Puddle Jumping in DC

Raising a vegetarian, or not.

First strawberry, approx 8 mo.

Snap peas fresh from the market, not quite 2.

Rainbow birthday cake, 4 yrs.

Evidenced by more than 600 comments so far, I've clearly struck a nerve with my Care2 post about allowing my hitherto vegetarian child to purchase school lunch, meaning meat. I've only read a sampling of those comments, but, as you can imagine, they range from cheering me on for empowering Maya's choices to condeming me for failing to provide moral guidance and being a pushover parent.

Help! My Vegetarian Child Wants to Eat Meat

 

When I became a vegetarian at age 14, I was opting out of a food system I felt was cruel, corrupt, and environmentally harmful. Decades later I’m facing a dilemma that my 4-year-old wants to eat the lunches served in her school cafeteria, which means meat.

After 3 out of 5 of her packed lunches came back from school untouched last week, I was unable to get a straight answer out of my daughter on what she was eating. So, I checked in with her teacher after school. The teacher reported that Maya had been “forgetting” her lunch in her locker at lunchtime. Since the teacher could neither send someone to fetch the forgotten lunch nor allow one of her preschoolers to go hungry, she’d been procuring a cafeteria meal for my daughter. Apparently, Maya had happily consumed barbecue chicken, fish tacos, and possibly a cheese burger that week.

As we were talking, Maya took a moment out of playing with a classmate to declare “I don’t want to be a vegetarian. I want hot lunch.” to which the teacher remarked, “She’s an independent thinker, that one.” And that’s my dilemma.

Do I impose my preferences on my child or let her find her own way?

Easy Homemade (Refridgerator) Kefir

When I embarked on making Kefir at home, I expected it to be an extension of our long-established habit of making our own yogurt. However, incorporating this fermented food into my diet took a little trial and error. In honor of Farmer's Daughter's Green Moms Carnival this month on preserving food, I'll describe lessons I learned making kefir, so that you might find your ideal routine more quickly than I did.

While kefir and yogurt both ferment milk, the process and our resulting routine are very different:

• Unlike yogurt, making kefir with live cultures does not involve heating and cooling the milk.
• Kefir ferments at room temperature (or lower, as I discovered) and does not require being kept warm over night.
• Kefir continues to culture until it is consumed, even if the grains are removed, so must be eaten quickly. (The same is true of yogurt, but the process is much slower.)

There are many websites with instructions for making kefir, and some of them make the process seem very complicated and involved. It doesn't have to be. My kefir routine involves just a tiny bit of planning and adds only a few minutes to my smoothie routine every couple of days.

Standard Homemade Kefir Instructions

1. Put your grains into a clean glass jar.
2. Add milk.
3. Cover jar with a clean towel, not a lid (it carbonates), and store at room temperature.
4. 24 hours later, or when the kefir reaches the desired sourness, strain kefir grains.
5. Drink kefir.
6. Go back to step 1.

That system didn't work for me in the warm climate of Washington, DC, mostly because I found I was making a quart of kefir every 12 hours. Even when I reduced the amount of grains in the jar, I simply couldn't keep up. I had to figure out a way to slow production, and since I had been storing extra grains in the refrigerator, where they still fermented the milk in which they were stored, I decided to try putting the whole process in there.

Make a Difference Monday: Factory Farms and the 40th Anniversary of EPA

That's what I was blogging on at Care2 this past week.

Data Shows 20 Percent Growth in Factory Farming In Past 5 Years

A new interactive web tool from Food & Water Watch provides a dramatic illustration of the increasingly consolidated animal agriculture industry in the United States. The advocacy group mapped USDA livestock census data from 2002 and 2007, providing a new way for concerned consumers to explore the origin of meat and dairy foods in the United States. (more)

10 Ways EPA Has Improved Our Lives, An Anniversary Retrospective

To mark the 40th anniversary of the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Aspen Institute convened environmental thought leaders to develop a report on 10 ways EPA has strengthened America. (more)

 

Jen's easy no-sugar-added peach cobbler

I posted this recipe over at my DC Green Living Examiner page as a companion to my article on making the most of your farmers market, and thought I'd share it here too.

If you are looking for an easy dessert or something to do with your perhaps-excessive peach bounty, try this recipe:

Easy peach cobbler closeup, variation
with blueberries.

1. Put 1/2 a cup of butter (1 stick) in a 9x13-inch Pyrex baking dish, put the dish in the oven and set to 350°F. You can substitute oil or margarine here but the buttery flavor is one of the charms of this dish.
2. While the butter is melting, mix up a batter by combining 1 cup of whole grain flour, 1 &1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/3 cup of powdered milk (optional), 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 1 cup of grape juice concentrate, undiluted. Add a little water or addition juice if necessary to get a thick, but pourable, batter.
3. When the butter is completely melted, remove the pan from the oven and pour the batter into the melted butter. Do not mix.
4. Then, carefully spoon 3 cups peeled and sliced fresh peaches and juice evenly over the batter.
5. Return dish to the oven and bake for 30 minutes. As the cobbler cooks, the batter will rise up and around the peaches. Makes 10 to 12 servings.

Jen's easy, no-sugar-added peach cobbler ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
• 1 cup whole grain flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup of powdered milk
• 1 cup grape juice concentrate
• 3 cups peeled and sliced fresh peaches, with their juices

Vegan variation: substitute vegan margarine or oil for butter and omit powdered milk.

Winter variation: use canned or frozen peaches and supplement with frozen berries (optional).

Separating frozen Gardenburgers

In case it ever comes up in an a spousal argument: running water over frozen Gardenburgers will not allow you to separate them.  It will, however, turn your Gardenburgers into complete mush*.

Thawing frozen garden burgers in the microwave for a few seconds and separating with a fork and knife is more effective.

*Thankfully, reconstituting mushy gardenburger is not difficult.  Shape into patties and bake.

Why do you think?

I've uncovered a grocery store mystery !

Why do you suppose that Classic Chocolate Ovaltine is colored with beet extract but Rich Chocolate Ovaltine is ?

And why does Classic Malt Ovaltine contain when the other two flavors do not?  What's that stuff for?

Where is when you need a mystery solved?  But then again, maybe she'd be no more critical of her corporate sponsors than the beverage nutrition researchers uncovered by Children's Hospital in Boston.

Ingredients of Classic Chocolate for the curious among us:

 

Jen's Monday News, Blog & Book Roundup

Ever been really angry about animal agriculture and antibiotics? No? You haven't read enough about it then. 

The poor critters raised in concentrated animal feeding operations are routinely fed antibiotics to promote growth (yup, read that right) and to ward of disease (yes, in advance of getting ill) caused by living in terrible, crowded, unsanitary conditions.  The microorganisms raised in that stew of antibiotics and filth develop immunity to regular antibiotics (E. coli O157:H7 anyone?). So, when the critters do get sick, they must be treated with the strongest stuff available.

In response to Rick Wiess's article in the Washington Post on Sunday, which contains this choice quote:

"The drug, called cefquinome, belongs to a class of highly potent antibiotics that are among medicine’s last defenses against several serious human infections. No drug from that class has been approved in the United States for use in animals,"

Dairy Queen expresses some justified outrage on Ethicurian.com:

"But today’s news is simply even more breathtaking in the sheer effrontery of [FDA's] disregard for public health and its focus on preserving business as usual at any cost."

---

What I'm reading now:

Reversal of Fortune by Bill Mckibbon in Mother Jones

"For most of human history, the two birds More and Better roosted on the same branch. You could toss one stone and hope to hit them both. . .

But the distinguishing feature of our moment is this: Better has flown a few trees over to make her nest. And that changes everything. Now, with the stone of your life or your society gripped in your hand, you have to choose. It's More or Better."

---

Did you know that ketchup was originally a British condiment made from salted anchovies?  Tomato ketchup wasn't invented until the late 1700's by an American in New Jersey who decided to try love apples instead of fish.

You'd know this if you were reading Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky.

You can get some of the same information and some conflicting information on Wikipedia (but can't you always?).

Just Because It's Weird

Why does the essence of blueberry sink to the bottom of the mug of tea?

Apple Ginger Cake Redux

Since my original attempt was a modification of a modified applesauce cake, I went back to a classic applesauce cake (Joy of Cooking) and modified it. Makes two moist, if slightly crumbly loaf cakes.

In a sauce pan, bring oil and spices to a simmer for a few minutes:
    1/2 cup of canola oil
    2 tsp cinnamon
    at least a tablespoon of minced fresh ginger
    1 tsp nutmeg

Blend oil mixture into wet ingredients and sugar until sugar dissolves:
    1 1/2 cups brown sugar
    1 1/2  cups applesauce
    1 1/2 cups okara

Add a cup or so of chopped walnuts and one medium apple, also chopped.

Sift dry ingredients together:
    1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
    3 tsp baking soda
    2 tsp baking powder
    1 tsp salt (or less)

Combine wet and dry mixes.  Add additional liquid as needed. Bake at 350 for about 1 hour.  Top with fresh plain yogurt (no longer vegan) . . . mmmm.

Culinary Insanity

Pamela commented that when I "write about food, it's often sweets."  While there really aren't that many food entries, it's true that I find it easier to blog on sweets.  Sweets are among the few things I make where the ingredients get "measured." Still, it got me thinking about what I eat/cook and what should be reported.

Do you want to know that I ate scrambled eggs with spring onions, tomatoes, and two slices of the apple ginger loaf (right) last Saturday morning? 

Are you riveted to learn that I took a break from re-organizing the bedroom to eat Amy's low sodium lentil vegetable soup and Quorn with fresh mozzarella for lunch - making for a highly processed meal, actually? (2/3 major components came with a nutrition label.)

That night I failed to photograph our couscous and tempeh with beet greens and mushroom, but I did catch up with it the next day at lunch (left).

I just adore the way the beet greens turned the couscous hot pink overnight. Don't you?

I then failed to blog on all this (I'm sure there was a snack and a big mug of hot cocoa in there that day) and have forgotten all the witty things I wasmust have been thinking when I took the pictures.

But all sorts of bloggers went nuts about Michael Pollen's advice in the New York Times Magazine to "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much." (By food, he means unprocessed foods that you prepare or cook yourself - stuff without a nutrition label.) Folks either love it or hate it.  I already wasn't a fan of processed food (and I thanks to Marion Nestle's Food Politics I'm pretty hostile toward the whole concept of "functional food"). I need to let my thoughts gel a bit more before I comment.

. . . then we got to Friday.

Lentil Loaf with Decorated Mashed Potato Icing at Chez Alex

(you will want to click on the pictures and see the larger versions)

I don't think I need to write anything further on this particular inspiration for the title of this post except that it was also extremely tasty (even the second and third day - we got the leftovers!).

So back to my initial musing, I'm pretty sure that my food posts will continue to feature sweets. My hunch is that the real common thread will end up being okara.  I've got a lot of it and it's kind of like a public service to provide recipes that other soy milk maker owners can use.

Vegan Junk Food (Apple Ginger Cake Redux)

I was going to respond to Pamela's comment that mimicking processed junk food only vegan wasn't really my style . . Then I was walking home reading (yes) the latest VegNews magazine in which was a really interesting looking recipe for devils food cake (including a little history).  I was itching to bake, I had beets, I had a container of okara in the fridge . . . but since cake can be a hassle, what did I make: cupcakes.

Modified from VegNews "Can't Beet Devil's Food Cake" Jan-Feb 2007
This recipe made 18-20 very moist, not too sweet, very chocolaty cupcakes. 

Blend wet ingredients and sugar:
      1 can beets
      1/2 cup water
      1 1/2 cup okara
      2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
      1 tsp vanilla
      3/4 cup sugar

Sift dry ingredients:
        1/2 cup cocoa (not Dutch or alkali processed)
        1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
        1 tsp salt
        1 tbsp baking soda

Combine wet and dry ingredients.  Add additional liquid as needed. Bake in greased muffin pans at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes.

Frosting
    I'm still working on finding a frosting method that I like. Here's what was given in VegNews:
      Beat:
      3 cup powdered sugar
      1/3 cup vegan margarine*
      1/4 cup soy milk
      1 tsp vanilla

I didn't have margarine of any kind so I used 50:50 blend of canola oil and palm shortening; it was kind of runny at room temperature and didn't dry out like a simple milk/sugar frosting. Tasted fine but cupcakes kind of had to be eaten cold or they got sticky quickly. Work in progress, I suppose.

As the Cake Rises (or Doesn't)

• Typically, a cup and a half of grain is not an optional bit of a cake recipe.

I was very tired on Sunday when I took a break from painting the green room (guess what color) and decided to make cake.  While there are many acceptable substitutions to a cake recipe (fresh ginger, pureed apple, okara . . . ), simply omitting about half the grain is not recommended.  The result actually tastes alright but, after a ridiculous cooking time, it's about an inch and a half high and has the consistency of damp Pemmican bars.  Warm it up and top it with yogurt and I can overlook that but I wouldn't really call it cake.  We'll have to try again and remember to include the oats.

Easy Loaf Cake

Did you know that there are a lot of food and recipe blogs? Am I going to post a recipe here anyway? Yep. 

I'm always experimenting with baked good and dessert recipes in an attempt to make healthy treats.  This cake has been modified so much from any inspiring recipe that I can safely say it's a Jen original.

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons canola oil
1/2 cup non-fat yogurt, plain
1 egg or substitute
3/4 cup fruit juice concentrate
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup whole-wheat pastry flour or all purpose flour
1 cup other whole grain flours (try whole wheat and oat flours)
1 cup berries, chopped fruit or chocolate chips

additional fruit juice concentrate or water as needed

Directions:
Grease 8 cup loaf pan.  Add canola oil, yogurt and egg to mixing bowl. Mix until smooth. Add remaining ingredients in order presented above, mixing and breaking up any lumps as you go along. Bake at 350¬∞ for 40-45 minutes or until a knife comes out clean and crust is golden.

Comments: If you are using wet fruit, hold  back some liquid until the end and add as needed. You could try whole fat yogurt and omit the canola oil but the above are the ingredients that I keep in my kitchen.  Makes a moist, mildly sweet loaf cake.  Ice with yogurt based icing (3/4 cup powder sugar, 1 tbsp yogurt) or serve plain. 

Adventures in Dairy Alternatives

This is bad . . .

. . . and gross.  It's basically itty bitty cooked (or maybe curdled) bits of soy in coffee.

Either my coffee pot makes hotter coffee than it used to, the beans are way more acidic than they should be, or my new soymilk brand is very delicate.  (It's just organic soybeans and water and I love it otherwise).  Whatever it is, soymilk in coffee is just not doing it for me.

I tried soy creamer.  It's kind of oily.

Very sad.  Seems silly to keep around a little organic milk just for coffee  . . . but I do love my coffee.

So Let's Do Something About It

Why pick on Starbucks? Because with 10,000 stores world wide, they are a huge dairy purchasing force! Their conversion to milk produced without artificial hormones would move the whole market.

(get your own banner here)

Do you want your cappuccino wet or dry?

Huh?

  cappuccino, empty 
  Originally uploaded by Studiojmm.

So, clearly I haven't reconciled my dairy concerns and, since I'd gotten up at 4 am to catch a flight to DC, I decided at 10 am that the espresso drink was warranted.

I normally do pretty well with all the options at coffee shops.  It helps that I don't care for sweetened coffee and that eliminates nearly all the fancy drinks on the menu.  But, wet or dry?  Apparently, that has something to do with the amount of milk and foam. 

Luckily, the unspoken option was "normal" -5 pheew.

Ethics, Hygiene, and Ice Cream

  Baby Dairy Cow  - Very cute, but ?
  Originally uploaded by Studiojmm.

I was seriously considering going vegan after touring a 1500 head dairy last week.  A subsequent visit to an 40 head organic dairy with an on site artisanal cheese factory made me feel a little better but I'm still questioning the place of dairy in my diet (sorry Mac).

It's tough to be a dairy farmer these days.  Faced with rising input costs and stagnant milk prices, many dairy farmers think their only options are to "get big or get out".

Once you get big, there are a host of problems to deal with.  On Thursday, I saw a possible solution to one of them - the methane digester is a waste management system that reduces neighbor complaints from the smell of massive manure lagoons that housing thousands of cows in a concentrated dairy generates, produces electricity (+$ in), cuts farm costs (-$ out), and may help a farm comply with environmental regulations.  But I'm not really all excited about this yet.

  Baby Dairy Cows 
  Originally uploaded by Studiojmm.

For one, who pays for this? Constructing a methane digester is very expensive - more than $1 million for a digester that can handle the waste from 1500 cows (not even a mega-dairy really; those have 5 to 50 thousand cows).  USDA; and the local power utility subsidized the one I saw.  Additionally, electricity users in VT pay an extra $0.04 per kilowatt hour for the privilege of buying Cow Power

And two, does this technology just enable a milk production system that is suspect from a moral or health perspective?  Confining frequently-medicated, grain-fed ruminants for their entire short lives to produce milk 3x per day? I learned enough about dairy cows last week to know that even the ones I saw, which were probably living as nicely as possible in close proximity of 1499 others, were not low stress cows.

Will methane digesters end up being a taxpayer-funded technology that just helps make mega-dairies profitable?

Alternatively, could we downsize the American dairy? Some producers have figured out that going organic or providing value-added products (cheese, yogurt) is far more profitable than producing a commodity food product. However, prices would be higher and production would be lower. Economic change is painful and that pain is never spread evenly. I have far more questions than answers, but this is what I am thinking about.

Have Yourself A Very Bakie Christmas

 

 

May your breads all rise . . .

 

This year, shopping would have coincided with finals and thesis concert preparations (you may have noticed the dearth of blog entries in December). Baking, however, was something we could handle.

 

Alex (top left) was an incredibly good sport for making 8-10 different kinds of batter for cookies, some of which had to be diabetic or allergy friendly, while Mac and I made it into cookies.

I Didn't Know It Was a Phenomenon

I think of myself as a rather adventurous cook. I've been cooking regularly since I was 14 and declared I was going to be a vegetarian. My parents had a fit; I was pretty stubborn; they calmed down; I learned to cook. I borrowed tons of cookbooks from the library and started my recipe collection. I discovered heath food stores and tofu, but, as I didn't drive, had a pretty limited capacity for getting specific ingredients when I wanted them, so I learned to make do. I've been playing "fast and loose" with recipes ever since, using them as guidelines for combinations of quantities, spices, and cooking times.

Since I've been cooking more, that makes Mac nervous. When we moved in together, 10 years ago now, he took over most of the cooking. Recently, I was going to cook fish (which we do occasionally even though it's not strictly vegetarian) but wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. I was also spending the evening cleaning the fish tank (the irony, no?) and didn't want to do anything complicated. I decided to just toss some canned black beans and diced tomato (w/green chili) over the fish and bake it. That was way outside the box for Mac (but, apparently he thought I was putting spaghetti sauce on the fish). Mac liked it even better than I did. Turns out that all the juice from the beans and tomato makes for very moist and tender fish.

But, back to the phenomenon, Google Cooking. What? The advent of wireless internet has made cooking much easier. I can plug the primary ingredients that I want to cook into a search engine and it spits back dozens (if not hundreds) of possible recipes to choose from. The Washington Post wrote a whole article about this "phenomenon" today. You can see  photos of the carnage from my last foray into Google Cooking. Our vegetable guy gave us two enormous cashew pumpkins so I made huge pots of pumpkin peanut butter and thai pumpkin coconut soups (generally, of course) for a recent potluck - it was a lot of pumpkin.

This morning's article lead me to tofu, cauliflower, peas, and orange for tonight's dinner.

Eating Healthy is Hard Work

Two weeks ago, I decided to experiment with the South Beach Diet. Their nutritionists recommend that distance runners (or bikers) skip Phase I and go right to Phase II.

I'm loving the food. I've discovered smoked tofu - sounds awful but is awesome on salad (as pictured left) and sugar snap peas with laughing cow cheese - hee, hee . . . - and re-discovered peanut butter and apple (from elementary school, remember?).

Since starting grad school our diet had de-evolved to mostly starches and fruit. Mac's been so stressed and busy that he hasn't been stir frying much for the past year or so (What? Mac not stir frying nightly?) We'd been eating out more and making ravioli and beans for dinner more . . . lunches fell into a rut . . . snacks from dining services (read: cheese popcorn or M&Ms) were common place . . .

I think I'm actually much happier without all the sugar. Plain yogurt, fresh mango, and raspberry is really nice once you've de-sugared your palette. Since we still leave the house after breakfast and don't get back until after supper some times, it takes planning . . . and cooking.  I go to the store all the time. . . . Yesterday, I went for a spagehtti squash. Tonight I think I want to make thai stirfry . . . I need coconut milk. Ah, the joy of having a supermarket two blocks away . . . .