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.

Curried Squash Soup

Winter squashes are beautiful. Yet who can be bothered with all that peeling. And the thought of chopping the big ones leads to fears of finger loss.

Fortunately, there is an easier way.

I wash and dry the squash, then roast it whole in the oven. Once it's cooked it cuts and peels easily, and it's a matter of moments to discard the seeds and scoop out the pulp. You can save energy by cooking an oven full of squashes.

The pulp freezes well, and is great in quick breads or pancakes, cheesecake or creme brulée. You can substitute squash for canned pumpkin in any recipe. I always have at least one 1/2 cup container of squash purée in my freezer. (And I never buy canned pumpkin.)

Winter squash is high in beta carotene which is healing to the entire digestive tract. It soothes the villi in the small intestine, healing the inflammation of diverticulitis, and lessening autoimmune reactions.

I like to combine the sweetness of squash with the spicy heat of curry or chiles. This fragrant curry soup is a favorite when I want a soothing meal after a stressful day. A bowlful scintillates the tastebuds and fills the tummy. (If I want more scintillating, I add hot sauce to my bowl.) Leftovers freeze well.

This soup is very thick. Add more water or stock if you prefer a thinner soup.

Vary the squash based on what you find in the market. Measure the cooked pulp and adjust the quantities of the other ingredients accordingly.

Curried Squash Soup
1 acorn, 1 small butternut and 1 turban squash
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 large onion
3 cloves garlic
1 tbsp curry powder
1 cup vegetable stock (see post Feb. 2010 for a good vegetable stock recipe)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Wash and dry squash, place on a cookie sheet, and roast until a knife slips in easily, about 45 minutes.

Let the squash cool, then cut each in half, remove the seeds and strings, and scoop out the flesh in chunks. You should have about 4 cups.

Fry the onion and garlic in olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the curry powder and stir one minute. Add squash and vegetable stock and stir well.

Cook until hot. Puree or mash as needed, and add extra broth or stock to get the desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with hot sauce on the side.

Makes 6-8 servings.

The Thrill of Fresh Citrus

The heaviest bags we haul home from the Hollywood Farmers Market are those that hold the citrus for Larry to hand-squeeze into juice for Sunday brunch.

He uses the Juice-O-Mat we found at the Pasadena City College Flea Market. My mother used one just like it to make fresh orange juice in the 1970s.

The juice Larry makes is more interesting.

He recently combined tangelos and blood oranges with Sierra Gold, Dancy and Page tangerines. Our niece Tracie joined us for brunch and said it was the best juice she ever tasted.

Commercially manufactured juice is formulated to always taste the same. How boring. Our juice varies from week to week, depending on the varieties of fruit available and how sweet or tart each piece of fruit is.

We only drink orange juice on Sundays. On other days we eat our breakfast fruit. Juice is not a whole food - it lacks fiber and the nutrients in the pith.

Also, it's important to chew fruit in order to fully digest it. Fruit is a carbohydrate, and the human body uses the enzymes in saliva to start the carbohydrate-digesting process. Swallowing fruit as juice or smoothies prevents the salivary enzymes from doing their work. The pancreatic enzymes in the small intestine have to do all the digesting of the juice. This is hard on the body and hard on the pancreas.

So it is better to eat fruit on a daily basis, and save fruit juice for a treat.

And if you squeeze your own juice from a variety of citrus, it will be a very special treat.

Nibbles

Larry and I like to spend Sunday evenings by the fire with the weekend papers.

It's nice to have something to nibble on while reading. Sometimes it's cheese and crackers, or Larry's fresh-popped popcorn.

Recently I served a plate of fresh spring vegetables alongside some tangy goat's milk feta. I really liked it. Larry found it a little challenging.

The vegetables were a medley of green and white. Radish-sized turnips with their spicy tender greens attached, leftover diced and cooked kohlrabi, slivers of sweet fennel, and shelled young fava beans.

The salty richness of the feta was a great foil for the spicy, sweet and pungent flavors of the vegetables.

I like food that activates my tastebuds and offers diversity in each mouthful. This appetizer plate fits the bill.

Asparagus Risotto

Risotto has a reputation for being time-consuming and complicated -- something to only be eaten in restaurants. But actually the best risottos are made at home.

I find it an easy dinner to cook. I stand at the stove with a glass of wine, gently stirring for the 30 minutes or so it takes to make good risotto. The stirring is not continuous. I can do dishes, make salad or steam vegetables at the same time.

It is possible to partially cook risotto ahead and then slowly stir in the last of the hot stock ten minutes before dinner. (I think this is what restaurants do.) It takes a little practice to get your consistency and timing right, but even over-cooked risotto is delicious if made with good ingredients.

Use whatever vegetables you have on hand. The essentials are arborio rice and a good stock.

I buy eco-farmed arborio rice at Granny’s Pantry on Arroyo in Pasadena. Lundberg Farms grows it north of Sacramento, CA. It’s not organic, but the Lundbergs have an earth-centered approach to farming, and it doesn't travel far to get to me. Find it at your health food store or order from their website. On the East coast, look for organic arborio imported from Italy.

The vegetable stock is homemade. The asparagus is from the Suncoast Farms Stand at the Hollywood Farmers' Market. Our garden provided the garnish of mint, chives and nasturtium flowers, and of course the lemon.

You can use any vegetables in risotto. Fresh or frozen peas can replace the asparagus. Mushrooms are good, added with the shallots. Don't add too many, though. The risotto experience is based on the rice - rich and creamy, each grain separate yet held together in the broth.

Taste the risotto often as you near the end of cooking. That's the best way to know when you have the texture you like.

I make enough risotto to have leftovers for a quick dinner later in the week. I form handfuls into burgers, coat them in breadcrumbs, and fry them in a little olive oil until they are warm in the middle and crispy on the outside.

Asparagus Risotto
1 cup arborio rice
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
2 shallots, diced (or 6 spring onions or 1 leek)
1/2 cup white wine (optional, but it adds flavor)
3 cups vegetable stock
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed, stems chopped, tips reserved
1/3 cup parmesan (optional, add salt to taste it you omit it)
1/2 tsp shredded lemon peel
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp black pepper
fresh mint, chives and nasturtium flowers for garnish (optional)

Bring the vegetable stock to a boil in a covered pan and let it simmer on the back of the stove.

Melt the butter and olive oil over gentle heat. Add shallots and cook until they soften. Add the arborio rice and cook over medium heat, stirring, about 5 minutes until it starts to turn pale golden. Add the wine and stir until absorbed. Add the asparagus stems, then start adding the stock, 1/2 cup at a time. Stir frequently, adding stock as it’s absorbed. Cook until the rice is tender and creamy. You might not need all the stock, or you might need to add boiling water from the kettle.

When the risotto is almost done, add the asparagus tips.

When it is creamy with still a little texture to the rice, stir in the parmesan, lemon peel, juice, and black pepper.

Serve in warmed bowls garnished with mint, chives, nasturtium flowers, or a little lemon zest or grated parmesan.

Makes 4 servings

Roasting on the Stove

I ate the most delicious roast parsnips and carrots the other day, and I didn't have to turn on the oven.

My mother made them in my cast iron fry pan on the stove.

I'll be using this technique often.

The parsnips came from Tutti Frutti at the Hollywood Farmers Market. They were the most slender parsnips I've ever seen. Mum cut them into sticks about 3 inches long and between 1/4 and 1/2 an inch wide. She cut carrots (from the Givens Farm stand) to match.

Meanwhile my cast iron fry pan was warming over low heat on the stove. She added enough olive oil to glisten the bottom and then the vegetables in one layer. She let them cook until lightly browned and then turned them and cooked them some more, for a total of 10-15 minutes, until they were fragrant. Next she added 1/2 cup water, covered the frypan with a saucepan lid, and let them steam until tender.

They were a great vegetable side dish, although I confess to having eaten many of them out of the pan before dinner was served.


There's nothing like a cast iron fry pan. This recipe won't work in non-stick -- and let's not start on the chemicals involved in the non-stick process (at least in this post). Berg Hardware in Pasadena -- corner of Altadena and Villa -- currently has a great selection of Lodge cast iron pans.

Pollan Season

In my last guest post, I wrote about my growing awareness of local and organic food advocates such as Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. Joy knows I’m still mad at her for not pointing out Jamie Oliver when she saw him shopping at the Hollywood Farmers Market last year. She’s dazzled by rutabagas, not celebrity.

Michael Pollan is on a promotion tour for Food, Inc. (see post March 2010). We’ve heard him on Fresh Air and Democracy Now, both of which can be downloaded as podcasts. He was on Oprah this week, and writes on Huffington Post about Oprah’s battle with the cattle industry. Pollan feels that Oprah “waded back into food politics” in a courageous way by having him on her show.

Joy and I both admire Pollan’s remarkable ability to fight the big money of agri-business and the meat industry armed with only facts, common sense, and a calm and intelligent speaking style. He takes on outrageous crimes against Nature knowing that he would lose his platform if he could ever be painted as shrill or extremist. He is neither.

Pollan’s interview on Huffington Post is framed with an interesting array of old photos of food producers and meat packers. There are more pictures of slaughterhouses and butchers than I would like. I won’t even show the site to Joy -- she couldn’t take it. (The pictures were chosen by Huffington Post, not Pollan.)

But if you’re a meat eater like me, these pictures force you to acknowledge the reality of the all-American meat-eating diet. Pollan isn’t a vegetarian, but he does choose his meat carefully, and eats only grass-fed beef and free-range chicken.

I used to gloss over those terms, feeling they were trendy marketing ploys. But after reading Fast Food Nation and watching Food, Inc., I find myself paying more attention to the meat that I buy. And I find myself appreciating every opportunity to listen to Michael Pollan. He certainly gets my wife’s stamp of approval.

Watercress and Barley Soup

It's easy to get stuck in the brown rice rut. Yet there are so many other great grains to eat. Recently I've been diversifying the grain in our diet, and have re-discovered the pleasure of barley.

I made barley soup last week to welcome my mother who’s visiting from Montreal.

Travelling can leave one slightly queasy, and barley is good for settling upset stomachs. I remember as a child being given barley sugar sweets to ease carsickness. And babies are traditionally fed barley water for colic.

Barley also provides long-term health benefits. A US Department of Agriculture study shows that the soluble fiber in barley reduces cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol (especially the bad LDL). Barley also helps balance blood sugar.

Just as you can buy brown rice or white rice, you can buy hulled or pearled barley.

Hulled barley is less processed, with only the tough outer hull removed. At my local health food store I found Health Best organic hulled barley (also called whole barley or scotch or pot barley). This has the bran intact, like brown rice. It’s more nutritious, a little chewier, and takes a little longer to cook than pearled barley.

Arrowhead Mills makes an organic pearled barley which has the bran shaved off so it has a little less fiber, but is still nutritious. (And honestly, to me it looks the same as the Health Best hulled barley.) Regular supermarket pearled barley is just the small white starchy center of the grain - don’t bother with it.

Barley takes between 45 and 60 minutes to cook. The way to know when it's done is to taste a grain.

This is the sprightly spring soup I served my mother. The watercress enhances the lemony taste, but you could substitute arugula or spinach if necessary.

A lot of the flavor comes from the vegetable stock. Chop the greens finely just before adding to the soup to conserve nutrients and keep their fresh flavor.

Watercress Barley Soup
2 tbsp olive oil
10 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup hulled barley
4 cups water or vegetable stock (I used 2 cups stock and 2 cups water)
2 cups finely chopped watercress (leaves and stems)
1 tbsp lemon juice

Sauté garlic in olive oil until lightly browned. Add barley and stock. Simmer until the barley is tender but still a little chewy, about an hour. At this point it can wait until you’re ready to eat. Then reheat the soup, adding extra water if necessary. Stir in the watercress and lemon juice, and cook for five minutes until the greens are soft. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 3-4 as a meal.