Thanksgiving Muffins

Thanksgiving Muffins have cross-species appeal!

This is one our favorite meals!

It all started when we threw some leftovers together in a pan with some butter and broth. We liked it so much that we now cook it intentionally from scratch.

Ingredients:

• Mashed potatoes (made with butter, salt and milk)
• Mashed butternut squash (mixed in with the potatoes)
• Baked chicken (we prefer thighs (cooked with skin and bones). We bake them until the meat falls off the bone and is swimming in juices).
• Sweet corn
• Quinoa
• Boxed stuffing (we prepare it in butter per the directions but use bone broth instead of water).

The only seasoning we add is Himalayan pink salt in addition to the seasonings that come with the stuffing and broth.

Pre-cook everything separately then assemble: Mash up the potatoes and squash first. Then add the quinoa. After that, it all goes in: chicken, corn and stuffing. Drizzle in some juices from the chicken pan. That's pretty much it!

For a crispy texture, fry it in a pan with some butter or bake it in buttered muffin tins.

Serve with a dollop of cranberry jelly!

Yum!

Why make muffins?

You might ask why we would take the extra step to mix all these ingredients together instead of just enjoying them separately like a regular Thanksgiving-style meal.  Here's why:

1. It's great toddler food!  Our 18-month old can grab little chunks of muffin mush and handle them very well. She would not have quite the same luck with, say, a serving of cooked quinoa by itself or mashed potatoes. Also, she probably wouldn't eat some of these ingredients unless they were disguised:  For example, she generally refuses most meats but will eat them in this way.

2. It's portable. My wife gets looks of envy from her colleagues when she brings a couple of these muffins to work for lunch. Once they are made, they're easy grab-n-go food.

Variations

We have incorporated sweet potatoes and baked beans at various times and still loved it. You can pretty much experiment with whatever is in the fridge.

It's so tasty! Yes, it's a carb-heavy meal, but the stuffing adds some necessary texture so that it can be toddler finger food. It's an otherwise perfectly balanced meal with meat, veggies and starches. The boxed stuffing is the only thing with any processed ingredients, but everything else is just simple whole foods. We might look for less-processed options in the future for the stuffing portion.

The consistency is mushier than a typical muffin but firmer than a glob of mashed potatoes.

Bon Appétit!

Will Baby Turn Us Into Foodies Again or Will We Corrupt Her?

A delicious stir-fry with leftovers from making baby food:
sorghum, pork, peas, sweet potatoes and yellow squash,
cooked with butter and salt! Served with Greek yogurt mixed in (not shown).
(all organic, pasture-raised, yadda yadda)

It's been over two years since I gave up my 20-year, big-bag-a-day snack chip addiction. Things are holding pretty steady. I basically don't eat chips anymore (with a possible relapse I discuss below). I still crave them, though.

What has happened, unfortunately, is that the rest of my diet has gone to hell in a handbasket. Andrea, too. Ever since Lucy was born, we've really gone on a downhill binge. Maybe for me it's a way to replace one junk food addiction with another, or maybe it's just what's normal for under-slept, stressed-out new parents. We now regularly consume the following items that were rarities in the past:

• Fast food
• Frozen, microwaveable dinners
• Canned soups
• Cereal
• Desserts
• Candy
• Soda pop beverages

Despite my snack chip habit, I almost never ate the above items. Now they are mainstays. The carbs from chips may have been bad enough, but I almost never ate sugary foods. In the past I had one vice—a huge vice, but just one. I wondered whether I could still claim that overcoming this addiction is still a "win" given all of the other problems that have come in its wake.

I mentioned above a snack chip relapse. I had a run-in with a sleeve of Saltine crackers on a few occasions. It may not sound like a big deal, but I know where the line is, and it's fair to say that I probably broke my snack chip fast this way. I was eating them the way I used to eat chips. I wasn't just crumbing a few into soup, rather I was binge eating them late at night.

Given all my other dietary shortcomings, I have often wondered if keeping chips away was really much of an accomplishment in light of all the other pitfalls I have fallen into. What harm would it bring to re-introduce some chips, I wondered?  However, my brief experience with Saltines has reminded me why chips are in a category of their own. When I ate them, of course I enjoyed it. But I was surprised that I also felt disjointed. My rhythms were off. It took me to an old, familiar place where I no longer wanted to be. I didn't like my mood. I quickly realized this didn't feel good and stopped.

I have long postulated that addiction stands in the way of our real vocation, our love and our accomplishments. Even though I don't sense a direct connection, perhaps it is not a coincidence that some of the most noteworthy events of my life—marriage, parenthood and significant professional milestones (particularly around publishing)—all happened during the two years I was sans chips.

Who's the real foodie in the family?

The big challenge, of course, is that we can't keep up the charade forever with Lucy. She eats a pristine, almost 100% organic, nutrient-dense menu of foods. Meanwhile, mom and dad are plowing fast food on the way to the organic food store. Sooner or later, she'll either latch onto our habits or we'll latch onto hers. We've struggled with eating well, so we know what we're up against.

Being busy parents has pushed us to eat poorer than before, but Lucy has also been helping us eat better. It's been a mix.

In a previous post, I talk about making baby food. I tend to make it in stages. I'll cook up (usually by steaming) lots of fruits, veggies, meats and grains and store them in the fridge in glass containers.  On top of that, we keep lots of fresh, organic fruits on hand at all times as well as dried figs, prunes and apricots and frozen fruits of all kinds.  I'll blend up meals and freeze them within the next day or two after cooking. There is some nutrient loss in not freezing them immediately after steaming, but this is a consequence of being busy parents who only have so much time in a day. (Once food has been blended into a puree, however, it is immediately put in the freezer as those do not hold up well at all).  If Lucy doesn't like something, or if it has been sitting more than a couple days, I'll take her food and mix it into stir-frys, omelets and soups for the adults. We've had some wonderful meals that way (the picture at the top is an example).

How Is Everything Tasting?

I’m not sure when it came into use, but a few years ago I started noticing that wait staff in restaurants would come to my table with a new question:  How is everything tasting?

It’s in near universal use now. In fact, it is quite noticeable to me whenever a waiter doesn't use this exact wording, because those times are extremely rare. In those cases, I figure it must be a trainee who is quickly taken out back and throttled after this faux pas.

This question disturbs me. It’s not just because it's a grammatical hack job: I certainly hope that my food is not tasting anything at all, because I prefer my food to be dead before I eat it. I am the one doing the tasting, not my food, thank you very much. If that’s not the case, I would certainly like to know, so I could make my exit and find another establishment where I could enjoy a meal of good, dead food. I’m okay with a few living microbes on my plate, but animals and plants should not be alive when the wait staff brings them to me. It sounds morbid to state this out loud--and it is, quite literally-- but it is the reality .

I'm not much of a grammatical snob. I enjoy regional variations in dialect. Language evolves, and what’s incorrect today may be in the rulebooks tomorrow. This particular phrase does stick in my craw, however, as it is particularly tasteless, if you pardon the puns. 

But that’s not what’s really bothering me.

No, what bothers me is that mealtime has been downgraded from a holistic experience of culture, memories, dreams and relationships to simply a matter of bodily pleasure.

I consider this a telltale sign of the downward trajectory of the health of our culture.

In the past, a waiter might have asked: How are you?  Or: How is everything?

Though very general, those are open-ended questions through which the staff would have been trying to gauge all aspects of their patrons' dining experience--food, ambiance, service. Within that, there would have been a deeper, implied question--how are you?

Mealtime is a cornerstone of human culture, so these questions are mightily important.

To now ask, how is everything tasting? reduces the meal experience to only an experience of pleasure sensations. Complex social interactions are being described as consumer transactions. You are purchasing a product, and the sly-but-ever-so-significant implication is that its taste is the only relevant factor in the dining experience. In fact, this question is not only a sign of the decline of civilization, but it actually helps to facilitate that decline.

How so?  It's an illusion of choice: You are not being told outright what opinion to have. No, that would never happen in freedom-loving America. Your opinion absolutely matters, as any marketer would tell you. It is, after all, all about you.

But it's not. What is going on is much more sinister. You are being told the category and range in which meaning itself is recognized or, dare we say, allowed.  You can like or not like the food all you want, and the wait staff and their employers really want to know. But it's taste is the sole criterion for your opinion.

Human flourishing, cultural meaning, the spirituality of mealtime--those are non-criteria. Those are not to be discussed. Those aspects are not being refuted or argued against--no, that would actually give them power. Even worse, they are completely ignored altogether. They simply don't exist. Those kittens have been drowned in the river. Human hope, where the sum is greater than the parts, that language is gone. No, we are merely cogs in the wheel of consumer transactions, moving from one sensation to another.

Please, pass the red pill. I hear it's really tasting good.

Not Quite Dumpster Diving

I saw my hero today for the first time.

At a local supermarket, there is a manager who does a very noble thing. This person goes the extra mile to liberally distribute the “Manager’s Special” orange tags on some choice items as they approach (and sometimes pass . . . shhh!) their expiration dates. As a result, the store is often glistening in little orange labels, like the glitter of new fallen snow, and they call out to me.

It seems like they could just round up these items and throw them out. I consider it an act of service to the poor to take the time to re-tag all this stuff, and it is a task much appreciated. Other store do not have nearly as many tags.

I have been partaking of this catch quite a bit, lately. I try not to touch anything unless it is at least 50% off. Often, the discount is even closer to 80%.

I saw this manager today for the first time. I wanted to go up to him and shake his hand. Instead, I just sort of stalked him as he meandered about the store with his little cart and sale gun.

I’m still one very important step removed from dumpster diving.

Pantry Check: Not Bare

I was hungry tonight and wanted a snack. All I could find were some tortilla chips to munch on. I don't do corn chips plain, so I was about to skip out for something else.

Sometimes you have to take a second look through your pantry before you declare it to be bare.

I found some green onions, a hot banana pepper, some sour cream and cheddar cheese. I chopped up the veggies, shredded and cheese and lobbed in some sour cream. I mixed it all together and spooned it up with the chips.

What a great little snack, and nutritious too! I used up some items that were in danger of going bad before they were eaten. Not bad.

Had my fridge contained other items, it's very possible that they, too, would have ended up in this bowl. When you have things like cheese and sour cream at your disposal, there is very little you can't do.

The Cheesecake Episode

I had some cheesecake tonight. I was very surprised by the impact it had on me. I could immediately feel my energy rise and then suddenly dip. The old familiar roller coaster was going down its track.

I had not been eating much sugar for the last two weeks. I have felt great from all the fresh produce and otherwise high quality foods I have been eating. However, I have not been fully cognizant of the impact on my energy levels until tonight. I have been very even-keel.

You would think that even-keel would be boring, but it is not. It is just a steady, healthy stream of energy. Energy is basically a non-issue. I do not have a never ending series of peaks and valleys with junk food and caffeine first to perpetuate it and then to mediate it.

I still consume some sugar. It may be a while before I can take my coffee straight, but I only put a small amount in. Other than that, I have been relatively sugar free.

Sugar is hard to avoid. It is not just in desserts. The worst culprits are carbonated beverages (which are no different than desserts), which thankfully I do not consume. Other than that, virtually all processed foods are loaded with sugar—breads, frozen foods, anything packaged. It is just everywhere, unless you eat basic, whole foods.

Avoiding sugar is not just for the weight conscious. Sugar is a key suspect in the modern diseases of affluence—heart attacks, diabetes, strokes, cancer, and possibly quite a bit more. It also disrupts our energy levels, as I experienced tonight.

My first thought was that I could not wait until the sugar cycle passes and I could get back to good eating, again!

Back on the Food Track

Living at the Catholic Worker was a bounty and a blessing in many ways, but one negative aspect was that the quality of my diet went down considerably. There were always leftovers to be eaten from our many potlucks, retreats and other events. In an effort to reduce waste and save money, many of us tried to eat up as much of this as possible. The downside was that what was left was often starchy, processed, snack food-type items.

I have always tried to balance between quality foods and economical ones. The scales definitely tipped toward the economical during this time.

I’m on a quest to get back on the food track. The jury is still out as to what I want to focus on, but I’m fairly certainly I want to eat good stuff and avoid bad stuff. Easy enough, right?

When I tell people that I am switching to a diet of mostly of organic and fairly traded foods, the first question they have is: How in the world can you afford it? I do live on a tight budget, and the prices of organic foods are often 2-5+ times more than their conventional counterparts.

Like most Americans, though, there are lots of places where I can trim expenses out of my food budget to make room for more organics:

1. I avoid restaurants. I love a good night out as much as the next person, but how often do we opt for restaurants just out of laziness?
2. I am careful about waste. I try to eat what I buy and preserve leftovers. Some folks may throw out anywhere between 15-50% of what they buy! That’s money.
3. I avoid processed foods. In fact, I try to buy the most basic ingredients as possible: Potatoes. Carrots. Beef. Garlic.

It comes down to priorities. The same folks who scoff at the high prices of organic foods may think nothing of a $50 dinner for two at the Olive Garden. Price wise, it’s outrageous, but the customers are happy. Some folks recently made fun of my fair trade coffee which is $10 for 10 oz. However, these same people have a Keurig in their home and often treat themselves to gas station coffee which is several times more expensive (and tastes worse) than what they could have brewed at home. My fair trade coffee comes in pretty cheap in comparison. I’m all for going out, but there are cheaper ways to do that.

The mark-up on processed foods is amazing. Organic ground beef comes it at a whopping $5/lb. However, you can buy the same beef pressed into hamburger patties with a fancy colorful box and pay $7.00 for 10 oz. If you do the math on this, that comes down to well over $11/lb! All they did was shape the ground beef into hamburger patties. Is THAT worth paying more than double? I also did a little price comparison on potatoes. Organic potatoes are a lot more expensive than conventional, but if you compare the price to Ore Ida hash browns, the cost savings disappears. It’s not that hard to cut a potato! (It was hard to do a price comparison here because frozen potatoes seem somewhat dehydrated so that will affect price/lb.) When it comes to “processed” foods, I’ll buy cheese and bread but I don’t need anyone to cut my potatoes for me and charge me double.

I do think organics are over-priced. They are marketed as a yuppie luxury item rather than wholesome nourishing food we all need. Still, it comes down to what I value.

Besides, the above list contains not just cost saving measures. I just about have to do this to meet my other health goals:

I want to eat a balanced, nutrient dense diet, as holistic and minimally processed as possible.

There are many items to avoid. I still have not decided which ones to prioritize. I think minimizing sugar, MSG, colors/flavors and other additives, is where I’ll put my attention.

I was quite taken with Dr. Robert H. Lustig’s viral You Tube clip on sugar and have come away convinced it is worth avoiding, even eliminating, if possible. Besides, I’m just so sick of sugar. Damn near everything is chock full of sugar these days. You can’t even get meatballs, for crying out loud, without sugar in them. All breads are sweet breads. Salsa, pasta sauce, you name it, it’s all full of sugar. It tastes great without it! The most scary thing is when you wean yourself off of this processed stuff and then have an opportunity to taste it again, it is real apparent just how bad it is once you’ve had some time away from it.

I am trying to minimize meat from factory-farmed animals. The best meat is that which is not only organic but where the animals eat a diet that matches what they are built to eat. This makes sense environmentally, nutritionally and from a standpoint of animal cruelty.

There are many things to do and many things to avoid. The best thing is to eat foods that I prepare myself out of the most basic, natural ingredients possible, and then I’m golden. There is no need to watch labels and scan ingredients when the items don’t even have labels. By doing this, I will be generally avoiding what I want to avoid (and then some) and getting what I want (and then some).

Farmers Markets and Red Meat

Spring means the return of farmers market season! I dragged my tired body out of bed just early enough to visit some markets before they closed. I’m partial to Worthington and Clintonville, but I’ve noticed that they have many of the same vendors. I have a feeling they are not the cheapest markets, so I’m game for looking around in the upcoming weeks.

I have to admit it was heavy on my heart to pass by so many booths selling heirloom vegetable plants. This year, I’m garden-less for the first time in a while (although I may help out at St. James the Less from time to time). Vegetables were scarce at the market due to the time of year, but I was there for meat.

My haul was this: Two whole chickens, 2 packages of bacon, 1 dozen eggs, and an assortment of 100% grass-fed beef. For the latter, I found some that had the bone-in and the rest was ground beef. I tried some of the Raven Rocks almonds—I don’t even like almonds but these were so good I almost drove back to buy some. I looked into buying a quarter-cow, probably from Long Meadows farm. Buying in bulk is the way to go to save money when it comes to organic meat.

Red meat has largely been demonized since the anti-fat hysteria of the 1980s. It was based on some truth and some myths. One thing people seem to forget is that fat is a nutrient. Yes, we must be careful to avoid the bad fats, but we need to seek out the good fats. I’m pleased to note that researchers from different disciplines are converging on this: food anthropologists who study the healthy eating habits of traditional cultures as well as mainline scientists are discovering that fat seems to be okay. Americans have collectively reduced fat intake by 10% since the 1980s and still heart disease, cholesterol, diabetes and obesity are on the rise. It’s not the fat, as Dr. Robert H. Lustig points out.

Red meat is actually quite good for you, but there is one essential caveat: avoid the factory-farmed stuff. Everything that vegetarians say about red meat is largely true, if you consider only factory-farmed animals. Naturally raised, organic meats that are devoid of steroids and antibiotics and which are raised on a diet consistent with what the animals would have naturally eaten in their pre-domesticated state is actually quite good for you. Those variables make a critical difference. Grass-fed beef has a beneficial ratio of good/bad fats, where factory farmed beef is the opposite. Grass-fed and organic beef is also much better for the environment, on many levels.

I’m getting to the point where I can’t eat the other stuff, anyway. Those tubes of ground beef for $0.99/lb at the grocery story are just terrible. I’m not exactly sure what makes that beef so bad, but I can barely stomach it anymore. I’ve become very tuned in to the difference in quality and let me tell you that it is significant.

In turning my diet around, one of the major factors is eating organic, pasture raised meats. I’ve taken a big step in that direction today. I should point out that you can buy this kind of meat at Whole Foods, Trader Joes and the Clintonville Co-cop, to name a couple places, but I think the selection and prices is better at farmers markets.

I should also mention that www.eatwild.com is the definitive place to go to find a farm near you that sells this stuff, and it also has a plethora of research on the health and environmental benefits of naturally raised meats.

A Lost Art: Bacon & Beans

I ended up soaking and pre-cooking a lot more pinto beans than I needed for the chili the other day. I put them away for another recipe. Here is what I did:

I chopped up and cooked a couple slices of organic bacon in the bottom of a pot. I added a little olive oil to keep it cooking well, since it was only in stainless steel. I then added a large array of chopped vegetables, mostly items that were leftover from the chili: onion, leek, banana pepper, garlic and a couple of mushrooms. I let it all sauté together for a while, tossing it with the bacon and oil. After it had cooked a bit, I threw in the pinto beans and added just enough water to cover it all, maybe an inch or more. I had previously boiled the beans and estimated that they needed about an hour more of cooking, so I planned that by the time the water ran out it would be done. I added some sea salt, black pepper, paprika and chili seasoning (it was the black pepper that made this dish). If it cooked any longer, the vegetables would have reduced to mush, but clocking in just under an hour prevented that.

It was simple and delicioso, to borrow a phrase from a popular cooking show.

It is great to keep a pot of ready-made beans like this on hand at all times. It can be a side dish or a main dish. It can be incorporated into other dishes, such as burritos or omelets. This dish can be prepared in so many ways with different ingredients, so it can be a great help when cleaning out the pantry.

“Beans & bacon” is a popular dish just about everywhere, such as drunken beans from Mexico or cassoulet from France. American pop cuisine has so ruined this concept with sweet baked beans and canned food varieties that many folks just do not know how good it can be. It is a great way to put vegetables into the forefront and meat into a supporting role, and even a robust meateater would never feel slighted.

Many Americans have little knowledge of how to properly prepare vegetables. Many folks assume that having vegetables means opening a can of plain corn or fetching a salad of iceberg lettuce. The truth is that vegetables can be a robust and central part of any meal, and the possibilities are nearly endless. Having a great recipe for beans should be essential for every household.

Compliments to the Chef

I usually try not to pat myself on the back too heartily, but I must admit that tonight’s chili is just amazing. We’re talking eyes-roll-back-in-your-head-food-gasm good. It’s loaded with a bounty of mostly organic produce and beef—leeks, mushrooms, yellow and red peppers, pinto beans, tomatoes, onions, garlic, hot peppers, you name it. I top it off with lots of raw green onions, cheddar cheese and sour cream.

My only regret is not recording the prices of everything. I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing some more food blogging. A big passion of mine is eating healthy, holistic foods on a shoestring budget. I'd love to know how much it cost to make this meal.

It is easy to bemoan the high prices of organic foods, but they are nothing compared to what we pay at restaurants or for ready-made, excessively packaged items at the grocery store. With a little bit of planning, we can eat really well without breaking the bank. Heck, I paid $3.50 for two donuts and a coffee this morning at Tim Horton’s! I have been spending the hours since coming up with all sorts of ideas of what kind of robust, organic breakfast I could have made for that same amount! A meal of organic bacon & eggs is still easily under $2. In the past, I have made a chicken soup that is mind-blowingly nutritious and crank out 12 quarts of thick goodness for under $20. I did it once for $15.

This chili tonight is full of everything that is good. My eating habits have gone down substantially over the last couple of years, but I was once very good at eating very well and very cheaply. It’s time to step back up to the plate.

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Traditional and Non-Traditional at the Same Time

I was cooking today and noticed that the kitchen smelled like my grandparents' house . . . and I knew I must be doing something right!

This comment will make sense if you have seen a certain commercial on (the) Cooking Channel.

I have playfully made fun of that commercial before, but when it happens and you are transported, it is deeply meaningful. Suddenly, you are not just in your kitchen anymore but also in the kitchen of your childhood, and the smells bridge a gap between now and then. You are standing in two worlds as if you had stepped through some sci-fi time warp. It is an amazing thing.

Today, what I cooked was traditional and non-traditional at the same time, yet it still took me back. There was some whole-grain rice sitting in the fridge, slightly dry. I put it in the bottom of a casserole dish. I then browned up some fresh chorizo (made in a local shop) and lots of onions in a pan. I poured them on top of the rice with some additional olive oil and sea salt and threw it all in the oven, covered to seal in moisture. The hope was that the sausage and onions would moisten and flavor the rice, and it did. I served it with lots of fresh chopped parsley on top. It was good to have some fresh greens with this.

This was nothing like anything my grandparents would have done, yet it totally had the same spirit all at the same time!

My grandparents probably never ate whole-grain rice, and they would have opted for fresh kielbasi before chorizo. Yet this dish carried the essence of Slovak/Polish food even though the ingredients were off-center.

The fresh sausage and onions sizzling in a pan and the smell of chopped parsley on the counter took me right there. That is the essence of a Slovak-American kitchen.

It is amazing the way smells can not only remind you of something, but actually take you there.

Why the Garden is My Happy Place

Don't garden with a condom, folks! A medical study states that microbes in topsoil have been shown to boost serotonin levels in humans. This is simply through contact with the skin, so take off those latex gloves!

Perhaps this is why the garden is my "happy place." Low serotonin is linked with all sorts of health issues, including depression, anxiety, etc.

While I don't profess to judge the scientific validity of this study, it doesn't surprise me in the least. In fact, it supports something I've been hypothesizing for a while.

Right now, there is a mad dash among nutritionists and amateur foodies to figure out the so-called "paleo diet." This is the holy grail of human nutrition. Based on the theory of evolution, it purports that the diet and lifestyle that humans beings experienced through most of our history would be the healthiest for us. This would be the diet and lifestyle we evolved around and are therefore best adapted to. For a number of reasons, most people are looking at the paleolithic era for the most representative diet and lifestyle.

I see no reason to limit this to merely food or exercise, though.

It is amazing to ponder the effects on human health from simply living out in nature--touching trees and grass regularly, drinking "dirty" water, breathing fresh air. The human body is much more permeable than we think--so much gets absorbed through the skin and lungs.

We try so hard to secure "clean" drinking water nowadays. Certainly, excessively dirty water can lead to all sorts of disease, especially in our extremely congested cities. But our ancestors regularly drank river water, pond water, water in puddles. To think that we somehow improved upon human health when we started sterilizing water might be an overstatement. What did we lose?

To our paleolithic ancestors, insects and microbes were everywhere and got into everything. Insects "dirtying" food also brought in beneficial vitamin B-12 and protein, the very items you need to sustain yourself on a mostly vegetarian diet. Modern methods of food processing often strips those factors out. We reduce the risk of disease, but are we also reducing essential components for health? Vegan who lived quite well in India develop nutritional deficiencies when they moved to England, as "improved" food sterilization stripped out essential components of their diet.

I am sure there are numerous environmental factors that affect our human health and happiness. They may impact not only nutrition but also metabolism. Too often, we in America think that diet just relates to the simple intake of chemicals into the body in the form of vitamins, minerals, calories, fats and oils, proteins, you name it. Other cultures intuitively understand that the way food is eaten and the environment in which it is eaten can affect the quality of a meal. Those may not simply be incidental or mere ambiance--if they affect metabolism, they have a real chemical impact on food and may affect the quality of digestion (hence the nutrients we are able to extract).

In other words, if you frantically buy up everything at Whole Foods, go home and stuff it down in isolation in a desperate attempt to ward off cancer, you may offsetting the very gains you are trying to get! Your body may process the foods better (and thus get more nutrition out of it) in a relaxed atmosphere among friends and laughter.

People in Crete love a good seafood meal. People in Crete also believe that a seafood bake on the beach in the company of good friends is the best way to experience it. This is perhaps a component to the Mediterranean diet that gets overlooked.

The French say that in America "the cheese is dead!" This refers to the way we sterilize cheese and pack it in airtight plastic wrap, thus killing off all the beneficial microbes. It makes you wonder when you consider that obesity is much lower in France, despite the diet rich in carbs and cheese. And even so-called lactose intolerant Americans often do very well on a diet of French cheese.

We are only beginning to understand human nutrition itself and have only barely begun to even speculate about things like the way food is prepared, the containers in which it is stored, and how it is processed and sterilized. The role of a good feast or fast (common among human history) probably also has some huge role to play. Just like fires are a part of the essential life cycle of a forest, I would also imagine there is a role of occasional fasting on human health, as well, especially since our ancestors experienced cycles of feast and famine on a regular basis.

People often think about the toxicity of the modern environment--toxins from upholstery, industrial exhaust fumes, plastics, pesticides, you name it. But not only have we added potential health hazards, but we may have also taken away other health benefits--the microbes and chemicals we used to be in contact with but now aren't. I believe there's going to be a lot of research into this in the future.

It is easy to see why there is a focus on the health effects of food right now. When we take something entirely into our body, it would seem to have a more dramatic effect than simply touching something with maybe trace amounts permeating the skin. However, if working in the garden can elevate one's mood, then perhaps the impact is far greater than we would otherwise think.

Think of all we touch--clothing with trace amounts of detergent, perfumes and deodorants (I don't wear any commercial deodorant), carpeting and tabletops with traces of soap and polish. They may be having a far greater impact on our physical and emotional health that we might otherwise think.

The New Diet

After subsisting on little more than coffee and potato chips for the past year, and having lost 12-14 lbs (not on purpose), I'm starting to take take stock of my health once again. The timing is right, as the garden is starting to offer forth its fruits, and I have two new housemates to cook with and for.

With new produce starting to come in, I noticed we still have some of last year's garden veggies in the freezer! There is also some dry rice and beans that have been sitting probably as long as they should. This demands a string of everything-in-the-cupboard-must-go recipes. Usually that means soup, and I've made two this week.

Today it was a crazy fried rice concoction, really hot and full of garden greens, last year's peppers and crispy rice. I could have passed it off as having come from some hidden region of Korea, it was quite exotic. It was not just food but rather a full mind, body and soul experience. I could feel my thirsty body absorbing the bursting nutrients of the just-picked greens and my environmentally sustainable, financially frugal mind appreciated putting all this leftover frozen stuff to good use with it. I'm sweating on this hot, muggy night, and loving it as the steamy, spicy rice mixture permeates my body.

I generally cook exclusively with olive oil, but it doesn't seem as conducive as other oils, so I try to use a cheap vegetable or canola oil to crisp it up nicely.

Soup of Cans

Soup of Cans is much better than a can of soup. It’s an easy and nutritious way to cook, and it takes virtually no time or effort: You just open a bunch of cans, throw the contents into a pot and heat it all up!

I usually start with a can of diced tomatoes, as it makes a good “base” and often has garlic and other spices already included. Today I added a can of black beans, corn, shrimp and some leftover salmon in the fridge and a half-full can of French fried onions that I had been munching on previously. Nice!

This is one of those great late-nite meals. You think the cupboard is bare but there is really a bounty. The good news is that it feels like a meal. A plain can of black beans wouldn't do much for me, nor would any of these other items by themselves.

It is always good to have something to act as a "base" to bring the flavors together. Something with a strong flavor such as soup broth, meat or the aforementioned diced tomatoes work well in this regard.

There are, of course, a zillion and one ways to augment this recipe into something more, but the gist of it is this: Open cans, mix and heat. Stir in leftovers you find in the fridge. There are tremendous ways to be creative and end up with all sorts of new concoctions while spending relatively little time putting it all together.

You also have the option to not make it soupy--totally your call. It can be just a nice non-soupy concoction.

Fats and Oils

What's the most nutritious part of a chicken?

That's sort of a trick question.

The answer: All the gelatinous juices left in the bottom of the pan after you cook the chicken.

Why is this so nutritious? It includes all the extracts from the bones, cartilage, and organs that you either can't (or won't) eat. It is full of minerals and important fats and oils. It is also the exact nutrition that most of us eating westernized diets lack.

I share the concerns of folks at the Weston Price foundation when it comes to fats and oils. It scares me when folks think that a low-fat diet is somehow ideal. Skim milk, zero calorie this or that, meats with all the fat trimmed off, etc.

Let's get one thing straight: Fats and oils are nutrients. Nutrients! You need them. You won't be doing your body good to dismiss them en masse as empty calories.

There is an important distinction to be had between good and bad fats, though. This is where it gets tricky.

Our ancestors sought out fats and oils in their diet. They hungered for them. Killing a fatted animals in the fall could make the difference between surviving a winter or not. Granted, they also spent a lot of time outdoors in the cold and exercised a lot. Still, we can assume that our bodies are hardwired and function best on a high-fat diet, if we look to evolution as a guide.

The fats and oils from animals raised in captivity on grain-based diets with little exercise are actually not as good for you as their natural counterparts. All the good fats, such as the popular Omega-3's, are found in high concentrations on free range animals who are fed a diet that is consistent with what the animals would eat naturally.

The worst are the artificially produced fats, such as trans fats, hydrogenated oils.

Health and weight loss cannot be determined solely by a linear accounting for calories. The kinds of foods you eat affect your metabolism and can change the way your body manages the calories you take in.

It is crucial to secure good fats and oils in your diet--olive oil, cod liver oil, and fats with good concentrations of omega-3's, such as any fat from grass fed beef or naturally raised animals. Avoid factory-farmed animals and the fat that comes with them.

Building Block Meals

I love being creative in the kitchen and coming up with new concoctions. I am also a very simple cook. I like having basic building blocks to work with.

Sometimes I just like to cook up a large batch of something and just eat off of it all week, mixing and matching whatever I have in the fridge. I am still ever-so-impressed with my purchase 25 lbs of whole-grain rice for just under $18. It is not that hard to cook up a batch and just keep it at the ready. It is cheap and I have whole-grains in my diet on a regular basis--that's called being strategic with time, nutrition and finances.

Rice by itself doesn't do the trick, though, so it goes into things and things go into it--I may spoon it into soup, lob it onto a burrito, fry it up with an egg and some veggies, or just mix things into it. One of the best meals is to take this rice, some cooked ground beef and add hot sauce. Even better if I can saute in some peppers and onions, too.

The other day I added the contents of a can of salmon (wild caught) to the rice, and then chopped up a garden-fresh red tomato.

I live and often eat with vegetarians, so keeping dishes separate can be beneficial for them, as well.

Today's meal? Rice with a pile of bacon, some skin-on baked potato pieces and some cherry tomatoes. All mixed together in bacon juices. It takes like something I spent hours cooking, when in reality I just took a bunch of leftover and out laziness just brought them all to work together in one bowl.

Eat It, Quick!

Once fruits and vegetables are picked off the vine, the clock starts ticking on their nutritional value. Within minutes, in some cases, the favinoids and other micro nutrients start breaking down.

Most of us in North America will probably never know the true taste of items such as coffee, bananas or pineapple. I would imagine at least several days go by after picking before any of those items appear on our store shelves. If they do arrive sooner, it is due to being flown in which is a massive problem for our carbon footprint!

You can eat fresh fruits and vegetables all year long, but if you aren't getting items that have been recently picked, you may be missing out on some important nutrition (not to mention flavor). Ironically, some frozen and canned items are preserved quicker than the fresh items in your store and may carry these nutrients better.

I encourage everyone out there to rotate some ultra-fresh items in your diet. A few times a year, go berry picking and eat the berries as you pick. Go to your garden and eat some things right off the plant--tomatoes, snap peas, lettuce and green beans are good candidates for that. At the very least, eat them within a few minutes of picking.

Our traditional ancestors ate a good portion of their diet right off the vine, and our bodies evolved to eat that way. While modern preservation and distribution methods have made life easier, they have come at a cost to quality. We could be missing out on some essential nutrition. Modern science does not yet have a good understanding of how this works, but in light of all this, eating fresh, whole foods is recommended.

Most traditional cultures also have a habit of going on a "fresh foods pilgrimage" several times a year. Some go wild berry picking, mushrooming or follow whatever the local delicacy is. They are in search of these amazing items picked ripe off the vine.

I write this after eating a fresh yellow squash that I just picked this morning. I cooked it up with some parsley that was just plucked out of the front yard. My body is soakin' it up! I also picked some radishes this morning. I almost never choose them at the salad bar, but I ate a few slices as I was cutting them up and they were absolutely delicious. If there is any vegetable that you don't like, try eating it fresh off the vine and you may reconsider your opinion. I bought some stalks of fresh broccoli last year, and couldn't stop eating them. Normally, I eat a few clumps from a veggie tray and need gobs of dressing to make it appealing. With the fresh stuff, I was wolfing it down and just couldn't stop.

Getting Wax Off Apples

I have heard all the arguments in favor of it, but I still don't like (nor do I trust) artificial wax on apples. For starters, I just don't like the taste and texture of it, regardless of whether there are no ill health effects.

I have tried different kinds of off-the-shelf solutions that supposedly remove it, but they end up leaving an even worse taste--sometimes an outrageously bad taste. And bad, as they say, is not good.

But alas, I have found a way to handle this: The hot water valve on the company coffee machine.

I put my apple in a cereal bowl and pour some hot water over the apple. I swish it around in the hot water for a few seconds, then wipe it off firmly with a paper towel. You can see the waxy film in the water, so it is doing some good.

At home, I simply get hot water from the tea kettle to do the same thing.

Am I reducing the nutritional value by subjecting the apple skins to hot water? I don't know. It does cause some slight discoloration and for apples with thin skin you can end up reducing the crunchiness of the skins substantially. However, most apples taste just fine. I suppose if there are any living microbes on the skin they might be killed off, but I don't imagine too many microbes surviving under a wax coating in the first place. The apple does not spend much time in the hot water, though.

The end result is that the apples tastes better.

Added Later: I have read that sometimes the wax can actually hold in pesticide residue that the growers did not clean off. Getting the wax off offers you then a better chance of getting any leftover pesticide residue off, as well!

Rice & Water

What's the difference between standing water and sitting water?

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I am happy as a lark today. I cooked up some whole-grain, brown rice and it turned out beautiful, tasty and fluffy. It is from a 25 lb bag of rice that I got dirt cheap at GFS. I made another variety of rice last week, and it was a soggy, mooshy mess. It was hard enough to finish one batch of it, good thing I don't have 25 lbs of it. This new stuff is great.

People claim that rice is so difficult to make. I suppose that can be true, considering my experiences last week. But it seems that if you stick to the rules, most rice can turn out just fine. You just get some rice and use double the amount of water as rice. Throw a little bit of salt, butter or a bay leaf in. When it comes to a boil, put a lid on it and reduce the heat as low as it will go and still boil. After about 40 minutes, it is done and just needs to be fluffed up and seasoned (half the time for white rice). They say don't take the lid off while cooking, but I have done it on occasion to stir and it turned out fine. Squeeze a lime at the end and throw in some chopped cilantro and you can duplicate Chipotle rice.

I'll be making some fried rice from a recipe from Scott soon. It is also great to make what Erin and I call Chipotle a la casa--dump some beans and rice together and slobber with sour cream, salsa, guacamole, cheese, chopped onions--whatever you have on hand. It is a great meal that can be eaten on a regular basis. Pat and I like to have a batch of beans and rice available in the fridge at all times.

Vegetarian Misconceptions

It is amazing to me the way vegetarianism is such an "all or nothing" endeavor for many. I don't know what it is, but when people become vegetarians it turns into a near religious crusade for them. Not one scrap of meat at all! Some even avoid honey, since it is the byproduct of insects. Honey, imagine that!

I can sort of understand if someone chooses this lifestyle because they are against the exploitation of animals. However, that is only one of a number of reasons why people opt for a vegetarian diet. Many are vegetarians for environmental reasons or for their own health. Yet, many of these folks often fall into the same fervor about avoiding meat. It almost doesn't seem to matter to them that they are chowing down on bananas and coffee shipped from several thousands miles away from farms where humans and the environment are exploited. Nope, they still are against my grass fed beef grown right down the road by a reputable farmer with well-raised animals.

I think the vegetarian movement has done a lot to devalue the health benefits of meat. When someone becomes a vegetarian, the first thing people ask is, "Where are you going to get your protein?" That very question itself communicates misinformation. It makes people think that meat is nothing more than a lump of protein. And we know we can get protein from all sorts of sources. In fact, getting enough protein is quite easy for a vegetarian--even a vegan--just by eating a balanced diet that includes some whole grains, beans and nuts.

The real question for a vegetarian should be this: "Where are you going to get your B-12, calcium, iron, beta-carotene and omega fatty acids?" B-12 is the most significant issue, because it is not to be found in a vegetarian diet at all. Milk and eggs have some B-12, but what they have is often not absorbed well enough by people to be useful. B-12 deficiencies can be quite serious. Supplements are not always effective (B-12 is destroyed by exposure to the sunlight). Certain individuals are not good at extracting beta-carotene and omega fatty acids from plant sources. A lot of it is probably based on genetics.

The only meat out there that actually is nothing but a lump of protein would be your lean muscle meats, like a chicken breast. While that is a prized item on today's menu, it is the least nutritious. You have no doubt heard stories of our hunter & gatherer ancestors who were able to utilize every last item from an animal without wasting any, right? Well, truth be told is that if they were ever to leave some of the meat behind, it would have been the lean meat. Lean meat is devoid of the essential oils and other nutrients, and if you ate nothing but lean meat you might actually die. Lean meat must be accompanied by starches or fats or else the body can go into something called rabbit starvation (usually that requires living in extremely cold temperatures, though). People who tried to survive a tough winter by hunting rabbits found out that the lack of fats made the meat actually useless.

So meat has been devalued, but that's nothing compared to the misconceptions about fat. People think of fat as nothing but empty calories. Not true. Fats and oils are every bit as critical to good health as vitamins and minerals. They are nutrients! Yes, there are such things as "bad fats", such as hydrogenated oils or the weird masses of fat that develop on feedlot animals (which you won't find on animals fed a natural diet, such as grass fed cattle). Those fats are unbalanced and can cause health problems for humans who eat them in excess. But eating a diet that is too lean can throw yourself out of whack, too.

Fruits and vegetables are not always so friendly, either. Yes, we need to eat a lot of them, but any single one of them eaten in excess can be harmful. Most plants have defenses to keep predators away and digestive inhibitors to keep themselves from sprouting. Raw items are good, because you have access to all the microbes, but they can be bad in excess because of all these chemicals that are often broken down in cooking. Yet, the current assumptions that people have would idolize fruits and vegetables.

I say this not to arouse suspicion about fruits and vegetables--just eat a wide variety of them, cooked and uncooked. I say this only to point out that for all the so-called negative effects of meats and fats, you can find negatives about fruits and vegetables, too. This all-or-nothing attitude that is promoted by many vegetarians is misleading and promotes an unwise diet. Most of the negative impact of meats is limited only to those raised in factory feedlot conditions, which, admittedly, is most of the meat consumed in the America. But sustainably raised meats can be a great option for the environment as well as your health.