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:

• Gaining "recession pounds"
• Farmer-in-chief
• President's Cancer Panel Report, Executive Summary
• News article on PCP Report
• Unhappy meals

High fiber reading, for sure!

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.

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.

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.

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.