The Lowdown on Chips

 

Food Gone Bad

We believe in American exceptionalism, the idea that our nation should be a “shining city on a hill” to the world.  Pilgrim leader John Winthrop coined this phrase in a famous speech aboard the Mayflower.  Today the evidence rests with the millions of people around the world who want nothing more than to come to America.  I also believe in the free enterprise system, but with a dreadful caveat:  In the last century it ruined the American diet.

I don’t see this—the way Food Inc ruined the American diet—as a criminal act, though some might.  I see it more as an act of ignorance, committed by our most capable people—the CEOs of Food Inc, elected officials, food scientists, and other coconspirators. 

The goal of the food reformation is to restore healthy food to the American dietary.  It’s a good thing, how the Industrial Revolution freed us from backbreaking labor.  But the way it adulterated natural food is a bad thing that people of good will must now reform.  We outline this reformation with our 52 Healthy Changes.

Healthy Fats

As you know, the Healthy Changes follow 13 themes that repeat each quarter.  The theme of this week is healthy fats.  Our goal is to help you replace unhealthy fats with less-processed healthy fats.  The nation has been on a foolish crusade against fat.  Experts who should have known better told us to minimize traditional, less processed fats like butter.  Saturated fats, eaten safely for millennia, were declared villains.  Highly processed, hydrogenated fats were ignorantly recommended.  This is the kind of craziness that happens with Food Inc. 

Here are our four Healthy Changes for fat:

Never buy deep fat fried foods:  This is so important we made it out 2^nd Healthy Change of 2012.  By now just about everyone knows that hydrogenated trans fats—introduced with unwarranted and unproven health claims in the form of Crisco, margarine, and vegetable oils—are unhealthy and should be avoided.  But it’s not advertised or generally known that hydrogenated fats are still widely used for deep fat frying.  This Healthy Change means no French fries, corn dogs, donuts, or most fried fast foods, like fish chips or chicken.  I consider the oils used for deep fat frying to be toxic, not only because of the trans fats, but also because they’re solvent-refined vegetable oils that are highly oxidized due to high-temperature extended exposure to air while in the fryer.   

Include omega-3 fats in each meal:  Certain vital fats are considered essential—for good health you must get them in your diet.  The essential fats come in two groups: Omega-3 and omega-6.  Basically, we eat too much omega-6 (found in refined seed oils) and too little omega-3.  The ratio matters.  The crazy thing about our omega-3 deficiency is that it’s the most abundant fat on the planet.  The short-chain form is found in green plants, including algae.  The long-chain forms are found in the fat of pastured animals and cold-water fish.  Your body needs these—your brain, for example, is 25% omega-3.  Getting regular omega-3, especially long-chain, makes you smarter and reduces any later risk of dementia.

Limit chips to national holidays, or for scooping healthy dips or salsas:  This week’s healthy change goes after the next biggest source of unhealthy fats.  We’ll talk more about it below.

Eat traditional fats (olive oil, butter, lard, etc.) in moderation:  This is our final fat topic and will come in the 41^st week.  For a long time we’ve heard that fat is bad and were told that reduced-fat, or low fat, was good.  But there’s growing evidence that the French have it right:  Enjoy healthy, traditional fats in moderation.

The Problem with Chips

I started my working career, fresh out of engineering school, with the venerable firm of Procter & Gamble.  P&G had a food division; the most famous product was Crisco shortening.  Crisco, we know now, was a really unhealthy idea, though it did make a lot of money.  P&G has since sold Crisco.

The wise men at P&G, in search of more money, studied the chip market.  At the time it was a regional business; lots of companies made chips, especially potato chips.  P&G thought they could take over that market with an engineered food product called Pringles.  Most of us at P&G were engineers so it made perfect sense to “engineer” raw materials into new food products.  It was a classic case of smart people collectively doing a dumb thing.

It’s been 40 years since Pringles was introduced with a marketing blitz.  The history didn’t turn out well; the product had limited success and was recently sold by P&G in an admission of failure.  During those 40 years another company came to dominate the once-regional chip business—PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay brand.  We discussed chips and Frito-Lay’s dominance in the food aisle visit reported here.

So what’s the problem with chips?  Regardless of the type, they’re simply the starchy portion of a grain or vegetalbe (whether corn, potatoes, or wheat) fried in refined oils.  Chips are a processed factory food.  Sometimes they’re baked, or “popped” but they’re still processed starch cooked with refined oil and salt.  Based on location, chips are a big money maker for grocery stores.  But there’s nothing wholesome about chips—it’s best to eat your grains or vegetables minimally processed, not fried into chips.  Here’s a better idea for potatoes:  Try our Oven Roasted Fries recipe.

We don’t stock chips in our pantry, though we do enjoy them with healthy dips (recipe to follow) on special occasions, like national holidays.  Whether made of corn, wheat, or potatoes, chips are basically the starchy portion, salted and fried in refined oils.  

Please comment:  Got a favorite, healthy recipe for a dip of salsa?  Please share.

Your Choice: Chaos or Order

The quick answer:  A menu-based shopping list will save time, money, stress, and maybe even your family’s health.

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I’ve been reading two totally different books—one about French food culture, the other a scientific study of synchronous systems.  In a flash of intuition, I realized they were discussing the same thing—how to organize our lives.  Here’s a brief summary of the books:

French Kids Eat Everything: How our family moved to France, cured picky eating, banned snacking, and discovered 10 simple rules for raising happy, healthy eaters.  You get the picture—an American mom, married to a French guy, was feeding her young children the modern American diet and using food, unsuccessfully, to win the kid’s cooperation.  The kids were in full rebellion; the more she catered to them, the worse they acted, and ate.  Their diet was terrible.

The family moves to her husband’s hometown in rural France and run headlong into a bastion of traditional food culture.  The relatives are shocked by the children’s diet, as well as their behavior at the dinner table.  The mom, resentful at first and overly protective of her children, puzzles her way through the French approach to eating, trying to figure out the rules.  She arrives at ten rules, which we’ll discuss in the next post.  The French are wiser about food, but the American wife is clever in a profitable way—she writes a likely bestseller about her experience. 

Sync: The emerging science of spontaneous order, the other book, investigates examples in Nature of order emerging from chaos by looking into cyclic behavior:  fireflies that began to blink in unison; heart muscles that contract at precisely the right instant, year after year; even the aquarium school of fish that turn in unison without an apparent leader. 

There was even an example of spontaneous order of interest to the beautiful wife, I thought.  My mistake.  "Have you heard," I asked, "how scientists have found that in coed dorms, as the school year progresses, the women began to have their monthly period about the same time?"  This was a poor topic choice—the beautiful wife never discussed such a personal topic with her dorm mates and didn’t think the scientists should either.

Winning Family Support

Do you ever have that mental flash of light, when you suddenly see clarity in something you’ve pondered for a while?  Trying to explain these two books to my wife, I suddenly saw the books had something in common with each other, but also with her.  Sync, the book, explores how Nature brings order out of chaos.  French Kids Eat Everything reveals how a society teaches the next generation their traditional food culture.  Isn’t that another example of order replacing chaos?  Isn’t that what mothers do on their best days?

I remembered how when rearing our six children, the beautiful wife had a way of winning their cooperation and support.  Harmony was her best dish; we were of one mind, especially at the dinner table.  The kids liked what she cooked and she mostly cooked what they liked.  Picky eating is often a subtle expression of child rebellion.  Somehow the beautiful wife organized order from chaos and harmony from rebellion.  Women are good at this. 

How does a family create harmony, unity, and a common purpose?  I think it happens at the dinner table but begins in the planning that precedes the meal.  It's planning that brinds order to our lives, and reduces the chaos.  Planning is a creative process—a tiny version of that first Creation.  Here are three essential tools:

1. A weekly menu, one created in a participatory process.
2. Recipes for familiar healthy foods (like our 52 Breakthrough Recipes).
3. A shopping list (the subject of this post) to keep the pantry stocked with only the good stuff. 

Shopping Lists

Here's a link to a shopping list if you go to several stores (like Costco, a grocery store, and a farmers market or health foods store).  Or if you prefer a list that includes space for menu writing, visit our daughter's blog inchmark.  In a post the grocery list, she shared her approach to meal planning and provided a link to her editable list.  You may be using an iPhone app for a list but if you don’t have a list you like, you’re welcome to try one of these.   

A menu-based shopping list brings big benefits:

#1:  A shopping list is a plan—an antidote to wandering the store aisles wondering what to eat, susceptible to the worst offerings of Food Inc.

#2:  A shopping list saves money—healthy food really is cheaper than the modern American diet, if you take a thoughtful approach to planning. 

#3:  A shopping list saves time—it’s your best way to minimize grocery store runs and streamline meal preparation.   

#4:  A shopping list reduces stress—how many times have you been in that last-minute squeeze to come up with an idea for dinner? 

#5:  A shopping list lets you teach—your family can’t learn by helping if the plan is all in your head. 

Please comment:  How do you organize grocery shopping?  Got an app for your iPhone?  Use a printed list you keep in the pantry during the week?  What works best for you?  Please share. 

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.

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.

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.

A Visit to Trader Joe’s

The quick answer:  Supermarkets went astray when they chose profits over the health of their customers.  Alternative stores, like TJ’s, offer better choices.

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Another Store Visit

It’s complicated, you know, to try and change one’s diet.  Change is hard to do alone, and some may get a little grumpy if they’re lectured too much.  Eric Hoffer, San Francisco’s longshoreman philosopher, now deceased, observed that when we’re free to choose, we choose to do what our friends are doing.  It’s a form of gridlock: we pick friends that are like us, and then limit our choices to what they’re doing. 

Still, in every social group, there are a few who act as catalysts, introducing some “new thing.”  Unfortunately new things tend to be vices more than virtues, so there’s this downward spiral in societies.  It’s bleak, except Eric Hoffer also noted this saving human trait: “Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one’s balance and keep afloat.” 

That sounds like the food reformation: a flailing of arms—and tongues—as together we rediscover how to eat and be well. 

Our society is at a tipping point.  The rates of obesity and chronic disease are ever increasing.  The treatment of these diseases grows increasingly complex and now costs more than the average person can afford.  To complicate matters, Congress generously decreed that every person is entitled to this unaffordable care.  So now the modern diet not only can destroy us, it can also bankrupt and destroy our nation.  So when we speak of a food reformation, it’s about more than our family’s survival, it’s also about the survival of the world’s greatest democracy.

The way our family shops for food is changing.  We still go to the supermarket, mainly because it’s closer and has a large variety, but we buy less.  For the larger food quantities we go to Costco; we get other produce and bulk foods at Sprouts (used to be Henry’s) or a new store, Growers Direct; and the beautiful wife loves Trader Joes (TJ’s).  In a new series of visits, we check out the stores that help us eat better, starting with TJ’s.  But first, a little history.

The Rise and Fall of the Supermarket

Two generations ago, grocery stores were small and local.  My grandfather borrowed $200 and started one in tiny Lincoln, CA, called “Heavy’s Cash & Carry.” Grandpa knew his customers personally; during the Depression he helped those worst off to survive.  In the next generation the variety of processed foods grew without restraint and stores got bigger; we grandly called them supermarkets.  What was once a small, local business became a large regional business.  In all this growth, profits became more important than people, or their health. 

The food corporations got big too, and their brands became valuable.  Supermarket chains stopped caring what their customers ate and simply rented their shelf space out to the food corporations to better promote their brands.  Brands were little more than a means to get more money for over-processed foods.  Caveat emptor.

The 10 Best Things at Trader Joe’s

At TJ’s the brand game is kaput—most of the food has the TJ brand.  So their food is cheaper but it tastes better than the stuff from the supermarkets.  It’s a brilliant strategy:  Sell cheaper food that tastes better.  My main criticism of TJ’s is they're agnostic about nutrition.  They sell lots of candy, cookies, and other processed foods, for example.   I visited the local TJ’s to see what's healthy; here is my top ten:

Salad in a box:  Right by the door as you walk in you find the prepared salads.  I counted 12 different kinds, including shrimp & surimi, and grilled chicken salad with hard-boiled egg.  The price seemed good, $3.49 for an 11 oz. serving. 

Lunch:  TJ’s offers a healthy alternative to fast food.  Right by the salads they had sushi, $3.29; wraps, $3.49; and ready-to-heat pizzas, $3.49 for 10 oz.  I’m not a big fan of prepared foods, but these were fresh with a short shelf life (meaning no preservatives), and offered good value.

Vegetables:  TJ’s makes it easier to eat vegetables.  As a rule, it’s best to buy foods as little processed as practical.  But as I studied the produce section something stood out:  90% of the produce is packaged and a lot of it is minimally processed.  This lets TJ pack a lot of variety into a limited shelf space—part of the TJ value advantage is the small size of the stores.  Best products:

     Mirepoix—I didn’t know what mirepoix (a traditional blend of three aromatic vegetables: carrots, onions, and celery) was until I started making soups.  So I was amazed to learn you can buy pre-made mirepoix.  We used it last week to make a chicken noodle soup from half a chicken carcass.  $2.99 for 14.5 oz.

     Root vegetable blend—this is a mix of cubed roots: rutabaga, turnips, and parsnips.  I wasn’t sure if I had ever eaten these before but I knew they were healthy so got a package to use in a soup.  $2.99 for 16 oz.

     Julienne Sauté—a mix of onions, bell peppers, squash, zucchini, carrots, and oregano all washed, cut in strips, and ready to sauté or stir-fry.  $2.49 for 9 oz.

French Baby Beets, peeled and steam-cooked, ready to eat cold or hot.  This has more preparation—they’re cooked, but in France so how cool is that?  I know beets are healthy but due to a childhood aversion I have a hard time eating them.  I liked these because they aren’t pickled, the beautiful wife thought them a little tart, but they are French.  (Good subject for a post: recipes that use beets.)   $1.99 for 8 oz.

Nitrite/Nitrate-free lunchmeats:  Supermarkets like a long shelf life but TJ’s sells some meats uncured (2-month shelf life).  They also have uncured bacon (cooked).

Breakfast cereals:  TJ’s doesn’t live by the more-fiber-than-sugar rule, but they did have two affordable breakfast cereals that qualified:

     High Fiber Cereal (looks like All Bran), 9 gm. fiber and 5 gm. sugar per serving.

     Shredded Bites (looks like Shredded Wheat, bite-size), 5 gm. fiber, no sugar. 

Frozen sockeye salmon, at a good price, $10.99 per lb.  I grabbed a package.

Bread, with more fiber than sugar, whole wheat ($2.99 for a 24 oz. loaf) and sprouted whole wheat ($3.44/loaf).  I tried the sprouted wheat and it was good for store bread, but not as dense or flavorful as homemade.

Soup:  TJ’s Creamy Tomato Soup is a winter favorite, lots of tomato taste though there is added sugar (10 gm. per serving).  $2.29 for 32 oz.

Flowers.  OK, it’s not actually food, but where else can you get a bunch of flowers for just $3.99 or $5.99?  I grabbed a bouquet of blue lilies for the beautiful wife.

Summary

TJ’s is okay, I decided.  They offer better value and taste than the supermarket and make it easier to eat right (if you have the discipline to walk by the candy, crackers, cookies and alcohol).  And it’s a fun place, as much a party as a store.  Can the supermarkets get their mojo back?  I wonder.  Ever hear of a supermarket banning Twinkies? Maybe they’ll change, time will tell, we need them on the side of the food reformation.  Everyone, these days, pretends to care about the public health, but only a few walk the talk. 

Please comment:  What’s your favorite store?  How has your shopping changed as you’ve turned to healthier foods?  What are your secrets to smarter shopping? 

The Chip Aisle? It’s all OK.

The short answer:  Yes, it’s OK to eat chips . . . on national holidays.  Chips can be one more reason to look forward to Memorial Day, 4^th of July, and Labor Day but don’t make it a habit.  They’re basically fried and salted starch.

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As promised I took a close look at the chip aisle in the local grocery store.  Here’s what I learned:

1.  About 80% of the stuff in the chip aisle comes from one company:  the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo.  Products include Lay’s, Ruffles, Tostitos, Cheetos, Fritos, Doritos, Sun Chips, Rold Gold, Lay’s Kettle Cooked, Tostitos Artisan Recipes, and Chester’s Puffcorn.  Frito-Lay rules the aisle and grocery stores make a lot of money renting shelf space to the chip companies. 

2.  Whether made from potatoes or corn, the nutrition panel reveals the chips are pretty much the same:  A 28-gram serving has about 140 calories, 6-10 grams of oxidized seed oil, 16-20 grams of refined carbs, and a dose of salt.  (Pretzels, made from flour, have little or no oil but a lot more salt.)

3.  The “original” chips are pretty simple: potatoes (or corn), oil and salt.  It’s the flavored versions—cheesy, BBQ, sour cream and chives, etc.—that have the 20+ ingredient list of odd chemicals.  Fewer ingredients is definitely better.

4.  Chips are an unhealthy processed food, but the manufacturers are clever about dressing them up to look healthy.  Potatoes become whole potatoes; salt is sea salt; corn is organic; and one brand uses expeller pressed oil.  They don’t contain trans fats anymore, but the healthiness of the new high-oleic replacement oils is doubtful.

5.  For those trying to avoid commercially fried foods (a good idea), some chips come baked and contain a little less oil.  Or if you’ve figured out that a baked chip really isn’t much healthier, there is now a “popped” chip cooked using heat and pressure.  There’s no end to how food-like stuff can be processed, is there? 

6.  This store had chips in two areas; the newer had a big sign “Wild Harvest Natural Foods” and included chips dressed up to look healthier.  Natural Tostitos, Natural Cheetos, and Natural Lays seemed to have about the same ingredients as the old “unnatural” version but they sported a wholesome looking package and a higher price. 

7.  Best buy in the chip aisle?  There isn’t one, really, you’re paying $3 to $6 a pound for unhealthy factory-processed commodities.  The best buy is in your home: home-cooked popcorn is healthier, tastier, and lots cheaper. 

Two closing thoughts:

First, thinking of popcorn brought new clarity to this principle:  Our health depends on our choice of home-cooked meals over factory-processed foods.  To protect the family health, we must do our own cooking.  The person of modest means actually has an advantage here.  Because eating out is a luxury they must do it less.  And meals cooked at home from minimally-processed and natural foods will always be healthier.  Call it a tender mercy for the humble.

Second, when we think about the processed food business we tend to lose a little of our faith in the goodness of man.  (I’m already on record that women should head these companies.)  So here’s a faith-restoring story:  I have a friend of many years I greatly respect named Ken.  An undiagnosed health condition (high blood pressure) resulted in kidney failure and Ken was facing the prospect of going on kidney dialysis.  Dialysis isn’t easy; it takes a lot of courage and greatly restricts your life. 

The only escape is to receive a kidney transplant, either from a cadaver or a compatible living person (most of us can get by on one of our two kidneys).  There is a great shortage of donor kidneys—most of the people on dialysis will die without getting one.  Cadaver kidneys are typically good for 10 years; living donor kidneys are good for 20-25 years.  So it’s way better to get a kidney from a living donor (though even a cadaver kidney beats life on dialysis). 

So here’s the good news: this past Friday, Ken received a transplant from an unknown living donor who chose to anonymously donate a kidney.  Ken is doing well.  And his anonymous donor has lifted my faith in the goodness of all humans.

Please share your ideas for healthy snacks to take the place of chips, or of kind acts that affirm the goodness of people.  Oh, and Happy Mother's Day.  Eat whatever you wish today, you've earned it.

visiting the egg aisle

Eggs have always been a symbol of Easter week and of life itself.  In recent years eggs have been out of favor, then back on the good listl.  Besides being a token of life, eggs are one of the best sources of needed nutrients, including:  

a)  the omega-3 fats, ALA and DHA (DHA is essential to the brain, eyes, and nerves);

b)  vitamin A, lutein and zeaxanthin, which help prevent vision problems like cataracts and macular degeneration;

c)  a complete source of the essential protein amino acids, and

c)  important antioxidants like vitamin E and selenium. 

The basic egg has been changing—we can buy eggs in five forms now:

• Regular:  The basic low-cost egg from grain-fed caged chickens.  According to the U.S.D.A., the egg contains 37 mg of omega-3s, roughly 1/4^th is DHA.

• Cage free:  I bet the chickens are clucking about their new door-less cages, but they eat the same diet of grains as caged chickens.  So same egg, you just pay a little more. 

• Flaxseed omega-3 eggs:  These eggs typically come from cage free chickens fed grains plus some flaxseed to boost their total omega-3.  Some eggs claim 115, others 225 mg.  DHA, the important omega-3, gets a little boost (I have heard of 75-80 mg. but I’m doubtful as it’s not shown on the label.)

• Marine-fed omega-3 eggs:  To really boost DHA, chickens are fed fishmeal, fish oil, or micro-algae, and the DHA level can reach 150 mg.  The supplier of cultivated algae requires licensed farms to use the “Gold Circle Farms” label on the eggs. 

• Pastured eggs:  These chickens live in movable cages so get sunshine and eat pasture greens and insects supplemented with grain.  These are the healthiest chickens and eggs but are as rare as hen’s teeth.  Bad joke.

The Egg Aisle:  I did a tour of the grocery stores in my area, to see what I could find in the way of eggs, and learned a few things:

1. The best deal was Costco’s Norco Organic high-omega eggs at $3.19 per dozen (but sold in 18-count cartons).  Omega-3 content was 225 mg per egg.  I expected Costco to be cheaper, but I thought the other stores might offer a quality advantage.  They didn’t.

2. Costco also had a rock bottom price for eggs from caged chickens but we’re not going there.

3. Of the omega-3 fats, DHA is most deficient in our diet so getting more is a big issue.  I was surprised that no store I visited is offering a DHA-enhanced egg. 

4. What are the egg companies pushing?  Free-range, cage-free, or hens living with roosters.  The documentary Food Inc. gets a lot of credit but kindness to chickens now trumps nutrition. 

5. Who has the best DHA eggs?  Maybe the poultry firms licensed by Gold Circle Farms.  They claim 150 mg of DHA per egg from their special diet but I didn’t find them in the stores I searched.  I sent an e-mail to Henry’s (our whole foods market) and got a quick call from the store director saying people hadn’t been buying them (there is about a $1.00 premium, a bargain considering the higher DHA) but he would try them again.  I’ll pick some up tomorrow.

6. The best food source for DHA omega-3?  If you bought the following foods for just the DHA (not a bad idea) here is what you would pay per gram:

a. If you bought Costco’s high-omega egg, I estimate you are paying $6.00 for a gram of DHA. 

b. If you find the Gold Circle high-DHA eggs, the cost is roughly $2.50.

c. If you get DHA in Nature Made fish oil capsules, you pay $5 per gram.

d. If you buy farmed salmon you pay roughly $2.50. 

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Bottom line: Enjoy salmon (plus other cold-water fish) and high-omega eggs in your diet; the Gold Circle eggs are a bargain despite the premium and deserve our support.

Why We Need DHA:

DHA is an essential fatty acid of the omega-3 family.  It is critical to the systems in the body involved with data: the brain, eyes, and nervous system.  Deficiency is linked to depression, dementia, memory dysfunction, attention-deficit disorders, and mental diseases.  Though not proven, some theorize that obesity and violent behavior can be added to the list.  In a future post we’ll talk more about DHA—it’s the most interesting fat.

best shopping list ever

Almost unconsciously, we adjust habits to the rhythm of the times.  In hard times, groceries are purchased ¾ of the time using a shopping list and food is cooked at home.  In good times, just 30% of us use a shopping list and meals are more often deli-prepared, or “takeout.”  We all know which is healthier—the home-cooked meals.  So good times or bad, if you want to look better, live longer, and enjoy better health, stick with home cooking.  But there is more to home cooking.

Dan Buettner wrote a book on longevity titled The Blue Zones based on his study of communities where people lived longer than 100 years.  (In a later post, we’ll discuss their secrets to longevity, but yes, they’re a lot like Word of Wisdom Living.)  One group was in Okinawa so Buettner sought the help of Sayoko Ogata, who he remembered as a hard-working, well-paid Tokyo business executive.  She had disappeared from Tokyo—he finally found her far from the fast lane, in a small village on a green island, now married to a humble schoolteacher, with two small children.  What had happened to Ogata?  Perspective.  An interview with a centenarian had brought her face-to-face with the wisdom of the ages and her busy career, by comparison, seemed both barren and bereft of meaning.  In her new life, she explained to Buettner, she was a mother, a wife, a person who cooked to “put love into my food. . . . I take time each night to think about the people around me . . . to reflect.  I’m not chasing the carrot anymore.” 

There is a lesson here that every homemaker—whether you work or are able to stay-at-home—knows.  But the lesson is often lost in the hustle bustle of life.  We don’t cook at home because it’s cheaper, or even just because it’s healthier.  We cook because it shows love, and because eating food endowed with that love is what binds families together and helps give meaning to life.  

With Ogata’s epiphany in mind, we can better discuss the prelude to cooking—planning and shopping.  Here are three keys:

1. Plan—write a weekly menu and use it to prepare a shopping list like the one shown above, available here.  The first year’s menus are hardest; in the following years you can merely refine the saved menus.

2. Shop—to reduce costs, eat natural foods in season and follow sales (most stores now post online), and consider coupons.  Coupons are a preference item—if you like collecting coupons do that, but limit yourself to things you normally use.

3. Cook—it’s cheaper and healthier to do your own cooking.  Preparation reduces hassle (during busy weeks focus on meals prepared in 30 minutes) and experience builds competence.  Training children to help provides a double benefit—with experience they become truly helpful plus they learn good habits.

Digital apps for menu planning and shopping are on the horizon, but for now a well-designed shopping list and a #2 wooden pencil seem to work best.  Your grandmother likely used this method and perhaps your mother, though in the faux-prosperity of the ‘80s and ‘90s many abandoned the practice in favor of processed or prepared foods.  People used to get everything at the local supermarket, but now usually shop at three types of stores, which we've included on our shopping list:

1. A warehouse store like Costco, with rock-bottom prices on bulk items.

2. A health food store with local produce plus bins of grains and other affordable dry goods.  (There are also outdoor Farmer’s Markets.)

3. The supermarket, which now seems more a large convenience store.

When I do the weekly shopping, I go to my warehouse store first (where I can usually get the best prices), then my local health food store (where we buy produce and bulk items not available at the warehouse store), and then to the supermarket (for items we couldn't find elsewhere).

Please comment with any changes or suggestions for the shopping list; we’ll incorporate as many as we can so that this can be the best shopping list ever!  If you prefer, a combined menu and shopping list is available here.

And may I ask a favor? Try leaving your shopping list in the grocery store cart when done, for others to discover. We'll spread the word, one shopping cart at a time.