Quick Tomato Sauce

I always have a couple of cans of Muir Glen organic diced tomatoes on hand to throw into soups, bean dishes, stews, and this great tomato sauce.

You could make the sauce with fresh tomatoes, but using canned ones makes this a quick meal from the pantry. And it tastes better than any spaghetti sauce out of a jar.

This is not the traditional tomato sauce cooked for hours over a hot stove. It takes under 15 minutes to make, and has a fresh zestiness that perks up any meal.

Don't limit it to pasta. Stir it into cooked cannellini beans or brown rice or barley for a great main dish. Pour it over cooked spaghetti squash or baked potatoes. It is a natural with any kind of cooked greens like chard or mustard greens. On toasted baguette. Poured over polenta. Your imagination is the limit.

When I made this last week I used a roasted red pepper in place of the orange bell pepper. You could use any kind of pepper, or you could use a diced carrot instead for the color and sweetness. I also added a hungarian hot pepper from our garden that gave the sauce a little kick.

If you don't have shallots, use four spring onions or a quarter cup of diced sweet Maui or Walla Walla onions. You could even use regular onion - whatever you have. The white wine adds a depth of flavor (I used a pinot gris) but you can leave it out if you prefer. If you have fresh basil, chop a handful to add near the end of cooking.

This recipe makes a little under 2 cups of sauce, enough for 1/2 lb of pasta.

Tomato Sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
2 shallots, minced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup white wine
1 orange bell pepper, diced small
14 oz can diced tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add shallots and cook one minute. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add wine and bell pepper and cook until wine evaporates, about 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes with their juice. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is reduced in half, about 10 minutes.

I know, it's too simple. But give it a try, using good ingredients. You'll be surprised.

Beans with Fresh Sage

When we moved into our house a few years ago, I planted a small English sage plant next to the orange tree. It has thrived, turning into a thicket that is covered in purple flower spikes every spring. The hummingbirds love it, as do the honeybees. It cascades out over our steps, creating a mass of buzzing purple for a couple of months each year.

Sage has a wonderful warm smell, and is a good base note in cooking.

Medicinally, it is antiseptic and boosts the immune system. So if you have a sore throat, pick a few leaves (or use some dried ones), pour boiling water over them, and let steep 10-15 minutes. Strain and then gargle with the warm liquid. Or drink it as a tea during cold season to boost your immune system. It's a natural estrogen promoter, so it is useful during and after menopause. And it's traditionally used by nursing mothers who want to stop their milk production after their baby is weaned.

This is an example of the many health-promoting properties that can exist in one plant -- yet another reason to eat lots of plants.

My favorite recipe using sage is this Italian one for beans. If you've been waiting for an opportunity to try cooking dried beans, this is the recipe to make the leap with. Because the beans are cooked in the sauce, they absorb the flavors and become delicious. They don't taste of sage, but it adds a depth to the flavor. If your family likes baked beans, they'll like these tomato-y ones.

This is a great Sunday-night bean dish. I cook it in the morning, and then reheat it in the evening. It's also good at room temperature on these warm summer evenings. Serve it with bread to soak up the sauce, and some wilted greens to add color and nutrients.

I use large white lima beans in this recipe, but you can use cannellini or whatever white bean you can find. Soaking the beans eliminates the need to cook them in a large pot of boiling water. Instead, the beans are cooked in a small amount of water, and you get all the nutrients as well as the flavor.

I adapted the recipe from Contorni by Susan Simon, a lovely book of Italian side dishes.

Beans with Fresh Sage
1/2 lb dried white beans
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, smashed then peeled
6 fresh sage leaves
2 cups water
14-oz can diced tomatoes, drained
1/2 teaspoon salt

Put the beans in a large bowl with 4 inches of water to cover. Let soak 8 hours or overnight. Drain and rinse the beans.

Warm the olive oil over medium heat. Add the smashed garlic and whole sage leaves and cook, stirring occasionally, 2-3 minutes to flavor the oil. Add the drained beans and stir to coat them with the oil. Add the water, lower the heat, and simmer partially-covered for 45 minutes. Add the drained tomatoes and simmer until the beans are cooked but still hold their shape, about 45 minutes more. They will be tender and slightly saucy. Stir in the salt and serve hot, or let cool and serve at room temperature.

The finished dish can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 4 days and reheated as needed.

Blackberries

Gloomy June mornings find me dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, edging into our fruit cage to pick blackberries. There is nothing like fresh berries on our morning fruit.

These berry bushes were given to me by a friend who calls them black raspberries. I don't know if they're olallieberries or boysenberries or blackberries -- but I do know they are delicious. And prickly.

They fruit on second-year canes (as do all blackberries), so while I'm picking berries off the canes tied up to the trellis, new canes are surging around my feet (hence the jeans). When this year's berries are finished, I will cut back the canes that fruited and tie the new canes up to the trellis.

It's a labor of love and prickles, made even more challenging by the netting we have to set up so the mockingbirds, orioles, bulbuls and squirrels don't get my precious berries. (They feast on the loquats hanging overhead instead.)

I first remember picking blackberries at the bottom of our garden in a London suburb (this was before we moved to Canada when I was five). The key was to tug gently on a berry - if it didn't come away it wasn't ripe yet. We fingered and tugged and ate, juice staining our fingers. I'm not sure if any berries ever made it to the kitchen.

When I visited my brother in Vancouver years ago, he fed me a crumble made from wild blackberries he picked along the local railway tracks. Denis Cotter writes of picking blackberries on rambles through the Cork countryside, although he bemoans the excess development that is taking away the country lanes.

This is the first year our bushes have produced an abundance of berries, enough that I can consider baking with them. I sat this morning browsing my English cookbooks with a bowl of blackberries by my side -- crumbles, pies, tarts -- and then I noticed there were no berries left in the bowl. They are so delicious raw, why bother baking with them at all?

So I made vanilla ice cream and sprinkled some berries over the top. I'm considering making a blackberry ripple ice cream - pressing some berries through a sieve and layering them with the ice cream in a pan. But I'm not sure the berries will make it into the sieve.

This is the recipe I use for vanilla ice cream. It came with the Donvier hand-cranked ice cream maker my mother gave me years ago. My Snoopy ice cream maker only holds a pint, which is more than enough for two people. You can double the recipe if your ice cream maker holds a quart.

Remember that dairy products should be organic to minimize exposure to hormones. I use organic vanilla essence from Watkins.

Ice cream is a wonderful summer treat, not a daily indulgence. So when you're going to eat it, make sure it is the best. And make it into almost health food by sprinkling fresh berries on top.

Vanilla Ice Cream
1 egg
1/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla

Beat eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until thick and cream-colored. Stir in milk, cream and vanilla until well-mixed. Pour into ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Makes 1 pint

Lemonade

Sitting in the shade of a tree with a good book and a glass of home-made lemonade is one of the pleasures of summer Sunday afternoons.

Usually I drink water, sometimes with a squirt of lemon. It's thirst-quenching, healthful and natural.

I find most bottled beverages -- sodas, iced teas, fruit juices -- are overly sweet and taste of the chemicals they're made from. I bet if you avoided them for a month and then tasted one, you would notice the chemical flavor front and center.

So water it is.

But as a summer treat, it's hard to beat lemonade. It's too sweet to drink with a meal, but as a break on a hot afternoon, poured over ice, garnished with a sprig of lemon verbena, it makes a wonderful drink.

This recipe is from an old library book: Family Circle's Recipes America Loves Best. It's quite strong so when it's poured over a full glass of ice, it will still taste good as the ice melts. (I tend to fill my glass with ice, then half water and the rest lemonade.)

The birds like to preen in our lemon tree after bathing, so I wash our lemons well before I use them. If your lemons come from a store, scrub them with a little dish soap before using the peel.

I make a few batches of lemonade at a time and freeze them after adding the lemon juice. When I want to serve lemonade, I defrost a batch and stir in the 4 cups cold water. I probably lose a few nutrients in the freezer, but it's healthier, more delicious, and just as quick to make as any of the frozen juices you can find in the store. And it's real food.

Freshly made, it will last a week in the fridge, if you can hide it from your thirsty family.

Real Lemonade
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup water
thin rind of 2 lemons (use a potato peeler, and just get the yellow, not the white)
1 cup lemon juice (from 3-5 lemons)
4 cups ice water

Combine sugar, one cup water and lemon rind in a saucepan over medium heat. Gently bring to a boil and cook until sugar is dissolved and mixture is syrupy. This will take 8-10 minutes. Remove the lemon rind and let the syrup cool to room temperature.

Add the lemon juice. (It can be frozen at this point.)

Pour into a pitcher and add 4 cups of cold water. Stir well.

Serve over ice cubes in tall glasses. Garnish with a sprig of lemon balm or mint, and a slice of lemon.

Makes 6 3/4 cups lemonade.

Bloomsday

Before we went to Ireland last year, Larry read James Joyce’s Ulysses; it was a multi-month project. He then arranged our trip so we would be in Dublin a year ago today, June 16th, Bloomsday, the day on which the story of Ulysses takes place.

The lead character in the book, Leopold Bloom, stopped at Davy Byrne’s pub for lunch that day in 1904. He had a gorgonzola sandwich and a glass of burgundy. It helped take his mind off the fact that his wife was having an affair with Blazes Boylan.

Bloomsday is quite the celebration in Dublin, the city which Joyce so accurately described in Ulysses. People dressed in turn-of-the-century outfits and pubs throughout the city sold gorgonzola sandwiches. We took a tour with a young actor (a student at Trinity College) who led us along part of the route Leopold Bloom had taken through Dublin that day, and read to us from the book at each stop.

We went to readings in Temple Bar, and immersed ourselves in the Bloomsday spirit, yet somehow I managed not to have a gorgonzola sandwich for lunch. I think the idea of it intimidated me somehow. How good can a gorgonzola sandwich be?

Well, I made one recently as an experiment, and I have to say it was awfully good.

The sandwich started with home-made Irish bread. The best bread I had in Ireland was made by the innkeeper at Iskeroon, a bed-and-breakfast we stayed at on the Ring of Kerry. He added pin oats (finely ground oats sold here as Scottish oatmeal by Bob’s Red Mill) for extra taste and texture.

I adapted this recipe from Coming Home to Cook by Mary Sheehan, an Irish American who moved to the west of Ireland to live near her kin. I bought the book in the west coast fishing village of Dingle, south of The Burren where Sheehan now lives.

It is a quick bread that tastes more like a yeast bread than a soda bread, probably because of the yogurt that helps the rising. I have made it in a 10-inch round cake pan, but for sandwiches I used a regular loaf pan. The bread makes wonderful sandwiches and toast, and it freezes well.

I bought some gorgonzola at Trader Joe's, and I'll make sandwiches for our dinner tonight, with a small salad and a glass of red wine. We'll cut our sandwiches into slender strips, and toast James Joyce, who brought early 20th century Dublin to life.


Irish Brown Bread
1 1/2 cups white flour
3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup pin oats
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 egg
2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt
1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Beat the egg with the yogurt and milk. Add to dry ingredients and mix well. Pour into a well-greased pan - either a 10" round cake pan or 9x4 loaf pan. (Mound the dough in the center of the loaf pan - it will seem like it will overflow the loaf pan, but it won't.)

Bake the round pan for at least 40 minutes and the loaf for 1-3/4 hours. You will know it's cooked when a wooden skewer inserted into the middle comes out with just a few crumbs on it.

Let the loaf cool for a few minutes before removing it from the pan. Set it on a rack to cool to room temperature before slicing.

Famous Vegetarians

Over the course of our marriage, I’ve gotten to observe the daily challenges (and benefits) of Joy’s vegetarian diet. It seems easy when the food is prepared at home. Not so easy when you’re traveling or trying out new restaurants with your vegetarian wife.

In looking for something entirely unrelated, I stumbled upon this list of famous vegetarians on Wikipedia.

Vegetarians always get the rap that they’re weak and sickly from improper nutrition. But Superman was a vegetarian. Hah!

Here are some golden oldie vegetarians: Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Leonardo Da Vinci, Sir Issac Newton, and Albert Einstein. I guess the veggies are good for the brain.

And here are some other people on the list: Gustav Mahler, Franz Kafka, Bob Marley, Leo Tolstoy, three out of four Beatles, Johnny Appleseed, John Coltrane.

Not bad company at all.

Granola

On these bright summer mornings, who wants to linger over breakfast? There are places to go, gardens to play in. A quick but nourishing bowl of cold cereal fits the bill, especially if you can take it outside and sprinkle it with fresh-picked berries.

But don't waste your time and money on packaged cereals from the grocery store. Instead, make your own with inexpensive wholesome ingredients from the health food store.

Nuts and seeds keep your heart healthy because they’re rich in unsaturated fats, including monounsaturated fats, as well as Vitamin E, fiber, folic acid, and other B vitamins. Buy raw nuts and toast them yourself - the pre-roasted kind may contain trans fats.

Oats contribute fiber, both soluble and insoluble, which lowers cholesterol, among other health benefits.

Add dried fruit to taste, but avoid the sweetened kinds like cranberries and blueberries (why they have to add sugar to dried blueberries I do not know). You don't want to have a sugar spike then crash in your morning. Instead use unsweetened dried fruit - plenty sweet but with a complex sugar that burns more slowly in the body, providing fuel for the whole morning.

This cereal is dense, so a half to three-quarters cup will be enough. Chew it well - carbohydrates are broken down by enzymes in your saliva, and you want to get maximum nutrition from this delicious breakfast. Eat it with soy, rice, oat or almond milk. Add berries or chopped fresh fruit to your bowl if you like. A sprinkling of ground flaxseed. Some yogurt. Variations are only limited by your imagination.

This is a good basic recipe from John Robbins’ classic book May All Be Fed. You can vary the grains, nuts and fruit to taste. You could add 1/2 cup soy flour before baking for extra protein. I can rarely find organic wheat germ, so I use wheat bran or oat bran instead, or sometimes just omit it entirely.

Nutty Sunny Granola
3 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup wheat germ
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped dates
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup maple syrup.

Combine oats, wheat germ, walnuts, and seeds. Spread on 2 baking sheets and cook at 275°F for 15 minutes. Stir and bake another 15 min.

Pour into a bowl. Stir in dates, raisins and cinnamon. Slowly stir in maple syrup.

Let cool completely before storing in an airtight container. Makes 6 cups. This will stay fresh in the cupboard for 3-4 weeks.

Black Beans

We had a great cook-out on Memorial Day weekend. Larry cooked my portobello mushroom to perfection, the potato salad was delicious, and the black beans were out of this world.

It was Larry who introduced me to the idea of beans with hamburgers. When we first moved to Pasadena I headed to the library to find a good recipe for this bizarre use of beans. The one I've used ever since is from the Williams Sonoma Vegetarian cookbook.

The beans cook in an afternoon, and taste even better the next day. They store in the fridge for a week, and they freeze well, so I can make sure to always have some on hand. They are great in burritos, or with rice and vegetables. Or you can serve them as soup - add extra stock, purée some to get the texture you like, and serve with hot sauce on the side.

Best of all, these black beans are delicious.

The key to the good flavor is the sofrito added to the beans after they are cooked. So while cooking the dried beans with pepper and onions enhances their flavor, you could make this recipe with canned black beans and it would still be great. Drain 4 14-oz cans of black beans and rinse them thoroughly. Put them in a saucepan with 2 cups of water or stock. Bring to a boil and then continue the recipe with the frying of the cilantro and garlic.

I used one of my homegrown poblano peppers in place of the green pepper. The white wine is a little better than Two Buck Chuck, but nothing too expensive or oaky. A sauvignon blanc or a fruity gewurtztraminer would be good. All the alcohol burns off but the flavor is left. If you prefer not to use alcohol, use an equal amount of vegetable stock.

Black Beans
2 cups dried black beans, picked over and rinsed
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 large green pepper, seeded, deribbed, and cut into 1/2 inch dice
1/4 cup olive oil
6 cloves garlic, peeled but not chopped
3/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 1/2 tsps dried oregano
salt
pepper
1/2 cup white wine

Soak beans for 3 hours in water to cover by at least 3 inches. They'll expand a lot and you don't want the top ones to get dry.

Drain the beans and place in a saucepan with the onion, bell pepper, and water to cover by 2 inches. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, until the beans are tender, about 1 hour. Add hot water from the kettle as needed so the beans are always covered by water. Remove from the heat. Do not pour off the liquid.

Warm the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed frypan over medium heat. Add the garlic, cilantro, brown sugar, cumin, oregano, 1 1/2 tsp salt, and ground pepper to taste. Sauté, stirring occasionally, until the garlic is golden, about 10 minutes.

Add the white wine. Simmer over high heat until the wine is reduced by one-fourth, about 5 minutes. Add to the beans and simmer, uncovered, about 15 minutes until the beans are hot and most of the liquid is evaporated.

Serves 6

Fresh Peas

A few weeks ago I told you that the white-crowned sparrows ate my tiny pea plants down to the ground. I was unamused, and invested in many yards of bird netting.

And last Sunday, we ate peas. Fresh from the garden.

So fresh, in fact, that I didn't even cook them. I picked them (all six pods) and arranged them artfully in the middle of the dinner table. We shelled them and popped the raw fresh-picked peas right into our mouths. Wow. Even Larry, not a pea-lover, admitted to really enjoying these peas.

Why were they so good? Because they were freshly picked, unlike any we will find at a market or a farm stand. Barely an hour went by between picking and eating, so the sugar content was still high. Plus more nutrients than I can think of.

Anything eaten fresh from the garden tastes better, as all home gardeners know.

And goodness knows I wasn't going to destroy that fresh pea taste and crunch by cooking them. When I want cooked peas, I buy frozen organic peas at Trader Joe's. Cheaper, less work, and a satisfactory taste and texture.

It reminded me of a question a friend asked me recently. She knows that blueberries are highly nutritious, and wondered if it was better to feed her family a small amount of the expensive organic fresh blueberries or a larger (and more affordable) amount of the cheaper pesticided blueberries.

My answer is to buy fresh organic blueberries to eat straight-up -- raw, out of your hand or with other fruit or yogurt or ice cream. If you want blueberries for smoothies or for baking, buy organic frozen berries. They are less expensive and in those uses you won't benefit from the fresh flavor, nutrients and enzymes of the organic raw berries. Pesticides are never beneficial.

Of course, ideally we would all be able to pick our own blueberries from our own backyard bushes. And then we'd appreciate that blueberries, like peas, have a short but delicious season.

Bowl of cherries

I loved cherries as a child growing up in the suburbs of Montreal. We ate them on the back deck, seeing who could spit the pits farthest into the flowerbeds, hoping a cherry tree would magically grow. The firm skin and juicy insides with that subtle cherry flavor were made to be popped raw and whole into the mouth.

Dexterity was required to chew the cherries without cracking teeth on the pits and to suck them clean before spitting -- no, really blowing -- them out across the lawn. Cherries and watermelon are the original foods as entertainment -- no chemicals required.

I couldn't figure out why the candies labelled cherry-flavored tasted nothing like cherries. Even cherry pastries and cherry pie left me cold.

But fresh cherries straight up - I loved them.

Part of the fun was probably their short season - 2-3 weeks, then no more until next year. Isn't it true that we have more appreciation when the anticipation lasts longer than the reward?

As a young adult with multiple-chemical sensitivities, I avoided cherries because of their high level of pesticides. Even now, cherries are among the most heavily-sprayed fruits and should be avoided.

Every June I walk through the farmers market looking at the piles of pesticided cherries and thinking wistfully of the cherries of my childhood. Sure I'm strong enough now that I could eat a few toxic cherries with little ill effect, but how could I explain to the ladybugs and bees that were killed by the sprays that I gave money to the farmer who poisoned them?

So my memories of cherries have been just that, memories, until last week when I found a stall at the Hollywood Farmers Market selling organic cherries. Delicious deep black and ruby red organic cherries. I bought a pound, took them home, and ate them outside (although I did not spit the seeds into the flowerbeds). They were just as good as I remembered, and I sent thanks to the farmer who had the foresight to stop spraying the trees and instead let nature do its work.

Corn Muffins

Corn muffins are great with chili, scrambled eggs, vegetable stews, black beans. Whenever you don't feel like brown rice with your main dish, corn muffins are a great alternative, and they're quick to make.

Some corn muffins are fluffy, suitable as a substitute for a dinner roll.

These muffins are dense and a little dry, which I find a good companion for chili. I serve them with chili for dinner and then the next morning for breakfast with scrambled eggs.

Last time I baked a batch I turned half of it into Spicy Cheese Corn Muffins. I followed the recipe below and poured half the batter into muffin tins for plain corn muffins. I then added a scant quarter cup of grated Mike's Firehouse Cheddar to the batter left in the bowl, stirred as little as possible to distribute the cheese while not overmixing, and then poured it into muffin tins. I topped the spicy cheese muffins with a slice of pickled jalapeno so I could tell which were which.

You could make the whole batch into Spicy Cheese Corn Muffins by stirring a half cup of your favorite spicy cheese into the batter before putting it in the muffin tins. (I buy Mike's Firehouse Cheddar at the Spring Hill Cheese stall at the Hollywood Farmers Market. It's made from organic milk from Jersey Cows, and it has a kick! You could use jalapeño jack instead.)

This recipe makes 7-9 muffins. Pour a little water into the empty muffin cups before you put the pan in the oven.

Corn Muffins
1 egg
2 tbsp oil
1 1/2 tbsp honey
1/2 cup water
6 tbsp whole wheat flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 425°. Stir together the egg, oil, honey and water.

Separately, combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt.

Pour egg mixture into flour mixture and stir just until combined.

Fill greased muffin cups 3/4 full. Bake about 15 minutes until lightly golden and a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out with a few small crumbs attached.

Makes 7-9 muffins.

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.