Read Your Ingredient Lists!

Many of my students are surprised at some of the ingredients found in the foodstuffs in their refrigerators and cabinets. A simple way to avoid this is by taking a minute or two when shopping to read ingredient lists.

If some of a food’s ingredients seem more suited for high school chemistry than the kitchen (the unpronounceable ones and anything with a number), take a pass. You and your family will be better for it.

How to Make a Blueberry Crisp

Blueberries are plentiful and cheap this time of year, so I took advantage and made a blueberry crisp.

The same easy recipe can work for a variety of fruits (i.e. berries, peaches, plums, apricots, apples, pears). As they come to market over the course of the summer and fall, I’ll bake those too.

To make the fruit filling, I started by buttering a 9-inch glass pie dish. I then added enough blueberries (about a pint) to fill the dish. I squeezed in the juice of half a lemon, plus added 1 tablespoon of white sugar and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar. I mixed everything together.

For the topping, I mixed 1 cup flour (½ unbleached white, ½ whole wheat), ½ cup white sugar, ½ cup brown sugar, 1 cup oats and ½ teaspoon unrefined sea salt in a bowl. I then added 1 stick of slightly softened Anchor butter, cut into smaller cubes.

Next came the only possibly difficult part: combining the butter and dry ingredients into a streusel-like topping. I used my fingertips to clump together the two until no dry ingredients were still powdery. The butter and dry ingredients were now one, stuck together in a moist mixture.

I spread this mixture evenly over the filling and baked the crisp in a 375 degree oven until the fruit started to bubble and the topping turned golden brown (about 45 minutes). I like it a little cold, but feel free to serve warm or at room temperature.

A Look At Immature Blackberries

Many of us buy and eat food without knowing how it grows. Here’s a video showing blackberries before they mature.

I’ll post a recipe and video for making blackberry jam when I pick the blackberries in the next two or three weeks.

The Importance of Crop Rotation

In both home gardens and huge farms, rotating vegetables is important to keep pests and diseases at bay. Unfortunately, many of our farms in the Midwest dedicated to commodity crops (soybeans, corn, etc.) plant the same item in the same areas year after year. The soil, depleted of certain minerals and nutrients, becomes unhealthy. To counter this, pesticides are sprayed, which end up in both our food and water supply.

Beach Peas - A Wild (and Edible) Food

As I have previously written, there are dozens—if not hundreds—of varieties of most fruits and vegetables.

Unfortunately, we are privy to only one or two (not the most flavorful) of each when we shop at the supermarket. Much of what we eat is dictated by how growing and transport issues affect the big food companies’ bottom lines.

Some lesser-known varieties can be found in farmers’ markets, while others appear in more unlikely places; wild foods, which our ancestors domesticated to create agriculture and a steady food supply, are still plentiful.

Watch the video below for an example.

A Narragansett Turkey

In the video below, see how beautiful and healthy a turkey should look. The bird is a Narragansett, one of the most popular varieties of domesticated turkeys in the early 20th century, but now labeled as threatened by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.

Thankfully, the Narragansett is making a comeback with small-scale farmers who are trying to meet the demand of a growing market for quality, non-industrial food.

The Broad Breasted White, by far the most popular commercial turkey variety (Thanksgiving and other times), isn’t this beautiful when alive or tasty when dead. In addition, the Broad Breasted White, because of the way it has been bred to have huge amounts of breast meat and shorter legs, cannot reproduce without human help.

Shouldn’t we be demanding heritage breeds, rather than varieties with no flavor that are full of hormones and antibiotics, and require in vitro fertilization to propagate?

The Scene at Mecox Bay Dairy

This weekend I visited Mecox Bay Dairy, which has the only dairy herd on Long Island. Mecox produces outstanding cheeses using raw milk from grass-fed cows.

This is a much different scene than what would be found at a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO), where almost all of our meat and dairy products come from.

(Tomorrow: my encounter with Tom the Turkey.)

Peeling Roasted (or Charred) Peppers

Removing the skin from roasted peppers can be a little messy, but it's definitely worth the effort.

How to Roast (or Char) Peppers

Watch this video to learn how to roast (or char) peppers in your kitchen. The same technique can be used outdoors on a grill.

(Tomorrow: How to peel the peppers)

Documentary: "Food, Inc."

I saw the documentary “Food, Inc.” last night.

The good news is that my wife officially no longer thinks I am totally crazy.

The bad news is that not enough people will see this movie, which illustrates how all parts of our food system are controlled by a handful of self-serving multinational corporations.

The movie echoes much of what I have been championing for several years and does a great job addressing core issues.

Our industrial food complex is an intricate system that is hidden from public view. A seemingly innocuous package of chicken, beef or produce is far from innocuous. If more of us knew how our food is grown and produced (under the banner of safe and wholesome products) there would be a revolt. Our future depends on all of us knowing.

I wish I were exaggerating, but through my work of teaching people how to buy and cook real food, I am witness to how our collective lack of food knowledge affects our health.

To see where “Food, Inc.” is playing, click here.

Substituting Ingredients in Recipes

When cooking, many people feel handcuffed to recipes. However, it is easy to improvise and substitute ingredients.

For example, if a recipe calls for a red pepper and you only have a yellow one, make the dish anyway using the yellow pepper. No scallions? Don’t hesitate to chop up a yellow or red onion instead.

Yesterday in a cooking lesson, I made guacamole with a student. She had made guacamole before, but always had used cilantro. I had brought parsley, which surprised her. She ended up loving what we made, but she said she never would think to make guacamole unless she had all of her usual ingredients available. Substituting never crossed her mind.

We also made a tomato sauce using onions, zucchini and whole peeled tomatoes (to replace her jarred tomato sauces). We added some parsley to finish the sauce, which nicely rounded out its flavor. Why parsley instead of the more conventional basil? It was as simple as not wanting to spend $2.49 for a huge bunch of basil, of which we were going to use two or three leaves. I knew we were going to use the parsley for the guacamole, so it became a part of the tomato sauce as well.

Feel free to tinker with your usual dishes. The change of flavors will be refreshing, less food may get wasted and you may even save yourself some money when shopping.

Peaches? Blueberries? Bueller?

Seen in a supermarket window in Brooklyn yesterday:
Wait, those are blueberries, not peaches! (Click on photo to enlarge.)

When I got home, just to make sure I wasn’t missing something, I Googled “Are blueberries also known as southern peaches?”

Nothing.

Every day I become more convinced that our lack of knowledge about what is in the food we eat, where it comes from and how it grows plays a huge role in the existence of our dysfunctional food system. If we were taught and learned some basic facts, I believe we would be less willing to accept most of what the food companies offer us.

And if a supermarket can’t get it right, how will our children?