Lunch on rue Rivoli

We enjoy wandering the streets of Paris. After a stroll through the flower market on Ile de la Cité we crossed over to rue Rivoli in search of lunch.

We found a table at a sidewalk café on the busy boulevard where we could watch pedestrians, cyclists, cars and fire engines navigate the busy street and sidewalk in front of us.

We shared a green salad, a magnificent cheese plate, and a carafe of red wine.

Is there a better way to spend a lunch hour in Paris?

The cheese was exceptional, and there was a lot of it. Our waiter was shocked we couldn't eat it all, and offered "un doggy bag." He carefully wrapped the cheese in foil so no kind touched another. We weren't sure when we would find time to eat our leftover cheese, but we dutifully carried it back to our hotel room.

Breakfast in Paris

The next morning we left our hotel in search of breakfast. A bakery down the street smelled great. We were told the croissants would be out of the oven in 2 minutes. We waited. Wow. Best croissants ever.

Dinner in Paris

Larry and I recently returned from a trip to Paris and London. While I don't have pictures of all the meals I ate, I do have some good stories which I'll share with you over the next couple of weeks.

We got into Paris later than expected because of the air traffic controllers strike. After checking into our hotel near Bvd. St. Michel, we headed out for a late dinner. Late for me - it was 10 p.m. But many people were eating at the brasseries and cafés in the neighborhood.

It is not easy to be a vegetarian in Paris. This first night I ordered a dinner salad - a large salad of many vegetables, hard boiled eggs and a mustardy vinaigrette. I asked that it come without the ham.

The waiter proudly presented me the salad with pieces of chicken on top instead of the ham. I told him actually I wanted it with no meat. "Au naturel (naked)?" he questioned. Yes, I assured him. He brought the salad back with no meat. "Tant pis pour vous, (too bad for you)" he said as he rushed off.

EWG organic list

Each year I write about the Environmental Working Group's list of the most pesticided produce in America.

This year they've added genetically modified crops to their list.

As always, let me remind you that it is always better to eat fruit and vegetables. Every cancer study out there says that people who eat more vegetables are less likely to develop cancer. So eat vegetables, even if you can't find/afford organic ones.

However, if you can avoid these heavily pesticided crops, your nervous system and endocrine system will thank you. (Most pesticides are neuro-toxic or hormone-disruptors. This includes the Weed'n'Feed and Round Up you put on your lawn. Don't do it.)

A brief aside on genetically modified organisms (gmos). Wheat, corn and soy are always gmo unless labelled non-gmo or organic. In the produce aisle, however, most foods are not gm. The exceptions are zucchini, Hawaiian papaya, and some varieties of sweet corn. EWG advises people to buy these organic in order to avoid gmos.

The good news is that sometimes really toxic pesticides are taken off the market because they can be detected on foods. Last year EWG singled out green beans because they were often contaminated with two highly toxic organophosphates. Use of these pesticides has since been restricted by the EPA. Unfortunately, non-organic leafy greens still show residues of organophosphates, and EWG recommends avoiding them.

Sadly, tests in 2008 found that some American-grown summer squash contained residues of organochlorine pesticides that were phased out of agriculture in the 1970s and 1980s. The toxic chemicals are still in the soil in some farm fields. Yet another reason to buy produce from organic farmers who feed the soil, not poison it.

Produce to avoid if not organic:
apples
celery
cherry tomatoes
cucumbers
grapes
kale / collard greens
hot peppers
imported nectarines
peaches
potatoes
spinach
strawberries
summer squash (zucchini)
sweet bell peppers

Produce that is safe to eat if not organic
(Although think of the soil and future generations)
asparagus
avocados
cabbage
cantaloupe
corn (if not gmo)
eggplant
grapefruit
kiwis
mangoes
mushrooms
onions
papayas
pineapples
peas
sweet potatoes

Get a downloadable app of this list, and donate to EWG to support their good work here.

Beet Salad

Some dishes are too simple to be called recipes. This is one of them.

Cook beets until tender. I prefer to scrub them well and then roast them in the toaster oven at 350°F until a sharp knife slides in easily - 30-60 minutes depending on the size of the beets.

Let them cool enough to peel them. Or leave the peel on - it's edible, but the beets are prettier without it. Cut off the top stem part and the thin root end and discard. Cut the beets into wedges.

Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, and crumbled goat cheese.

If you're making it ahead, stir together all but the goat cheese. Crumble that on just before eating so it doesn't turn pink.

Smoked Chilies

I was browsing the Mountain Rose Herbs website recently, putting together an order for tonic herbs, when I noticed they had smoked chili flakes. I had to buy some. Smoke is such an excellent flavoring in beans and barbecue sauce - getting chiles infused with it sounded great.

When the packet came, I opened it up and sniffed cautiously. Not cautiously enough. These chiles are hot and smoky. Yum. I added a spoonful to my favorite chili. I think I could have added even more, but I find with chiles it's best to start slowly. And it was an excellent stew. I served it with brown rice and sautéed greens.

Here's the recipe. If you don't have smoked chili flakes, you can use the regular kind. Add chili powder to your taste.

The smoked chili flakes will give a smokey flavor that will match well with the smoke of the fireworks on Fourth of July.

Chili
1 cup pinquito beans or pinto beans, dry
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 carrots, diced
1/4 cup oil
1 cup green lentils
6 tsp chili powder
1 tsp smoked flaked chiles
1 tbsp dried Mexican oregano
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp paprika
14-oz can diced tomatoes
1/4 cup tamari
salt to taste

Cook beans in plenty of boiling water until tender, about 90-120 minutes depending on how old the beans are. Drain off the water.

Sauté onion, garlic and carrot in oil until soft, about 10 minutes. Add cooked beans, dry lentils, spices and tomatoes with their liquid. Stir in 2 cups of water and bring to the boil. Simmer the chili, uncovered, for 1 hour, adding water as necessary so it doesn't dry out. Add the soy sauce and simmer another 30-60 minutes. Season with salt to taste.

Serves 6. Even better reheated the next day.

Millet and Arugula

I can never resist arugula when I see it at the farmers market.

This zesty spicy green is great with pasta. I recently stirred it into cooked millet, which improved the grain immensely.

Millet is a small round grain that is much enjoyed by budgies. Practitioners of macrobiotics say that it is the least acid-forming of all the grains.

It's a good source of magnesium, so it is a heart-healthy grain. Magnesium is known for lowering blood pressure and reducing the risk of heart attack. Millet also contains niacin to lower cholesterol. So it should be one of the grains in the rotation.

I cook it like rice - 1 cup grain to 2 cups water. It cooks in 15-20 minutes.

So it's healthy and fast to cook - it's only downside is that it's a little boring. Arugula perks it right up.

Millet and Arugula
1 tbsp oil
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 small clove garlic, chopped
1 lb arugula
3/4 cup millet
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp tamari

Sauté the onion in oil for a minute, then add garlic and cook about 4 minutes until lightly browned.

Wash, trip and coarsely chop the arugula. Stir into the pot with the salt and cook, covered, 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, toast the millet in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat until golden, about 5 minutes. The seeds will pop slightly as they cook.

Add the millet to the arugula along with 1 1/2 cups water and the tamari. Stir well, then cook, covered, over medium-low heat until the millet is tender and the liquid has been absorbed, about 20-30 minutes.

Serves 4

Stretching out the meals

As I mentioned in my last post, we came back from two weeks away to a relatively empty fridge. Three dinners loomed between us and the Sunday Hollywood Farmers Market where we would replenish our vegetables with produce from our favorite farmers.

I couldn't manage lunches, so we ate those out. But thanks to our garden, the dinners were pretty good.

Thursday night I made pesto with basil from the garden, garlic and olive oil from the pantry, and walnuts from the freezer. Tossed over pasta from the pantry, it was a great dinner.

Friday night my jet lag had lessened and I was more inspired. I pulled some cooked brown rice from the freezer before I went to work. In the evening, I whisked it with an egg and a few chard leaves from our garden. First I steamed them and chopped them coarsely then stirred them into the rice along with some salt and pepper. It went into a small casserole dish and a few slivers of old cheddar cheese were scattered on top. It was great.

Steamed carrots alongside. (Carrots last well in the fridge.)

And our out-of-control garden provided the final dish: stewed wax beans.

As you can see in the picture, the wax beans were prolific and large. (They're the green tower to the right of the blue agapanthus flowers.) The beans were too tough to steam, but excellent braised for 30 minutes until they softened and took on some additional flavor.

I trimmed them and cut them in 2-inch lengths. Then I put them in a pot with a 14-oz can of diced tomatoes and a little salt and pepper. I covered the pot and put it over medium-low heat to simmer until the beans were tender, stirring occasionally so it wouldn't stick. Just before serving I tossed in some fresh shredded basil from the garden. The slightly saucy beans were great with the rice, and you couldn't tell that they had started off tough.

That was the end of my inspiration. Saturday night we ate pizza in front of the hockey game. And then Sunday morning we replenished our fridge at the Hollywood Farmers Market.

Sunday Shopping

We returned late Wednesday night from two weeks away.

It was good to be home, but sad to look at the empty fridge. (Grapefruit, olives, carrots, one egg - not very inspiring.)

Fortunately the Hollywood Farmers Market was only a few days away. This is what we filled our bags with Sunday morning:

2 maui onions
1 red onion
6 grapefruit
15 oranges
5 red potatoes
1 sweet potato
1 red lettuce
1 green lettuce
feta
2 lb bag of white lima beans
1 pint strawberries
arugula
1 avocado
beets
parsley
1 cucumber
2 small green zucchini
1 yellow summer squash
St Benoit Yogurt: 4 small (1 plum, 2 honey, 1 lemon) and 1 quart of plain
4 ears of organic corn from Finley Farms
2 dozen eggs
fava beans in the pod from Tutti Frutti farms
asparagus
turnips with their greens
cilantro
collards
watermelon
La Bolsa Huehuetenango ground coffee from Cafe Organico
celery
2 tomatoes
spring onions
6 apples
2 peaches
2 nectarines
5 plums (3 fabulous tiny ones from Flora Bella)
3 apricots - dry farmed from Flora Bella - we ate them for breakfast

Also, plants from Jimmy for the vegetable garden
2 lettuce
1 dill
1 cilantro

It feels good to start the week with a full fridge.

Zucchini Salad

Zucchini is a pretty bland vegetable. It is good filler in brown rice casseroles, ratatouille and grilled vegetable sandwiches. But it needs some help to take the starring role.

In this simple salad, the zucchini is marinated in lemon juice, giving it zest, and then layered with parmesan cheese, making it delicious.

Only make this if you have small zucchinis - maximum 6 inches long. Any larger and they get spongy inside and even more bland-flavored. A mixture of green and yellow is nice, but remember that yellow zucchini go bad in the fridge very quickly, so use them within a day or two of purchase.

This salad is quick to make and keeps a couple of days in the fridge. When serving it as leftovers, squeeze a little more lemon juice over the zucchini to perk it up.

Zucchini Salad
3 small yellow and green zucchini
1 tbsp olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
parmesan cheese

Trim the ends off the zucchini and discard. Slice them thinly lengthwise using a mandoline. Toss with the olive oil and lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and paper. Thinly shave some parmesan on top.

Serves 2-3.

Cooked

From my old Sunset bread book -
more complicated than Pollan's way.

Michael Pollan was on Democracy Now recently promoting his latest book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.

He's always good to listen to about food politics, and his enthusiasm for making bread with the natural yeasts flying around the kitchen has inspired me to re-discover sourdough starter.

It's a fun interview. You can listen to it or read a transcript of it here: Democracy Now

Arugula and Lime Salad

Arugula is a zesty green. When you can find small leaves of wild arugula at the market, pick them up to toss with lime juice and garlic in this simple salad that gives a lift to any meal.

It also adds a boost of nutrition. Arugula is in the cruciferous family, so it has the anti-cancer benefits of cabbage and broccoli. It's also high in antioxidants, vitamin C, and bone-supporting minerals.

Arugula and Lime Salad
1 clove garlic
juice of 1 lime (about 2 tbsp)
1 tbsp cilantro
2 tbsp olive oil
1 bunch arugula (4-6 cups)

Mash garlic with a little salt. Whisk together with lime juice, cilantro and olive oil. Season to taste.

Wash and dry arugula. Remove any really thick stems. Put in a bowl. Toss with a little of the dressing, just enough to coat. Serve the extra dressing on the side.

Serves 4

Root Vegetable Salad

Move over cole slaw. You are being replaced with this healthy and beautiful grated root salad.

It's easy to make in the food processor and keeps well in the fridge, thus fulfilling the requirements for lazy summer dinners.

This is a great recipe to introduce your family to raw turnips and beets. The lemon juice cuts some of the earthy flavor, and the carrots make it sweet.

Turnips are cruciferous vegetables, so they have similar cancer-preventing substances to cabbages and broccoli. They are anti-inflammatory, good for the heart and circulatory system, and full of minerals and fiber. Beets are a good source of iron and fiber, and are great liver tonics.

Plus, just looking at the colors of this salad will make you happy!

Root Vegetable Salad
3 carrots
3 medium turnips
1 large beet
small wedge of cabbage (about 1 cup grated)
1 cup corn (thawed frozen is fine)
juice of 1 lemon

Grate the carrots, turnips, beet and cabbage in the food processor (or by hand). Tip into a bowl and stir in the corn and lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

I find this salad great as it is, but you can serve your favorite salad dressing on the side if you like.

Serves 4-6

Eden Foods Disappoints

Eden Foods, the organic food company that makes canned tomatoes, canned beans, soymilk and much more, is suing the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act.

Company CEO Michael Potter says birth control is not natural, and his company should not be required to offer it through their employee health plan. Read more here.

(The ACA requires health insurers to cover the cost of birth control at no cost to women. The Catholic Church did not want to offer its female employees birth control so an exemption was negotiated for religious organizations. The insurance companies will offer additional contraception-only plans to the employees of these institutions. If you managed to avoid this ridiculous story the first time around, you can read about the birth control controversy here.)

Eden Foods wants an exemption from having to offer birth control, the lawsuit says, because birth control "almost always involve(s) immoral and unnatural practices."

Hmm. Wonder if they think the same thing about Viagra.

Something to remember when choosing which brand of canned tomatoes to buy.

Marinated Chickpea and Red Pepper Salad

I found baby artichokes at the farmers market last week, and used them in this bean salad that was excellent for lunch and dinner.

If you can't find tiny artichokes, use one large one. It will take longer to cook. Or you can use a small jar of marinated artichoke hearts.

I pulled a roasted red pepper from the freezer. (Last November I thought I was freezing too many, but my supply is running low and this season's harvest won't be at the market for a few more months.) You can substitute a small jar of roasted red peppers if you like.

This salad would also be good with some feta cheese crumbled on top, or some fresh oregano stirred in.

Marinated Chickpea and Red Pepper Salad
1/2 cup dry chickpeas, cooked (or 1 can, drained and rinsed)
1 roasted red peppers, peeled, seeded and diced
6 baby artichokes
1/4 cup red onion, diced
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Tear the leaves from the artichokes, pare off the bottom of the stem, and cut them in half lengthwise. Pull off any thistly parts of the choke. Put them in water with lemon juice as you work so they don't go brown. Cook them in boiling water about 3 minutes until they are tender. Drain.

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Stir well. Season to taste. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

This dish keeps well in the fridge for a few days.

Serves 4-6.

Portobello Mushroom Burger

Who needs meat when you have a portobello mushroom?

I had the most delicious burger ever on Memorial Day.

It was a portobello grilled with a marinade of 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp balsamic vinegar and 1 tsp tamari. Larry did the cooking, and says he poured a little beer on it to make it extra good. I believe him, although he was drinking Corona which doesn't really have a lot of flavor.

Then I placed it on a mediocre Whole Foods bun spread with chipotle mayonnaise, and added a slice of grilled red onion and a few wedges of avocado. What a feast!

It's easy to make your own chipotle mayonnaise. Start by puréeing a small can of chipotles in adobo sauce. Store this spicy paste in a jar in the fridge and add spoonfuls to soups, stews - anything that needs a kick. Stir a little into mayonnaise along with a squirt of lemon or lime juice for a zesty spread that will improve any sandwich or burger.

Monsanto protests

People around the world protested Monsanto last weekend, even here in laid-back Los Angeles. You can read about the LA protests here.

What interests me is that most people don't know they're eating genetically-modified foods. Tofutti, Boca Burgers and Kashi were three companies singled out by protesters in Chicago. Read about it here.

Last November a proposition was on the ballot in California to require packaged foods to indicate if they contained gmos. Needless to say, a huge Monsanto marketing push helped the proposition fail.

But honestly, it had to fail. If you are eating packaged food in North America, you are eating gmos. Wheat, corn and soy are always genetically modified unless they specifically say organic or non-gmo. Plus, have you read a label recently that does not include the words "natural flavors?" These can be  gmo. They can even be animal by-products from an animal fed gmo corn. Along with corn syrup, natural flavors are the hardest ingredients to avoid in packaged foods.

Can you imagine if all the foods you normally put in your shopping cart at Whole Foods or the local grocery store suddenly were labeled "contains gmo ingredients"? Consumers would freak out. Maybe that would be a good thing, but not for the grocery store managers who would be fielding all the complaints.

The only way to avoid gmos is to eat non-processed organic food. Like the foods I write about on this blog. The more processing involved in the food you eat, the more likely it is to contain organisms you might want to avoid.

Easy Summer Suppers

This is a beautiful time of year in Southern California. Birds, butterflies, flowers - I come home from work and head out into the garden to enjoy it. And then I don't feel like coming in to cook dinner. I don't want to be cooped up in the kitchen when I can be sitting out in the cool evening air, enjoying the fragrance of the flowers, the rising moon and the birds having a last bath at dusk.

So we had a week of not eating dinner.

But that's not a good long-term nutritional plan. So I turned my mind to easy dishes that last a few days in the fridge and just need to be scooped onto a plate when it's time to eat. This has been a much better week of eating.

I planned the cold meals the same way I do our regular dinners - a bean, a grain and some vegetables. When we're ready to eat, we pull the containers from the fridge, scoop what we want on our plates, grab a fork, and head out onto the patio.

This marinated tofu lasts well in the fridge, is good eaten cold, and also can be grilled if you're feeling ambitious.

Marinated tofu

1 block firm organic tofu

2 tbsp oil

2 tsp tamari

Rinse the tofu and dry it. Cut into 1/2 inch slices and pat them dry.

Warm the oil and tamari in a skillet. Add the tofu (if it's wet the hot oil will splatter) and let cook 5-8 minutes until colored. It might go a little crisp, but that's not necessary. Flip and cook on the other side.

You can eat the slices warm, or refrigerate them to eat cold later. They're good grilled in a sandwich, diced and added to a grain dish, or eaten cold as part of a salad dinner.

Beets

I haven't posted much this month because I'm slightly burned out on writing. I just finished a major redesign on my website (you can see it here www.joycarroll.net) which I'm really happy with but it took a lot out of me (20 years of work are reflected on it).

While I was immersed in the website, I had little attention for anything else besides my practice.

Fortunately, my vegetable garden requires little of me beside watering, and I managed to keep up on that.

So when I came home from work Thursday night, I was able to head out to the garden and pick a couple of beets for dinner.

I grew these beets from seed, which impresses me. Most seeds I plant never show up.

We ate the beets less than 2 hours after I picked them, and Larry commented on how tender they were. This is a guy who used to avoid beets before he met me. He has since learned to enjoy them in small amounts, but he has never before called them tender. There is nothing like homegrown food!

I cut the leaves from the roots and cooked them separately. The roots were scrubbed and put in a covered casserole in the toaster oven at 375°F for about 45 minutes until they were tender. I then peeled them and we ate them with butter and salt and pepper. Yum.

The leaves I washed, cut off the long stems, and combined with turnips greens and radish greens from the farmers market. I sautéed some onion in olive oil, threw in the washed and chopped greens, stirred in salt and pepper, put the lid on, and let it cook 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the greens were wilted and delicious.

I had found some lentil loaf in the freezer the night before, and defrosted it overnight in the fridge. I shaped it into burgers and fried it in a little olive oil. Along with some mashed potatoes and the beets and greens, it made for excellent and healthy comfort food.

Why avoid gmos

I haven't written much about genetically-modified organisms because they just make me mad.

But driving home yesterday I heard an excellent interview on Ian Masters's show (kpfk pacifica radio) about the side effects of gmos as discovered through animal research, and how these studies are systematically suppressed.

My favorite line came in reference to last year's failed campaign to require labeling of gmo foods in California.

Monsanto and other agribusiness campaigned heavily to not require gmo labeling. Yet if gmos were really good for us, then companies would be rushing to label their food "contains gmos" and would see an upsurge in consumer purchasing. After all, it's worked in the organic marketplace. All sorts of companies are using organic ingredients so they can get that all-important "Organic" on their label and boost sales. Somehow, despite huge advertising blitzes, agribusiness has not been able to convince consumers that eating gmos is a good thing. So they have to hide their franken-ingredients instead of promote them.

(The sad thing, of course, is that they're hiding them in everything. If you eat non-organic wheat, corn, soy, or corn syrup - you're eating gmos. And natural flavorings can be genetically modified - and can contain animal parts. If you're eating restaurant or packaged food in America, you're eating gmos.)

You can listen to the podcast of the interview by clicking here or by going to ianmasters.com and scrolling to the April 10, 2013 show - it's the 3rd segment that is on gmos.