Analog Kitchen

I watched recently as Joy thumbed through her over-stuffed binder of recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines, and I found myself thinking that our new iPad would be a great way to store and catalog recipes in the future.

But Joy would never make that conversion to digital. Her binder works just fine. She likes clipping the recipes and physically flipping the pages. She prefers an analog lifestyle to a digital one.

The word analog in audio and photographic recording means there is a direct physical method of converting and storing data. Photographic film is analog. Vinyl records are analog. There is a direct transfer of data. Digital recording is different. It converts the information into zeros and ones and then recreates it later.

Having grown up with 45s and 33s, I distinctly remember when I first heard of the amazing new digital recording technology in the 1980s. The first digital recording I bought was “Bop til You Drop” by Ry Cooder.

After the digital novelty wore off, audiophiles realized that the old analog recordings were better. They had more depth. Classical music fans especially preferred records over cds for the quality of sound.

I think Joy believes that real food is analog. The nutrients are stored in the plant and then transferred directly to your analog body when you eat them. Simple.

Chemical re-creation of nature is more like digital technology trying to re-create something with zeros and ones. Pills don’t replace plants. Artificial sweeteners are just what they say – artificial.

As with digital recording, the chemical re-creation of nature seems appealing at first, but it can’t really replace or improve upon thousands of years of analog eating by our species.

"Better living through chemistry"? I don't think so. How about "better living through nature."

ADHD and Pesticides

A new study in the journal Pediatrics shows a direct link between the pesticide malathion and ADHD.

Malathion is a commonly available pesticide used by farmers and backyard gardeners to kill caterpillars and other insects on fruit trees and in vegetable gardens.

You might have it in your garden shed.

It's been generally known that children of farmworkers and others exposed to high levels of pesticides suffer from neurodevelopmental and behavioral disorders.

This study, however, looked at a wide cross-section of American children. Their main exposure to pesticides was from food, the authors of the study speculated.

I am glad that scientists are proving what I've been saying for 20 years: eating pesticided food is bad. (See Safe Produce for a list of foods with the highest levels of pesticide residue.)

It is a little scary to find out exactly how bad it is.

The researchers used urine samples to determine the level of malathion in the children's bodies. They found minute amounts of malathion metabolites in the children's urine, meaning they had had some exposure to the toxic chemical, probably from eating non-organic food. And the researchers discovered that children with a tenfold increase of malathion metabolites (still a small amount) had a 55% higher risk of having ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder).

Malathion is an organophosphate. There are 40 similar pesticides on the market, and at least 73 million pounds are used in agricultural and residential settings in the U.S. each year.

You can read more on the study in the Los Angeles Times.

I was writing 20 years ago about organophosphates being neurotoxic. It's great to see major studies backing this up, and that these studies are making the mainstream press, even though they're on page nine instead of page one.

And it's good to have a reminder that eating organic is not just a trendy thing to do. It is essential for the health of future generations.

Changing up the Salad Dressings

My mother visited recently from Montreal, and shared the recipes for her two favorite salad dressings with me.

She keeps them in old Worcestershire sauce bottles in the door of her fridge. She measures the white wine vinegar and olive oil by eye, pouring the wine vinegar to 1/3 full and the oil to the neck of the bottle. I’ve converted the measurements into tablespoons for those of us who do not have old Worcestershire sauce bottles.

These dressings will store indefinitely in the fridge, but the olive oil will solidify. Let the dressing stand at room temperature a few minutes before shaking it up to meld the ingredients.

The umeboshi plum vinegar adds a salty sharpness to the dressing. You can find the Eden Foods brand at your local independent health food store.

Roasted Sesame Dressing
1/4 tsp dry mustard
2 tbsp umeboshi plum vinegar
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
3 tbsp toasted sesame oil
9 tbsp olive oil or mixture of olive oil and canola oil

Put the dry mustard in a small bottle. Add umeboshi vinegar and shake well. Add balsamic vinegar and shake some more. Add white wine vinegar, keep shaking. Add sesame oil and olive oil. Shake one last time.

When she uses this vinaigrette, she toasts a handful of pine nuts in her cast iron frypan while she assembles the salad, and tosses them in with the greens.


Walnut Oil Vinaigrette
1/4 tsp dry mustard
2 tbsp umeboshi plum vinegar
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
3 tbsp walnut oil
9 tbsp olive oil or mixture of olive oil and canola oil

Put the dry mustard in a small bottle. Add umeboshi vinegar and shake well. Add balsamic vinegar and shake some more. Add white wine vinegar, shake again. Add sesame oil and olive oil. Shake well.

When she uses this vinaigrette, she toasts a handful of walnuts in her cast iron frypan while she assembles the salad, and tosses them in. I recently used this dressing on a salad of buttercrunch and romaine lettuce, avocado, spring onions, radishes, walnuts, and some diced Cotswold Double Gloucester cheese with onion and chives from Trader Joe's. That was a great lunch.

These dressings are good on salads, steamed vegetables, broccoli and asparagus.

Mum offered a third variation as well:

Basic French Dressing
Use paprika instead of mustard, and use canola or olive oil instead of the sesame or walnut oil.

Blueberries and cancer

My blueberries will ripen one day. So far they are beautiful green berries, but I have hopes. The birds have hopes too, so I have surrounded most of my two bushes with bird netting, leaving a few available for the avid avians. There's heaps else for them to eat in the garden, and I need my blueberries.

Blueberries are high in antioxidants which fight free radicals and boost the immune system. Now scientists at City of Hope are finding that they can prevent the spread of cancer, according to a recent report on abc news.

Usually scientists try to extract one key health-promoting element of a food and study its effect. I'm skeptical of those studies, in part because I think bodies use all of the nutrients in whole foods more effectively than they do a single nutrient taken by itself. But in this study, the scientists at City of Hope think that it's not one specific chemical in blueberries that is the magic anti-cancer bullet.

"We actually believe that it's a combination of all the different phytochemicals in blueberries working together that aid in increasing its activity," said City of Hope research fellow Lynn S. Adams.

Whole food. It's the best way to maintain health. Slowly, science is catching up to common sense.

Potato Salad

Just in time for the start of summer barbecue season -- Victoria Day in Canada and Memorial Day in the US -- here is my favorite potato salad recipe.

Larry will cook burgers (well, a portobello mushroom for me) and we'll eat them with potato salad, black beans and a green salad for our ceremonial cook-out. (A grilled portobello mushroom in a bun with grilled red onion and avocado is a messy but delicious eating experience.)

Potatoes have been much maligned in recent years, but they are actually a wonderful food for the colon, the blood sugar and blood fat levels.

They contain a resistant starch that is not broken down by our digestive enzymes so makes it to the large intestine intact. There it provides bulk, offers protection against colon cancer, improves glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, lowers plasma cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations, and possibly even reduces fat storage.

The way to double the amount of resistant starch in a potato is to cook it and then cool it. Potato salad!

So enjoy your holiday barbecue, knowing that the potato salad is possibly the healthiest part of the meal.

The buttermilk ranch dressing is also great on green salads, and keeps in a jar in the fridge for a few days. While it sounds like a lot of dressing, the hot potatoes will absorb it and become flavored all the way through.

You get more protein and nutrients from the potatoes if you don't peel them.

For a little extra flavor, seed and dice a poblano pepper, sauté it in a little olive oil, and stir it into the potatoes along with the red onion. My poblano plant is covered in peppers. If you're not so lucky, you could use a green pepper instead.

Potato Salad with Buttermilk Ranch Dressing
3 lbs potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch dice
1/4 cup buttermilk (or put 1 tsp of lemon juice or vinegar in the bottom of a measuring cup and fill to the 1/4 cup mark with regular milk)
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
1 tsp lemon juice
2 scallions, finely chopped
1 small red onion, peeled, halved, and cut in thin slivers
black pepper

Place the potatoes in a large pot. Cover with cold water and sprinkle with salt. Bring to a boil and simmer, partially covered, until fork-tender, about 12 minutes.

Meanwhile make the dressing. Whisk together buttermilk, mayonnaise, vinegar, garlic, lemon juice and scallions.

Drain the cooked potatoes and place in a large bowl. Pour the dressing over them while they are still warm, tossing gently to make sure all the potatoes are coated.

Let them cool a little, then stir in the red onion and season with black pepper.

Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours to chill.

Serves 6 to 8.

Peanut Sauce

When I want an easy yet healthy supper, I make peanut sauce.

Spooned over greens and brown rice, peanut sauce turns a healthy meal into comfort food. The fat in the peanuts helps the body absorb the nutrients in the greens. The brown rice provides fiber and B vitamins. The nuts and grains combine to make a complete protein. Yet it doesn't taste like health food.

If you're having a hard time getting your kids to eat greens, serve this peanut sauce. Your family will ask for second helpings.

Plus, it's an easy meal to cook.

I start the brown rice in the rice cooker. Fifteen minutes before dinner time, I wash the greens (last time I used collard greens and purple mustard greens), chop them coarsely, and throw them in a pot with just the water drops still sitting on their leaves. I cover the pot and cook them over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until they are nice and soft.

Meanwhile, I stir together this peanut sauce that I adapted from Diana Shaw's book Vegetarian Entertaining. It's a California peanut sauce, not an Asian one. Yogurt smooths out the peanut butter and orange juice sweetens and lightens the sauce, which is quite addictive. Make extra and keep the leftovers in the fridge for a few days to add to cooked rice or spoon over steamed vegetables.

Peanut Sauce
1/2 cup yogurt
1/4 cup peanut butter (I use crunchy)
1/4 cup orange juice (1/2 of a juicy orange)
salt
cayenne

Mash peanut butter into the yogurt until well combined. If it seems too runny, add more peanut butter. Then stir in the orange juice. Taste and add extra juice to thin or add sweetness, extra peanut butter for intensity and firmness, or yogurt for smooth binding. Season with salt to taste and a dash of cayenne. It can sit on the counter for an hour or so until you are ready to use it. Refrigerate for longer storage.

Serves 2-3.

Hidden Ingredients

One of the reasons I cook my own food is so I can control the ingredients.

Pre-packaged foods (and some herbal teas) contain flavorings - natural and artificial. I avoid artificial flavorings because they're chemicals. I avoid natural flavorings because they can be derived from animals. As a vegetarian I prefer not to eat any part of an animal.

But I hadn't realized the human animal is involved as well.

Mother Jones recently reported that some food additives and supplements are made from human hair.

Human hair has a high percentage of L-cysteine, an amino acid that gives hair its strength. This quality enhances baked goods as well, and many bakeries use dough conditioners containing L-cysteine in their products. (Mother Jones cites Tastykakes, Noah's bagels and Lunchables as products with L-cysteine added.)

L-cysteine is not only found in human hair. It can be extracted from poultry feathers (natural flavoring), or even manufactured in a lab (artificial flavoring). But human hair (natural flavoring) is the cheapest. A lot comes from a temple in India where pilgrims have their heads shaved.

Funnily enough, companies were reluctant to tell Mother Jones whether the L-cysteine in their products was synthetic or made from duck feathers or human hair. Vegans frown on feathers and hair, and Muslim religious authorities have deemed human hair derivatives haram - forbidden. Jewish authorities have determined that L-cysteine is kosher regardless of its source, kosher food expert Rabbi Zushe Blech told Mother Jones.

In the supplement world, L-cysteine is widely touted as an antioxidant. Alacer Corp. wouldn't say which form of L-cysteine is in Emergen-C, but Twinlab told Mother Jones writer Scott Carney that their supplements contain only human hair-derived L-cysteine.

Cajun food maker Zatarain's said it uses the synthetic product to create a "vegetarian chicken flavor" in its Blackened Chicken With Yellow Rice. Carney said he couldn't get an answer from General Mills, Goya Foods, or Orowheat about where their L-Cysteine comes from.

The words "natural flavorings" look so benign on an ingredient label. Who would have imagined what could be hiding behind them?

The world of mass-produced food just gets weirder and weirder.

Freezer Soup

People ask me how I cook healthy food every day.

I don't.

I make it a point to cook food that makes good leftovers or that freezes well.

For instance, I love freezer soup.

These are the containers of leftover soup that I pull from the freezer when I don’t feel like cooking.

Most soups freeze well. The exceptions are ones with pasta or milk - the pasta loses all its texture, and the milk can curdle when you reheat it.

All vegetable, bean and grain soups freeze well. I recommend using them within 3 months, but I’ve found 3-year-old soups in the back of the freezer and they’ve been fine - although I tend to eat those when I’m alone, just in case they’re weird.

If you don’t like the texture of a defrosted soup, puree it in the blender. If the spices seem a bit off, add some chopped raw potato to smooth it out. When it’s cooked, taste the soup again and re-season as needed.

I rarely need to doctor freezer soup. I just defrost and serve.

This is a soup I recently pulled from my freezer. It's also delicious served fresh from the pot.

Lentil and Vegetable Soup
1 tbsp olive oil
2/3 cup diced celery
1/3 cup diced onion
1/3 cup diced carrot
3 tbsp diced shallot (optional)
2 tsp minced garlic
2 quarts vegetable stock or water
1 1/4 cup dried brown lentils
2 tsp whole-grain mustard
2 tsp red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Sauté celery, onions, carrots, shallots, and garlic in oil until onions are translucent. Add vegetable stock and lentils. Cook uncovered until lentils are just tender but not too soft. Before serving, add mustard, vinegar, salt and pepper.

Serves 4

Nutbars

The first thing I do every morning is pour two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar into two fingers of water, pinch my nose and chug it down.

Joy doesn’t do this, but I’ve been doing it for years, and I’m convinced that it has reduced the number of sinus infections I get each year.

If you Google ‘apple cider vinegar’ you’ll see hundreds of websites on the health benefits of this natural elixir. If you believe a fraction of them, Hippocrates, the Roman Legion, Jesus and Christopher Columbus all drank it for health reasons.

Why did I start this habit? Well, a few years ago, Joy remarked to me that if you drink apple cider vinegar on an empty stomach it ‘alkalinizes your body’ – meaning it resets your body’s pH to its natural default level before you bombard it with acidic food for the next 18 hours.

Apple cider vinegar also contains Acetic acid, which lowers the body’s pH levels and creates an inhospitable environment for infections.

The Internet would have you believe that apple cider vinegar has miraculous health benefits. I don’t know about all that. The most balanced website I’ve found on this subject is here.

My personal choice is Bragg’s organic raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar. Check out their website - it’s quirky, with echoes of Minnie Pearl and Hee Haw. But once you get over the look of the site and read their philosophy, it’s pretty sound. Paul Bragg believed in a diet that “focused on natural live foods”.

The Bragg website reminds me of the Dr. Bronner soaps that we use. I like Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap, which he first sold from his tenement-based store in L.A.’s Pershing Square in 1948.

Dr. Bronner was crazy. He had been in an asylum the previous year. He used to give lectures on how the world would be saved by planetariums, but he noticed that people just bought his peppermint soap and left. So he started printing his save-the-world rants in microscopic print on his soap bar wrappers.

Joy uses a term – Nutbars. I think she’d say the Braggs and Dr. Bronner were Nutbars.

Joy likes Nutbars. They seem to be untainted by commercialism and societal norms. They don’t care what you think about them. They just think they’re right.

And sometimes the Nutbars are exactly right.

Check out this short You Tube Video on Dr. Bronner.

Saving Dairy Cows

There was an article in the Los Angeles Times recently about a local woman's project to save cows from slaughterhouses, make them healthy again, and use their manure to create biodynamic fertilizer that will be sold in bags for avid gardeners.

What a great idea.

The dairy farm involved in the project is Organic Pastures, which I mentioned in my post on butter. This dairy takes its milking machines out to the pastures to milk the cows. I am sure this is much less stressful on the cows than being herded to the barn twice a day. And the cows are outside eating grass, not inside eating grain like most dairy cows. You can buy their raw milk products at the Hollywood Farmers Market and Granny's Pantry in Pasadena (Arroyo at California).

And be on the lookout for Bu's Blend Biodynamic Compost, produced from the poop of happy cows.

Chili

Chili is one of my favorite dishes. It improves in the fridge, and freezes well. It goes great with wilted greens and brown rice, yet it feels like junk food to the taste buds.

I made this chili for Sunday lunch. I used pinquito beans from Suncoast Farms in Lompoc. These are tiny beans which cook in a couple of hours with no presoaking. You could substitute navy beans or any other small bean, but soak them for a few hours in cold water first. If you use kidney beans or other large beans, pre-cook them for an hour or so in boiling water until they are cooked but still a little crunchy before adding to this recipe.

Don't bother with canned beans. You want the beans to be flavored all the way through, and that only happens if they are cooked in the stew.

I give the chili a smoky (some would say bacon-y) taste with Spanish smoked paprika. You can use chipotle chiles instead. Or regular paprika, but then add 1/4 cup soy sauce instead of the salt to give a depth of flavor.

Once you've combined all the ingredients, this chili cooks itself. Check it occasionally to make sure there's enough water to cover the beans, and stir it so it doesn't burn on the bottom (although that adds to the smoky flavor).

I served it with a batch of wilted greens made with home-grown chard and beet greens, combined with purple mustard greens and dandelion leaves from the farmers market. Cornmeal muffins rounded out the meal.

Chili
1 large onion (about 1 1/2 cups diced)
2 carrots
4 cloves garlic
2 tbsp oil
4 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp oregano
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp paprika
14-oz can diced tomatoes
2 cups pinquito beans
1 tsp salt

Sauté onion, carrots and garlic in oil until soft, about 8 minutes. Add chili powder, oregano, cumin and paprika. Stir well. Add tomatoes, beans and 5 cups water. Stir well. Bring to the boil and simmer, uncovered, for about an hour, adding water as necessary to keep the beans covered. Add 1 tsp salt. Continue cooking until the beans are tender, another 30-60 minutes. I like the beans to hold their shape. Season to taste. (After sitting in the fridge overnight the beans will be softer and the flavors more melded.)

Serve with brown rice or cornmeal muffins and wilted greens.

Serve 6-8.

Market Shopping

Yesterday I told Larry I was happy to go to the Hollywood Farmers Market alone because we didn't need much food.

I took a bag to hang on my shoulder for all the heavy food like potatoes and citrus, and a bag for my other hand for the greens and strawberries. No problem. I'm strong. And it was a short shopping list.

Apples, potatoes, coffee -- moving through my list. Then I arrived at the Mud Creek Ranch stall and found they had Sierra Gold tangerines which would be great juiced with the oranges left over from last week. Plus they had cherimoyas, and I really wanted to try my cherimoya creme brulée again. I made it at St. Patrick's day, but it was a little solid. I need another try, so I picked a cherimoya that will be ripe on Friday, a good day for dessert.

At Finley farms they had dandelion greens, which would be great with the home-grown chard I was going to make into wilted greens for lunch. And fennel for crudités - Tracie was coming for lunch, and while I was planning chips and salsa as a pre-lunch snack, I wasn't sure if she was on a carb-free kick.

I resisted the wonderful spinach at South Central Farmers Cooperative, but gave in to the beautiful mustard greens from Flora Bella. You can never have too many greens.

Then McGrath Family Farms in Ventura County had small turnips with greens attached, and I remembered an Italian recipe for turnips cooked with their greens. Into my bag they went.

I picked up 2 pounds of chickpeas at Suncoast farms for our bean salad this week, and then found Jorge (the stall next to them) not only had his wonderful grapefruit, but also tangelos -- best juice ever -- and ripe avocados for guacamole during the hockey game. So much for a light day's shopping.

I was still on the hunt for celery. I won't buy celery unless it's organic and we were all out. However, I've found it disappears from the market in some months. Fortunately I had the fennel for crudités.

And at Givens farm stand I found kohlrabi. Tracie had requested it specially because she had read my kohlrabi post and really wanted to try some. Into my bag it went, along with a small box of strawberries, and I was fully weighted down. I gazed longingly at the fava beans at Tutti Frutti, but my arms were happy I had only taken two bags to the market. Next week, Larry will come with me again. After all, you can never have too many vegetables.

Toxic Fish

When I taught Environmental Health at NHC Institute in Montreal in the mid-90s, I used a comic postcard to show how toxins concentrate in animal proteins.

In the first panel were little fish, each with a toxic symbol in its belly indicating a low-level of toxicity. When a bigger fish ate a few small fish, all their toxic symbols showed up in its body. When it was eaten by a yet bigger fish, all those toxic symbols were passed on. Finally a man eating a fish dinner exploded from the concentrated toxins in one piece of fish.

The oceans have become even more dangerous since I taught that course. In addition to man-made pollutants, the warming of the oceans is causing tropical toxins to move north and infect new fish.

There was a story in the New York Times Magazine recently about a man who got ciguatera poisoning from eating barracuda in the Caribbean. An organism growing on tropical reef algae produces a toxin. As in the cartoon I showed my class, this fat-stored toxin grows more concentrated as it moves up the food chain from the algae-eating fish to the predators like shark and barracuda. When humans eat the big fish, they get ciguatera poisoning, a non-lethal but debilitating illness that can take months to recover from.

As a vegetarian, I am like the little fish who eats low down on the food chain. I probably have the equivalent of one toxic symbol in my body -- not as many as the man whose head exploded.

If you eat seafood, stick to the smaller fish, not the large predators.

And consider the consequences of your food choices on the health of the oceans. Seafood Watch, run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, explains which fish are sustainable and safe to eat, and describes fishing practices and fish migration routes. There's an iPhone app so you can carry the info to the store or restaurant with you.

Their Super Green list names ocean-friendly fish with low levels of mercury contamination and high levels of omega 3s.

When you consume fish, eat lots of liver-supporting greens, and take a moment to thank the oceans for providing you nourishment despite the devastating impact of humans.