Green Bananas? Green Coffee? Green Tea?

Sure, all of these exist. But what about environmentally-friendly tropical fruit, coffee, and tea?

Grist has a great Q & A on this topic today. I myself try to follow the "doom-mitigating action steps," like always buying organic and trying for as close to sustainably grown and as fair trade as possible for all three items.

But it's true: I do enjoy a banana every now and then, as well as coffee and tea fairly often. That's definitely not in the 100-Mile Diet. But I believe that without making small, hopefully infrequent, exceptions, holding fast to the stricter rules for other things becomes near impossible.

How do you navigate the locavore-yet-I-love-tropical-fruit-or-coffee line?

From Grist.org:

Dear Checkout Line,

We try to buy local food whenever we can. Some things just seem doomed to have air miles on them, though. Is there anywhere in the U.S. that can grow bananas? Or coffee and tea?

Best,
Pat

Dear Pat,

Personal confession: If frequent-flyer miles were assigned to my coffee habit, I could probably commute from New England to Tibet for free. After doing a little research, I learned that some of the beans in my cuppa French roast this morning came from Ethiopia. According to this food-miles calculator, those beans traveled approximately 7,158 miles. I’m not going to tell you how much coffee I drink for fear of being taken into protective custody.

As you already know, many of the tropical crops dearly loved by Americans come with a whopping carbon footprint, in part due to the miles that they travel aboard planes, ships, trains, and trucks. While it would be an improvement carbon-wise to buy this stuff locally, in most parts of the United States it’s not possible to grow these crops commercially.

Well, at least not yet.

Let’s take a look at the warm-weather darlings you mentioned and I’ll give you some options to offset their mitigate their deleterious effects on our planet.

Bananas
Where they are grown: These favored phallic fruits are currently cultivated in the toasty equatorial regions of the world known as the tropics. Check out the banana wiki and scroll down to the top-banana producing nations if you want to get specific. Good news: Hawaii grows a tasty, nutritious variety of banana called an apple banana that will be available from this web site in the near future. Although this won’t help you reduce your food miles unless you live in Hawaii, you would stimulate the Aloha state’s agricultural economy. A few things: These Hawaiian bananas must be irradiated for export and although they are not organic, Hawaiian banana farmer Young Tarring assured me that they are low-spray. Meanwhile, the tropics may not be the only place producing bananas in our globally warm future: according to this article, bananas now grow in southern England.

Doom-mitigating action items: Bear in mind that food-miles are just one of the environmental problems associated with our dysfunctional food system. Other things that effect sustainability are how the food is grown and processed, so buy organic and Fair Trade bananas to assure that your bananas aren’t heavily sprayed and that the people who grow and pick them are treated with respect. But because food miles are at the top of your irk-list, I’ll suggest limiting your intake of commuter fruits to wintertime, when your access to fresh, local fruit might be limited. That said, we might brace ourselves for some banana deprivation: The most common variety of banana, the Cavendish, is likely to vanish from our future because of a blight. Ain’t monocultures grand?

More radical step: Grow your own. Hunka-hunka burnin’ lobe, calculator-wielding eco-pioneer Amory Lovins manages to grow bananas with passive solar energy in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, so maybe there’s hope for the rest of us. Talk to your local nursery about getting a banana plant suited for your climate (you’ll want to stick to container growing if you live up North).

Coffee
Where it is grown: In parts of the world with stable, moderate temperatures, sunshine, and great soil. Check out this “bean belt” map. As is the case with bananas, you can’t buy coffee locally unless you live in Hawaii. If you’d like to support American growers anyway, surf the Internet to find organic growers there. This organic coffee farm also offers a vacation rental. (I’m just saying.) Local Harvest is a great place to find Hawaiian high-test.

Doom-mitigating action items: Buy triple-certified (organic, fair trade and shade-grown) coffee, bring your-own mug when you caffeinate on the run, and use your buzz to save the world. If the travel miles are coming between you and the enjoyment of your latté, heed your values and kick the habit. Just don’t ask me for advice on how to do this because I am draining a French press as I type.

More radical step. Move to Hawaii! Short of that, grow your own coffee shrub. According to this site, a mature plant can produce as much as two to four pounds of java per year. Okay, so that’s only a month’s worth of coffee for me, but you could always raise more than one plant and have your own micro-plantation. Downside: It could take a few years for your plant to start producing. And you can’t cruise your plantation on horseback.

Tea
Where it grows: Most of the tea that comes from Camellia sinensis plant (which produces black, green and white teas) hails from countries in Asia, Africa, and South America. Hawaii also has some growers; look for them here. Giddy news: You can buy tea from the Lower Forty-Eight! The Charleston Tea Plantation in South Carolina produces American Classic Tea, which was recently purchased by Bigelow. If you’re willing to do a little homework, you can also get tea from small, artisan growers such as this one.

Doom-mitigating action items: Buy organic, Fair Trade-certified teas. Buy in bulk to avoid excess packaging.

More radical step: You guessed it! Grow your own tea plants. As with the above grow-your-own options, a few plants won’t keep a serious habit fully supplied, but it will be an enjoyable exercise in appreciation. Here’s some help. Who knows, tea growing might even become your thing. “There will always be hobbyists and green thumbs who are growing and processing small quantities of tea using different varietals of the tea plant,” Seattle tea blogger Brett Boynton told me by email. “You find these people all over the world. Although we will never be as common as orchid people, rose people or tulip people, I am proud to be one of a handful of NW tea lovers who grows and processes a little bit of my own tea.” (A “tea blogger”--is this a great country, or what?)

Well, Pat, let’s hope, for all of our sakes, that things don’t get so hot here in the U.S. that we’re able to grow coffee in Colorado and bananas in New Jersey.

Thanks for the great question. I need to surf real estate websites in Hawaii now (so that someday maybe I’ll learn to surf for real), so I must run.

Yours,
Lou

Menu Plan for the Week

This is a little belated, I realize, but -- we just got back from camping in the Willamette National Forest right alongside the McKenzie River! It was fantastic and gorgeous and I promise to post photos and recipes of our camp food soon.

For now, here's what we're eating around Casa Dena this week:

• Monday: Black Beans & Rice (made such yummy lunch leftovers today!)
• Tuesday: Pan-seared filets mignon in some kind of pan sauce that I have yet to decide upon with roasted young potatoes and sauteed garlic spears. (The filet mignon was on a serious special at the market -- it was too good to pass up! Garlic spears are immature garlic scapes, or stems, and are apparently delicious. We'll see!)
• Wednesday: Tamale Pie (I have yet to figure out exactly what this will be, too -- I'm kinda making it up as I go along. All I know for now is it will have a polenta base, black beans as the filling/protein, lots of gooey cheese, some enchilada sauce.... basically some messy yummy casserole type thingy.)
• Thursday: The undeniable and delicious Sesame-Soy Soba Noodles. Hubby has requested them every week for the foreseeable future, and I am in complete agreement.
• Friday: Not sure yet....perhaps some grilled chicken, greens from our garden plot (which I definitely need to post photos of!), and grilled toast with garlic rub for little summer sandwiches?
• Saturday: Date night!

Apparently it's Improv Week here at our house. What about you? Any good ideas for summer meals?

Top Chef Master Indeed!

So...remember I was in San Francisco a little while ago?

Well, I got to meet a few really awesome people when I was there. And one of them is a personal hero of mine, whom I've met before but have always been a little starstruck over. This time, I just talked to her, and lo and behold she is a totally normal, friendly, and down to earth person, just like I knew she would be. And I finally got up the gumption to be a total dork and ask if I could take a picture with her.

Because let's face it: Elizabeth Falkner is one KICK-ASS chef who makes delicious food and puts a wonderful face to the culinary industry, and women in the industry especially.

If you don't know who she is yet, you will soon -- she is starring on Bravo's Top Chef Masters! (You may also have seen her on the Food Network on Iron Chef America or on various cake-baking competition shows, or on previous episodes of Bravo's Top Chef, where she's been a guest judge.)

So not only is she totally friendly and approachable and a serious rockstar chef, her food is also delectable and delicious. My husband took me to one of her restaurants, Citizen Cake, for dessert on my birthday several years ago -- which was also like our third date -- when we first met, and let's just say: her food is definitely seductive.

And this time when I took this photo with her, we were at her new restaurant, Orson, where I had some of her hors d'oeuvres -- and there were these cheesy poofy bite-thingys that were out of this freaking world, people. Yummm....

Thank you, Elizabeth, for humoring me and being such an approachable, watchable, and insanely talented icon for us foodies. Can't wait to watch you on Top Chef Masters* and can't wait to eat more of your food!


(*I'm DVR'ing all the episodes so I can watch a marathon some weekend afternoon!)

Almond Biscotti

I was lucky enough to get three recipes from the sweet Chef Mike, kind of a triptych -- today's is the last, which follows up on this one and this one, using the vanilla extract you made at home.

Almond Biscotti
Adapted from Williams Sonoma's Savoring Desserts
Yields 2 loaves, 12 servings each

• 1 cup toasted almonds, coarsely chopped
• 2 whole eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• vanilla extract, to taste (I would guess you'd want at least a tsp)
• almond extract, to taste (you can also use the more expensive almond tequila)
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 + ½ cup cake or all-purpose flour
• 1 cup almond meal
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

You could also add dried cherries or cranberries to this for a yummy twist.

Pre-heat oven to 375F.

In a small bowl lightly beat the eggs and fluid ingredients together. Set aside.

In a large bowl (or in the bowl of your fancy-schmantzy electric mixer, if you have one) combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt with a hand mixer (or the aforementioned fancy-pants electric mixer). Beat until blended -- should take about 30 seconds. Gradually add the egg mixture and beat until a dough forms, adding almonds about halfway through.

With floured hands, divide dough in half. On a lightly floured surface roll each half of dough into a wide and not too tall loaf. Place loaves fairly far apart on baking sheet covered in parchment paper or a silpat (I covet a silpat!).

Bake the biscotti loaves at 375 for 25 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes, then cut each loaf into ½-inch thick cookies, along the bias.

Reduce the oven temp to 325F, and help the oven come down in temperature by holding the door open until an oven thermometer registers 325. Bake the cookies, laid flat on the baking sheet, for 10 minutes more.

Enjoy with coffee and/or homemade Jack Daniel's ice cream!

Variation for cakier, less dry biscotti: omit egg yolk and lemon zest, add 2 oz butter, bring total flour to 2 cups (or 3/4 cup almond meal with 1.25 cups cake or all purpose flour), total sugar to 1 cup, total salt to 1/4 tsp.

Menu Plan for the Week

Aaaaaactually, hubby and I are on a mini-vacation in Bend, Oregon for most of this week, so our menu plan is pretty sparse!

I definitely plan on making a spring version of my Quinoa Pilaf (with yummy Italian soy-sausage) and perhaps one last ode to asparagus with this when we get back.

For now, though, we're having fun eating the delicious fare at such places like this, this, this and this.

And even though I'm on vacaciones, there actually will be a sweet little recipe coming your way very soon.... ah, the powers of technology. Stay tuned! You'll want to pull out your homemade vanilla extract for this one.

Happy summer everyone!

Dan Tobin's Breakfast Nachos

Remember this post? Well, we've got a follow-up, with an honest-to-goodness recipe for Breakfast Nachos.

And the scary part? They sound goooooooood. Kinda like chilaquiles.

There you go, Dan -- you've perfected Boston Chilaquiles. I'll send you 10% for referencing the recipe here on my site, but you gotta give me 15% for coining the name.

Learning to Eat

How many parents do you know who make separate food for their children? Who bargain with their kids at mealtime ("If you eat one piece of broccoli, you can have dessert")? Who are constantly struggling with trying to get their kids to eat anything?

I feel like I see this everywhere: parents making one delicious, gourmet meal for themselves and chicken nuggets and mac 'n cheese for their kids.

It doesn't have to be this way! I often wonder how much this is a uniquely American phenomenon -- kids in other countries or from other cultures eat what their parents eat, and it's not a big deal. It's not an absurd notion in Latin America to think that kids will eat the same foods their parents eat, no matter how "sophisticated" or "non-kid-friendly" the meal may seem. In fact, one of the bloggers I read and love, CityMama, has written about how her kids eat everything she eats, and how often people are in shock and awe when they see it happen.

My dear friend Robin is a school garden educator. In other words, she teaches low-income kids about food and where it really comes from -- from growing their own food to cooking it and then composting it and completing the garden-to-plate cycle. She recently shared with me the work of Ellyn Satter, who helps parents learn how to feed their kids appropriately so kids learn how to eat appropriately.

Ellyn's rules are so simple, yet so genius. I share them with you here -- happy eating for everyone!

The Five Responsibilities In Feeding & Eating

Parents are responsible for:

• What food is served
• When food is served
• Where food is served

Children are responsible for:

• How much to eat
• Whether to eat or not
  

How genius is that? She also emphasizes: Don't get your responsibilities mixed up with your child's responsibilities.

• If you don't do your jobs, your child will eat poorly and not behave at the table.
• If you get bossy and try to do her jobs, she will fight back and not eat.

I love this. Even though it can seem hard to do, if we do our part -- serve an array of foods that are healthy and tasty on a reliable mealtime schedule where we eat together -- kids will do their part: eat as much as they need. We can stop worrying and start trusting.

There's a wealth of information on this topic on Ellyn's website, but these five key responsibilities seem like keystones to establishing healthy eating habits (and peace of mind for parents!).

What about you -- if you have kids, do you follow these five rules? If not, where are you faltering?



(Another great thing about Ellyn's website: estas responsabilidades estan en su sitio del red en español tambien!)

Sesame-Soy Soba Noodles

I promised a delicious summer evening dinner, and boy do I have one: Sesame-Soy Soba Noodles.

Full of flavor, really easy to make, and not too hot to eat on those summer nights when it's so warm and lovely, you're still in tank tops, skirts, and flip-flops at 9:30pm as you take the dog out for a night-time constitutional.

I got the original inspiration from a quick little recipe for Sesame-Soy Broccoli from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine (one of my all-time fave magazines, as you know). Add some noodles, tofu, and scallions, and you've got a delicious complete meal.

Dena's Sesame-Soy Soba Noodles

• 1 head of broccoli, chopped into florets and stalks chopped into bite-size pieces
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 package soba noodles
• 1/3 cup+ sesame seeds (use more if you like; hubby LOVES toasted seeds so I am very generous with these)
  
• 1 bunch scallion
• Raw firm tofu, baked and marinated tofu, or store-bought pre-marinated and baked tofu to save time
• 1/3 cup+ Toasted Sesame Oil
• 1/2 cup Soy Sauce
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp (or more or less, depending on how spicy you like things) Sriracha Sauce

First, get the broccoli going: turn your oven to 400 and start chopping your broccoli. Spread chopped broccoli on large baking sheet with sides (my fave is my industrial-grade Chicago Jelly Roll pan), drizzle with olive oil, and toss so it's all mixed. Pop it in the oven and roast for 20 minutes.

Set water to boil and cook soba noodles according to package instructions. Don't overcook -- when you drain them, run them under cold water so they stop cooking. Let them sit to drain water.

Spread sesame seeds on baking sheet for oven or toaster oven sheet. Pop them in the oven or toaster oven for about 5-10 minutes, depending on how hot it is. You want them to brown and toast, but not burn -- when they start popping, remove them! They will be fragrant and so delicious-smelling.

Chop your scallions thinly at an angle -- you want a lot, so use the whole bunch, even though it seems like too much. They balance out the other flavors really nicely.

Slice your tofu into bite-size pieces.

Toss all of the above together in a large bowl, mixing well. Add the toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, lemon juice, and sriracha sauce, and mix again to coat everything. Give it a taste and if it needs a little more of the oil or soy sauce, go for it.

Serve in big bowls with forks, chopsticks, or whatever works for you. Enjoy! Happy Tummy, Happy Summer.