A Sweet and Summery New Year

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins tomorrow evening. This is the beginning of the High Holy Days and a time of introspection, retrospection, atonement, forgiveness, and hope.

The ten days between Rosh Hashanah -- a very joyous, sweet occasion -- and Yom Kippur -- a more solemn occasion, the day of atonement or 'at-one-ment,' the most important Jewish holiday -- are called the Days of Awe, and they are our opportunity to make right the wrongs of the past year, and to set hopes and dreams for a sweet year to come.

But what does all this have to do with food? It's also a time for eating and enjoying food with our loved ones, of course! It is a Jewish holiday, after all. (The typical and traditional dish of Rosh Hashanah is apple dipped in honey -- to help you taste the sweetness of life and mark the beginnings of a sweet new year.)

What's lovely about the High Holy Days in 2010 is that well, they start "early" this year. As one of my fave websites for all things Jewish, www.jewfaq.org, puts it: There is a joke about the Jewish calendar that goes something like this: "While sitting in synagogue, one man turns to his friend and says, ‘When is Hanukkah this year?’ The other man smiles slyly and replies, ‘Same as always: the 25th of Kislev.’" It’s a joke, but it makes an important point: The date of Jewish holidays does not change from year to year. Holidays are celebrated on the same day of the Jewish calendar every year, but the Jewish year is not the same length as a solar year on the civil calendar used by most of the western world, so the date shifts on the civil calendar. 

And as this wonderful post from one of my new favorite Jewish literary magazines, Tablet, puts it: This year, Rosh Hashanah, which typically falls a little later in the year, begins in early September, when summer fruits and vegetables are still overflowing.

So this Rosh Hashanah, we've got a great chance to put the 'sweet' and 'succulent' into our wishes and dishes for the new year, with bounty from our gardens and Farmer's Markets. Tablet has got some great recipe ideas, including this one (how GOOD does that look?!?):

Beet 'Carpaccio' With Wild Arugula, Goat Cheese, and Orange Vinaigrette 


1 pound large loose beets, golden, red and/or candy striped
4 cups wild arugula
¼ cup goat cheese, crumbled
1 orange, segmented and juiced, separated
1 tablespoon good quality local honey
¼ cup olive oil
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

1. De-stem and scrub beets. [Dena's note: save those beet greens and saute them with some olive oil and garlic for a deeeeelicious side dish! Beet greens are hubby's very favorite.] Wrap in foil and place on a sheet tray. Bake for 50 minutes or until tender. Transfer to a bowl, cover with saran wrap, and refrigerate for at least two hours.

2. After beets have cooled, peel all beets. On a mandoline or slicer, slice beets very thinly. This may be done with a knife, but will take a little longer. Keep all different color beets separate so that the color does not bleed.

3. Arrange beets in concentric circles in any pattern you wish on a serving platter.

4. To make the dressing, combine the orange juice (1/3 cup) and honey, whisk in the olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Reserve.

5. Right before serving, toss arugula in the reserved dressing and place in the center of arranged beets. Top with crumbled goat cheese and orange segments. Serve immediately.

Yield: 4 servings


A Greenmarket Rosh Hashanah from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

Avoiding the Dirty Dozen

The Environmental Working Group just released their new Shopper's Guide to Pesticides. Have you seen this? Do you use it? If not, I highly recommend.

I try to be as conscious of the environmental and health impacts of the food that I eat, cook, and serve as possible. But the truth is, it's simply impossible to eat all-organic, all-local, all-sustainable, all-ethical ALL of the time. Well, perhaps it might be possible if I had a million dollars in the bank and didn't work and had the land space to raise chickens and have a huge garden. Then I might have the time and the resources to be able to make that happen. But I would still have to limit at what restaurants I ate, and I am okay (for now, at least) with not imposing such strict limitations on myself and my family.

So what I'm saying is: knowing what I know about the brokenness, filth, toxicity, and inhumanity of our food systems, and as someone who wants to eat as healthily and as safely for our planet as possible, I still need to compromise and make choices.

And nowhere is that more important than in the grocery store.

When I make my weekly meal plan, I also make up a grocery list and head to the store to stock up for the week. Sometimes a recipe will call for, say, red bell peppers. And sometimes I will buy them, if they're not grown and flown in from Chile or New Zealand (because for me personally, I've drawn the line there -- I won't support that much fossil fuel being used to bring me a bell pepper. Plus they never taste the way they should -- and why would they? They've traveled a looooong way to make it to my store).

But if I do buy them, I will only buy them organic. If the organic ones are too pricey (because OMG red or orange bell peppers are freaking expensive!), I'll either choose to buy the smallest one I can find, or pass and find some kind of a substitute, like a (usually cheaper) organic green bell pepper.

Why? Because bell peppers are on the Dirty Dozen list!

Check it out -- EWG has put together two lists:

THE DIRTY DOZEN
The top 12 vegetables and fruits that are the most susceptible to and carry the most pesticides on and in them when they are grown conventionally. So these are the 12 that you will want to go out of your way to be sure to buy organic. These are listed in order of "dirtiness," with 1 being the worst (ie, most full of pesticides).

1.  Celery (Who knew?! This is news to me -- and glad I know! I love me some celery sticks with peanut butter.)
2. Peaches
3. Strawberries
4. Apples
5. Blueberries
6. Nectarines
7. Bell Peppers
8. Spinach
9. Cherries
10. Kale and Collard Greens
11. Potatoes
12. Grapes (Imported)

THE CLEAN 15
These are the 15 fruits and vegetables that retain or carry the lowest amount of pesticides. This is where you can make your compromises if you need to buy non-organic. These are listed in order of "cleanliness," with 1 being the best (ie, least full of pesticides).

1. Onions (Yay, because for some reason, organic red onions are wayyy expensive here at some times of the year. I'm switching to conventional next time I shop until their price goes down.)
2. Avocado (Also yay because a) I loooove avocado and b) sometimes organic avocados are not even available in the store.)
3. Sweet Corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mangos
6. Sweet Peas
7. Asparagus
8. Kiwi
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Cantaloupe
12. Watermelon
13. Grapefruit
14. Sweet Potato
15. Honeydew Melon

I was surprised to not see bananas on the Clean 15 -- I was under some mistaken assumption that they were on that list. I am now switching my banana-buying habit to organic-only.

If you're wondering how much pesticides really get into your system and how bad they really are for you (in other words, how much should you pay attention to the Dirty Dozen or the Clean 15), you can read the many, many reasons why or here's a brief summary of what EWG has to say about it:

Some of the most toxic food pesticides have come off the market in the past 15 years. But some pesticides considered safe now will invariably be restricted in future years. Chemical agribusiness interests might assert that pesticides in food are perfectly safe, but the reality is that many pesticide uses that are on the books as safe today will be found unsafe by EPA in the future, based on new science, new understandings about the mechanisms by which pesticides can harm the human body, or strengthened policies for health protection within the agency itself. 

EWG research has found that people who eat five fruits and vegetables a day from the Dirty Dozen list consume an average of 10 pesticides a day. Those who eat from the 15 least contaminated conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables ingest fewer than 2 pesticides daily. Concentrations of organophosphate pesticides, including chlorpyrifos and malathion, in elementary school-age children’s bodies peaked during seasons that they ate the most produce. Conversely, exposures fell to non-detectable levels in just 5 days, when they switched from a conventional diet to eating exclusively organic foods.

So how about you? If you find these useful, you can download a PDF to print out and then cut out your own little card with the two lists. I've got mine in my purse for when I go to shop. And if you're an iPhone user, you can download their app to take it with you!

Amen

Michael Ruhlman is spot on. Amen!

We can’t expect big business to have our best interests in mind, nor expect the media to stop ringing the all-in-one Salt-Is-Bad! Fat-Is-Bad! alarm bells. Big companies want to sell us their goods any way they can. If they can take advantage of our confusion about how to eat, they will, rubbing their hands and chuckling with delight.... I blame us for being stupid.  It’s our own damned fault. We need to stop paying for lies and start paying more attention to what we’re eating.

Ultimately, our eating habits -- good, bad, or ugly -- are our own responsibility. Yes, manufacturers need to change their ways. But the only way they will is when it becomes profitable to do so. In other words, when we as the consumers change our habits, both in regards to eating and purchasing.

Here's to reading the fine print....

Let the Free Market Decide

Remember that little graphic I posted a few days ago about why salads cost more than Big Macs?

"...My pie in the sky dream is to end subsidies for agribusiness and end subsidies for animal production and basically let the free market decide the cost of a pound of beef and a pound of chicken. If there were no subsidies for beef, a pound of beef would cost around $25, and if every aspect of animal production wasn't subsidized, a family of four going to McDonald's for a quick meal would spend $75. So really it's like the silver bullet that fixes the problem. And I would almost think it would make for interesting bedfellows, where you might even get some libertarian Tea Party people to talk about ending giving subsidies to animal production. But then again, not to be too inflammatory, but thus far every single person in the Tea Party is a raving lunatic, so I don't expect them to join our cause any time soon."

-- Moby, author of Gristle: From Factory Farms to Food Safety (emphasis mine)

Amen, Moby. It thrills me to just imagine it.

Why DOES a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?

Since I'm so inspired by the adorable and brilliant Jamie Oliver's latest quest, I came across this graphic and very short article and had to share.

Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?

"Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac? Part of the reason is that a huge proportion of our food subsidies go to meat while only 0.37 percent go to fruits and vegetables. That makes meat and dairy artificially cheap, so we end up consuming more of it than we should, and getting fatter."

P.S. Did anyone else watch Jamie last night?

The (Food) Revolution Is Being Televised

Did you happen to catch the pilot of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution?

I had recorded it and wasn't sure what I'd think of it. I finally got around to watching it -- and was riveted. What a fantastic show. Jamie is telling it, bringing it, and cooking it.

It's going to take some serious doing for him to make even a dent in the god-awful eating habits (pizza for breakfast as a sanctioned school meal?!?) of Huntington, West Virginia -- recently named the "unhealthiest city in America."



I salute Jamie Oliver for taking on our country's eating: he's got it all right. What we eat is more than just what we put in our mouths for any given meal. It's about changing our future: we can be better than who we have complacently become at the hands of industries and corporations who make money off our unhealthy habits.

We don't have to surrender to this new reality of "easy, inexpensive eating means our only options are unhealthy." We don't have to accept that we are becoming heavier and sicker every day. We don't have to resign ourselves that our children may not have the lifespan that we are projected to have. And we certainly have a right to be outraged about this entire state of affairs! I feel like Jamie is helping us to take off some of our blinders and retrieve our outrage about the state of our food systems and eating in this country. How can it not all make you mad? My favorite part in the pilot is when Jamie talks about being PISSED about the food being fed the schoolchildren he's working with. I so feel you, brother.

It's about taking the simplest steps to cook simple meals for ourselves and our families -- in doing that, I really do believe we can change the future of this country. (Just think how that would change our healthcare needs and healthcare system!)

So go watch. I'll be right there with you: Fridays, 8pm, ABC.


(No, neither ABC nor Jamie Oliver have any idea or care about who I am. I just really did love this show. It's not all preachy, either. It's entertaining -- especially when he tangles with the school lunch ladies!)

Kvelling

I had to share some news with you all: I've been accepted as a contributor over at one of my very favorite food blogs, The Jew & The Carrot!

As they describe themselves, "launched in November, 2006, The Jew & The Carrot is the epicenter of Jews, food, and sustainability on the web. It brings together 3,000 years of Jewish thought and food tradition with contemporary issues like sustainability, organic eating, nutrition, food politics, and healthy, delicious cooking.The Jewish community has an amazingly complex relationship with food. As the rest of the world is waking up to the notion of sustainable agriculture, local foods, and healthy eating, so is the Jewish community in the States, in Israel, and across the world."

Perfect, right? Very exciting.

So now I'm all nervous about posting over there.... Feeling a little intimidated. But I'm working through that by working on a first post based on the Shabbat meal I'll be making this Friday: Cashew Chicken adapted from Martha's recipe. Yum.

I'll be sure to let you all know as soon as my first post is up!

(Big shout-out to my friend Peter for connecting me with this gig!)

A Sampling of Food Rules

Following up on yesterday's post about Michael Pollan's new book, Food Rules, I thought I'd share the sampling of rules he made available. I think my favorite of the below is #19. I can't wait to read—and take to heart—the rest!

#11 Avoid foods you see advertised on television.
Food marketers are ingenious at turning criticisms of their products—and rules like these—into new ways to sell slightly different versions of the same processed foods: They simply reformulate (to be low-fat, have no HFCS or transfats, or to contain fewer ingredients) and then boast about their implied healthfulness, whether the boast is meaningful or not. The best way to escape these marketing ploys is to tune out the marketing itself, by refusing to buy heavily promoted foods. Only the biggest food manufacturers can afford to advertise their products on television: More than two thirds of food advertising is spent promoting processed foods (and alcohol), so if you avoid products with big ad budgets, you’ll automatically be avoiding edible foodlike substances. As for the 5 percent of food ads that promote whole foods (the prune or walnut growers or the beef ranchers), common sense will, one hopes, keep you from tarring them with the same brush—these are the exceptions that prove the rule.

#19 If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.

#36 Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.
This should go without saying. Such cereals are highly processed and full of refined carbohydrates as well as chemical additives.

#39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.
There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we’re eating them every day. The french fry did not become America’s most popular vegetable until industry took over the jobs of washing, peeling, cutting, and frying the potatoes—and cleaning up the mess. If you made all the french fries you ate, you would eat them much less often, if only because they’re so much work. The same holds true for fried chicken, chips, cakes, pies, and ice cream. Enjoy these treats as often as you’re willing to prepare them—chances are good it won’t be every day.

#47 Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
For many of us, eating has surprisingly little to do with hunger. We eat out of boredom, for entertainment, to comfort or reward ourselves. Try to be aware of why you’re eating, and ask yourself if you’re really hungry—before you eat and then again along the way. (One old wive’s test: If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you’re not hungry.) Food is a costly antidepressant.

#58 Do all your eating at a table.
No, a desk is not a table. If we eat while we’re working, or while watching TV or driving, we eat mindlessly—and as a result eat a lot more than we would if we were eating at a table, paying attention to what we’re doing. This phenomenon can be tested (and put to good use): Place a child in front of a television set and place a bowl of fresh vegetables in front of him or her. The child will eat everything in the bowl, often even vegetables that he or she doesn’t ordinarily touch, without noticing what’s going on. Which suggests an exception to the rule: When eating somewhere other than at a table, stick to fruits and vegetables.

Food Rules

I will be back to blogging regularly (and promise a post on the amazing Boeuf Bourguignon a la Julia Child), but for today, I thought you'd like to see an excerpt from Michael Pollan's latest missive on his new book, Food Rules. (Bolded parts are emphasis mine.)

I, for one, can't wait to read it -- and most likely, own it and keep it as a little reminder and reference for the real rules when it comes to eating and food.

Friends:

My new book, Food Rules, was published yesterday. You can get some info about it from the website, at http://michaelpollan.com/foodrules.php.

The idea for this book came from a doctor—a couple of them, as a matter of fact. They had read In Defense of Food, which ended with a handful of tips for eating well: simple ways to navigate the treacherous landscape of modern food and the often-confusing science of nutrition.  “What I would love is a pamphlet I could hand to my patients with some rules for eating wisely,” they would say. “I don’t have time for the big nutrition lecture and, anyway, they really don’t need to know what an antioxidant is in order to eat wisely.” Another doctor, a transplant cardiologist, wrote to say “you can’t imagine what I see on the insides of people these days wrecked by eating food products instead of food.” So rather than leaving his heart patients with yet another prescription or lecture on cholesterol, he gives them a simple recipe for roasting a chicken, and getting three wholesome meals out of it – a very different way of thinking about health.

Make no mistake: our health care crisis is in large part a crisis of the American diet -- roughly three quarters of the two-trillion plus we spend on health care in this country goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which can be prevented by a change in lifestyle, especially diet. And a healthy diet is a whole lot simpler than the food industry and many nutritional scientists –what I call the Nutritional Industrial Complex—would have us believe. After spending several years trying to answer the supposedly incredibly complicated question of how we should eat in order to be maximally healthy, I discovered the answer was shockingly simple: eat real food, not too much of it, and more plants than meat. Or, put another way, get off the modern western diet, with its abundance of processed food, refine grains and sugars, and its sore lack of vegetables, whole grains and fruit.

So I decided to take the doctors up on the challenge.  I set out to collect and formulate some straightforward, memorable, everyday rules for eating, a set of personal policies that would, taken together or even separately, nudge people onto a healthier and happier path. I solicited rules from doctors, scientist, chefs, and readers, and then wrote a bunch myself, trying to boil down into everyday language what we really know about healthy eating. And while most of the rules are backed by science, they are not framed in the vocabulary of science but rather culture—a source of wisdom about eating that turns out to have as much, if not more, to teach us than nutritional science does.

Standing Up For Food

One of my favorite bloggers (food and otherwise), City Mama, has just posted a really wonderful post to her blog. You have to read it. I find it inspiring. And here's what it made me think about and post as a comment:

I am also very much caught in that delicate balancing act between wanting to stand by my values and beliefs (and keep myself and my family healthy) by eating only sustainable, local, organic, ethical -- and not wanting to see every penny we manage to save go towards food: balancing the CSAs, the farmer's markets, and a backyard garden with the Whole Foods or Whole Foods-like grocery store.

It's a daily, weekly, monthly struggle. But after maintaining this balance -- or at least working to try to maintain it -- for a few years now, I think it's actually in the struggle where we find that golden, happy medium. Sure, it's not easy. It's not cheap. It's not mindless, and it's certainly not effortless.

But I am starting to think that it is the putting-in of that effort, that thought, and those resources that makes a difference.

So basically what I'm saying is I totally salute you. And I am standing right here with you, against Tyson, Cargilll, Swift, Monsanto, Smithfield, and the whole system that has turned what and how we eat into a bastardized farcical version of its original, natural self.

The truth is I haven't yet seen Food, Inc. I have kind of wanted to but also felt like I might just want to jump out the window after seeing it. Which, I really do realize, is not a good reason -- I know about the stuff that's in there, and the fact is that not seeing the movie won't make it go away and won't make it any less true. Just because I am sick over the state of our food systems because I know a lot about what's wrong with them doesn't mean a) I don't have a lot more to learn and b) that I get some kind of pass on seeing the hard stuff.

I'm putting it on our Netflix queue now.

My Parents' Turkey

My parents live in Petaluma in Sonoma County in Northern California, which is pretty much one of the most gorgeous corners of the earth.

This year, my mom noticed, on her way to work, turkeys, chickens, and cows in the fields right by their house. She did a little investigating and found out it was a new farm called Tara Firma that has sprung up and is raising delicious, sustainably raised poultry, beef, and pork, very nearly in my parents' backyard. I am so jeals.

So this year, their turkey came from right next door. My mom said she would wave hi to the turkeys whenever she drove by, wondering which gobbler might end up on their plate.

So awesome, and hooray for Tara Firma Farms! Now I want my parents to do a meat CSA with them. And see if they can get fresh eggs from them. And go on a tour. Basically I want them to move to Tara Firma. There's room in those rolling hills, right?

Long After Human Cleverness Has Run Its Course...

Remember Joel Salatin? Of Polyface Farms?

No? Well then you need to get on down to the library and read The Omnivore's Dilemma immediately!

For those of you who do remember his name, I'm sure you smiled on the inside just like I did to read his name. As it says on his farm's website, "Polyface, Inc. is a family owned, multi-generational, pasture-based, beyond organic, local-market farm and informational outreach in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley."

That's right. And it's the sole reason I must travel to said Shenandoah Valley someday. I simply must visit this farm.

Joel Salatin is the farmer Michael Pollan is lucky enough to visit and work with for a week, who refers to himself as a "grass farmer," because all of the animals he raises -- and everything on his farm, for that matter -- are an interconnected web with grass-eating at the very center of that web. Remember the happy piggies whose tails curled (pigs' tails curl only when they are happy) as they rooted for fermented corn kernels amongst the cows' winter bedding and droppings? Or how Pollan calls Salatin up, asking the farmer to kindly ship him one of his famous grass-fed steaks -- and Salatin refuses, because California is too far from Virginia, making it impossible to justify the expenditure of fossil fuels that will go into getting it cross-country? Or the chickens whom he moves from patch of pasture to patch of pasture each day, cycling them through on a schedule that ensures the symbiotic relationship between the earth, grass, cows' munching and treading with their specially evolved hooves, and chickens' scratching is intact and even thriving? Joel Salatin became my hero before I even read the last page of that book.

I don't have particularly strong feelings either way on the benefits or hazards of drinking raw milk (though I pretty much lean in its favor and am guessing the "hazards" are made up, as Salatin suggests), but I certainly do think if one wants to drink it, one should absolutely be able to. Salatin's recent post on raw milk and its regulations on grist.org is very interesting. And anything Joel Salatin has to say, I will listen to!

I found this passage from his post really spoke to me:

The same curative properties espoused by raw milk advocates exist in a host of other food products, from homemade pound cake and potpies to pepperoni and pastured chicken. Real food is what developed our internal intestinal community. And it sure didn’t develop on food from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations[*] and genetically modified potatoes that are partly human and partly tomato. Long after human cleverness has run its course, compost piles will still grow the best tomatoes and grazing cows will still yield one of nature’s perfect foods: raw milk.

I love that he talks about how "real food" (food that you and I make every day, from scratch) has curative properties. I believe it does indeed. And I love the line, "Long after human cleverness has run its course...." I wonder, has it? It often feels these days like it has. It feels today like going back to basics -- the compost-grown backyard tomato -- is the truest, newest technology we have for making real, curative food.

* Have questions about what's a CAFO? And why they are not good?

A Dream of A Small Farm

"But they never imagined that the definition of sustainable farming would change so quickly or drastically, to the point that small-scale farming has become a kind of luxury."

My mom sent me this article from The New York Times, about the family behind the French Laundry restaurant, who traded it all in for a small family apple farm.

When did visions of a simple life gleaned from the hard work of creating sustenance from soil become near-to-impossible pipe dreams? What a strange world we live in.

Still, I'm so glad people like the Schmitts are doing what they're doing.

And dining at the French Laundry is still totally on my list of To Do Before I Die!

Oregon Fall Bounty Hash with Quinoa

A week ago Sunday we went to the delicious and oh-so-very-Oregon Mushroom Festival at the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum with our dear friends Eric, Nic & Vic, and Nic & Vic's friends Gabe & Suzanne and their daughter Coral. I'll post separately about the festival and that lovely day; it was so cool it definitely deserves its own post!

It was fantastic and sooooo fall and a pretty perfect way to spend an autumnal afternoon. There were hay rides! And many mushrooms on display -- Coral, who's eight years old, delighted in pointing out to us the coral mushrooms. Which, I gotta say, really do look like coral! And they are gorgeous. Who knew mushrooms came in so many different colors, textures, sizes, and shapes? And I was again reminded of mushrooms' truly mysterious magic -- they have so many incredible medicinal properties!

While there, we signed up for a mushroom CSA! I'll post more on that later for sure. What a brilliant idea, no?

In keeping with the spirit of the season, I threw together this dish for our dinner on Sunday night. It was seriously seriously no joke not even kidding delicious. I have already promised hubby I'll be making this every week for as long as these fall ingredients last.

It's super easy and super seasonal, so get thee to the forest a-foragin' or store or farmer's market and get a-cookin'!

Dena's Oregon Fall Bounty Hash with Quinoa

• EVOO (use of acronym is just for you, James)
• As much chopped garlic as you can handle like (for us, that's about 5 or 6 cloves or so, depending on their size)
• ~ 3 cups cooked quinoa (I prefer to cook in mushroom or chicken broth to boost the flavor)
• Anywhere between 12 to 20 heads brussels sprouts, trimmed of brown spots and halved lengthwise
• 3 to 5 good-sized leeks, green stalks removed and white to light green parts sliced lengthwise and then chopped and washed (ours came from our garden!)
  
• 1/2 lb chanterelle mushrooms, sliced (and if you're lucky like us, they were foraged for very nearly in your own backyard. And remember that the smaller the chanterelle, the creamier and more delicious it will be!)
• Salt & pepper to taste
• Good, nutty Parmesan cheese as a garnish

Begin by pre-heating your oven to 400F. (Also begin cooking your quinoa in a pot right about now -- I always do 1½ parts broth or water to 1 part quinoa. So, 3 cups broth to 2 cups uncooked quinoa, which does get you about 3 cups cooked, give or take. Add the broth and quinoa to your pot, set it to high uncovered and once it is boiling, bring down to a simmer, cover, and cook for 10 minutes. Easy!)

Heat about 1 tbsp (remember that's ~ one solid drizzle around the pan) EVOO in a cast iron skillet on medium-high heat. Once it is shimmery and hot enough, add the sprout halves, cut-side down. Cook without moving until they brown nicely and develop a crust. Do not move them, no matter the temptation to do so -- this is where the unique and addictive nutty-delicious brussels sprout flavor is developed. If necessary, brown the sprouts in batches. I used about 20 heads, and had to do about 3 batches or so -- it's very important every sprout gets a chance to develop that browned deliciousness!

Once all the sprouts have been browned, toss them onto an oven-roasting sheet with sides and pop them into your 400F oven for about 7 minutes. When they are done, set them aside in a big mixing bowl -- this will be where you mix all the ingredients together.

Next add more EVOO to your skillet and toss your leeks in when the oil is shimmery and hot enough, letting them get translucent and hopefully even a little browned -- about 10 minutes, give or take. When done, add to brussels sprouts in mixing bowl.

Then bring up the heat on your skillet a bit, to a little above medium-high heat, adding EVOO and letting it get nice and hot before you add your chanterelles. Give them a couple of minutes to heat up and develop a bit of brown fond, then stir to make sure they're cooking all over. After about 5-7 minutes, toss in your garlic and stir to get the garlicky goodness and mushroom yumminess all mixed together. Let it cook for a few more minutes, then add to your brussels sprouts and leeks.

Add your quinoa, mix it all together, add plenty of salt and pepper, and serve. Oh god it will smell absolutely heavenly. Garnish with Parmesan cheese or another nutty hard cheese of your choice. You will taste the warmth and flavor of fall in each bite.

Serve with your favorite Oregon beer in a frosty glass and enjoy!

Quickie Pollan Post

We just moved into our amazing new house, and we are totally in love with it and our new neighborhood. And we're still kind of in shock that we get to live here, as homeowners.

So on that note -- picture me surrounded by boxes trying to figure out where the dutch oven is -- I am going to post another quickie post, and I can't wait to get back to regular blogging. For those of you still reading, thanks for sticking with me.

_____________________________

Two new items of Michael Pollan (or, as they like to call him on my favorite Jewish Ethical Eating website, Rebbe Pollan) interest this week!

The first is a little New York Times interactive article I came across on Facebook, which I adore:

Michael Pollan's Reader's Food Rules

My favorite? "If you are not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you are not hungry." Genius. Some friends also commented that when apples are not in season, they substitute "lentils" or "a peach," and it still works like a charm.

The second is the recent publication of The Omnivore's Dilemma for kids! As Pollan himself put it, this edition is "aimed at middle and high schoolers. It's shorter and more streamlined, but also has some new material and a wealth of visuals -- photographs, charts, graphs, etc."

I am so ordering it from my library now. And this will definitely go on my list for good ideas for books for kids 13-18.

(Sidenote: if you decide to buy it, I hope you'll support your local bookstore or one of the big independent booksellers like Powell's.)

Gettin' Ready for Tomato Season

It's 100 degrees here in Eugene today (!) and it is also the time of year when we have to start thinking about tomato season.

All the delicious recipes that are set to the back shelf, that I dream about in the middle of winter, are moved to the front of the queue -- happily and deliciously. I'm one of those people who eat fresh tomatoes only seasonally -- even though you can get "red" tomatoes in the grocery store year-round, there are many reasons not to eat them, including their utter tastelessness and mushy texture.

This great article in the San Francisco Chronicle will help anyone who wants to put tomatoes by for this winter -- something I have long wanted to do and may try to do this summer. Homemade, homegrown tomato sauce in January -- yum! (A great recession special idea, too, by the way.)

And here are some of my favorite recipes for real, honest-to-goodness vine-ripened summer tomatoes:

• Summer Tomato Side Salad
• Mediterranean Melts
• Zoe's Greek Salad

Our tomato plants have just started to tip into the Going-Crazy/Little-Shop-of-Horrors territory. Which means that soon, the many, many green tomatoes hanging on their vines should start to become red, delicious, and little bursts of summer in our mouths!

Can't wait!

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

To Live Free

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! Hope you're taking this day and beginning of this wonderful season to spend some time outside -- and hopefully cooking outside! Nothing is better than grilled food on a beautiful Memorial Day.

And in honor of living free....here's a little blurb from one of my fave writers and environmental gadflies, Wendell Berry.

The industrial eater is, in fact, one who does not
know that eating is an agricultural act,
who no longer knows or imagines the connections
between eating and the land, and who
is therefore necessarily passive and uncritical....



We still (sometimes) remember that
we cannot be free if our minds and voices
are controlled by someone else.



But we have neglected to understand that
we cannot be free if our food and its sources are
controlled by someone else.



The condition of the passive consumer of food
is not a democratic condition.

One reason to eat responsibly is to live free.

-- Wendell Berry, The Pleasures of Eating

The Thing With Feathers

Hope doesn't come from calculating whether the good news is winning over the bad. It's simply a choice to take action. ~ Anna Lappé

Anna Lappé and Frances Moore Lappé are the authors of Diet for a Small Planet and Grub (among other books) and founders of the Small Planet Institute and Take a Bite Out of Climate Change.

I particularly loved Take a Bite's "About" section, which includes this (blue and bold are mine):

Take a Bite plunges into the heart of the debate with a powerful message: If we are serious about the crisis, we’ve got to talk about food.

With nearly one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions coming from the food and agriculture sector, we at Take a Bite are here to help you learn about the connection between global warming and the food on your plate and what you can do about it.

The connection between global warming and the food on your plate and what you can do about it. Amen. Count me in.

I Won, I Won!

Omigosh! Look what I won: a copy of Eating Close to Home by Elin England! THANK YOU, Our Home Works! Yay!

Here's what I'll be reading and what I promise to share with you as I make my way through this book:

In this book, local author Elin England put together a compendium of simple, well-tested recipes using local, seasonal ingredients. The book is arranged by seasons and even has a handy chart depicting the availability of Pacific Northwest fruits and vegetables. As a bonus, Elin is graciously sharing 10% of the proceeds with Willamette Farm & Food Coalition.

Yay and yum. I can't wait. This is a perfect companion read to what hubby's reading these days because he won the lottery for a community garden plot! I'll share pics of our little 16' x 22' patch of organic community garden goodness soon.

(As an aside, Our Home Works is on my current list of heroes because they just got chickens!!! Check 'em out. I hope to follow in their footsteps someday.)