Friday, January 30, 2009

Food Politics

My morning reading takes me through a regular series of web sites and blogs that provide me with news on subjects that interest me. Recently, I found another blog taking up the matter of the recent salmonella outbreak, and I read through the article with some interest to see someone else's take on the issue. One commenter pointed readers to this "interesting website."

I was disappointed when I did a quick check of Marion Nestle's take on diabetes (it's caused by being fat), but was quickly impressed by the breadth of her writings on food and policy and politics, impressed enough to think that I will take a second look. I guess we all have our axes to grind and blind spots in our understanding of how things work. So I'll be impressed but skeptical while I see what she has to offer.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Reducing America's salt intake

At least that's the plan for New York City's Health Commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden. He has made a plea to Big Food, the corporations that provide the stuff we buy in the grocery store, to reduce sodium content in their products by 25% over the next 5 years and then by another 25% in the following 5 years. And he's thinking that this will end up helping our health as a nation.

It could be that Dr. Frieden is right to think so. He's been successful in previous campaigns regarding cooking with trans fats and posting calorie counts for restaurant menus. This time he is also joined by several other health departments in other states.
Although he has jurisdiction over only New York City, Dr. Frieden is presenting the plan as a “national salt-reduction initiative” that includes support from a half-dozen other health departments around the country and organizations like the American Medical Association.
I've no idea whether Texas or any of its local health departments has joined in the effort, but it would be interesting to find out.

Should we care?

Well, yes, because reducing dietary sodium is on of those healthy lifestyle changes that we are already being nagged about.

Well, also yes, because it's not easy to find low sodium alternatives at the grocery store. You can buy fresh--which is expensive, requires refrigeration, and is time consuming to prepare (not that there's anything wrong with that). You can buy frozen--which can be expensive, requires a freezer, and may require thawing before cooking (not that there's anything wrong with that). Canned goods of any sort are often cheaper, easier to store, and easier to prepare. Finding canned goods with less that a zillion grams of sodium per serving is the challenge.

Living a healthy lifestyle ought to be easy. Instead, the reverse is true. If Frieden can add some pressure to Big Food to think that healthy should be the norm instead of the specialty item, then more power to him.

Presidential eating



I love this picture! No matter how you might have felt about the results of the recent presidential election, I think you might share my appreciation of this image of a hungry man who just looks so happy to be sitting down to a meal.

As it happens, of course, this is no ordinary hungry man. (Nor is My Prince--ordinary, that is. He's always game for a good meal.) The picture accompanied an article about how President Obama can change the way our country eats and goes on to provide an intriguing list:
  • He’s expected to support local and organic farmers
  • Food prices may go down…or up
  • Food safety should improve
  • School nutrition will be in the spotlight
These are interesting items that will, no doubt, provide for some interesting debates about food policy. The one that most interests me at the moment is food safety and the article's speculation about funding for the FDA:
Working with the Obama administration, a Democratic-led Congress will likely be able to pass legislation that boosts the FDA’s oversight and pays for more food inspections, especially after the numerous and dangerous food scares of the last four years.
I know that some folks would argue that more regulation is just not what we need in the current economy, but I'm on the opposite side when it comes to food safety. We need more, not fewer food inspections.

Consider the current outbreak of salmonella and the impact that it has had on our economy. (Well, yes, there's that pesky health thing, but it's the money thing that is used to argue against more food inspections.) So far, more than 500 cases of salmonellosis have been reported (with many more likely unreported) in the current outbreak. For these individuals, there is incurred health care cost, loss of work (and, for some, loss of income), the multiplier effect of cost and loss when one family member's illness affects other family members' ability to work or function in their normal role (think caregiver, think mommy takes daddy to the hospital), etc. For their employers, there may be health care costs, especially if the company self-insures, and there may be loss of productivity/profit while a worker is absent from work.

This, of course, is small potatoes really. A mere 400 cases is pretty insignificant, given the size of much larger epidemics of HIV, diabetes, etc. With a death toll of 8, as heartbreaking as those deaths are to the families who suffered the loss, it's a small outbreak.

But now the public health folks are attributing the outbreak to peanuts. Whoa! I think maybe the only thing more ubiquitous in our food supply is corn. OK, wheat, sugar, chocolate are right up there, but peanuts are everywhere. Peanut butter is practically a food staple for some age groups. And, whatever the source of these peanuts, the outbreak has already spread to 42 US states. This is a much bigger outbreak than the numbers suggest. The wide geographical distribution alone makes it more than a little worrisome. The popularity of the food source makes it even more troublesome (unlike, say, spinach, which more folks would be happy to avoid in the first place).

What difference to the economy? Start with food recalls. That's gotta hurt--and that's only the products made by or from products made by Peanut Corporation of America. (PCA has been identified as the source of this outbreak.) What about peanut related products from other companies? Not recalled, no, but often tarred with the same brush, if you will. Consumers, hearing news reports about the salmonella outbreak, are certain to hear the word "peanut," not at all certain to remember the particular company involved. Could that mean a drop in consumption of all peanut products from all producers? A similar outbreak earlier in 2008 put a kink in tomato sales before jalapenos were finally identified as the source of the problem. So add to the cost of the outbreak the public relations damage to all things peanut and the effort that has to be made to identify what is actually safe.

Money, of course, doesn't count when a loved one is lost, but with 8 deaths to its credit, I also can see PCA subjected to at least 8 wrongful death suits, not to mention all the others for medical costs and such. This will give some money churn for legal fees, but I don't know that that will be an overall benefit to the economy.

Now, there are a couple of caveats that have to be made before going too far afield on the subject of regulation and inspection.
  1. Peanut Corporation of America already knew that its products contained salmonella and shipped them anyway. No additional regulations would have helped in this case, although additional inspections might have. A corporation determined to place profit above public health could probably circumvent such inspections anyway.
  2. The FDA, an agency that I generally respect, especially on the worker bee level, may not have been the heroes of the 2008 could-it-be-tomatoes salmonella outbreak. Floundering around, issuing conflicting advisories, and devastating producers doesn't seem like the most useful way to go about protecting the food supply.
I tend to think that more inspections would be better--I guess I'm just that kind of gal. However, if our Eater-in-Chief is going to try to make a difference in food safety, he might need to think about the role of competence in the earlier epidemic and the need for enforcement in the current epidemic. The point, however is this: preventing such an outbreak will still be cheaper than allowing one to happen. Improving food safety would, I think, be part of a valid approach to helping a troubled economy.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Pot scrubbers



While I'm thinking about washing dishes (not), I may as well talk about my favorite dish scrubber. It's hand crocheted from some sort of stiff plastic thread (maybe this?). It can scrub dishes, pots, stoves, and apparently even skin.

I got my first one by inheriting it from My Prince's late mother (#1MIL). I got a used one and a new one. I used them until they were falling apart. In the meantime, I looked and looked in stores, hoping to find one. No joy. Then it occurred to me that #2MIL lived in an area where she might have access to crafty items.

Indeed, she did! And, dear woman, she went right to the drawer where she had several of these little jewels stored. I got two and have treasured them ever since. This year, I got two more for Christmas.

As pot scrubbers go, these are the cat's pajamas. They are effective but also non-abrasive. I'm thinking that even I know enough about crocheting to make a circle. Now I just have to run across the right thread and go for it!

"What are those diapers for?"

I mentioned dish towels in one of my ramblings about food safety and have been thinking ever since about how different my kitchen is in that regard these days. Once upon a time, my one drawer that is assigned to kitchen cloths (both dish cloths and towels and other minor necessities) was stuffed so full, I could hardly close it. It was full of terry cloth dish towels. Not a lot, mind you, but as many as the drawer could hold. I rarely needed to use all of them between launderings, but I could certainly thin the drawer out if I took a while between times of turning on the washing machine.

Things got a little harder when the aforementioned cousin stayed with us for a while. She could empty that drawer in nothing flat. I began to think that she mopped the floor with them, except, of course, that you can't mop my kitchen. *sigh*

Anyhoo, I happened to mention to #2MIL one day that I needed to get more cup towels and then whined about how full that drawer was. Where would I even put more cup towels? Some time later, we got our Christmas presents from My Prince's dad and stepmom (#2MIL). For some reason, My Prince brought the gifts to our house, so I must have been elsewhere when they were handed out. That meant that I needed to call #2MIL and thank her for the gift, but what, I wondered, were those diapers for? So I asked her.

"Those are cup towels," she told me, laughing. My basic response was: Huh? Everyone knows that cup towels are made of terry cloth and printed with more or less domestic themed pictures (and flowers, of course). How could these plain white squares of woven cotton be dish towels?

I quickly found out.

Sometimes called a flour sack dishtowel, these babies can be used in a zillion ways. When wet, they dry quickly. When folded, they take up much less space in my crowded little drawer. They are suitable for all seasons.

Once I tried these towels, I none too slowly got rid of almost all of the terry in my little drawer and bought more of the sacking ones. I even appliqued a few as a later gift for #2MIL, just to show her how very much I appreciated the introduction to these little jewels. Now terry cloth dish towels feel so clumsy, and I am stealthily trying to introduce my favorite towels to Mama's kitchen.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Top Chef Blues

One of the joys of getting back to Mama's house is watching cable tv. I've learned that even with so many channels, there often isn't really that much on, so My Prince and I are not missing too terribly much by not subscribing to cable. There are, however, a few bright spots, and Top Chef is one of them.

I've enjoyed watching this season's Top Chef New York, and hate to miss any episodes. Happily, Bravo seems to re-run the whole season up to the current episode just before a new episode is due out, so it has been easy to catch up. I watched several episodes last week, waiting for the newest one, and enjoyed every repeated minute.

I was, however, much taken aback when I saw Episode 8's quick fire challenge. I recognize that the challenge was intended to show the intense contrast between what most of us have to work with in our kitchens (canned goods) and the elimination challenge's trip to a farm/restaurant where everything is so fresh it's still in the ground or on the hoof. There was a lot of "we want to cook with the freshest ingredients" yadda yadda, but what really startled me was the contestants' agony with the quick fire: they were simply appalled with having to work with canned goods.

Like they were too good for canned food. Like they never opened a can of beans at home. Like they would rather die than suffer the taste. Like it was okay for a mere housewife to use this stuff, but not they.

Hmmm.

Well, yes, I like cooking fresh vegetables. Now that I've started making Mystery Stir Fry, I use a lot more fresh vegetables than I ever have before. The vegetable crisper is no longer the place where good food goes to die at my home. I like to fill it up with good things and nosh on raw veggies at every available opportunity. (Like now. Yummy carrots.) The taste, the fiber, the vitamins--it's all so much better when we are using fresh.

The contestants only had 15 minutes to come up with something to impress their judges. Some of them seemed to flounder badly, and their dishes seemed as uninspired as their groaning and moaning suggested that they would be. And then young Jeff comes up with conch fritters. And the Stefan (nasty man!) won with bean and spam soup with grilled cheese. And Fabio came up with mac and cheese with artichoke (which I fully intend to try out on My Prince).

While I'm no fan of spam (or Stefan), there were some creative dishes produced for the quick fire. I'm more concerned that the potential of these commercially produced/processed ingredients was presented as something unappealing, to be disdained, not worthy of a chef's attention. I wonder if that also applies to the people who use canned goods on a daily basis.

Chili today and hot tamale

LOL! That's the punch line from an old joke. I don't remember the joke itself, but I often think of the line when someone comments about chilly weather. For some reason the line comes to mind as I am thinking about the wonderful visit that I recently had with #2MIL.

After several months of one thing and another keeping me away, I finally had a functioning car and time away from elder care to make a quick run out to see My Prince's stepmom. "Quick" turned into three days and two nights of fun conversations, fun shopping, and fun eating. #2MIL, I should explain, is only "#2" because we both still honor #1, My Prince's late mother; both moms are very much in the center of our hearts.

While #2 MIL is a fantastic cook with whom we've enjoyed many wonderful meals, she's not as interested in spending quality time over a hot stove these days. She prepared fine, low-carb breakfasts for me, but lunch and dinner were eaten out (or involved certain happy leftovers).

Our first dining adventure took us to Tamale King near Buchanan Dam. Other folks have reviewed Tamale King quite highly, and I have to join in the praise.



This painting by J. McElwaine shows the old pickup truck that used to be filled with the most wonderful bounty of bougainvillea. It was parked in front of the restaurant and lifted your spirits immediately. #2MIL says a freeze finally got to the plants, and the truck was just hauled off. I'm glad that the artist managed to capture this memory before it disappeared.

I'm also glad to report that nothing has happened to the quality of food at Tamale King despite the loss of the truck with the bougainvillea. #2MIL ordered 3 dozen tamales to go for My Prince's Christmas present. (We froze them so that I could take them home later.) Then we settled down to take care of ourselves. The Tamale King platter came with 3 tamales (I chose beef), covered with chili sauce, and accompanied by rice, borracho beans, guacamole, and a generous supply of flour tortillas. Then we added a side order of a dozen beef tamales. A side order of tamales to go with the tamale plate you ask? Well, it made sense to me! This allowed me to have an extra tamale for dinner (yes, they are that good); it allowed #2 MIL to have her favorite bowl of boracho beans and still nibble on some tamales from the side dish; it allowed me to take some home for extra bites when needed. Besides, it's so tacky to eat someone else's Christmas present before they even get it, doncha know.

The next day, we went on a road trip to preview the activities for a planned excursion for #2MIL's neighborhood group. This took us to Lampasas and Eve's Cafe on the Square. A German cafe, Eve's serves various schnitzels and hearty sandwiches in a biergarten cum ranch atmosphere. The service was friendly and helpful. I ordered a Reuben. Bypassing the chips offered on the side, I tried to see what else might take their place. No joy there. #2MIL had a chef salad with dressing on the side. Both of us found our meals tasty, filling, and reasonably priced. Here's a shot of beer mats on the ceiling of Eve's.

Every other chance that I had to eat involved those wonderful leftover tamales. A friendly neighbor had brought over a small bowl of spicy chili. She warned us that it would be quite hot. I didn't find it so hot, but it was delicious and just the thing to spoon over a couple of tamales. #2MIL never had to touch the stove after breakfast! Indeed, if she had allowed it, I probably would have had those wonderful tamales for breakfast.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Rounding up 2008

End of year round-ups can be fun. We get the top 10 this or that, often with pictures, and can enjoy the reminders of news stories and pop culture fads for the past year. Another round-up comes from the Diabetes Self-Management website in "2008: The Year in Diabetes." The post covers news stories, blog entries, web stories, and even recipes of note from 2008.

The most interesting of the lot (to me) was a story that I had missed: "ADA's New Guidelines OK Low-Carb Diets for Weight Loss." This is an major (like tectonic plate size) shift in policy regarding diet for diabetics. For many years, the American Diabetes Association has advocated a carb-filled diet for diabetics that has to have killed off quite a few Americans and made many more totally miserable.* It doesn't sound like the ADA is ready for a full on embrace of reality and the effect that carbs have on blood glucose and what that means for diabetics, but it sure looks like a truce. Things could get interesting in 2009.

*If that sounds a little too scathing, let me note that, when first diagnosed with diabetes, I visited the ADA web site. The one question that I had at that time was: what can I eat? After reading their recommendations, I never went back to the ADA site. I don't donate to their charity. I don't pay attention to what little advocacy that they do. I just ignore them. I would dearly love to have some easy answers to my question, but, after that look at the ADA, I've been digging out the answers on my own, one vegetable at a time apparently. *sigh*


Drag out the slow cooker

Or did we ever put them away? Ours once sat in the unhandy, hard to get to corner of the kitchen counter. Lately it's been moved a tad closer to front and center, and now I can get to it a lot more easily. That's all to the good since dietitian Amy Campbell says that slow cookers are a must-have for health eating. Why? Because when
foods are cooked slowly at a lower temperature, the vitamin and mineral content of foods are preserved. And since you control the ingredients, you can make soups and stews using lower-fat, lower-sodium broths and lean cuts of meat and skinless poultry; include more whole grains, such as brown rice or quinoa in your meals; and even make desserts a little healthier by cutting back on some of the sugar and fat.
Her tips for slow cooking:
  • Always thaw frozen food before cooking in a slow cooker.
  • Only fill up the slow cooker one-half to two-thirds full. Any more than that and the food may not cook thoroughly; any less and the food may cook too quickly.
  • Cook ground beef in a skillet before adding to the slow cooker.
  • Add tender vegetables, such as tomatoes and zucchini, only during the last 45 minutes or so of cooking to avoid mushiness.
  • Add spices and seasonings during the last hour of cooking for better flavor.
  • Don't lift the lid too often — every time you take off the lid, you extend the cooking time by 20-30 minutes.
I use my slow cooker year round for roasts, stews, and the occasional pot of beans. Any favorite recipes out there?

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Where da brown rice?

My Prince and I just returned from a trip to our warehouse store. Buying bulk can really save us money--as long as we can use up what we buy and don't end up throwing some of it out because it has spoiled before we can consume it. We tend not to buy as much of the fresh items there but focus on multi-packs of favorite canned goods and big bales of necessary paper products for that very reason.

Today I was on the lookout for brown rice. We've eaten a lot of it this past week, so I need to rebuild my stock. I've noticed before that there were several varieties of white rice available, but never any brown rice.

Today I put the absence of brown rice together with my understanding that one of the "missions" of this warehouse store is to support small business by making the tools and supplies needed for small restaurants and convenience stores available in comparatively small (although humongous for a small family) quantities at discount prices. That "mission" paired with the absence of brown rice means that a healthy food choice will not be easily/cheaply available at the establishments run by their clients. This forces the small businesses and institutions that use the warehouse store as their supplier to offer a less healthy food choice to their customers, saving everyone a few pennies in the process but adding yet one more challenge to the health of everyone but those at the top of the chain.

Now, I know that I am making a judgment about the shaping of "food policy" by a corporation, and I have to acknowledge that brown rice is actually deemed inferior in most of the culture groups that use rice as a staple. Still it's sad to see 20- and 50-lb sacks of white and jasmine and basmati rice stacked on a good part of a very large aisle and not a single bag of brown. There is, however, instant and parboiled white rice in large containers to make even the cooking of white rice go faster. Brown rice is harder to cook and might not be the choice of other customers, perhaps making it uneconomical for the warehouse store to stock.

If I want to replenish my supply, I will have to do that at Fiesta, where I can get a 4-lb bag of brown rice. That's the biggest I've ever been able to find.

If I want to change our food culture, I have a much bigger chore, and I'm not entirely disposed to think that (a) I know enough to argue what changes we should be making or (b) I have the will to want to get involved in such a battle. If I did, one place to start would simply be a customer comment at the warehouse store, asking them to stock brown rice and telling them why. It worked for almonds! ;)

Kitchen Counter Economics

Here's a blog by htwollin about "how to save money, live more sustainably, and gain control over the stuff of daily living for ourselves and our families in the current economic environment." It has some useful thoughts about saving money (as in both not spending it and actively socking it away) and a few recipes. Part of the thrift in some of the recipes is counterbalanced by the carbs, but, if you are not carb-restricted, they seem pretty good--and thrifty.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Food dating

Nope, this is not about going out to dinner with the hunk du jour. It's about those troublesome expiration/use by dates on food packages. Imagine my surprise to read this:
Frequently Asked Questions About Food Dates and Storage

Q: Should all food containers have dates on them?

A: There is no uniform system for food dating in the United States. Except for infant formula and some baby food, product dating is not required by federal regulations. Dating of foods is only required by about 20 states right now. Federal regulations do say, however, if a calendar date is used, it must express both the month and the day of the month. In the case of shelf-stable and frozen products, the calendar date, if used, must also include the year. If this calendar is used, there must also be a phrase next to it explaining the meaning of the date, such as �sell by� or �use before.�

Dates found on foods may be �open dating� or �closed� or coded dating. Open dating is the use of a calendar date that the consumer can understand. In general, open dating is found primarily on perishable foods such as meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products. Closed or coded dates might appear on shelf-stable foods such as cans, boxes, bags, etc.
This comes from a University of Georgia web page dated simply "2005." It could be out of date, but I'm cynical enough to believe that it is not. And that annoys me. There are some regulations that might go to far, but I'm pretty much pro-regulation when it comes to food safety. Expiration dates and such are pretty important when deciding what to buy and when to eat it. This is something that I feel strongly enough about that I'm headed over to change.gov to make a recommendation that there ought to be federal standards to the effect that:
  • all processed or packaged foods intended for human consumption should have an expiration or use by date, and
  • the date should be written as a calendar date that includes month and year in a format easily understood by consumers.
Join me if you wish. Of course, change.gov is the easy way to voice an opinion on the subject. I have not yet discovered that Texas is one of the 20 states that require food expiration dates on products manufactured or sold within the state, so it might not be a bad idea to tell your Texas Representative and Senator about this (if you wish). And then there's your congresscritters (one rep and two senators).

UPDATE: And here's the comment on change.gov. There's already a discussion!

Eating seasonally

The cheapest fruits and vegetables are said to be those that are currently in season. I'm a city girl. What do I know about growing seasons?

This handy site fills the gap: Fruits and Veggies More Matters. Here's what's in season for the winter months (December, January, February):
  • Apples
  • Belgian Endive
  • Brussels Sprouts
  • Cherimoya
  • Chestnuts
  • Dates
  • Grapefruit
  • Kale
  • Kiwifruit
  • Leeks
  • Mushrooms
  • Oranges
  • Parsnips
  • Pear
  • Persimmons
  • Pummelo
  • Radicchio
  • Red Currents
  • Rutabagas
  • Sweet Potatoes
  • Tangerines
  • Turnips
  • Winter Squash
Once again, I have some issues. The dates would probably put me in a sugar coma. The grapefruit will counter half of the medications that I take with a similar result (coma). I have no clue what Pummelo is, but I have at least heard of Radicchio.

Nonetheless, I will start looking up the unknowns and give the knowns another look. Eating seasonally is cheaper--and better for the environment--so I need to try to do my part.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Top 10 healthiest foods?

According to Melissa Matinelli, The Atlanta Examiner's Food Examiner, these are the top 10 healthiest foods:
  1. berries
  2. broccoli
  3. citrus fruits
  4. garlic
  5. nuts
  6. oats
  7. salmon
  8. spinach
  9. tomatoes
  10. turkey
Hmmm. I'm good on berries, broccoli, garlic, nuts, and tomatoes. Not so good on the others.

We have begun eating more salmon, but not once a week or even regularly once a month. I avoid citrus fruits because of potential indigestion and sugar spikes. I may have to rethink oats, since Martinelli suggests that this grain is acceptable for diabetics (although I have my doubts about the value of the instant and flavored packages). I work spinach in as much as I can, but certainly not often enough and not fresh. Need to do better there. Turkey, well, there's only so much of that we can stand. Might rethink, but might not. I so do not like the smell of uncooked ground turkey.

Lincoln's birthday



His 200th to be exact. It's coming up this year on February 12. To mark it, President-elect Obama will be treated to an inaugural luncheon that salutes President Lincoln's tastes and experiences. Here's the menu. Here are the recipes for the foods to be served.

Looks pretty tasty but not really to my taste. I could see trying out the Winter Vegetables recipe, tho. It's simple enough and has some new combinations (to me) that might be interesting. I assume, despite the lack of directions, that all of these vegetables, while cooked separately, are tossed together for serving. Or not?



Oh, yeah. That's a replica of the Lincoln china. The luncheon will be served on it.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Food to get expensiver?

Yep, I know "expensiver" is not a real word--and poor grammar to boot--but it seems to fit the situation right now: Food prices are unreal and nudging us toward poor nutrition to boot. So, I'm so not happy to find, in the course of my dinking around on the interwebs, this prediction that food prices will continue to increase in 2009. Seems the high cost of some commodities cut into corporate profits last year, so, now that commodities prices have fallen, food prices will continue to rise so that those "lost" profits will be "recovered" by food corporations. Restaurants are following the same principle, so we can expect more increases there too.

Wanna bet that My Prince and I will dine out even less in 2009? Portion control takes on a whole new meaning in this context, doesn't it?

School lunches

I'm not qualified to talk about this too much, but I am thinking a bit about food policy. My reading is leading me down several paths that look interesting, but the whole issue is a tad complex--and overwhelming--to me. Still, I want to understand it better, so I will continue to try to work my way through it.

My basic question is: Why are carbs so cheap and green vegetables so expensive?

The answer seems to be that food policies are largely responsible. I just don't understand exactly how that may be, so I need to do more reading.

I am not alone in this examination of food policy, and I think a semi-big battle is going to be waged on the matter. We may not read about it so much in the newspapers, even though it will be important to each and every one of us, but the battle will still be fought.

The battlefield? School lunches. But don't be deceived that this is only about school lunches. It will be about farm subsidies, commodities programs, even the food pyramid. And it won't just be about what kids eat.

Here's what I'm looking at so far:
High fiber reading, for sure!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Oh, noes! No Waterford no more?

We've already seen a lot of bankruptcy and general corporate collapse in this nasty economy we have right now. It should not be a surprise to read that Waterford Wedgwood has now also filed for bankruptcy. This is the blended corporate descendant of the English and Irish companies that manufactured Waterford crystal and Wedgwood china.

*sigh*

I own one tiny Wedgwood plate, souvenir of a trip to England. It looks something like this, only smaller.


Having that bit of Wedgwood was actually enough for my need to touch history. Had Wedgwood not been merged with Waterford, I would probably have done no more than have a moment of sadness at the passing of greatness. If they ever emerge from bankruptcy protection, I might not even notice.

The association with Waterford, however, and the situation in which both lines find themselves now hits me harder. Not that I have a heavy investment in Waterford crystal. If I had the money, I surely would have had a seriously heavy investment in it. "Waterford" has been synonymous with everything elegant and graceful and luxurious in my (admittedly) small world. To think of the passing of this company is almost to lose the very concepts of elegance and grace and, to my mind, luxury. It also touches a bit on my own mortality.

I did once want to own a full set of Waterford stems. I began my collection with a single stem, a champagne flute, in the Lismore pattern.



It cost me $32.50 over 20 years ago (today it would cost $69). Mama, ecstatic that I might at last have adopted her version of reality, promptly bought me a second stem.

And there my collection stopped. Owning such pieces of Beauty brought with it a whole set of responsibilities and obligations and expectations. We had just enough flutes with these two for My Prince and me to toast whatever occasion needed toasting. Were we to buy more, we would surely need to begin entertaining to the extent that others might be present to join us in such toasts. We would, between toasting occasions, need to display the collection rather than tucking it away in a cupboard. Moreover, we could certainly not set a table with only these flutes. We would need to broaden the collection to include other appropriate stems from the line. At that point, we would be talking about a real investment, one that would have to be properly maintained and then passed on.

To whom?

Waterford is not the same as a collection of Bama jelly glasses. A set of these stems would be an heirloom, a family treasure. My Prince and I have no one who would care to receive such a treasure.

And there the dream came to an end. I treasure my two Waterford stems. They are handled with loving care and brought out for special occasions shared by My Prince and me. I don't know who will treasure them after I am gone, but I hope someone does. Soon there may not be any more to treasure.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Resistant starch

One of my Christmas presents was food (yea!) in the form of (gasp!) spaghetti. I laughed when I opened the package because I thought it was just a gag reference to the fact that I buy these huge packages of frozen meat balls for Mama's freezer and pop them out for a quick spaghetti dinner for Big Kid Cousin and Little Sister when I'm short of cooking time. BKC eats the meatballs, LS eats everything, and I try to stick with the meatballs but always end up wanting the spaghetti. I figured LS was giving me a gentle dig about a quick meal that I shouldn't be eating.

Not. LS is always thoughtful, always helpful. I should have remembered that.

When I got around to reading the package, I saw that it was supposed to have only 5 net carbs per serving. How could that be? The box said:
  • total carbs = 51
  • fiber = 5
  • protected carbs = 31
  • digestible carbs = 5
Huh?

What in the world are "protected" carbs? Could LS have been taken in by a deceptive health claim? Is this spaghetti made of hay?

This led to quite a few hours of puzzling over the matter and revisiting sources for more information about carbohydrates and fiber. As it turns out, there is something called "resistant starch" that may just be what the package is talking about. I particularly like what I read about blood sugar response to resistant starch:

Natural resistant starch helps maintain healthy blood sugar levels by increasing insulin sensitivity in healthy people. Incorporation of resistant starch into processed foods (i.e. as a flour substitute) reduces the glycemic impact of that food and increases insulin sensitivity, which research suggests may help to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Studies suggest continual exposure to elevated levels of insulin as a result of a high glycemic diet may contribute to reduced sensitivity by cells to the insulin (insulin resistance) and a higher risk of diabetes. As insulin resistance increases, the body produces more insulin to maintain adequate blood sugar control. With rising resistance, even more insulin is required, and the body may not be able to keep up or the pancreatic cells producing insulin may stop functioning.

Consumption of natural resistant starch by humans has been shown to result in decreased glycemic response in healthy individuals,[12] decreased glycemic response in diabetics,[13] and increased insulin sensitivity in healthy individuals.[14][15]

The spaghetti is Dreamfields brand. I'll be reading more about that company--and more about resistant starch--this year.

Thanks, Little Sister!


Potato starch

Duh!

I'm just figuring out that what I'm reading is telling me that bigger and older (in potatoes) means more starch. New and small means less (but not "no starch"). I must learn more.

In the meantime, I got to see an episode of (something) with Jacques Pepin. Actually I saw several episodes of several somethings with Jacques Pepin, since it was Jacques Day on that station. In this particular episode, he kissed a fish, demonstrated how to debone a cooked trout, and took some starch out of a potato.

Chef Pepin (who can make even a potato sound romantic) grated some medium white potatoes. He said that some of the starch could be removed simply by washing off the resulting pile of grated potato, but it was faster to just wring it out. And he did just that: took a pile of grated potato in two hands and squeezed it out over a bowl. I was shocked by the amount of liquid (all cloudy and starchy) that he got out of those potatoes.

I'm not looking forward to grating potatoes like that, but when My Prince will just about die if I don't let him have some real potato, I think that that will be the way to get some of the starch out of it. I'm not putting fish eggs on it, though.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Private labels and portion control

Found an interesting article ("Go Lite!" by Kristin R. Ball) on so-called private labels (what I have been calling house brands) and portion control. The article begins with a reminder that we are all getting fatter.
One of the keys to eating healthier, of course, is portion control. Whether it’s an oversized steak in a restaurant or a family size bag of chips from the grocery store, the key is, not to eat the whole thing.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, “the larger the package, the more people consume from it.” So what was the market’s solution to this problem? Portion control in the form of 100-calorie snack packs.

And then the article just sort of wanders around, making the point that some private labels are offering single-portion foods and beverage mixes, some of it markets healthier eating elements on the front of the package, and finally ends up saying:
So whether consumers are watching their calories or their cholesterol, private label has something to offer those looking for affordable ways to eat better.
"Affordable" as in house brands are cheaper than name brands, but not as in single-portion packaging doesn't cost a bundle (it does). Those little packages are handy when you are trying to force yourself to limit how much you eat, assuming, of course, that you have enough will power to consume only one package at a time. They do, however, use more packaging than larger bags/boxes/containers (i.e., not so green), and, just as important for portion control, the nutritional basis for the single portion may be derived from a unit that is less critical to one's own dietary needs (how many carbs/sodium/cholesterol in that 100 calories?).

I'm getting closer to thinking about ways to repackage using reusable containers. It's a nuisance to count out 14 nuts for a snack, but less so if it's part of dividing up the whole can at once into several days worth of snacks. The problem is, of course, the container. I have a lot of snack size "zipper" bags for my jewelry making, but I hesitate to resort to them for these for snacks. I can take the jewelry out of the bag and put another item in it without having to worry about cleaning up the bag, i.e., I can reuse it. For food use, reuse is a problem. This will take more thinking.

Pumpkin fail 2

Bad idea. Bad, bad, bad idea.

Well, it might have been a good idea when I first had it, but all the traveling and time away from home, meant that my pumpkin might have been past its prime. Or that my initial enthusiasm for all things pumpkin might have waned. Or that I just never really felt like I had a good idea about how pumpkin can be used for a side dish rather than a dessert.

Nonetheless, I did try. Once I got the thing opened and more or less prepared for cooking, I tried a couple of things.
  • Boiled some pumpkin meat with Splenda and water. Added cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, butter. Light mash. I didn't care for the taste. It was a bit earthy for me. My Prince had three helpings.
  • Baked shards of pumpkin (peel on) at 375 degrees for an hour, wrapped in foil, dotted with butter. The buttered bits tasted better than the unbuttered bits. I ended up cutting off the peeling (which had finally softened enough to actually be a peeling), chopped the meat, and tossed it into a Mystery Stir Fry. Hidden among the other ingredients, the taste was fine. Tasted alone, still earthy.
  • I saved the seeds. They've been spread out and drying for a couple of days, but I still don't know how to get all the strings off. Maybe they will just fall off when I try to roast the seeds.
The other half of the pumpkin went in the trash. I hate to waste food like that, but I really didn't like it. And it was hard to handle. I might try pumpkin soup with canned pumpkin, but I do believe that that is the last (more or less) fresh pumpkin that I will try.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Save the package!

I've been drinking sugar-free drink mixes for the past year or so. Crystal Light is a tad expensive (like twice the cost!), so I've been looking at various house brands. HEB, Kroger, and Target all have different flavors, some of which are quite tasty, and other of which are more forgettable. Aside from the taste, what I like about these mixes is the packaging.


The only pictures I could find (after a lot of googling) are from the Crystal Light web site, so I've borrowed this one to show the canister that I am now so fond of (sorry, Kraft people). The drink mixes come in a plastic cylinder that is 6.5 inches tall and 2.75 inches in diameter and capped with a plastic lid. Crystal Light tends to invest in colors for the lids; the house brands tend to be white, although I have seen some light pink cylinders now and then. Inside the canisters are 6 little plastic "tubs" filled with the powdered drink mix.

I recycle the little tubs, since I don't have a use for them currently. The canister, however, is a whole other thing. Peel the label off and you have the perfect storage container for odd bits and pieces and handy tools.

My first thought when I saw these containers was that they would be useful for storing beads. They have been quite handy for dumping in some (larger) beads that I normally store in little drawers so that I can take them with me when traveling. I can just pick out the beads I want for a project, put them in the canisters, take them with me, and then return the leftover beads to the drawers when I return.

I then discovered that the canisters were the perfect way to store the very unhandy shape of a marinade injector. I just put the pieces of the injector in one of the canisters and used a marker pen to label the outside to identify the contents. Now I have the injector in an easy-to-find location on the shelf and don't have to worry about pricking myself when hunting for it in a drawer.

My latest use is to store tubes of beads. I always worry about hanging them from a rack. Just one bit of carelessness will have beads strewn everywhere when that top comes off. The tubes don't stand up very well either. I can, however, slip several of them into one of these canisters and have no fear that the lids will pop off in transit. The canisters are not transparent, so I still have to dig through them to see where the bead that I am wanting might be, but it's a whole lot easier to store the tubes these days, thanks to the canisters.

While I've managed to come up with a few canisters on my own, Big Kid Cousin and her mom are particularly heavy drinkers of Market Pantry Raspberry Tea (one of my own favorites). BKS provides me with a steady stream of her leftover canisters, and I seem to be finding endless uses for them.

Recycling is good, yes, but repurposing is also a good use of resources since it saves the added cost of sending the item back through the manufacturing process. Could the best repurposing be to find recycled items that can be repurposed? Whatever. If you can, repurpose; if not, recycle.


Got milk?

Milk prices have gone out of sight. We don't buy as much with the grandson moved out of the house, but I just about need a guarantee that every drop will be consumed before I bring another gallon into the house. The price of cheese has escalated as well. My favorite 2 lb. bag of grated cheese is nearly $9 now. Needless to say, I monitor its use quite closely.

So imagine my surprise (and secret pleasure) when I ran across this article in the New York Times about the dairy glut that we are now in the middle of. Seems other parts of the world have developed a taste for dairy, thanks in part of the spread of McDonald's, and that (along with drought in New Zealand and Australia) produced high demand for American dairy. And that, my peeps, made for reduced supply in the US. Ergo higher prices for us.

The economy is in the tank globally as well as locally. This is bad, yes. Really tough times are ahead for all of us. Still, I couldn't stifle a little spark of happiness when I realized that there was actual hope that dairy products might eventually become affordable here in the US again. Milk, cheese, sour cream, ricotta, cottage cheese, mozzarella, parmesan--these are all basics in my kitchen. In normal times, I could only occasionally afford a taste of anything more exotic. I can't be unhappy that the home market will get a break for a while. I doubt we will be able to afford those exotics anytime soon, if at all, but it will be nice to get back to a more normal supply of affordable dairy products.

If that sounds a tad callous in regard to the income and well being of American dairy farmers, do note that we have price supports for dairy. The USDA will buy much of the surplus produced and put it into food programs for the poor, meaning more protein and Vitamin D for them, and continued production in the dairy sector. The high prices for the rest of us was a by-product of globalization. Lower prices will be a by-product of the collapse of the market. Dairy farmers will still get paid, just not so much.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Pumpkin Fail 1

Now I know why my parents never let me have a pumpkin to carve at Halloween. It always seemed like a wasteful thing to do anyway, but still a lot of people seem to have fun with it. Who knew those suckers were so tough?

First, there's the shell. It's not a rind or skin. It's a shell. A hard one. It took all of my strength to cut through the outer covering with a chef knife. I went straight in and then tried to cut around the middle. I had to saw with the knife and finally just gave the whole pumpkin a strong tap on the counter. Part of it was nicely cut, and part of one half was pretty ragged, but I got the thing opened.

Then, there's the innards. All the recipes say "clean out the seeds and strings." How hard could that be? I reached right in and started pulling. Yuck! The strings are tough, impossible to break, hard to cut. And everything is slippery.

Finally, there's that instruction: "remove the skin." Huh! I tried a potato peeler, as instructed, and darned near ruined it before I quit. I then tried a knife, finally hitting upon the idea of cutting each section in smaller pieces and then paring the skin off. At the same time, I more or less peeled out the remains of the strings from the inner surface.

I got one-fourth of the pumpkin cut into three large sections for baking (skin on). The next fourth was cut into smaller sections and then cleaned up for boiling (skin off). The next two-fourths are still laying on the kitchen counter. I think that half of the pumpkin will go in the trash unless I grow a new wrist. My wrists went numb while I was carving, and they still ache with remembered pain. I have my doubts about cooking this monster.

Pumpkin ideas

I am curious about how one can use pumpkin without making a pie or bread or soup. Those are mostly the only recipes that I can find. However, I did run across a reference to Eat.Drink.Better and its list of "beyond pie" recipes for pumpkin. The hummus and the curry sound most interesting to me.

The pumpkin interests me because its so big and, usually, comparatively cheap. One pumpkin is a lot of food! As a healthy food choice, it seems like this would be a good way to round out the diet with fiber, taste, and variety. It would also, I'm thinking, be a good way to get more pumpkin seeds!

The proof of its value will, however, be in the pudding--or the hummus and curry.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Fennel ideas

I'm still working out how to work with fennel. In the course of my reading, I ran across this list of serving ideas from the World's Healthiest Foods site:

  • Healthy sautéed fennel and onions make a wonderful side dish.
  • Combine sliced fennel with avocados, and oranges for a delightful salad.
  • Braised fennel is a wonderful complement to scallops.
  • Next time you are looking for a new way to adorn your sandwiches, consider adding sliced fennel in addition to the traditional toppings of lettuce and tomato.
  • Top thinly sliced fennel with plain yogurt and mint leaves.
  • Fennel is a match made in Heaven when served with salmon.
I have everything on hand except the plain yogurt and fresh mint. I have to break down and try something, don't I?

A new way to look at carbs?

Sometimes I wander over to the world's healthiest food site to look at whatever they are posting as their food of the week. My most recent visit was drawn by the article called "A new way to look at carbohydrates." The article does a nice job of explaining some fairly complex (to me) ideas about what a carb is, what's in a carb, and how various elements in carbs work in the body.

I was intrigued to read about "resistant starch," since I'm always looking for ways to toss out some of the total carbs in food. I already try to toss out fiber, knowing that it's not digested and, therefore, will not affect blood sugar or weight gain (or loss). Resistant starch is, however, something that I sadly fear I cannot toss out. It looks like we will still get the effects of starch from this part of the carbohydrate, but on a kind of delayed reaction. Our body will digest it (and make us sorry that we ate it), just not right away.

Oh, please, correct me if I'm wrong!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

New year, new food

We have been venturing out of the traditional foodways of my family for a while now. Once upon a time, this was just an attempt to discover new tastes and sample the delights of the world. Some of those dishes and foods were adopted as things we wanted to continue eating, so My Prince and I already dine on a diet of foods that would be alien to most of my family.

Lately I've been actively seeking healthier foods to add better nutrition to our diet. I've particularly been looking for lower carbohydrate foods that are higher in fiber. Over the past year, three new foods have made an impression: quinoa (see "Return to Central Market"), edamame (see both posts on edamame here), and jicama (see my jicama posts here). Only the latter two have really stuck in our diet. Quinoa is harder to find here in Austin and impossible in our regular shopping haunts in Houston. (Yes, I could drive 20 miles out of the way to get it, but I tend not to do that for anything except raspberry tea.) Edemame and jicama, however, are on our plates at least once a week, sometimes more.

I have three more new foods ready for review right now. One is really an herb: rosemary. I know I've tasted rosemary before, but I have never cooked with it. Now I have the promised rosemary bush and am making my first efforts to incorporate it into my cooking. Fennel can be used as both a vegetable and an herb. Haven't tried it yet, but look forward to trying. Pumpkin is not exactly new. I've had pumpkin pie all my life. I've even made a couple. I've never tried fresh pumpkin, though. I'm going to try my hands at cooking the seeds and making a couple of dishes from the fresh pumpkin that have nothing to do with pies.

Happy New Year!

Well, it's time for our New Year's Resolutions, isn't it? If we do as many of us have done in the past, we are just setting ourselves up for failure by trying to make too many changes too quickly and too grandly. Better we should make fewer resolutions and make them more manageable, perhaps even measurable.

I'm thinking that I need to lose weight. Of course, I've been needing that forever, but I'm getting more and more worried about the consequences of carrying all of this extra weight around one my aching feet and knees (so far so good on the hip joints!). So I need to set a weight loss goal that in the next 365 days I will lose X pounds. If I keep with the recommended pace for healthy weight loss, I would shoot for 1 pound per week, or a total of 52 pounds in the coming year. That seems like a lot to me (even though I know that it is only a part of the weight I need to lose). I think it will be hard to do. Thinking that, I could just simply wander away from the goal.

So I am setting an arbitrary goal for my New Year's Resolution: 20 pounds. Anyone can do that, even me!

Setting a goal is, however, not enough. I have to have a plan for reaching it. The only plan that works is: eat less, do more. I need to cut more carbs from my diet and do more walking. Since walking hurts, that last part will be a challenge, but I have to try. Even once around the block once a week will be more than I have done. And cutting carbs will involve actually counting them in the first place, i.e., having a carb budget.

Twenty pounds might turn into 52 later on, but making the changes needed to lose those 20 will certainly be hard enough. Let's hope I'm up to the challenge.