Today's brunch was fun and wonderful. It's always so good to laugh with our friends. I'll be off-line for a week or so.
Happy Yule to all!
Monday, December 24, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Food gifts
Oh my stars and bells, where have I been? It's not as if I haven't been cooking. I just haven't been posting!
So - food for gifts. Do you like to get this? Do you like to give it? I'm partial to both! This year, I'm branching out: I'm giving away cute little bags of the pancake mix I invented that's loaded with many healthy whole grains. Amaranth, oat flour, brown rice flour, flaxseed meal... all kinds of things. It makes fluffy, nutty pancakes and waffles and probably nifty biscuits, too. Haven't tried that, yet.
I also ventured into rum cake territory. I ran into an ethical dilemma with this one. If you google "rum cake recipes" you get a million hits, most of them the old Bacardi rum cake recipe from the 60s. It's a very popular cake and I can't disagree: it's great!
But it uses a cake mix and instant vanilla pudding mix. And oh blessed Gaia, I can't do that! I'm sorry. I just can't. Those two things would load my beautiful cake with...with... you know.
I hate to cook with anything that comes with a 6-inch list of poly-syllabic ingredients only a chemist can read. And don't bother telling me that even broccoli has a long list of "poly-syllabic ingredients only a chemist can read." I know everything on the planet is made from basic chemistry.
It's not the same thing and you know it.
But I really wanted rum cake.
I can handle the cake mix part without any problem. I have tons of recipes for a basic yellow cake. Easy. But what did the pudding mix add? I had no idea and I didn't think it would do any good to check the box for ingredients. I doubt there's any Real Food in the stuff.
But I make pudding. What goes in the pudding? Milk, of course. Sugar, cornstarch, egg yolks. Vanilla. That's about it.
Ah. I bet the cornstarch does something. Adds binding, thickening, moistness, and it's the only ingredient that's not already in the cake. Was it that simple?
What the heck. Won't know if I don't try. So, here's the recipe. It made moist, dense, lovely rummy cakes. From scratch. And you can pronounce every organic ingredient.
Meals by Marlene Rum Cake
3 cups whole wheat white flour
2 cups sugar
½ cup powdered dry milk (my only nod to processed food. I wanted to replace the liquid ingredient (milk) with rum.)
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp cornstarch
½ cup butter, softened and cut into small chunks
1 ½ cups spiced rum
1 ½ tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the butter, rum, and vanilla. Beat on low speed until combined, then on high speed for 2 minutes. Add the eggs and beat on high speed for 2 more minutes.
Pour into a greased bundt pan or 2 greased 9-inch round cake pans. Bake at 375 for 25 to 30 minutes.
CAUTION! Stand well back when you open the oven and open it slowly. There WILL be a small explosion of flames because of all the rum. It should go out immediately, though.
Check with a toothpick to see if cake is done. Cool on wire racks for 10 minutes, then remove from pans. Cool thoroughly on the racks.
*Note: for gifts, I baked these in small loaf pans. You could easily give away a whole cake, though.
Like the original cake, this should keep well. With all that rum, it ain’t spoilin'!Let me know if you make it or any changes you make. This is a big experiment!
Friday, November 30, 2007
Making Fat
I’ve been thinking about fat.
Not in the “I’ve got too much of it and need to lose some” kind of way, but in the nutritional way.
One of the offerings in this month’s package from the meat CSA is a side of pork. I have to confess, I didn’t even know what a side of pork was. Adventure is part of the charm of belonging to a CSA. Ah, but Google knows. A side of pork is the part that bacon comes from. More specifically, I think it’s the part that’s left after the bacon and ribs have been removed.
It’s fat. And I have a big slab of it. You can see why I’m thinking about it.
I’m supposed to render it and get lard. The powers-that-be in the CSA gave us some general instructions and pointed us to someone’s blog where it’s discussed. But I couldn’t find the blog and anyway, I had something just as good.
In an honored place on my bookshelf is Jessica Prentice’s Full Moon Feast and I knew perfectly well that she talked about rendering fat. In fact, she has a whole chapter devoted to it. I’ve read it before, of course, and it’s thought-provoking. Enough so, that I generally try to avoid non-fat, low-fat, skim… whatever, and try instead, to eat the Real Thing.
Jessica makes no bones about the idea that fat from free-range, grass-fed animals is not the enemy of our health. Sugar, refined grains, processed food, animals raised in cages or feedlots… these are the enemies. This is the kind of idea that makes so much sense to me, that I have to be careful I don’t just accept it without investigation. After all, everyone will tell you that fat is bad. Every person in the health industry. Nutritionists. Dieticians. Lawyers, even. It’s one of the accepted doctrines of western civilization.
Why do we think that? Why don’t we agree that the other list is far more dangerous? Why doesn’t the government’s food pyramid put those items in the “use sparingly” category?
We all know that heart disease, high cholesterol, stroke, diabetes, etc. are at epidemic levels. We all know that this epidemic has been growing the last 80 years or so and we’ve let the “authorities” tell us it’s because we eat too much red meat, too much bacon, too many eggs, too much fat.
The “authorities” never tell you that the last 80 years have also seen the growth of the processed food industry. That in that time, we’ve become completely dependent on Big Agriculture and food created in laboratories. That even our fat has become adulterated by chemically grown plants and animals stacked up in feedlots and fed food they were never intended to eat.
And of course, we eat way too much of this stuff, because, as Jessica says, it’s not satisfying. Especially if we eat the ‘skim’ varieties. Fat used to be healthy. It used to be nutritious. It used to be satisfying. And most of us didn’t get “fat” from it.
Challenge yourself. Eliminate all the sugar and processed food from your diet. Buy local, organic produce and meat. Eat artisan whole-milk cheese and dairy products and don’t worry if your meat has yellow gobs of fat in it. Try it for a while and see if you’re not in better shape.
I’ve been eating this way for several years. It’s been a gradual process and I’m not completely there, yet. But my cholesterol is about 30 points lower than it was when I was doing the low-fat diet thing and eating processed foods and fake sugar. My weight is about the same. I still don’t have diabetes or high blood pressure.
And I can really enjoy my food.
Not in the “I’ve got too much of it and need to lose some” kind of way, but in the nutritional way.
One of the offerings in this month’s package from the meat CSA is a side of pork. I have to confess, I didn’t even know what a side of pork was. Adventure is part of the charm of belonging to a CSA. Ah, but Google knows. A side of pork is the part that bacon comes from. More specifically, I think it’s the part that’s left after the bacon and ribs have been removed.
It’s fat. And I have a big slab of it. You can see why I’m thinking about it.
I’m supposed to render it and get lard. The powers-that-be in the CSA gave us some general instructions and pointed us to someone’s blog where it’s discussed. But I couldn’t find the blog and anyway, I had something just as good.
In an honored place on my bookshelf is Jessica Prentice’s Full Moon Feast and I knew perfectly well that she talked about rendering fat. In fact, she has a whole chapter devoted to it. I’ve read it before, of course, and it’s thought-provoking. Enough so, that I generally try to avoid non-fat, low-fat, skim… whatever, and try instead, to eat the Real Thing.
Jessica makes no bones about the idea that fat from free-range, grass-fed animals is not the enemy of our health. Sugar, refined grains, processed food, animals raised in cages or feedlots… these are the enemies. This is the kind of idea that makes so much sense to me, that I have to be careful I don’t just accept it without investigation. After all, everyone will tell you that fat is bad. Every person in the health industry. Nutritionists. Dieticians. Lawyers, even. It’s one of the accepted doctrines of western civilization.
Why do we think that? Why don’t we agree that the other list is far more dangerous? Why doesn’t the government’s food pyramid put those items in the “use sparingly” category?
We all know that heart disease, high cholesterol, stroke, diabetes, etc. are at epidemic levels. We all know that this epidemic has been growing the last 80 years or so and we’ve let the “authorities” tell us it’s because we eat too much red meat, too much bacon, too many eggs, too much fat.
The “authorities” never tell you that the last 80 years have also seen the growth of the processed food industry. That in that time, we’ve become completely dependent on Big Agriculture and food created in laboratories. That even our fat has become adulterated by chemically grown plants and animals stacked up in feedlots and fed food they were never intended to eat.
And of course, we eat way too much of this stuff, because, as Jessica says, it’s not satisfying. Especially if we eat the ‘skim’ varieties. Fat used to be healthy. It used to be nutritious. It used to be satisfying. And most of us didn’t get “fat” from it.
Challenge yourself. Eliminate all the sugar and processed food from your diet. Buy local, organic produce and meat. Eat artisan whole-milk cheese and dairy products and don’t worry if your meat has yellow gobs of fat in it. Try it for a while and see if you’re not in better shape.
I’ve been eating this way for several years. It’s been a gradual process and I’m not completely there, yet. But my cholesterol is about 30 points lower than it was when I was doing the low-fat diet thing and eating processed foods and fake sugar. My weight is about the same. I still don’t have diabetes or high blood pressure.
And I can really enjoy my food.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Reclassify Salt?
The medical community (who are they, exactly?) is asking the FDA to reclassify salt. Right now, salt is considered GRAS – Generally Recognized as Safe. The new classification would make it a food additive tied to limitations.
Why, you ask?
It turns out the medical community is tired of treating our excessive-salt related illnesses. They consider excessive salt intake to be a public health hazard and want the government to force limitations of it.
Lest we forget: salt is essential for humans. We’ll die if we don’t have some in our diet. But like a lot of other essential nutrients, too much is poison. That skittish happy medium is once again in the spotlight.
The medical community is focusing on processed foods, which of course, makes me want to jump up and down in joy. The food industry has known for decades that they put a dangerous amount of salt in the processed food, but they’ve done very little about fixing it. Because after all, processed foods taste perfectly horrid if they aren’t loaded up with salt and/or sugar. Nobody would buy the stuff if they had to eat it with a sensible amount of salt.
Wait, let me repeat that. Nobody would buy the stuff if they had to eat it with a sensible amount of salt.
Can we all say “D’oh!”?
Government regulations can force the industry to lower the amount of sodium in their food products. But they will want us to buy these products, so they’ll have to do something to help the taste. I shudder to imagine what they might come up with.
We’re in bad shape on this, too, because salt is addictive. We have three or four generations that have grown up on this heavily salted diet of processed foods. If that’s what you’ve eaten for most of your life, you’re going to have a hard time learning to like Real Food. Cutting back on salt is like quitting smoking.
Most people have no idea what Real Food is supposed to taste like. And when they’re forced to eat processed food that is low in sodium, they HATE it. The good news is that, like quitting smoking, it gets easier over time. If you start eating Real Food, your mouth gradually forgets the overly salted taste of the fake stuff and you begin to actually TASTE the food you’re eating. Stick with it for a year or two and you’re probably home free. I know when I try to eat processed food, I’m not usually successful. I can’t stand the taste of the stuff, whether it’s a can of Campbell’s soup or a frozen meal from Lean Cuisine.
So we’ll see what happens. The food industry is fighting the doctors' recommendation and the food industry has a lot of money. I’m not going to place any bets on what the FDA will decide. In the long run, it doesn’t matter. Like I said earlier, the food industry will have to put something in the food to make it palatable and that something will probably not be good for us. The answer is to stop buying and eating processed foods.
That’s always the answer.
Why, you ask?
It turns out the medical community is tired of treating our excessive-salt related illnesses. They consider excessive salt intake to be a public health hazard and want the government to force limitations of it.
Lest we forget: salt is essential for humans. We’ll die if we don’t have some in our diet. But like a lot of other essential nutrients, too much is poison. That skittish happy medium is once again in the spotlight.
The medical community is focusing on processed foods, which of course, makes me want to jump up and down in joy. The food industry has known for decades that they put a dangerous amount of salt in the processed food, but they’ve done very little about fixing it. Because after all, processed foods taste perfectly horrid if they aren’t loaded up with salt and/or sugar. Nobody would buy the stuff if they had to eat it with a sensible amount of salt.
Wait, let me repeat that. Nobody would buy the stuff if they had to eat it with a sensible amount of salt.
Can we all say “D’oh!”?
Government regulations can force the industry to lower the amount of sodium in their food products. But they will want us to buy these products, so they’ll have to do something to help the taste. I shudder to imagine what they might come up with.
We’re in bad shape on this, too, because salt is addictive. We have three or four generations that have grown up on this heavily salted diet of processed foods. If that’s what you’ve eaten for most of your life, you’re going to have a hard time learning to like Real Food. Cutting back on salt is like quitting smoking.
Most people have no idea what Real Food is supposed to taste like. And when they’re forced to eat processed food that is low in sodium, they HATE it. The good news is that, like quitting smoking, it gets easier over time. If you start eating Real Food, your mouth gradually forgets the overly salted taste of the fake stuff and you begin to actually TASTE the food you’re eating. Stick with it for a year or two and you’re probably home free. I know when I try to eat processed food, I’m not usually successful. I can’t stand the taste of the stuff, whether it’s a can of Campbell’s soup or a frozen meal from Lean Cuisine.
So we’ll see what happens. The food industry is fighting the doctors' recommendation and the food industry has a lot of money. I’m not going to place any bets on what the FDA will decide. In the long run, it doesn’t matter. Like I said earlier, the food industry will have to put something in the food to make it palatable and that something will probably not be good for us. The answer is to stop buying and eating processed foods.
That’s always the answer.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Easy plans
I'm in the kitchen today. My own, this time. I must get started on baking for the holiday. And I have chili to make with turkey leftovers. I've decided to make a batch of sausage.
My back hurts, so no sitting at the computer. Standing and cooking is just the ticket!
My back hurts, so no sitting at the computer. Standing and cooking is just the ticket!
Monday, November 26, 2007
Raw Milk
If you live in California, you will shortly not have the right to buy raw milk.
AB 1735 takes effect on January 1st, having passed the legislature with no debate and no warning to dairy farmers or consumers.
This is not how our ruling bodies are supposed to work.
Read the letter from Ron Garthwaite and Collette Cassidy of Claravale Farms and then write to your legislators. More information can be found at www.Organicpastures.com
I use raw milk for my yogurt. It makes the best yogurt I've had this side of Ireland and I don't want to give it up. Raw milk is safe and much healthier than the pasteurized junk put out my the Food Industry.
Sure, it needs to be produced by a properly clean dairy. Isn't that true for all our milk?
Oh, right. The pasteurized stuff can come from cows standing in their own muck, because it gets pasteurized. Silly me.
I truly do have a hard time holding down the sarcasm and cynicism when it comes to rulings like this. Help us out and write a letter or send an email.
Dairy farmers are fighting back.
AB 1735 takes effect on January 1st, having passed the legislature with no debate and no warning to dairy farmers or consumers.
This is not how our ruling bodies are supposed to work.
Read the letter from Ron Garthwaite and Collette Cassidy of Claravale Farms and then write to your legislators. More information can be found at www.Organicpastures.com
I use raw milk for my yogurt. It makes the best yogurt I've had this side of Ireland and I don't want to give it up. Raw milk is safe and much healthier than the pasteurized junk put out my the Food Industry.
Sure, it needs to be produced by a properly clean dairy. Isn't that true for all our milk?
Oh, right. The pasteurized stuff can come from cows standing in their own muck, because it gets pasteurized. Silly me.
I truly do have a hard time holding down the sarcasm and cynicism when it comes to rulings like this. Help us out and write a letter or send an email.
Dairy farmers are fighting back.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Prep Day
The turkey is brining, the cornbread is drying, the sweet potato casserole is cooling. The giblet stock is in the frig, as is the homemade cranberry sauce, and the prepped ingredients for the stuffing. The housekeepers are coming but after that I'll probably work on the veggies for tomorrow.
What to do for dinner? I've been quite persistent at using up leftovers this week, so I have room in the frig and freezer. We still have some spaghetti sauce, but I don't want to use pasta. I also don't want to cook the spaghetti squash, yet.
I think I'll make a soup out of the sauce. Add some water (or maybe wine), throw in some cannellini beans and toast some bread with olive oil, salt and pepper. I've got a rind from the parmesan cheese that will go good in that, too. The sauce already has spinach in it, but I'll see what's in the freezer, in the veggie department. The more, the merrier!
Sounds good, no?
What to do for dinner? I've been quite persistent at using up leftovers this week, so I have room in the frig and freezer. We still have some spaghetti sauce, but I don't want to use pasta. I also don't want to cook the spaghetti squash, yet.
I think I'll make a soup out of the sauce. Add some water (or maybe wine), throw in some cannellini beans and toast some bread with olive oil, salt and pepper. I've got a rind from the parmesan cheese that will go good in that, too. The sauce already has spinach in it, but I'll see what's in the freezer, in the veggie department. The more, the merrier!
Sounds good, no?
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