D, cholesterol, B12, and the fatty acids AA, EPA and DHA. None of these peoples at a low fat diet, and the fat content of their diets ranged from 30-80%. They ate natural fats, mostly animal fat, as this is the type of fat that can be produced at home. Check out the Weston A.Price foundation http://westonaprice.org/.

The big killers of today--heart disease, cancer and diabetes—were virtually nonexistent in this country before the 20th century. It has become increasingly clear to me that they are caused by the Standard American Diet, known as SAD, which we are exporting around the globe with increasing speed. The tremendous change in the way humanity produces and consumes food has happened in a very short time. As I was learning about and experiencing the healing benefits of traditional, whole foods, I reflected on the many lessons my two grandmothers taught me about food. They were born early in the 20th century, when America was just beginning to industrialize its food system, and their mothers and grandmothers still knew how to grow, produce and cook their own food.

1. Sit down at the table and eat a real meal. My grandmas would never eat in the car (Americans today report that up to 20% of their “meals” are eaten in cars), or scarf cold food straight from the refrigerator. Snacking was frowned upon. Many fond memories of my childhood stem from extended family meals around those long, dark, polished tables in formal dining rooms where we learned to eat and to converse.
2. Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. A highlight of my annual week at Grandma’s was the lovely, simple lunches we would have together at the picnic table in her garden.
3. Food is always better when eaten outside. My father’s family were big fans of picnics—either in the middle of a hike or as a destination in themselves—and alfresco eating in general. When we finally had a garden of our own, my family immediately got a picnic table to continue the tradition of those wonderful meals out on the back patio.
4. Grow your own food. Both my paternal grandparents grew up on farms. Although they were happy to leave their rural lives behind when they moved to the Bay Area, they put in an apple tree and raspberry and blackberry bushes in their front yard in Piedmont, the source of many wonderful preserves and desserts. And my other set of grandparents always had a vegetable garden and allowed my uncle to keep chickens for his 4H projects. My grandmother can still do a credible imitation of a happy chicken’s “I just laid an egg!” cluck.
5. Get food straight from the farm. My lifelong love of farm stands was nurtured from childhood when a highlight of my weekend visits to Grandmas was stopping at Webb ranch for berries and artichokes. And my other grandma would drive out to the central valley each in early summer for a lug of Santa Rosa plums to be made into that wonderful, easy plum freezer jam she was famous for.
6. Butter is better. I remember my grandmother’s sad recollection of WW2 when they couldn’t get butter. Margarine was white and it came with a yellow food coloring packet which you had to use yourself to dye the butter yellow. No one was fooled! In the giant Nurse’s Health Study, the more margarine nurses ate, the more heart attacks they had. The more butter they ate, the less heart attacks. Hmm….
7. Make it yourself. In general, it will be better. One of my grandmother’s holiday treats was lemon milk sherbet she made at home. Now I make it too, using buttermilk, crème fraiche and maple syrup. I skip the antifreeze and additives used in commercial ice cream.
8. Pasta is not good for you. As grandma would say, “there’s nothing to it.” White flour products, in general, act as antinutrients because you must draw on your own nutritional reserves to metabolize them. Especially mac and cheese(a pet peeve). Forthcoming post : “Mom, please don’t feed me mac and cheese!”
9. Eat 3 green vegetables with your dinner. A standard I aspire to but often fall short. I usually get in one leafy green, one orange-yellow and at least one other.
10. Table salt is not healthy. My maternal grandfather was an early health nut—Jack La Lane style. They used a wonderful VegeSalt at the table (which probably has MSG). I’m confident he would use sea salt if he were alive today. He also introduced me to maple sugar candy, the best candy in the whole wide world.
11. Don’t drink soda. (Except the kind you make at home through lactofermentation).
12. Make your own salad dressing. You can use decent oils and spare yourself ingesting rancid, cancer promoting “vegetable oil” or worse, hydrogenated oil and other chemicals used in commercial salad dressing. Plus, you’ll save a lot of money!
13. There’s nothing wrong with meat. I will add: as long as it comes from an animal raised on a farm, not a factory.
14. Ditto: cream.
15. Soak your pancake batter overnight. Grandpa used to do this with his famous buckwheat pancakes. Now I know that soaking whole grains overnight in a slightly acidic medium, such as buttermilk or sourdough, neutralizes the phytic acid they contain which can block the absorption of calcium and other nutrients. I do the same with oatmeal.
16. Cook and eat at home.
17. Take a walk after dinner.
18. Finally: Eat real food.
19. One from my mother: if you are in a bad mood, chances are it is caused by lack of food or sleep.

How to Cook a Wolf

2008-11-04T14:36:00.000-08:00

I felt right in step with the American economy when I recently recommended to my boss that I be laid off. I’m in good company among the ranks of the unemployed. I figure we can make up for the reduction in income at our house mainly by reigning in our spending on food. I tend to view money spent on food as not only nourishment but entertainment, healthcare, education, supporting the local economy and organic small scale agriculture…in short, money is no object at the Farmer’s market. Well, I’m going to have to change my ways.

There was a recent article in the Chronicle on this topic. The range of spending on food for Bay Area families was from $300 to $3,000 a month. Most folks had no idea what they really spent, like me. A spending report from my bank reveals that I spent around $500/a month on groceries over the last year, and another $100 or so on restaraunts. The funny part is that doesn’t include the large outlays of cash at the Farmer’s market or $784 for a year’s worth of Full Belly veggie boxes, or the grain CSA from Windbourne farms or the quarterly meat CSA outlays or any of the money my husband spends on food for us…

Last year the Eat Local Challenge called a week-long pennywise challenge wherein locavores were asked to stick to the food budget of an average American for the week: around $10/person/day. It was doable for the retirees who’d been eating locally for several years, almost impossible for the hip singe urbanite. The alcohol budget they allowed was $8/week. As I have grown older, my tastes in wine have gotten more expensive, and that won't cut it!
Of course the budget of the average American isn’t realistic, either, as much of that is spend on subsized wheat, corn and soy which is denuded into cheap processed food. One study I found showed that US households allocate less than 7% of their expenditures to food, whereas in France 14% of household expenditures are for food eaten in the home. For my foodie household, the French rate of spending might be more realistic.

As part of my effort to economize, I did some comparison shopping. People are always telling me the Farmer’s market is too expensive, so I went to Whole Foods and Monterey market, a local non-chain but non-union produce market, this week as well and compared prices on organic food.

Farmer's Market..............MontereyMarket..............WholeFoods

(prices are per pound unless otherwise specified)
Apples $3.00............................... 3/1.89-1.69.............................1.99-2.99
Beef (Grassfed, ground)
$5.99 or 5#/25............................ ..n/a........................................... $7.49
Bread (Vital VittlesReal Bread)
$4.00........................................... $3.89 ...........................................$4.79
Chicken, whole $5.99 (pastured).....n/a ...................................$3.69 (Judy's)
Eggs (dozen)
4 (Glaum's), 6 (pastured)............... 7.99 (pastured)................ 4.89 (Glaum's)
Onions.. 1.5-2.............................. 1.98...................................... 1.49
Potatoes 2.00 .........................1.49........................................... 1.79
Tomatoes, Heirloom 1-2.00......... 2.29 ..................................4.99
Winter Squash 1.50..................... .59-.89............................... 0.99

My conclusion? Not a huge difference, really. Whole Foods is predictably more expensive on some things, but not vastly. Monterey Market, like other markets of its type, has some bargains. The big price breaks come around quality--the truly free range, happy, pastured chickens who eat a diverse diet rather than just (albiet organic) grain cost more--but are way more nutritious. So I'll probably still spend more on them. Meanwhile, I'm finding other ways to economize. Like making everything I can with the huge crop of Granny Smith apples my tree has produced this year. So far we have had apple sauce, butter, galette, cake, cookies, chutney, baked apples, sauteed apples, savory and sweet apples, cheese with apples, grilled cheese sandwiches with apples, apple soup and I may have gone too far with this: apple pizza.

Spring Hill Pumpkin Patch

2008-10-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

More locavore thrills this weekend during a visit to Spring Hill Farms near Petaluma, in the idyllic Two Rock valley. Milking the cow wasn't too daunting after breastfeeding a child. Oh, those rural delights: another haybale pyramid, hay maze, potato digging, cheese tasting, fantastic pumpkin ice cream and a huge selection of every known and some unknown types of winter squash. We brought home a gigantic ungainly Blue Hubbard, looking like a vegetable turkey and plan to have a fall full of sweet squashy goodness. Will anyone notice if I make Blue Hubbard ice cream instead of pumpkin? The goodness of Spring Hill cheese, a local farmer's market staple, was apparent in the good grass, now brown, the rich dirt and seabreezes at the farm. They make such an array, whenever I need cheese I consult with David who works the Tuesday stand on which Spring Hill cheese will work for my recipe. Who needs imported cheese? They have an ever-expanding selection of raw cheese, too.

Blue Hubbard Squash Flan

(adapted from The New Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas)

Back in my vegetarian days, I brought this to a carnivorous wedding feast so I would have something to eat. It was a huge hit. I'll be cooking this for an alfresco dinner party Saturday night. Works well for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

2 1/2 cups thick puree of cooked Blue Hubbard, Kabocha or Tahitian squash

1 t sea salt

2 1/2 cups whole milk

2/3 cup cornmeal (Fully Belly's freshly ground if you can)

2 t butter

5 pastured eggs, beaten

2 T blackstrap molasses

1/2 t each cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg and ground ginger

1/4 small walnut pieces

1/2 cup crumbled bleu cheese (Spring Hill doesn't make one yet--I'll use Pt. Reyes Bleu)

Heat the milk in a saucepan and whisk in the cornmeal and butter. Continue stirring with a whisk or wooden spoon until the mixture thickens, remove from heat, let cool for 5 minutes and whisk in the beaten eggs a little at a time.

Stir in the squash, molasses, salt and spices. Whisk all this together or puree with a hand blender until smooth. Stir in the walnut pieces and crumbled cheese, gently. You want a smooth pudding with interesting veins and pockets of cheese. Pour the custard into a large, shallow, buttered baking dish and bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes to brown. Lower the heat to 350 and cook for 40-45 minutes more. Serve hot or warm, with a sauce on the side: perhaps roasted heirloom tomato or chipotle salsa...

10 Versatile Locavore Pantry Items

2008-10-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

The SF Chronicle has been running a very interesting “Kitchen Essentials” series. The first was 10 essential kitchen techniques (but really, is segmenting citrus that vital for good cooking? I’ve never done it, not even in my 8 years in a restaurant kitchen), and this week was “10 Versatile Pantry Items.” Find the original article at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/08/FDBQ139J2D.DTL&hw=10+versatile+pantry+items&sn=001&sc=1000.

Author Tara Duggan’s excellent point was that a well-stocked pantry can make the difference between cooking and eating at home and running out for Thai takeout or something unmentionable.

When I teach on nutrition, a recurring question is how to have the time for real food and real cooking. The short answer is planning. A well-stocked pantry can sub for planning in a pinch.

As October is both the Eat Local Challenge and Fair Trade month, I respectfully submit a Bay Area locavore’s version of Tara's list. Good cooking does not have to rely on imported ingredients!

Mirin: A versatile staple and flavor/sweetness source, but usually imported. How about local wine, verjus (Navarro's is great) or apple juice, frozen in ice cube trays then bagged, labeled, in the freezer?

Dark chocolate, 70% cocoa: Love having it on hand. How about locally produced Scharffenberger, or better yet Fair Trade, organic, cane-juice sweetened, Sweet Earth chocolate , produced in San Luis Obispo?

Fish sauce: always imported. For my umami kick, I use tamari, shoyu or domestic organic miso in light and dark colors which lasts indefinitely in the fridge. My other umami source is bone broths. I make stock regularly, saving all bones and carcasses in the freezer until I have enough to make stock, usually in the Crock Pot with a big splash of vinegar to extract maximum calcium. This I freeze in jars and ice cube trays to use in cooking.

Quinoa: so handy and yummy but almost all is imported. You can get fair trade, but also fufill your whole grain needs Massa organics brown rice or wheat berries or Full Belly wheat berries, cooked in large batches and frozen for last minute convenience.
For more shelf-stable grain staples, how about homemade or local sourdough bread? I can keep a loaf of Anna's Daughters Rye Bread from the Berkeley Farmer's market in the fridge for weeks. One of the beauties of sourdough is improved keeping qualities.

Chipotles: delicious, but imported and canned food, well, it all leaches Bisphenol A and worse into your food. For heat, local chilis at Farmer’s markets, dried red chiles from Marin Organics, or my favorite, fermented hot sauce (actually kim chee juice) from Berkeley's own Cultured, the saurkraut people.

Fancy tuna in olive oil: love it but pick locally-produced from Santa Cruz or Oregon.

Capers: great but sub your own pickles or wonderful real pickles from Cultured or other local producers. I once was ambitious enough to pickle the nasturtium pods from my garden which worked well for a pepper caper kick. Locally produced olives might work, also.

Honey: ah yes, a true local staple.

Canned Garbanzos: Again the can itself is problematic. Although Eden foods cans with a ceramic liner instead of plastic, protecting you from chemical leaching. No wonder they cost more. You can get local beans from Full Belly, Phipps or Iacopi farms, cook in big batches and store in stored in your freezer.

Mustard: Can't live without it. I look for domestic and organic brands, such as Eden, and get sour tastes from apple cider vinegar or lemon juice from my tree. Local apple cider vinegar is available from the Apple Farm in Philo, at the Ferry Plaza farmer's market by the liter or gallon.

I used to consider canned tomatoes a staple. Now I keep sundried tomatoes from my local farm on hand and use them, softened for 20 minutes in boiling water and chopped or pureed, whenever I need tomato for a recipe.

When in doubt, in a hurry, when sick or generally unprepared, I make soup. With the staples above or not, soup can be concocted in a half hour and will exceed most convenience food in flavor, nutrition and gastronicity.

Hoes Down

2008-10-08T14:59:00.001-07:00

If you are what you eat, I was with my people this weekend. The fabulous harvest festival of our CSA, Full Belly farm, was better than ever, less crowded and dusty than some years due to Friday's rain, and left us tearful at the prospect of returning to our city life. Except that half of Berkeley must have been in attendance. Including our city's farmers, like Jim Montgomery, founder of West Berkeley's Green Faerie farm where they've been raising chickens, rabbits, goats and veggies for over 15 years. He was there to do a goat workshop, complete with his three urban goats and samples of fresh chevre. As usual, I wasn't quite together enough to actually make it to any of the workshops, but they sure sounded good. I'm sorry I missed "Indigenous microorganisms: Improving your Soil's Health." And somehow I never quite made it over to the herb yurt, despite being a professional herbalist, for gosh sakes. I was just so busy running around after my son, grinding corn to make tortillas, churning ice cream, watching the cow being milked, running into old friends, trying to squeeze through tiny passages in the hay bale pyramid after a gaggle of four year olds, then heading over to the lazy river for a late afternoon wade. And the food, it sure took time to try something from almost every stand: gourmet popsicles, Straus ice cream, Prather Ranch burgers, Three Stone Hearth's local lamb stew, a bicycle powered smoothie. I loved the bicycle-powered grain grinder, gotta get one of those at home. Then there is the farmer's market for a jar of Herbs de Provence from Good Humus farm (thyme, basil, oregano, rosemary, lavender, bay and fennel) which was wonderful on Sunday night on a Swiss steak from our Clark Summit Farm meat CSA. In this October of extra local eating I am trying to source ever-more local herbs and spices.

All too soon the sun started heading down and we hopped onto the wagon for a leisurely tour of the farm, stretching overhead to grab a ripening walnut from the gracious trees and arriving back in time to catch Asheba's last few songs at the kid stage where my son joined the mad toddler mosh pit. Then over to carve pumpkins and scoop up 3 free seed packets from Seeds of Change (get them now before the prices go up in 2009), electrifying African drumming next and then a million stars appearing over the valley with a fat streak of the milky way leading us back down the path to the heart of the Hoes Down glowing with two hundred winking jack-o-lanterns harbinging fall.

Have you heard that Full Belly's making wine now, which was fabulous and how is it they got Devil Makes Three to play, one of the few bands whose CD I actually bought this year? This trio sing sad and play happy country punk. My people and I were dancing fools and my son even curled up to sleep in the middle of the dance floor so his mama could boogie late into the night. And what a sweet peaceful sleep we finally had in the almond orchard. Or was the sweetest moment the long sleepy rumpled line for brunch the next day, last chance to run into long lost friends before we all helped clean up and wistfully packed for the ride back to our urban lives? Are you surprised that my boy asked me if we could move to Full Belly Farm?