A New Year, A New Light

A Call for Help

It was a good year, 2011.  Before New Years, the beautiful wife and I traveled to San Francisco for the 34^th annual holiday dinner sponsored by my fancy sister.  She might object to the term "fancy," but I make my case with this picture of her Christmas tree.  Do you think 4200 lights a bit much?  My sister doesn't.

After 34 dinners, it has become more than a tradition.  Though the main topic is resolutions—reporting on last year's resolutions, and sharing next years—it's more a validation of our family.  We're far from perfect, but we're immeasureably better for having shared our walk through life with each other.  So most years the beautiful wife and I drive 14 hours, round trip, simply to share a family dinner. 

When it came time to make new resolutions, my goal to double the Word of Wisdom Living audience in 2012 was challenged.  “You should grow ten-fold,” they countered.  So that’s our goal.  If we make it, we promise to continue for a 3^rd year.  We need your help—we've invited all our friends, and a few strangers.  So we’re asking you to spread the word and expand our audience—in December we averaged about 250 readers daily, so our new goal is 2500 per day.  

Please become a partner in the food reformation.  Make a difference by commiting to bring 10 friends or associates to Word of Wisdom Living, beginning right now. Each month I'll report on our progress. (One easy way to spread the word is to share our new Facebook page with your friends and family.)

Healthy Changes

The Healthy Changes are like resolutions, but better—they're done continuously, all year long, one each week.  I measured our family's performance on the 52 Healthy Changes in 2011.  Following the Healthy Changes has made a big difference in our health but we weren’t perfect—I put our compliance at 80%.  The hardest part was eating five vegetable servings daily.  So we square up our shoulders and resolve to do better in 2012.  If we do this for three yars, I think we shall have mastered it. 

Over the Holidays we worked on the 52 changes, keeping most, improving others, replacing a few.  We didn’t invent these changes—we sorted through the available literature and distilled the recommendations of doctors, scientists, and journalists into 52 topics.  It’s a good list, the fruit of 1000s of hours of study, but if you have health issues, follow your doctor’s counsel first.  And we're always open to suggestions for Healthy Changes.

We're making some improvements to this site too, watch for them over the coming weeks. (If you view this blog through a reader, you might want to click over to the actual site to see how things are changing.) We've thought a lot about how we can improve things and have come up with an ambitious list that includes small daily tips, web videos that expand on posts, and recipes that can make the Healthy Changes a little easier. We hope you'll stick around to see what we're working on and let us know if you have other ideas that would make this site better.

Measure Your Progress

Through 2012 we’ll collect the Healthy Changes into a list with the idea that you can grade yourself monthly as the list grows.  There’s a repeating seasonal pattern—each 13 weeks we cover the key themes of lifestyle and diet reform, each time building upon the prior changes.  The themes include eating less sugar, healthier fats, whole grains, more fruits and vegetables, and less meat.  Other themes are more exercise, better kitchen organization (menus, shopping lists), cooking, and special topics.  Be patient: reforming one’s lifestyle in a year is an audacious project.

Worried that your life is already too complicated without adding 52 things?  The big blessing is the 52 Healthy Changes actually simplify your life.  Factory drinks like sodas are this week's subject.  Drinking water—which is essentially free—is simpler and more natural than constantly buying soda or other drinks.  When we get to factory-made convenience foods we'll make the same argument—home cooking done right is simpler and cheaper.  There's a deep thought here, one worthy of Thoreau:  Living more simply is the first step towards living more deeply.

Please Comment:  Share your thoughts on how we can advance the food reformation.  Whoever puts their shoulder to this worthy task becomes a light upon a hill. 

Healthy Winter Desserts

The quick answer:  In winter, when you crave an after-dinner sweet, make fruit the first ingredient.

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Next Year

We’re most grateful for all that has been accomplished in 2011.  In the next post we’ll discuss our  plans for 2012.  We started our conversation a year ago with three basic premises. 

1. The modern American diet (MAD) is the primary cause of chronic disease (heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, etc.).
2. Prevention of chronic disease by dietary reform is better than treatment.
3. Dietary reform is too big a jump to do all at once, but could be substantially accomplished in a year of 52 weekly steps, called Healthy Changes.  

The three premises rested upon three hypotheses:

1. Because the science of nutrition is impossibly complex and changes with time, we could balance science with two timeless oracles: food tradition and scripture.  This brings to mind the stability of the three-legged stool.
2. Using these sources, an ordinary person given sufficient time could better define a healthy diet than any congress of conflicting and conflicted experts. 
3. Because everyone is different, this diet could be improved though conversation with other concerned people.  Whoever reads this blog and comments, adds to that conversation.

The focus of this blog is prevention.  Only qualified doctors can diagnose illness and prescribe treatment; nothing in this blog should be considered medical advice.

The Sugar Addiction

Americans eat too much sugar, over 100 pounds each year.  So six of the 52 Healthy Changes combined to reduce our sugar intake to below the AHA target of 6 teaspoons daily for women (about 20 lbs./year) and 9 for men.  

Healthy Change #1 targeted the problem of excess sugar intake, by going after sugary drinks:  If you consume sodas or other sugary drinks, limit yourself to one (12 oz.) serving per week. 

Healthy Change #3 talked about breakfast cereals, but actually provided a rule for all processed foods:  Cereal products must be made of whole grains, and have more grams of natural fiber than grams of sugar.

Healthy Change #8 went after the bag of candy in your home:  Buy candy a piece at a time; never bring a box or bag of candy into the home.

Healthy Change #9 applied the “more sugar than fiber” rule to the bakery aisle:  Your daily bread must be whole grain, with more grams of fiber than added sugars.

Healthy Change #31 put the dagger into the diet drinks, which many mistakenly think are healthier than the sugar drinks:  If you consume diet drinks, limit yourself to one (12 oz.) serving per week.

Healthy Change #51 proposed that traditional spices and herbs replace sugar as our most popular flavoring agent.  This is the hallmark of a competent cook—to not rely on sugar to make food taste good.

The Easiest Thing

Did you notice this year how we haven’t had a single post on one of the healthiest food groups—fruit?  There’s a reason.  Fruits are so easy to eat they don’t need an eating rule.  They’re Nature’s candy—fruit is fun to eat so it usually is eaten before it spoils.  Not so with vegetables—if you don’t include them in your menu writing, they’ll go bad sitting in your refrigerator.

People enjoy candy during the Holidays.  Because we expected a lot of company, the beautiful wife bought a box of See’s candy (technically, a violation of Healthy Change #8).  Christmas passed without opening the box.  Later, overwhelmed by the noise of little grandchildren, I proposed a silence contest, with a treat for all who could be still.  Silence by the promise of See’s worked.  Had a few pieces myself.

Dessert

We crave something sweet after dinner, a little dessert.  Have you noticed this craving more in winter?  I have.  In times past, summer’s fruit was put away for winter use.  Berries were preserved as jam.  Tree fruits were bottled, or dried.  Dried fruits could be used in compotes.  Traditional fruit preservation has declined because fresh fruits are available year around.  This presents an opportunity to reinvent, or at least redisocover fruit-based desserts:

Here are ten winter fruits desserts that can be made with little sugar:

1. Apple with cheddar cheese—no cooking required.  See this Washington Post article for cheese ideas.
2. Apple Crisp with granola topping—there are lots of recipes.  I could eat this every week; it’s great with vanilla ice cream, or just cream.
3. Pear Crisp.  I’m not a big Ina Garten fan, but she does have a recipe that combines pears and apples.
4. Chocolate dipped fruits—winter strawberries need a little help and what’s better than chocolate?  Here’s Martha’s recipe.
5. Tropical fruit—if you have a ripe pineapple, combine it with banana and/or coconut.
6. Baked Apple—here's a recipe for this traditional winter treat.
7. Poached Pears (photo shown above)—delicious with a small scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, or lemon sorbet (recipe here).
8. Banana Nut Bread—good for desserts or snacks.  When bananas get brown spots, simply slip then into the freezer until needed.  Recipes abound but I do a health-up by replacing half the white flour with whole wheat flour, cutting sugar by 1/3 and replacing with brown sugar, substituting butter for less healthy oils, and adding applesauce to reduce the butter.  I also double the walnuts.
9. Orange slices with warmed raspberries—this recipe is another way to enjoy winter navels.
10. Dried Fruit Compotes—this recipe can be made from a variety of fruits by simply adding honey and a little vanilla.

Please comment.  Share your favorite healthy fruit desserts and treats.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

In Praise of Spices

The quick answer:  Anyone can flavor food with sugar or salt, but artistry with spice combinations is the true measure of a cook. 

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Christmas Parties

We’re really “B” list people, the beautiful wife and I, but dear friends invited us to their “A” list Christmas dinner-party.  It was elegant, fun, and healthy.  The dinner menu included mushrooms stuffed with butternut squash, asparagus, green salad with wonderful fruits, and grilled salmon. After such a healthy meal, chocolate Bundt cake hardly seemed decadent. 

After dinner we shared favorite Christmas stories, some touching and a few hilarious.  Mine was from a college Christmas trip across Nevada, when my car broke down in the middle of the coldest night of the year, in a tiny depressed town, and being offered help by an old man that as far as I could tell was either homeless or very poor.  Though the man has long ago passed from this world, the memory of his kind generosity still lights my life.

On the hilarious side, one couple told of their first Christmas after getting married, also during college.  Because money was tight he had secretly gotten her a present.  In the way of young love, his wife had done the same.  On Christmas Eve, as a maneuver to retrieve the gift from his hiding place, he announced he would go downstairs, where the bathroom was located, to take a shower.  He got the water running, undressed, but before slipping into the shower, darted into the adjoining room to retrieve his hidden present.  At the worst moment, he heard his wife coming down the stairs.  She had decided to retrieve her present for him while he showered!  Trapped and unaware of her purpose, he slipped into a closet to hide until she returned upstairs.  Unfortunately, he chose the closet where she hid his present. 

I’ll spare you the rest of the story, but we laughed until we cried.  I think it a good segue into our next subject—spices.

Spices and Herbs

In our series of grocery store aisle visits, we now come to the spice aisle.  We lump spices and herbs together but there's a difference—herbs come from the leaves of plants, while spices are processed from the seed, fruit, skin, or root.  Spices are healthy ingredients, in part because they’re an alternate to just dumping sugar and salt on food.  The complexity of our seasonings is a measure of our (food) culture.  A command of spice combinations is one measure of a cook’s prowess.  There’s good information on the Internet for the curious cook; another good reference is The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs. 

Spices conjure up romantic images of ancient camel caravans and the adventures of Marco Polo.  Spices were the stimulus behind exploration of the New World, and the wars over the Spice Islands (known for nutmeg, cloves, and pepper; now part of Indonesia). 

The spice wars are over now.  Who won?  McCormick & Company—they’re the masters of the spice aisle in the local grocery.  Remember Schilling spices?  The brand’s gone, bought out by McCormick.  Lawry’s seasonings are there, but McCormick owns them too. 

Here’s an interesting fact about the spice aisle—the foods in the other aisles (think chips, crackers, soft drinks, margarine, etc.) have been processed into unhealthiness.  But spices remain remarkably unchanged—no other food group has survived so unchanged.  I find nothing artificial in the spice aisle.  Spices not only flavor our food, they’re considered healthy and are rich in antioxidants, which accounts for their long shelf life.

 

Spice Economics

Have you noticed the rising cost of spices?  With control of the spice aisle, McCormick has been able to steadily raise prices.  This presented a window for Trader Joes’s, which introduced their Spices of the World brand (shown in the photo below).  The local TJ’s offers twelve common spices in 4” tall bottles, usually priced at $1.99, a fraction of the cost in regular grocery stores. 

The best example is ground dill:  the local grocery charges the equivalent of $426/lb. (in 0.3 oz. bottles) while TJ’s sells the same product for $48/lb (0.5 oz. bottle).  No other food has such an outrageous store-to-store price difference.  Here are other comparisons:

• TJ’s rosemary is $42/lb. versus $104 for McCormick's version at our local grocery.
• TJ’s thyme is $34/lb. vs. $162.
• TJ’s oregano is $11/lb. vs. $97.
• TJ’s curry is $18/lb. vs. $67.
• TJ’s garlic powder is $12/lb. vs. $28.

Fair warning:  When I returned to my grocery to photograph the spice aisle all the spices were on sale.  There’s a strategy here that I see in other aisles:  Combine high prices with frequent sales, lest the native become restless.  I resent this manipulation—people aren’t dumb, they’ll figure this out, and see the grocery chain as predator rather than trusted purveyor.  You can see the same behavior with packaged breakfast cereals (where you pay dollars per pound for what is bought at pennies per pound), and other products.

Here’s a trivia question:  What’s the cheapest commonly used spice?  Garlic.

Shelf Life

This will make you laugh.  After studying the spice aisle I saw one difference between spices and other packaged foods in the store—spices don’t have shelf life data, there’s no expiration date.  Because they’re high in antioxidants, spices have a long shelf life, but it’s not forever. 

You can check the age of your McCormick spices this way:  Any spice showing Baltimore as the address (they’re now located in Hunt Valley, MD), is at least 20 years old!  No one keeps spices 20 years, right?  Wrong.  I checked the 64 spices in our drawer; we have a bunch of cans and bottles showing the Baltimore address. 

Spice Mixtures

One way to add value, or at least convenience, is to blend spices that go together and create a new product.  I didn’t realize it until now, but curry is an ancient example.  Curry is actually a mixture of turmeric, ginger, coriander and other spices.  Other examples:

• Herbs of Provence: thyme, rosemary, savory, basil, lavender, etc.
• Italian herb mix: marjoram, thyme, rosemary, savory, sage, oregano, basil
• McCormick’s Bon Appetit: salt, MSG, celery seed, and onion.
• Lawry’s Seasoned Salt:  salt, sugar, paprika, turmeric, onion, cornstarch, garlic, tricalcium phosphate (prevents clumping), etc.
• TJ’s 21 Seasoning Salute: onion, black pepper, celery seed, cayenne pepper, parsley, basil, marjoram, bay leaf, oregano, thyme, savory, rosemary, cumin, mustard, coriander, garlic, etc.
• Cajun’s Choice Creole Seasoning: salt, red, black, and white peppers, garlic, and other spices.

Excepting curry, these pre-mixed spices have limited use.  The beautiful wife, however, likes to use the Italian herb mix. 

Spices for Singles

I discovered a new convenience product, on the market since 2010:  McCormick’s Recipe Inspirations.  These are pre-measured spices, sold on a card with six separate pockets.  To cook, you simple open the card and dump the spices onto the food.  This is a product for less discriminating novices, rather than experienced cooks.   Typical blends:

• Rosemary Roasted Chicken: rosemary, garlic, paprika, and black pepper.
• Apple Sage Pork Chops: sage, garlic, thyme, allspice, and paprika.
• Caribbean grilled Steak: garlic, cumin, onion, oregano, and red pepper.

There’s a big need for products that enable the novice cook, or the single person, to make simple homemade meals.  Recipe Inspirations isn’t a healthy answer, in my view, as the current offering is based on meat dishes.  But isn’t there an opportunity for products that simplify cooking for one, that don't’t compromise the wholesomeness of the food?  They should have these criteria:  Based on whole foods, ease-to-use, and affordable.

Please comment:  Share your favorite spice combinations, or spice tricks from your kitchen.  Or tell about your favorite Christmas foods.

Saving Old Recipes

The quick answer:  Recipes are often family heirlooms, but those from the last century may require "healthing-up".

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1000 Words

I’ve renewed my intention to keep posts under 1000 words so can’t tell the whole story of our recent trip to Sacramento.  Except to say we attended the funeral of the beautiful wife’s namesake Aunt Clare; had dinner with my Mom who gave us some of her delicious Heavenly Hash (mixed berry jam) and prized Christmas fruitcake; and stopped at Elk Grove Walnut Co. for just-harvested walnuts at $5/lb., shelled.  (Yes you can get some, just Email: egwalnut@comcast.net.) 

But I did tell the walnut lady the lovely story of how Aunt Clare’s husband died after a 50-year marriage and how she rediscovered her first true love, whose wife had also died, and how through the years each had saved a portrait of the other, and how at 80 he swept her off her feet, again, so they could spend their last years holding hands in Hawaii.  Which simply proved that Robert Browning was right when he penned, 

Grow old along with me!  The best is yet to be,

 The last of life, for which the first was made . . . .

As I turned to leave, the walnut lady,  wiping a tear from her eye, thanked me for sharing the story. 

Nor can I tell how my Mom’s dad, a hard rock miner, died of pneumonia when she was just two, and how she and her widowed mom survived the Depression by the grace of God and the kindness of her Aunt Kate (she of Aunt Kate’s Chili Sauce), and how through the hard years Mom came to cherish the promise of Christmas future.  I can’t even tell the story of how at the moment she turned from girl to young woman, when she expected nothing for Christmas, her mother surprised her with a beautiful green gown that she later wore to the dance where she dazzled her husband-to-be.  Well, actually, that story has to be told—next week we’ll set food aside and tell a Christmas story.

Cooking and Flavor

By now you know I can’t resist a good story.  But the real subject of this post is how to improve old recipes.  On our drive to Sacramento I read Mark Bittman’s Ebook, Cooking Solves Everything: How Time in the Kitchen Can Save Your Health, Your Budget, and Even the Planet.  It’s short, meant to be read in one sitting, and echoes the argument we’ve made here:  If you want good health, cook!  I didn’t realize when I started this blog that home cooking would be the key to health.

Bittman, in his Ebook, shared his three favorite flavors for improving a dish:

1. A squeeze of lemon or lime juice.
2. Highlight with smoked paprika.  (Not the old stuff sitting in your spice drawer waiting for you to make deviled eggs, but Spanish paprika, also known as pimenton.)
3. Toss on whatever fresh herbs you have on hand, chopped.  (This works best, I think, if you have a herb garden, or at least some leftover parsley, cilantro, or thyme.)

Taking Stock

Bottom line:  It's best to make your own stock.  The picture (above) shows the evolution of stock.  Campbell's broth, mixed as directed, costs $3.34 per quart.  Swanson's Chicken broth is $3.39.  Maggi's chicken bouillon flakes are cheaper but the ingredient list starts with "salt, cornstarch, MSG, hydrogenated palm oil", etc.  Actually, all these imitations of old-fashioned chicken stock are high in sodium (salt) and artificial ingedients.  The tastiest, cheapest, and healthiest is our homemade chicken stock (shown in the pint Mason jar).

Saving Old Recipes

Have you looked through the recipes of a grandmother or great-aunt who has passed on?  If so you will notice that between the World Wars, food began to be modernized, i.e. made more convenient, or more factory-processed.  Food Inc. accelerated meal preparation, but didn't tell us they were also speeding up our aging process. 

Stock, as shown above, was replaced by high-salt, low-taste, factory substitutes.  Lard was replaced by Crisco, or hydrogenated vegetable oils.  And the amount of sugar in cakes and cookies approached the amount of flour, which was refined and bleached.  If you love those old recipes, here are some tips I’ve collected to "health" them up.  (Yes, "health" can also be a verb.)

1. Flour:  Use whole grain flours, or a mixture, in place of refined flours. 
2. Sugar:  Minimize the use of sugar; reduce sugar by ½, or at least by ¼.      
3. Broth:  If a recipe calls for store-bought chicken broth, Campbell’s, or chicken bouillon cubes—pull out your homemade chicken stock.  Last week I made three batches of Skip’s Potato Soup.  For the 3^rd batch I forgot to take my chicken stock out of the freezer so, because I was in a hurry, I used store-bought.  We could tell the difference—the soup was good but the flavor was diluted.
4. Fat:  Only use healthy fats.  Ignore the call for Crisco and substitute butter, or lard if you’re experienced.  Instead of refined vegetable oils, use butter, olive oil, coconut oil, or cold-pressed organic oils. 
5. Low-cal stuff:  Minimize low-calorie versions of food.  There are no studies—to my knowledge—showing any benefit from low-calorie food products.  The best way to reduce calories is to avoid refined foods in favor of whole foods.  Whole foods are full of fiber and fill you with way less calories.
6. Ditto for low-sodium products.  Less salt is better but some, especially if prescribed by your doc.  But the bigger issue for most if that salt is mainly found in processed foods.  Lowering the sodium doesn’t restore the lost nutrients.  Often low-sodium foods are higher in sugar.
7. Vegetables:  To increase your intake, puree your produce and add it to entrees, sauces, and soups.

Please comment, share your share your favorite healthy recipes, or your favorite healthy cookbooks.  In the next post we’ll tell how the Sunday roasted chicken got processed into those frozen chicken nuggets. 

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Soup Recipes

The quick answer:  To live longer, eat like a peasant—enjoy whole foods, which have more nutrients and fewer calories—beginning with soup.

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The Folly of Metrics

You’ve heard the management truism about the value of metrics?  It says that whatever we measure will improve, that if we report the measurement it will improve more, and if we set goals for the measurement, it will improve faster.  I was a fan of metrics in my youth because of their power to direct behavior.  I’m still a fan but with this caveat—the most important things don’t lend themselves to measurement.  (Confession:  one metric in my life is the number of daily readers of this blog—your visits help to make my day.)

Love, for example, is essential to our happiness, but have you ever tried to measure it?  So there is this danger, you know, that in life we may be measuring the wrong thing.  Do you think money will make you happy?  It will definitely increase your options, but it tends to interfere with the source of true happiness: love.  So be cautious about counting your money too often. 

Here’s another example of a metric gone awry: calories.  In the early days of nutrition science, in the late 1800s, they learned to measure the calories in food.  Because it was easy to do and there were few other metrics, calories got a lot of attention.  The dominance of this metric led to the false idea that calories caused overweight and that the cure for overweight was to count and restrict calories.  If you look around, you can see the error of these assumptions—the more we focused on calories, the more overweight we became. 

In a prior post—The Skinny on Overweight—we posited that the quality of our calories was more important than the quantity.  If you wanted to reach a healthy weight, rather than count calories, you should change the nature of your food. 

The issue here is that whole foods are full of fiber and very filling.  They’re also high in nutrients and low in calories.  Processed foods are the opposite, high in calories and low in nutrients.  So if you eat mostly whole foods, you’ll get plenty of nutrients but not too many calories.  We won’t all have the same figure if we do this—that would be boring.  But we will achieve the goal of this blog:  Eat smarter, look better, and live longer.

Starvation Recipes

Making money a primary metric leads to foolish behavior.  Out of control borrowing, especially in Greece, has been a financial disaster for the European Community.  In street demonstrations, the Greeks have defied the reality of their plight, but nonetheless, hard times are in their future.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Though difficult, it’s essential to learn to live within one’s means.  Here in the US, we’re having our own hard experience.

So how do you survive in a tough economy?  If you read Greek, buy the new cookbook, Starvation Recipes, written by a woman of Athens.  During WWII, occupied Athens suffered severe food shortages and people became very creative about conserving food.  The author studied WWII era newspapers and collected ideas and recipes for surviving on less.  The book is selling well.  Which all leads to this week’s subject:  the nutritious economy of soup.

Living Longer

A friend suggested I listen to a podcast titled, “Can We Reverse Aging?”  The podcast reminded me of other truisms:

• Across all species, the larger animals live longer.  Blue Whales, the largest of mammals, can live 200 years; the mayfly lives but a few hours.
• Conversely, within a single species, the smallest live the longest.  That’s good news for the beautiful wife, at 5 foot, 2 inches.
• A longevity pill would be worth billions, so scientists are hard at work.  The research to date has shown just one way to slow aging—eat less calories.
• Studies of varied species prove that as long as long as nutrients are adequate, life is extended, even doubled, by reducing calories. 

A word of caution—caloric restriction hasn’t been tested on humans.  There is interesting literature on longevity improvements in Denmark and Scandinavian countries during WWII food shortages.   The calorie-restriction findings are bad news for Americans because our daily calorie intake has steadily increased in recent decades.  As our diet has gone off the tracks, overweight has increased in step. 

An Interesting Woman

This all leads to a UCSF professor born in Tasmania: Elizabeth Blackburn.  Blackburn earned a Nobel Prize for discovering the enzyme that regenerates telomeres.  Telomeres, you will recall, are the protective tails on the chromosomes that protect the DNA within each of our cells.  Aging is linked to the shortening of our telomeres so the enzyme that restores them could also extend our lives.  (Shortened telomeres have also been linked to cancer risk.) 

Blackburn’s current interests are reported to include how stress harmfully shortens telomeres, the cancer risk of shortened telomeres, and how eating less calories helps to restore them.  The drug companies would love to discover a molecule that lengthens telomeres, thus lengthening life and reducing cancer risk.  A lot of money will be spent on telomere research, but I think it unlikely a pill is the answer.  Where is the answer more likely to be found?  By rediscovering recipes for traditional foods.

A Word About Recipes

Going off-subject for a moment, UNESCO has compiled a list of world heritage sites, seen here.  Checking out the sites on the list is to take an exotic vacation without leaving your home.  Traditional recipes (returning to our subject) are also a world heritage.  The other day, the beautiful wife was making Christmas cookies with a recipe handed down from her mother.  The recipe is in her deceased mother’s handwriting so I saw it as a family heirloom.

If you’re mathematically inclined, you can figure out that inventing a simple recipe of, say, 8 ingredients with each tested at three different amounts, requires over 6000 batches to test all the combinations.   This is an impossible task.  So a well-evolved recipe, tested by time in many kitchens, is truly a heritage.  Can you see a good recipe as a treasured algorithm distilled from eons of cooking experiments?

I subscribe, from time to time, to Cooks Illustrated.  They have a great test kitchen and like to improve or invent recipes.  If I’m currently subscribed, it’s because I like all the background information about why you do certain things, or use certain ingredients.  If I’m not paying for it, it’s likely because they don’t focus enough on health, or because they may over-complicate recipes in search of a certain taste most of us can’t discern.  For everyday cooking, recipes must be kept simple.

I’ve looked for blogs that offer recipes with the idea of linking to them.  It’s been a disappointing search.  I’m wary of commercial blogs.  Only a few blogs have a real focus on health.  To catch people’s interest many blogs use exotic ingredients and my focus is to be more practical.  Here are the recipe essentials I look for:  Healthfulness, Value, Simplicity, and Taste. 

So I was pleased to see the blog, Peasant Food.  Two sisters are putting ideas we support to work by combining traditional healthy foods with the tools of the modern kitchen.  They have a love affair with legumes (the best value in food) and offer their Butterbean and Bacon Soup recipe, shown in the picture above. I’m going to try their recipe.

Skip’s Recipes

My approach to recipes is to make a statistical survey.  I look at dozens of recipes and search out trends in ingredients.  When a trend is visible, I look at the healthiness of the ingredients.  Then, I look for simplicity and value (yeah, no truffles).  Finally I make the recipe and convene a tasting panel.  (Another source of recipes is our readers—we're making a list of the best to share.)  Sometimes the panel is the beautiful wife, but my favorite panel is a bunch of grandchildren.  They love tasting food—kids don’t usually get to give out the grades. 

I once was working on a homemade macaroni & cheese recipe and though I didn’t find the perfect recipe, I was pleased the grandchildren liked my efforts more than the Kraft version we used for comparison.  Kids will eat packaged foods, but they prefer real food. (This was a single-blind test, meaning the grandkids didn’t know the origin of the tasting samples.) 

Soup Recipes

Soups vary around the world, according to the ingredients at hand.  In the US the most popular soup recipes are tomato, chicken, potato, onion, clam chowder, and perhaps black bean soup.  Campbell’s would argue Cream of Mushroom, but I think it is used more as an ingredient than as a soup.

We previously offered recipes for split pea soup, and chicken soup.  We don’t have a recipe for tomato soup; we usually buy Trader Joe’s.  “Is this an example,” I asked the Beautiful Wife, “of a soup that’s just as well purchased as made at home?” “Perhaps,” she said, “but you can’t beat the tomato soup served at Nordstrom’s.”  She’s right.  Nordstrom’s recipe was published in their cookbook and versions can be found on the Internet so I decided to make potato soup the subject of this post. 

Potato Soup

The humble potato—like wheat, rice, or corn—is a dietary mainstay in certain regions of the world.  Potato soup is a heritage dish, economical, tasty, and easy to make.  You can make it with any variety—Idaho russets, the red new potatoes, or even sweet potatoes.  The russets are softer when cooked; the new potatoes are firmer.  The following recipe worked with both.  (Caution: If you store potatoes, keep them out of the sun and remove any sprouts or green spots before using, as they contain the toxin solanine.)

Common ingredients from our survey of potato soup recipes:

• Potatoes, onions, celery—this is the basis of nearly every recipe.  Sometimes the 3^rd mirepoix ingredient, carrots, is added. 
• Chicken broth.
• Milk, thickened with roux. (An alternative is to thicken by adding cheese at the end of cooking.)  Older recipes include cream but I used whole milk.
• If you’re feeling prosperous, bacon or ham. (But add less salt.)

Potato soup recipes require little flavoring.  Typically they include thyme, salt and pepper, and a little chopped parsley as garnish. Other flavor combinations:

• Garlic, cumin, red pepper flakes.
• Mustard/Worcestershire sauce, allspice.

Warning:  You can tell the recipes from the ‘50s and ‘60s, when food began to go off the track.  Chicken stock is replaced by bouillon cubes in water; butter (for the roux) is replaced by margarine; and celery salt is substituted for fresh chopped celery.  In this era, convenience blindly passed from virtue to vice.

Skip’s Potato Soup

Ingredients:

  3 C. potatoes, washed and cubed

  1 C. white onion, chopped

  2/3 C. celery, chopped

  3 C. chicken stock

  3 strips bacon

  2 C. milk (some recipes include cream)

  2-3 T healthy fat (to sauté)

  2 T butter or bacon fat (for roux)

  2 T flour

  ½ tsp. each thyme, salt, and ground pepper

Directions:

1. Place stock in large soup pot and heat to boil.  While stock is heating cube potatoes (washed, but unpeeled) and place in soup pot.  Chop the onion and celery. 
2. In a frying pan cook the bacon; chop and set aside.  Leave 2-3 T bacon grease in pan. 
3. Sauté the onions and celery in pan, starting onions first.  Add the sautéed onions, celery and flavor (thyme, salt, pepper) to the soup pot. 
4. Reusing the frying pan, make roux with butter/bacon fat and flour; cook about a minute.  Stir in milk and cook 5 minutes to thicken (do not boil).  Add to soup pot. 
5. Continue cooking soup until potatoes are tender.  Remove about half the soup to a blender and puree.  Return to soup pot.  Add chopped bacon, adjust salt and pepper if needed, and garnish with chopped parsley.  Serve.

We served this with a spinach salad and corn bread.  This morning the Beautiful Wife returned from walking and talking with her friends; she exclaimed upon entering the house, “It smells so good!”  So this recipe will also make your home smell good.  I took some of the soup to the grandchildren for taste testing (one mom had just delivered a new granddaughter; the other was gone on a photo shoot).  Grandchildren love soup.  If there’s extra soup, freeze a quart for later.

Please comment:  Share your favorite soup recipes.  Oh, one other comment, did you think this post too long?  If so, my apology; one thing just led to another.

Making Soup

The quick answer: A warm bowl of soup makes a perfect winter dish.  It’s also healthy, tasty, economical, and filling (plus low in calories).

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Canned Soup

I spent two and a half years in Central America when a young man, living with humble people and eating their food.  It was a seminal experience that influenced my life.  I didn’t fully appreciate the wisdom of their diet at the time, but it was affordable, minimally processed, and mostly local.  I still remember the first soup I ate—homemade chicken vegetable.  It stands out because I discovered the chicken’s foot in my bowl.  I thought my Mom was a frugal cook, but these people were world-class in waste reduction.  Water-based soups were a regular part of lunch and even dinner.  I regret that it never occurred to me to collect a few recipes   

Later, the soup most familiar to me was Campbell’s.  The Campbell soup can, artfully copied by Andy Warhol, is an American icon.  The Napoleonic Wars caused the invention of canned food in the early 1800s.  There was a double benefit to the can:  It fit the needs of wartime eating, plus in-can cooking sterilized the food, eliminating spoilage.  Indeed, consumption of canned foods (like other bad habits) increases during wartime.  The Campbell Soup Company got its start following the Civil War based on one improvement—a condensed soup cut costs.  The user could add water or milk when the soup was heated, which at least gave the appearance of cooking.

The health complaints against Campbell’s soups have been the sodium content (lowered for a time, but recently increased when sales continued to drop), and concerns about high levels of Bisphenol A (BPA is a human endocrine and nervous system disruptor, a cause of obesity, and a suspected carcinogen).   There is a movement away from canned foods, though they’re useful when you don’t have time to cook dried beans, or don’t make your own tomato sauce.

Campbell soups played a role in the rise and fall of casserole dishes, I believe.  In the post-WWII emphasis on convenience, casseroles rose in popularity as a single-dish meal.  Recipes often included a can of Campbell’s soup.  Unfortunately, taste and wholesomeness were lesser considerations and there is a generation now who distain casseroles.  This is unfortunate as casseroles have a place in traditional cooking—think of ratatouille.  We should have a post on tasty and healthy casserole recipes.

Homemade Soup

Two things:  First, it’s cheaper to eat traditional home-cooked whole foods than buy modern processed foods (even before you consider the cost of healthcare for the diseases of the modern diet).   That’s our position—healthy home food is cheaper than factory food.  Second, Marie Antionette, wouldn’t have lost her head if she has just said, “Let them eat soup” and then cooked up a big pot to mollify those hungry protestors. 

Leah Widtsoe, a formidable advocate of healthy eating, wrote a 1943 book titled How To Be Well: A Health Handbook and Cookbook.  Widtsoe spoke of traditional soup making:

“A soup kettle is a wise possession for every family.  In it should go every scrap of meat, bone, cooked meat, chicken and turkey bones.  If a rolled roast or shoulder of ham is ordered, insist that the chopped bones are sent also for soup or gravy.  In the vegetable soup kettle go all clean vegetables parings, outer leaves or lettuce, celery, pea pods, chopped parsley, and all bits of good food that should not be wasted.  The basis of the soup of the day should be found here. . . . One must never waste good food.”

Soup is more a winter food and in Widtsoe’s day the wood-burning kitchen stove often heated homes.  So the stove would be hot often enough that bacteria wouldn’t get established in the soup kettle.  The soup kettle was displaced by modern heating, which led to the success of Campbell’s soups.   

It's time to reinvent soup making.  The soup kettle is no longer practical but a plastic container with a closable lid, placed in the freezer, could take its place for saving scraps.  Another innovation is slow cooking using a crock-pot.  Set the crock-pot on low for 8-hour soups, or on high for 4-hour cooking.  Or you can just simmer a pot on the back burner.

What are the most popular soups?  Tomato, followed by the chicken soups.  Other favorites include potato, onion, split pea, and clam chowder.  (For our split pea soup recipe go here.)  

There are established patterns to soup making.  Meat flavored soups, with the exception of the chowders, traditionally have four ingredient groups:  meat in some form, stock, mirepoix (chopped onion, carrot and celery), and herbs (typically bay leaf, thyme, and parsley, plus salt and pepper).  Some may include a carb, like egg noodles, rice, or perhaps orzo. 

Chicken Soup

If you read through enough chicken soup recipes, you’ll see a pattern.  The chicken is either whole, cut up, or pre-cooked & chopped.  The latter is the quickest to make, you can be done in 40 minutes.  Recipes using cut up chicken usually call for browning of the chicken with the mirepoix in a frying pan. 

For raw chicken—cut up or whole—plan on 2+ hours cooking time, but there’s a benefit—you can make your own stock by cooking the chicken with mirepoix, and the traditional herbs (bay leaf, thyme, and parsley).  Or you can slow-cook by using a crock-pot. 

To make chicken noodle soup simply follow the basic recipe and add ½-1 cup of egg noodles (preferably whole grain) per pound of chicken plus extra water.  For chicken and rice soup, substitute a cup of rice for the noodles, with extra water, adding it as needed to meet the cooking time of the rice.   For cream of chicken soup, replace the stock with milk and puree after cooking.  These are well-evolved, simple recipes. 

The approach that makes the most sense to me begins with the carcass of a roasted chicken.  After you’ve enjoyed a meal of roasted chicken (you may be buying them roasted, but a future recipe will feature home roasting) you’re left with the carcass.  I confess to throwing these in the garbage in my prior life.   The recipe below starts with stock; if you have a carcass see note #1.

Skip’s Chicken & Rice Soup Recipe

Ingredients:

1 lb. meat scraps (about 3 cups)

6 cups liquid (I used 4 cups homemade stock and 2 cups water.)

3 cups mirepoix (roughly equal amounts of chopped onion, celery, and carrot)

1 cup of mixed wild rice, or brown rice (If you like more rice, add another cup plus 1-1/2 cups additional water.)

2 each bay leaf

2 T chopped parsley

½ tsp ground thyme

1 tsp each, salt and ground pepper

Directions:

Combine ingredients in a large pot, bring to a boil, and simmer 40 minutes.  Let cool, add salt or pepper if needed.  If too thick for your taste, add a little water.  Homemade bread or cornbread makes a nice side.  Could this be any simpler?  For the small family, this makes 2-3 meals.  Put a quart in the freezer for later use.

Note 1:  If you’re starting with a cooked chicken carcass, flatten the carcass in a pot, cover with 6 cups water, and add herbs (bay leaf, thyme and parsley).  Bring to a boil and simmer at least two hours to loosen meat and make stock.  Remove and discard the skin and bones, and chop up the meat.  Return the meat to the liquid (you can add extra meat if you have leftovers), add the mirepoix, rice, and salt and pepper, and cook per directions above.

Note 2:  If you want Chicken Noodle soup, replace the rice with noodles and reduce liquid by one cup.

Note 3:  We made this recipe with turkey.  We simmered the carcass of our Thanksgiving turkey for three hours with a couple of bay leafs to make a simple stock (no mirepoix).  When done, we gleaned the loose scraps of meat seen in the photo.   The stock and meat were refrigerated for several days before making the soup above.  Perhaps the turkey was content we wasted so little of his sacrifice. 

Please comment:  Share any favorite food blogs that follow the criteria noted above (Healthiness, Value, Simplicity, and Taste).  Contribute your favorite soup recipe.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

The Freezer Aisle

The quick answer:  The invention of quick-freezing technology is one of the best food innovations.  Enjoy near-fresh vegetables year around.

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Preventing Breast Cancer

With December’s joyous arrival, come lists of notable 2011 events.  Looking over those who left us, I lingered over Steve Jobs (made billions creatively transforming industries but lived in an ordinary Palo Alto home); Dick Winters (the remarkable WWII officer made famous by the book, Band of Brothers); Nancy Wake (a WWII English agent both beautiful and fearless, who fought with the French Resistance); and Bernadine Healy (MD, cardiologist, head of NIH, AHA, and the Red Cross, and a fierce advocate for the study of women’s diseases). 

Dr. Healy, as head of the NIH, initiated the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), the observational study of 93K women, which did more than any project to reduce breast cancer.  In 2002 the study linked hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with a higher risk of breast cancer.  Within a year 60% of HRT women stopped filling their prescriptions, resulting in a remarkable 15% permanent decline in breast cancer incidence. 

The WHI also found that the standard treatment for osteoporosis (calcium and vitamin D pills), though it slightly increased bone density, did not reduce the risk of hip fracture, and raised the risk of kidney stones.  See this post for more on bone health.  These two WHI findings were remarkable for refuting advice regularly given by doctors.

Clarence Birdseye (1886-1956)

As long as we’re remembering people who’ve passed, we should give a nod to Clarence Birdseye, the inventor most responsible for the frozen food aisle.  In 1912 Birdseye went to Labrador where the indigenous Inuit traditionally preserved fish by freezing them at sub-zero temperature.  (Fast-freezing creates smaller ice particles and less cell damage.)  When fast-frozen fish was thawed, Birdseye observed, it tasted as good as fresh, and much better than the frozen fish he ate at home.  Birdseye was the driving force behind improved freezing technology, and founder of the company known today as Birds Eye.  His initial 1930 product line included frozen fish, meats, spinach, peas, fruits, and berries. 

Here’s what fascinates me about Birdseye:  Most of the inventions in food had bad outcomes—roller mills for flour removed the nutrition of the germ and bran; hydrogenation of vegetable oils to make margarine, etc. created toxic trans fats.  But Birdseye invention—fast freezing—preserved food’s natural nutrients.  Even better, he was inspired by a traditional practice of the Inuit—an example of reinventing food olden ways. 

The Freezer Aisle

I visited the local grocery store to observe the evolution of Birdseye’s invention.  Perhaps it’s the chill, but I had never taken a close look at the frozen food section.  It’s big—over 200 feet of freezers line both sides of one aisle and one side of another—with thousands of food choices.  The biggest section, almost 40 feet long, was ice cream.  Frozen dinners and entrees had 30 feet, and pizza got 20 feet.   The items of most interest to me, vegetables, got 12 feet, and fruit, mostly berries, got 3 feet. 

The store posts the price of food in cents/ounce so I did a walking tour of prices.  Surprisingly, the foods fell in a tight range.  Turkey was cheapest, at 10 cents/oz; ice cream next, 12-20 cents.  Dinners ranged from 26-40 cents, with the low-calorie varieties most expensive.  (An odd trend, charging more for fewer calories.) 

Cost of vegetables:  In the vegetable section the store brand (which we rarely buy) had half the space.  The private brands, Birds Eye, Green Giant, and Green Giant’s C&W brand, shared the rest.  The store brand was cheapest, 16-19 cents/oz.  The type of vegetable doesn’t matter—corn kernels, peas, string beans, chopped spinach, and broccoli all cost about the same.  I hadn’t noticed that before.  Mixed vegetables cost a little more, but I think the variety of taste is lost.

Green Giant veggies are most expensive, running 30 cents with the steamer package.  Though it’s convenient, I’m not a fan of cooking vegetables in their package—seems like a good way to leach chemicals out of the plastic. 

The type we buy most often, Green Giant’s C&W brand of petite corn, peas, and string beans was in the middle at 22 cents/oz.  (Don’t forget that’s $3.52/lb.—frozen foods are a premium product.)

We prefer fresh but do buy frozen when fresh isn’t available.  You can buy carrots year around so I was curious about the cost of carrots in the various forms.  In the produce section fresh carrots (without tops) are about 4 cents/oz ($.59/lb.).  Canned (sliced and cooked) they cost 9 cents.  Frozen they range from 15-30 cents, depending on the brand.  Bottom line:  Canned doubles the cost of fresh, and frozen doubles the cost of canned.  If food is available fresh, that’s the best value though there’s more preparation.

Bottom line:  I’m a fan of Clarence Birdseye, and traditional preservation by flash freezing.  We prefer produce fresh in the season, but extending availability through freezing may just help offset some of the problems with modern food.  As to the more processed foods along the freezer aisle—they’re good in an emergency, but I wouldn’t make them a habit.  One exception: ice cream, especially Rocky Road.

Please comment:  Perhaps the toughest challenge of diet reform is to get the recommended five daily servings of veggies.  (Cutting back on sugar is tough also.)  Share your favorite ways of adding vegetables—including frozen—to your menu.

The One Best Way

The quick answer:  To reform your diet, organize and simplify your kitchen.
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We stand at #48 of this year’s 52 Healthy Changes.  Taken together, they have the power to transform your diet, and your health, by reinventing how you eat.  Fair warning:  they can also complicate your life.  For example:

• Exercise:  We’ve asked you to get outside and exercise most days, to work up a sweat.  We even had the nerve to suggest you reconsider the laborsaving devices in your life.
• Refined flour:  We proposed that you replace the modern flour with freshly ground flour that is so full of nutrients it must be refrigerated.  We also suggested baking your own bread.
• Packaged cereals:  We’ve shown you how to make your own breakfast cereals, here and here, when it’s so easy (though costly) to just go to the store.
• Canned soup:  And we’ve noted that homemade stock is better than store-bought; a future post will include recipes for homemade soups.

There are two themes here:  First, cook more (some food processing now done in factories is best done at home).  Second, sweat more (exercise is good for you; it makes you stronger and healthier).  These things, good as they are, take time.  Rather than get crazy busy, it’s best to simplify our lives.  We suggest a process of not adding but of replacing bad stuff with good, and good stuff with better.  Simplification can also reduce the stress of life and bring us that elusive peace we all seek.

Cheaper by the Dozen

As a child, I loved the book, Cheaper by the Dozen.  Frank B. Gilbreth was the father and author, but he was also a leader in the emerging field of scientific management.  The goal was to discover the most efficient way to do every task—the one best way—so when Gilbreth took a shower, he used two bars of soap.  He was a creative guy who led the family on many fun adventures but there was a sad turn to all this rushing about—he died of a heart attack at the age of 55.    

From the shadows of Frank’s premature death a new star emerged—his wife Lillian, also a practitioner of scientific management.  Lillian maintained the Gilbreth’s consulting business while rearing the children and making her own contributions to scientific management.  She put her children through college (one died in childhood), traveled the world, and advised five US presidents on women’s issues.  A less known book was written about this early career mom, appropriately titled, Making Time. 

The Gilbreths made a big impression on me as a father (when the kids were small, I put them all in the tub at once), engineer, and novice cook.  For example, when we make freezer jam, I reduce waiting time by doing multiple batches at once.  The beautiful wife thinks this a little reckless and patiently does her batches one-at-a-time, with exactness unknown to me.  So in the kitchen, I look for that one best way, trying to improve my cooking skills.  Those are my credentials for the following discussion on simplification.

Simplification

We humans can’t keep from complicating our lives.  For many, self-worth is linked to owning whatever’s in fashion.  We live in a shopping culture and a whole nation—China—has grown its economy by cheaply manufacturing whatever we might next fancy.  Did you notice the elaborate Halloween costumes?  Or what those crazed shoppers were carrying out of Wal-Mart on Black Friday?  Acquisitiveness isn’t a new habit, rather a human trait exposed by the limitless productivity of the Industrial Revolution. 

The poet William Wordsworth spoke to this human frailty: 

“The world is too much with us; late and soon.
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”

Henry Thoreau, rejecting the materialism of his time, retreated to the woods about Walden Pond, seeking to discover the essence of life by removing all distractions.  He found new meaning in simplicity: 

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

Concealed within the Healthy Changes is a thesis worthy of Wordsworth and Thoreau:  “Life can be made more healthful by using modern means to reinvent olden ways.”  This thesis allows us to reject the “getting and spending” but to embrace those few things that most enhance the quality of our lives.  If we can learn to do this, less really can be more.  So starting in the kitchen, here are ten steps to simplicity.

Ten Steps to Simplicity

Here are ten ways to simplify your life, all centered on healthy eating. 

#1.  Write a weekly dinner menu.  This is a major time saver and stress buster.  Save old menus by season in a binder for future years. 

#2.  Collect your favorite recipes.  It’s great that chefs, once hidden away in kitchens, have become celebrities, but we must resist the trend of complicating food.  Exotic 15-ingredient dishes may be fine for the chef but for the home cook, traditional dishes of six or so ingredients are practical, healthful, and delicious.  Let the family vote as you collect 24 favorite recipes of comfort foods.  If you use 2-3 each week, it will take several months to repeat.  Preparing a few dishes repeatedly is key to finding the one best way to cook.

#3.  Keep a weekly shopping list, as discussed here.  You’ll save the hassle and expense of multiple runs to the grocery store.

#4.  Make Sunday dinner special.  Plan your best meal for Sunday and have family and friends over from time to time.  Cook a roast, whether chicken, beef, pork, or lamb, and reserve a portion to flavor meals during the week.

#5.  When you cook family favorites, make a double portion and save one for a rainy day.  This is easier to do if your freezer is just ¾ full (see #9, below).  Soups are extra work but can be eaten for several meals. 

#6.  Relish leftovers (for smaller families; large families tend to eat everything in sight).  You don’t need to cook an original dish every night.  Get the family’s support to include leftovers in following meals.  Some dishes even taste better the next day.

#7.  Recognize that stuff accumulates.  It collects in your kitchen drawers, cupboards, and in your pantry. Periodically dump the kitchen drawers on the counter—save the simple tools you regularly use and toss everything you haven’t needed in the last year. 

#8.  Clear out the pantry.  We recently went through the pantry and threw everything away over the expiry date.  There was so much stuff it became a game to find the oldest item—the winner was ten years expired.  When the pantry’s too full, you don’t know what you have.

#9.  Manage your freezer.  Most of us toss stuff in until it’s full and forget what’s underneath.  This follows the FISH inventory rule (meaning, “First In, Stays Here”).  Adding a freezer in the garage may just expand the problem.  Here’s a better idea:  When you write your weekly menu, poke through the freezer for stuff you can use.  Set a goal to keep your freezer just ¾ full.  If you do this with your refrigerator also, you’ll save money via less spoilage.

#10.  Include frozen foods.  Frozen fruits and vegetables, unlike the produce in grocery stores, are harvested at their peak so you get extra vitamins while saving prep time.  In the next post, we’ll take a walk through the frozen food aisles of our grocery store, to sort out the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Please comment on your favorite ways to save time while cooking better food.  Share your shortcuts and clever simplifications.

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

. . . With prudence and thanksgiving

The quick answer:  The path to eating well begins in the head.  Practice prudence and thanksgiving.

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Reflections

A few years ago my interest turned to nutrition.  Could a normal person, amidst all the confusion about food, I wondered, solve the puzzle of what to eat?  In the beginning, it seemed as simple as “eat this, not that.”  Now, several years into the journey, I respect the complexity of nutrition, and the simple elegance of traditional foods.  The answer to what we should put in our mouths seems to begin with what’s in our head—our outlook.

In the ‘30s a pioneering dentist researched the cause of tooth decay by visiting the aborigines of every continent and clime, comparing their teeth to those of their cousins who had moved to the city and converted to the modern diet.  The native dietary was as varied as their landscape but one thing was constant:  natives living on their traditional foodstuffs rarely had dental decay or the need for orthodontia; their cousins who moved to the cities and ate the modern diet did.   Dr. Price demonstrated that cavities could be healed by diet reform, and thought it a better solution that drilling and filling the cavity.  He wrote a book that became a classic after his death, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.  He also made an important conclusion:  The cavity in your tooth is not a problem of that tooth—it’s an early warning of a health problem affecting your whole body. 

If you've heard of Dr. Weston A. Price, you’re an unusual person.  If your dentist is aware of his work, he’s also unusual because the powers-that-be didn’t want to hear Dr. Price’s message—that improving nutrition was a better solution than drilling and filling the cavities as they occurred. 

This is a provocative idea, that eating right starts with thinking right.  In this post we discuss two attributes of people who see beyond the conventional wisdom—prudence and thanksgiving—by first looking at those remarkable Pilgrims who founded the first successful colony in America.

The First Thanksgiving, 1621

You know the story of the Pilgrims sitting down with their Indian benefactors to celebrate the first harvest.  They counted themselves blessed, even though their condition was most humble.  Their survival had hung in the balance—of the 104 Mayflower passengers just 53 survived the first winter.  Weakened in numbers, they held their burials at night, lest the Indians see and take advantage.  But now, stronger for what they had overcome and with the harvest safely gathered, they paused to return thanks.  

In Boston, one’s social standing improves if Mayflower ancestors are proven.  It’s not such a rare thing—millions of Americans are descents but most are unaware.  I once checked our family history against the Mayflower passenger list and found the Chilton family, of whom only Mary Chilton, age 13, survived that first winter, and George Soule, sponsored by Edward Winslow, the sometimes governor.  Mary later married John Winslow, Edward’s brother, so there is a tie to the Winslow family.  This led me to an interest in Pilgrim and Puritan history, and a few stories I like to recount on Thanksgiving.  I gained one other thing: an appreciation for the hard-earned Pilgrim values of prudence and thanksgiving.

The Specter of Famine

In recent years we’ve heard disquieting discourses on the decline of food stocks around the world, as well as people impoverished by the resultant rise in prices.  Last week Stanford hosted a conference and Kofi Annan, past UN secretary general and Nobel Laureate, made these points:

• The number of hungry people, about a billion, is growing rather than shrinking.
• Food reserves around the world are also shrinking, which increases the risk of global famine.
• Africa is key; though plagued by dysfunctional governments, it possesses 2/3 of the world’s unused arable land.

Unless there are fundamental changes, the shortage of sufficient affordable food will continue to grow.  Annan called for Western nations to give more money to develop Africa.  I was okay until Annan asked for money—I question whether more Western money is the answer. 

Here’s a trend that Annan didn’t mention:  As nations develop and grow in prosperity, they adopt the modern American diet (MAD).  The MAD diet is high in meat (the least productive use of land and water) and refined grains (the least healthful use of the world’s main food commodity).  Because foreign aid tends to advance the agenda of the donor nation, it’s likely that Western aid will simply spread the MAD diet.

Prudence

Here’s a prudent idea:  Before we can properly help the world to eat, we must first learn to eat well ourselves.  This is best done if we embrace the qualities of prudence, meaning to be “canny, careful, cautious, circumspect, discerning, discreet, economical, far-sighted, frugal, judicious, provident, sagacious, thrifty and vigilant.” 

This morning I took the garbage cans out to the curb for collection.  One container is for garbage, the other for things to recycle.  In the past the cans would be overflowing but now, after a year of learning how we should eat I’m surprised that we’re creating less garbage.  We buy more whole foods, and less packaged goods.  We cook a little more, but we waste less. 

I met a charming woman recently who was Basque, visiting from a small town in the Pyrenees Mountains of southern France.  I wondered about her diet, about her food traditions.  Last month she commented on this blog, sharing a family recipe for eggplant—La Zingara (which translates, I think, to “gypsy girl”).  Last night I made the recipe, a sauce that we put on homemade bread, for dinner.  It was tasty, healthy, and economical, so I share the Basque Woman’s (as she identified herself) recipe:

Recipe for Eggplant La Zingara

Ingredients:

1 big eggplant

1 or 2 T tomato paste, or 3 tomatoes if you have time to cook them down.

1 clove garlic

1 T olive oil

½ cup grated Swiss cheese (I used a cup)

Directions:

1.  Boil water, well salted, sufficient to cover the eggplant.  Peel and cube the eggplant.  Plunge the cubes into boiling water.  Cover and cook until soft.

2.  In a separate pan, cook the garlic in olive oil and add tomato paste or tomatoes.  Cook the tomato mixture until the eggplant is done.

3.  Put the drained eggplant cubes and the tomato mixture in a blender and puree.

4.  Return the eggplant mixture to the pan, heat gently, and stir in the grated cheese, until melted. 

5.  Serve the eggplant as a sauce over bread, or meat.

Note:  Rather than open a can of tomato paste, I used some tomatoes about to go bad.  This added more liquid than using tomato paste so rather than take time to cook down the mixture, I doubled the cheese to thicken the sauce.  It tasted great and was easy to make. 

Message to the charming Basque Woman:  More family recipes please.

The Bottom Line

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving day.  If you have time read this N. Y. Times article about the benefits of thankfulness.  There is something healing about the "attitude of graditude."  Here's another benefit: If we are filled with the wisdom of prudence and thanksgiving for food as it comes from Nature, the siren song of Food Inc’s marketers will have no influence with us. 

Please comment on how a prudent attitude affects what you eat.  Or how thankfulness for food as it comes from nature guides what you buy. 

Need a reminder? Download our Healthy Change reminder card. Print and fold, then place in your kitchen or on your bathroom mirror to help you remember the Healthy Change of the week.

Farmers' Markets

The quick answer:  In the food reformation, three trends travel together—healthful eating, artisan cooking, and farmers’ markets.  Support your local farmers’ market.

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Examining a US map of where farmers’ markets are most active, I have that déjà vu feeling—like, “This is the first time I’ve seen this map but it feels like I’ve seen it before.”  Then I remember the longevity map we discussed in this post.  There’s an association:  Where longevity is improving the most—mainly the costal regions in the West and New England—you find people buying more local food, especially through farmer’s markets.  Vice versa for where longevity is doing the worst—in the Deep South, and central states—there are fewer farmers’ markets.

Writing this blog has dominated our life for the past year.  The beautiful wife has been a good sport but I wondered if we couldn’t combine it with getting out and having some fun.  The beautiful wife was likely thinking of cooking classes in Provence, France, but I was curious about the local fast food restaurants.  Did they offer anything that was healthful and tasteful?  You saw the fast food taste tour report here.  She brightened up when I proposed we next tour the café style restaurants like Chipotle, Panera, Rubio’s, and Café Rio.  A post is upcoming.

My fancy sister in San Francisco puts on a Christmas ornament-shopping trip before Thanksgiving.  It’s a tradition.  This year I wondered if we couldn’t combine the trip with some Bay Area food tourism.  So on Friday, while the girls shopped, I tried the Milky Whey.  More precisely, I explored the Sonoma Marin Cheese Trail (read about it here).

The Milky Whey

It was raining as I left San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge but it stopped when I arrived at the tiny town of Nicasio.  I was so sorry I hadn't brought my camera because the Victorian steepled church (built 1867), one-room schoolhouse, and volunteer fire department’s ancient carriage house, were too picturesque for words.  The Nicasio Valley Cheese Company is a farmstead creamery, meaning they own the cows.  (Artisan cheese makers only know the cows.)  They make cheese using organic milk from their herd of 400 cows.  I tasted the cheese and bought some Nicasio Reserve as a gift for my sister, as we were spending the night at her Pacific Heights home. 

Next was an artisan cheese maker, the Cowgirl Creamery at Point Reyes Station (a little bigger than Nicasio, but no less charming).  I joined a class on cheese making, unaware that it was a private course arranged by a family from San Jose.  They kindly let me join in tasting the different cheeses.  I learned a lot (don’t wrap cheese tightly in plastic film, don’t eat cheese with black mold, etc.), tasted the local cheeses, and decided to buy a kit to make my own cheese (available from homecheesemaking.com).  Here I bought the acclaimed Point Reyes Blue Cheese.  

There are 27 cheese creameries that can be visited; I regretted there was only time to see two but made a vow to return in the spring.  Next stop: San Francisco’s farmers’ market, strategically placed around the old Ferry Building between the Embarcadero and the skyscrapers of the financial district. 

Ferry Building Farmers’ Market

The best of the San Francisco waterfront, for me, runs from the Golden Gate Bridge at the old Presidio, around Fisherman’s Wharf, along the piers of the Embarcadero, to the old Ferry Building, hard by the Bay Bridge.  On Saturday there’s a farmers’ market, which we visited with my fancy sister.  The morning was beautiful in the way that only people who love San Francisco can appreciate.  A warm sun was shining through patches of fog carried by a cool breeze; packs of runners jogged along the Embarcadero, sharing the right-of-way with strolling sea gulls; and ships of all kinds made their way around Alcatraz Island. 

The farmers’ market, arranged around the Ferry Building, is the place to go on Saturday morning.  You not only get fresh, organic (the Bay Area, especially Marin County, is ground zero for the Organic Movement) produce, you get to visit with the people who raised it, and taste free samples.  A walk through the market is an education on what’s in season.

What's in season?  Root vegetables.  Not just the ordinary stuff, we're in San Francisco afterall, these are heirloom root vegetables.

It's the season for pomegranates, and persimmons (in the background).  I bought some fresh pomegranate juice ($10 per quart). 

The beautiful wife fell in love with these fresh beets and cooked them up when we got home.  I find beets hard to eat, but I liked her recipe (roasted, with Greek yogurt, jalapeno pepper, ginger, coriander, cumin, garlic, mustard and cilantro added).

You can see the end-of-season color rotation of bell peppers in this picture, as they pass from green to yellow, then orange and finally red.

We bought a bag of Valencia oranges for making juice.  You can enjoy the perfect taste of fresh OJ and save about 1/3 of the cost if you do your own juicing.  It's also good exercise for the wrist muscles.  We don't often see Valencias in the local markets, they mostly carry navel oranges, which are best for eating.

Want to destress?  Spend a few moments in the morning sun here by the bay, tell your sad story to sea gulls perched on the rail, eat tasty artisan cooking, and listen to the local music.  (Yes, I put something in his collection case.)

Present at the Creation

At the end, I stood quietly, sniffing the air, composing a deep thought.  Something critical to the Food Reformation is going on here, around this crazy place known as Bagdad by the Bay.  To the south is the paradigm-busting, creative chaos of Silicon Valley.  To the north are the organic dairy pastures of Marin County.  To the east, the croplands of the great San Joaquin Valley.  Nearby by is Berkeley, home of Alice Waters' Chez Panisse restaurant, famous for the creative use of local organic produce known as California Cuisine. There's nothing like this area in the world.

Pomegranate juice at $10 a quart isn't the answer to the terrible crisis of the modern American diet (MAD).  But standing in this farmers' market, looking around at these passionate orthoexics (a word I just invented), I felt close to the creation of the answer.  The last century belonged to Food Inc. but this is a new century, and this region is becoming ground zero for America's food reformation.  A torch has been lit.  We must carry it forward.  To the barricades!  And when you shop, vote with your dollars.  Food Inc. must either listen and change, or go the way of the dinosaurs.

Please comment on whatever your thoughts and feelings are about the food reformation.

P.S. for Guys:  Your Best Chance to Impress Your Beautiful Wife

Plan a minimoon (a short trip with your dearly beloved) to the Bay Area.  Stay in charming Victorian bed-and-breakfast inns, tour the cheese creameries of picturesque Marin and Sonoma County (catch the Friday cheese course at Cowgirls Creamery), take the sunset walk over the Golden Gate Bridge, holding hands all the way over and back, and on Saturday morning take her for a stroll along the Embarcadero, enjoy a grazing breakfast at the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market, and buy some beets to take home to the kids.  Maybe I should organize a group trip.