Why I Won’t Be Watching the Olympics

“Olympics Offer Flatt, Abbott Chance for Marketing Mettle.”  So read the headlines after Rachael Flatt and Jeremy Abbott won national skating titles.  Not to take anything from these athletes.  They both sound like wonderful people.  And it’s not a lack of interested in figure skating.  I used to love watching it.

But now, it’s the Olympic marketing machine I’ll be boycotting, the one that’s ensnared the Olympics and morphed it into a big money game.  Witness the talk of the advertising world:  “I would not be surprised if you’re looking at a million-plus dollars,” said Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, Inc., a New York-based brand-and-consumer loyalty research consultant firm. When did the buzz about marketing potential come to outweigh athletic talent as the main topic of Olympic news?

And for the record, it’s not just the money, but the crazy things that money makes young athletes do.  At least there’s been a little press about the ridiculous heights being scaled by, e.g., snowboarders.  I feel it’s time to vote with my viewership dollars and tell the Olympic carpetbaggers that no, I won’t pander to interests that encourage athletes to sacrifice the best interests of their bodies and lives.

Vegetable Exhaustion

Investment Thinking + 4 Days of Meal Ideas Put Ease into a Vegetable Life

I suffered a case of Vegetable Exhaustion last night while driving to a friend’s house, loaded with prepared vegetables.  After a nasty ski accident landed her in bed for three months, she readily accepted my offer for a few vegetable dishes.  So I spent the better part of a day making a roasted beet salad, green salad with sautéed mushrooms and onions, Beef Stew with Tomatoes, Turnips and Leeks, and kale salad with golden raisins and almonds.

Find all sorts of great recipes at VegetableAMonth.com, like this Beef Stew with Tomatoes, Turnips and Leeks

“Dang!” I groused to myself on the drive to her house.  “How could it have take so long to make four vegetable dishes?”

On average, I get sucked into these head debates about once each month.  A tipping point is reached, I get overwhelmed and aggravated, and off I go, demanding to know why vegetables take so long.  I’m guessing I’m not alone in these outbursts.  In fact, the time commitment required for vegetable cooking is undoubtedly a big part of the reason only one in ten of us eats the recommended daily servings.

So is there any hope for a peaceful coexistence with vegetables?  There has to be.  Vegetables are far too important (and delicious) to be squeezed out by the clock.  But how to still the discontent and debate provoked by these hard-to-crack powerhouses?

Here’s what calmed me down yesterday:  “Investment thinking,” or taking the long view.  If I limited my view plane to a single day, then of course I spent way too much time on vegetables yesterday.  But if I instead took a long view of things, what seemed like wasted time was magically transformed into an investment with a payoff.

Remember, I had made four vegetable dishes—some in quadruple batches!  Although several servings were going to my bedridden friend, one day’s effort still left me with enough green stuff for three more days.  And truth be told, I didn’t really spend the entire day cooking vegetables, only about three hours.  So a three-hour investment yielded a total of  four days’ worth of lunches and dinners.  Not a bad return!  In fact, that payoff is a lot better option than driving to, ordering and coming home with fast food multiple times.

But I didn’t stop with taking a long view.  Not wanting any of my payoff to go to waste, I also jotted down a quick plan for using everything up to maximum advantage.  Reproduced below, it also gives a few hints for maximizing prep time.  For instance, I actually started the green salad a night before, taking advantage of the extra meal making time made available by having leftovers for the rest of the meal.  See if any of my efficiency tricks can help lighten your nightly meal making load.

Saturday–Start Making Ahead

Dinner

• Leftover Coq au Vin (a fancy French name for chicken cooked in wine)
• Leftover Brown Rice
• Simple Green Salad with shredded Jerusalem artichokes and red peppers, topped with sautéed mushrooms and onions

Notes:  With the entrée and starch already cooked, this was a good night to

1. cut and wash enough lettuce for several meals,
2. make enough sautéed mushrooms and onions for two nights,
3. roast some beets, and
4. throw a few potatoes in the oven to bake.  Now I had a few “cooked resources” to work with.

Sunday, the Big Vegetable Prep Day

Breakfast

• Leftover Coq au Vin

Notes:  Eating leftovers again freed up time to brown the meat for Beef Stew with Tomatoes and Turnips and get it into the crockpot.

Lunch

• Roasted Beet Salad with Apples, Celery and Nuts

Notes:  Because the beets were roasted the night before, preparing the beet salad was easy.  That, in turn, freed up time to prepare the vegetables for the Beef Stew, make croutons to freshen up the salad, and prep a double batch of kale salad plus two batches of kale for sautéing.

Dinner

• Slow Cooker Beef,  Tomato and Turnip Stew
• Leftover Green Salad with Sautéed Mushrooms and Onions and Fresh Croutons

Notes:   By the time dinner rolled around, the slow cooker stew smelled and tasted divine and a great salad was had by just reheating the sautéed mushrooms and onions and tossing on some fresh croutons.  The payoff begins.

Monday:  More Payoffs

Breakfast

• Leftover Beef Stew

Lunch

• Leftover Salad, Nicoise Style, with canned tuna, some of the leftover baked potatoes, chopped apples and frozen petite green beans

Dinner

• Thai Coconut Soup (Tested the recipe for previous blog.)
• Brown Basmati Rice
• Orange Slices

Notes: No problem making a new vegetable soup since the rest of the day has required no vegetable cooking.

Tuesday

Breakfast

• Leftover Beet Salad

Lunch

• More Salad, Nicoise Style

Dinner

• Leftover Beef Stew
• Kale Salad

Notes: Again, no problem making the kale salad since I’ve had leftovers the rest of the day and the kale is already cut and washed.

Wednesday–Yet One More Day of Payoffs

Breakfast

• Leftover Kale Salad pumped up with leftover Brown Basmati Rice

Lunch

• Tomato Basil Soup (Imagine brand)
• Leftover frozen green beans from Salad Nicoise

Dinner

• Sauteed Kale with Onions and Garlic
• Leftover Baked Potatoes with Miso Gravy
• Baked Apples

Hopefully this “demo” shows how efficient meal making is a sort of “rolling” procedure.  One day’s leftovers lightens the next day’s load enough to make double or triple batches that, in turn, lighten the next day’s load.  Read more about investment thinking and how to ease into the time-saving plan ahead habit, both covered in Take Control of Your Kitchen.

Ready to start living a vegetable life like this?  Check out VegetableAMonth.com, as well as my Twitter column to the left.

Vegetables for a Vegetable Life

Thai Coconut Shrimp (or Tofu) Soup

Another version of Thai Coconut Soup, with the cilantro chopped fresh and sprinkled on at the end!

Yesterday’s post described my big ski adventure to a hut deep in the Colorado mountains.  Being light years from the nearest grocery didn’t keep us from enjoying great cuisine, from potato-broccoli fondue to a hash brown scramble and apple crisp, to the Thai Coconut Soup that provoked yesterday’s post on the “Good to Better Continuum.”   In case you’re now hankering for Thai cuisine, here’s my recipe for a shrimp version, although tofu can easily be subbed for a vegetarian take.

Thai Coconut Shrimp (or Tofu) Soup                                                      Serves 4

• 1 oz.  mung bean threads (See below for more info)
• 2 cups boiling water

Place noodles in a small mixing bowl and cover with boiling water.  Set aside for about 10 minutes.  After noodles have softened, drain in colander, then use kitchen shears to cut roughly into 2-3” lengths.   Reserve.

• 1 Tbsp. canola or safflower oil
• 2 lrg. carrots, julienned and chopped into 2-3” lengths (about 2 cups)
• 4 green onions, sliced ½” thick (about 1 cup) or 2 lrg. leeks, white and light green parts, diced to 1/2″ (about 2 cups)
• 1-2 lrg. cloves garlic, minced (or 1 1/2 tsp. bottled minced garlic)
• 1 1/2 tsp. grated fresh or bottled ginger
• ¼ to ½ tsp. chili pepper flakes, to taste

Heat oil in a large soup pan until fairly hot.  Add carrots,onions or leeks, garlic, ginger and chili flakes, in that order, sautéing about 5 minutes total.

• 1 6-oz. can regular, not lite, coconut milk
• 1 qt. (4 cups) chicken broth

Add to vegetable mixture and simmer just 5 more minutes, until carrots and leeks are crisp tender but still vibrantly colored.

• 1-2 Tbsp. fish sauce, to taste
• 7 oz. baby shrimp, peeled, de-veined and tails removed (or 8 oz. firm tofu, diced into ½” cubes)
• 1-2 tsp. toasted sesame oil
• 2-4 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lime juice, to taste

Add fish sauce and shrimp (or tofu) to soup along with drained and cut mung bean threads.  Simmer just 2-3 minutes more, until shrimp turns pink and opaque (or tofu is heated through).  Remove from heat immediately and stir in sesame oil and lime juice, to taste.  Serve and garnish, as desired, with:

• Chopped cilantro (optional)
• Thin lime wedges (optional)

Notes

Soak a wad of mung bean threads in boiled water . . .

Mung Bean Threads? Way cool noodles made out of mung beans, so they’re ok for Gluten-Free folks.  But kids really like them, too, because they’re so very kid-like.  They start out as a wad of crackly white sticks but after just 10 minutes of soaking in boiled water, presto, they become soft, gelatinous noodles, great in Asian style soups, stir fries and lettuce wraps.  I cut them for better mouth manageability, but they can be left long for slurping.

Be Prepared for Speed This recipe is truly fast, so fast, in fact, that it’s advisable to have all your ingredients prepared and ready to go before beginning to cook.  Also have any side dishes either already, or almost all prepared.  It’s important that the soup not get overcooked or it will lose color and freshness.

and they turn into clearish, tender noodles.

Super Sides Speaking of side dishes, there are many nice accompaniments for this all-weather dish, depending upon when you decide to make it:

• Spinach salad with fresh berries and curry vinaigrette
• Steamed artichokes
• Brown basmati rice
• Plate of cucumbers and orange segments or cantaloupe balls
• Roasted winter squash:  acorn, butternut, delicata, etc.

Make It Your Way A great thing about cooking is making a recipe exactly as you like.  There are three distinct flavors in this recipe that can be adjusted up or down to suit your tastes:

• Salty:  Fish sauce
• Sour:  Lime juice
• Hot:  Chili pepper flakes

Words to the wise:  start small with seasonings, since you can always add more but can’t take away!  You might even experiment with a small amount in a bowl before adding it to the entire pot of soup.

Using Fresh Herbs at 11,000 Feet

. . .  and the “Good to Better Cooking Continuum”

You’d think cooking might fall off the priority scale in a bare bones hut, at 11,400 feet above sea level, in the middle of winter.  Actually, cooking, meals  and food conversation were a good 50 percent of the fun on a recent altitude adventure.  In fact, it was a deep discussion about the proper use of fresh cilantro that prompted this blog.

A friend and I start our Altitude Adventure

First, however, some background.  A friend and I accepted a challenge to ski seven miles with some outdoor pros to a backwoods hut in the mountains above Aspen, Colorado.  While it was a cakewalk for them, my friend and I view the trip one of the crowning physical achievements of our entire lives.  Things might have been easier, of course, if we hadn’t hauled in two pounds of hashed brown potatoes, one pound of cheese, 18 eggs and the fixings for a dried apple crisp.

As mentioned, however, cooking was a big part of the trip, which is how we came to be discussing the proper use of fresh cilantro when the world outside was frozen solid.  One of the dinner chefs was planning to make Thai Coconut Soup.  To conserve space, he had mixed the fresh chopped cilantro with the peppers and onions, meaning the cilantro would have to be sautéed with the peppers and onions.  Would this be a bad thing for his soup, he wondered?

The Standard Answer:  How to Use Fresh Herbs

The standard answer is that fresh herbs should be cut as close to serving time as possible and added at the end of the cooking time, to prevent their flavor from cooking out (The Professional Chef, 7^th ed., p. 183.)  So technically, my hut companion did a “bad thing” for his soup by mushing the fresh cilantro with the vegetables that had to be sauteed.

Although this answer was “right,” I’m not sure it was helpful.  Assessing things as simply good or bad only seems to contribute to the cooking fear the paralyzes a lot of everyday cooks.  “Am I doing this exactly right?” is a question that plagues us amidst on overload of cooking info in magazines, on TV and all over the Internet.

An Alternative View

Here’s an alternative view:  Maybe cooking was never meant to be an exact science, subject to one-dimensional assessment on a good/bad scale.  Instead, cooking is first and foremost an avenue for making food edible and then, pleasurable.  The object is to simply do the best job possible, with the food gifted us, to make meals that nourish and nurture.

Taking this perspective eliminates the pressure to achieve absolute “rightness” in the kitchen, replacing it with a no-pressure opportunity to just make things better, as we have the time and wherewithal.  Hence the “Good to Better Cooking Continuum,”  where the inquiry is longer judging good vs. bad, but exploring what might make a good thing better.

Everyone in the hut is pretty satisfied with the Thai Coconut Soup, even if the cilantro was cooked, not fresh. (Ben the Soup Chef is first on the left; I'm third from the right.)

In this view, cooking becomes something like a treasure hunt.  All along our journey we find nuggets of information to make our meals ever more enjoyable.  Step-by-small-step, we utilize these finds and keep nudging our “good” baseline a little to the right, towards “better.”

The Thai Coconut Soup was a perfect example.  It was magnificent!  Could it have been better if the cilantro had been freshly chopped and sprinkled on at the end?  Sure.  But that’s just a trick for making it magnificent-plus on the next go round.

Tomorrow’s post:  A Thai Coconut Soup recipe,  plus, in the vein of offering tasty tidbits for your treasure hunt, be sure to check out VegetableAMonth.com:  all sorts of tools, information and inspiration you need to make your eating life better—especially when it comes to vegetables.

Vegetable Paradise–An International Perspective

Just in time for Thanksgiving, I gave a talk last night:   “Getting Thankfully to the Promised Land of Vegetables.”  Just before the talk began, I was surprised by the arrival of some Japanese students, then a Russian, then a group of Saudis and another of Kuwaitis.  A Taiwanese student rounded out the group of 10 international students.

They are all here for a short language-immersion program at the University of Colorado, and their professor thought a healthy eating class would be a perfect language-immersion activity.  At first, I wasn’t so sure.  I quickly ticked through my planned talk, panicking that it wouldn’t be relevant or of interest to young people from all points of the globe.  There really wasn’t time for much adjusting, however, so I dove in.

Turns out, the topic was just fine for our international attendees–and they were a wonderful audience.  As interesting as anything was learning from them about food issues in their countries.

• In Russia, vegetable eating isn’t the alien act that it is in our country.  Because food is so highly priced, nearly 90% of the population has a garden and derives a good part of their diet from it.  So they end up with a vegetable-rich diet automatically.  And getting exercise is no problem, either.
• Kuwaitis are dealing with diabetes, too.  One student’s mother makes sure his father eats a lot of broccoli, among other things, to help with his diabetes.
• Also in Kuwait, dieting is the rage among women.
• In Taiwan, organic foods are becoming quite popular.  One student worked for a successful German importer of organic nuts and spices.
• During the cooking portion of the class, we prepared a Light Orange Spinach Waldorf Salad.  It was interesting to see how many of the ingredients were common in other countries, e.g., Bosc pears, spinach, Asian pears and walnuts.
• Finally, when the conversation turned to the seasonal foods in the salad, speaking to an international audience got me thinking about the meaning of this concept in countries that don’t have so many or such distinct growing periods.  In Saudi Arabia, for instance, do they ever have cool-weather crops?  Do they ever not have warm weather fruits?  Hmmm . . .

Bottom line:   American cuisine has been delightfully enhanced by the addition of international flavors.  Maybe our whole conversation about healthy eating could benefit and take on greater dimension with more international perspectives.

Making Turkey Day Healthier for Diabetics–and Non-Diabetics, Too

7 Tricks Make Thanksgiving Easier on the Blood Sugar

You know that sinking feeling—more like a crash, really.  The rolls, stuffing, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy and pies have all been devoured and now they’ve joined forces to create white carb havoc.

While most of us joke about the stupor we fall into after a big turkey dinner, Thanksgiving aftershock is not a joking matter for diabetics.  Hence the call I got from Pam Mellskog, reporter for Longmont’s Times-Call.  November is Diabetes Month and Pam was looking for ideas that could make Thanksgiving easier for diabetics.  Here are some of the things we talked about.

First, a clarification:  There isn’t such a thing as a specific “diabetic diet.”  Diabetics benefit from the same whole and natural eating approach that everyone benefits from:  real fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, good fats, beans, nuts—in other words, foods that come straight from the earth or as close thereto as possible.  What’s not so great for diabetics are the same manufactured foods that aren’t great for any of us:  white sugar, candy, sodas, white flour breads, muffins, cakes, pizzas and cookies, and other highly processed packaged foods.*

Ideally, we’d would pitch most of the traditional Thanksgiving meal out the window if there were any diabetics at the table.  As this would like spark serious civil unrest, however, I shared some intermediate steps with Pam:

Trick 1:  Weave in Whole Grains This is one of the easiest ways to “healthify” the Thanksgiving meal.  You might remember the whole grain article in September’s newsletter, “What Makes Whole Grains So Hard to Eat?”  As one reader commented, whole grains aren’t so hard to eat if you just follow a 50-50 rule:

For my baked goods, I just make them out of half white, half whole wheat flours. The difference between 50-50 and all-white is much smaller than the jump to 100% whole grain. Whole grain flours do not hold moisture as well as processed ones, so using half white maintains a familiar texture, while actually increasing flavor.

So Trick 1 this Thanksgiving is to make 50-50 baked goods.

• For the rolls and pie crusts, get some whole wheat pastry flour in the bulk aisle of a health foods store.  (Great Harvest also makes some delicious whole wheat rolls.)
• For the stuffing, use half whole wheat or other whole grain bread.
• If you want, make the gravy with not just half but all whole wheat flour—the difference is negligible.

Trick 2:  Cut Back on Sugar With sugar so cheap, it’s no wonder it gets overused in recipes.  I discovered long ago that I could safely reduce the sugar in most recipes by a quarter without anyone so much as batting an eye.  Start with this much in your Thanksgiving pies, but feel free to continue gradually cutting back to half the sugar called for.

Trick 3:   Use Alternative Sweeteners Many dietitians will tell you that to the body, sugar is no different than honey, maple syrup, agave nectar and so on.  This isn’t the place for a debate of the science behind this statement, but it does bear noting that the major sponsors of the American Dietetic Association include Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, General Mills, Kellogg Company, Mars, the American Beverage Association, Post Cereals and Safeway.  Their sponsorship is not insignificant, either.  It costs $18,000 just for a booth at the ADA’s annual conference.

On the other hand, it costs nothing and doesn’t hurt anything  to experiment going without sugar, which is how I found out that substituting honey and agave nectar eliminated my sleeping problems.  Don’t worry about how to use these new sweeteners; recipes are plentiful.

Trick 4:  Use Fruits  and Flavors Instead of Sugar This trick is especially good for cranberry sauce which contains a lot of the white stuff, very often the High Fructose Corn Syrup variety.  My Cranberry Fig Relish, for instance, uses orange juice, pears, dates and figs, with just a small amount of maple syrup.  Also, strong spices like ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and orange zest help create flavor that isn’t reliant on sugar.

Trick 5:  Add More Green There’s a reason Thanksgiving frequently precipitates carb arrest:  Practically the whole meal is comprised of starchy carbs!  So what about making two or three (light) vegetable dishes, like a clean, fresh green salad, a simple kale dish and maybe some Brussels sprouts.  Fill half of your plate with those and at least it will take a second trip to the food bar to get any more servings of carbs.

Trick 6:  Moderation Of course eating smaller portions would help stave off a carb attack, but that’s almost antithetical to Thanksgiving tradition.  I mention it anyway, with the thought that it might pop up in time to save you from a second helping of pumpkin pie.

Trick 7:  Thin the Taters This is the trick Pam is featuring in her article.  Potatoes are high on the Glycemic Index, which is particularly bad for diabetics according to some experts.  However, Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes and gravy would be no Thanksgiving at all for most of us.  So Pam and I talked about how celeriac (or celery root) could be used for part of the potatoes, “thinning” their glycemic rating.  For the recipe, be sure to check out her article and get the recipe on Wednesday, November 11 in the Times-Call Food Section.

* See “Diabetes Diet, Variety and Consistency Are Key,” Dr. Tedd Mitchell, M.D., USA Weekend Magazine, November 12, 2006; and Sandra Woodruff, MS, RD, LD/N, author of The Complete Diabetes Prevention Plan (Avery, 2005), as quoted in Energy Times, July/August, 2006.

Last-of-Summer Marinara Sauce

Cooking and Eating with the Seasons

Homemade Marinara--Simple yet Elegant

There’s not much to a basic marinara sauce: Tomatoes cooked down with onion and garlic, then seasoned with salt, pepper and herbs.  In summer, a fresh tomato sauce doesn’t go much beyond that.  Moreover, it’s kept light by cooking only briefly and using sweet onions, fresh garlic and fresh basil.

Colder weather calls for a heartier sauce, not to mention that sweet onions and fresh basil are long gone.  Hence my idea for a more savory, longer simmered sauce with regular winter storage onions, roasted garlic, a little red wine, some sausage meatballs and mushrooms, all topped off by hardier herbs like fresh thyme, oregano and parsley.

A Note About Time: Making a long-cooking savory marinara is more akin to ritual than fast everyday meal making.  As probably any good Italian grandma will tell you, there’s no rushing a good marinara.  So I allow it to be an evening or weekend project, something done piecemeal, while cooking a different dinner or puttering around the house.  The fact that it may not be done for dinner is a good thing.  Tomato sauces always taste better the second day.

Serves 6-8 (since of course you’ll want leftovers)

Step 1: Puree and Cook the Tomatoes

Cut and puree enough tomatoes to make about 10 cups of puree. When fresh tomatoes are gone, use 2-3 large (28 oz.) cans of Muir Glen or a similarly high-quality canned tomatoes with their juices.

It all starts with the tomatoes.  No matter how skilled a cook you are, a marinara will be only as flavorful as the tomatoes that  go into it.  So start with the best, which generally means heading to the garden or farmers market.

Fresh tomato marinara takes a lot of tomatoes, about 6 to 8 pounds.  Don’t be surprised at how many tomatoes that comes out to.  Remember, once the water is cooked out, there’s not much left.

Scoop out stems, cut roughly into halves or quarters, then process in the food processor until pretty smooth.  Save time and don’t bother peeling; the skins just get chopped up, too.

The big surface area of this saute pan allows for faster evaporation of the tomato juices.

Cook the puree in a BIG, flared side sauté pan until it is no longer runny, but thick and rich.  This may take as long as 2 or 3 hours; which is why this is a good evening or weekend project.  Go ahead and fix a different dinner and prepare all the other ingredients while the puree cooks.

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Step 2:  Roast the Garlic

Roast 1-2 heads of garlic, depending on your taste for it, bearing in mind that roasting turns it sweet and mild.

Garlic is easy to roast.  Just dribble a little olive oil (about 1/2 Tbsp.)  over each head, rub it all over, then pop in a small, lidded baking dish and bake at 350 (F) for 45-60 minutes.

While a small terra cotta garlic roaster is nice, I often use a small baking dish so I can roast 3-4 heads at a time.   Roasted garlic keeps for a week or so in the frig, so why not keep some extra on hand for the wonderful flavor it adds to most dishes.

FYI, this particular variety of garlic has a purple hue; roasting didn't turn it purple!

You’ll know the garlic is done when it feels squishy and spongy when squeezed lightly.  I throw in a head or two whenever I have the oven on.

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Step 3:  Cook and Puree Carrots

It doesn't take many carrots to work a mellowing magic, just 2-3 large ones.

Pureed carrots are a Mary Addition to classic marinara.  I like how their sweetness mellows the acidic taste of the tomatoes while adding valuable nutritional depth.

Cut carrots into 1/4″ thick half moons, then microwave with about 2 Tbsp. Imagine Vegetable Broth for 8 minutes (stirring twice during the cooking time.)  Once cooked, puree in the food processor and stir into the sauce.

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Step 4:  Saute Onions

Use 2 medium onions, diced to about 1/2"

As always, warm about 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a saute pan before adding the diced onion.  Cook and stir about 10 minutes, until they are nicely browned.  Then reserve them in a bowl until the tomatoes are cooked down.  This way, they don’t get cooked to death while the tomatoes simmer away their juices.

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Step 5:  Saute the Mushrooms

Use 1/2 to 3/4 lb. Cremini are a favorite, but white button are fine, as are portobellos if sliced thinly

The same goes for the mushrooms.  After sauteing, I reserved in a bowl until the tomato sauce is cooked down.

From the picture to the right, it may look like I’ve used two different kinds of mushrooms, but they are all cremini.  The darker ones on the far right were just a couple weeks old when I finally found them in the frig.  Although they were on the verge of rotting, my waste-not, want-not conscience made me use them up.  Good thing.  They were actually much richer-tasting than the pretty, light-colored mushrooms on the left that I had purchased that day.

Optional Step:  Deglaze with Wine

Use about 1/2 cup good quality wine to deglaze

For a gourmet touch, deglaze the onion and mushroom sauteing pan with 1/2 cup good quality red wine.  After scraping any bits and coatings from the bottom of pan, cook the wine a few minutes to reduce slightly, then  add directly to the sauce.

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To keep our meat consumption moderate, I used just 3/4 lb. of Italian sausage rather than a full pound. I mixed it with 1/4 cup gluten-free breadcrumbs, 1 egg, salt and pepper and 2 tsp. of dried leaf basil, since there wouldn't be any fresh basil in the sauce.

Step 6: Basic Meatballs

Like a basic tomato sauce, it’s good to know a basic meatball recipe.  And like a basic tomato sauce, there isn’t much to basic meatballs:  Meat, whole grain breadcrumbs, onion, egg, herbs and salt and pepper.

For this dish, I saved time and skipped the onion since I was using sausage which has plenty of flavor.  Also, the sauce already contained a lot of onion.

The best way to mix meatballs?  Knead everything together with your hands.  It’s messy, but go ahead and form the meatballs while you’re at it.  I size the meatballs small (about 1 1/2″), both to spread the meat further and so they cook through without burning.

Because my sausage was so lean, I had to fry the meatballs in a little olive oil

Once formed, fry the meatballs in the same pan used to cook the onion and mushrooms.  No need to wash in between.  The flavors just keep piling up.

I found a large soup spoon does the best job of turning each meatball without destroying its neighbor.  Once done, I just turned off the heat and reserved until the sauce was done.

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Cut off the "hairy" end of the head.

Step 7:  Mash the Garlic

Once roasted, garlic turns soft and silky.  Cut off the ends of the cloves and the pulp can be easily squeezed into a small bowl.  Start mashing with a fork, then gradually add a little broth (2-4 Tbsp.) to thin so it can be stirred easily into the sauce.

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Squeeze the soft pulp from its skins, either clove by clover or several cloves at a time.

I used a little Imagine's Vegetable Broth for a flavorful thinning agent.

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Just a teaspoon of sugar takes off the acidic edge of the tomatoes.

Step 8: Season

Stir in sea salt (I used Celtic salt) and freshly ground pepper, to taste.  If in doubt, start small.  More can be added at the end, after all the other ingredients are added.  This is also one of the few times when I use white sugar, just a teaspoon, to further “smooth out excess acidity,” as Joy of Cooking puts it.

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The herbs rescued before the big storm come to my aid now. About 1/4 cup of thyme leaves, 1/3 cup of oregano leaves and a handful of flat-leafed parsley will add magnificent flavor to the sauce.

Step 9:  Prepare the Herbs

Fresh herbs take a little more time than dried, but the flavor is worth it.  Hold the top end of each stem with one hand and with the other hand, strip the leaves from the bottom part with the thumb and index finger.  The idea is to eliminate the tough parts of the stem.  The small thin tops of each stem aren’t a problem.  Chop everything until fairly small.

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Step 10:  Put It All Together!

Now comes the fun part.  By the time you’ve cooked dinner and prepared the other ingredients, the tomatoes should be cooked down to a thick, rich sauce—like the stuff you buy in jars.  Now dump in the onion, mushrooms, meatballs and roasted garlic.  (The pureed carrots and wine, if using, should already be in there.)  Stir everything together well, and continue simmering for about 5-10 minutes.

Not until now, when you turn off the heat, should you stir in the fresh herbs.  They shouldn’t be cooked much to better preserve their bright, fresh flavor.

By now, you’re surely tired!  So put the lid on your sauce and put it in a cold place.  I have an outdoor shed that makes a perfect winter refrigerator.  Of course the sauce can also be stored in a regular refrigerator, but cool it completely first.  It’s hard on a refrigerator—and uses a lot of energy–to cool a hot dish.

The hard work will pay off.  As the sauce sits all night, the flavors will meld and you’ll be set for a super easy, super delicious seasonal meal the next night.  Enjoy the passing of the season.

Pair pasta and marinara with a simple salad made with the last of the lettuces and yellow and purple peppers of the season.

P.S. Gluten Free?  No Problem

Fresh Pasta is now available in a gluten-free form

In addition to the many brands of dry gluten-free pasta (Tinkyada being my favorite), Longmont-based Villa Bozza now makes fresh, gluten-free pasta for a special treat.  Find it in the Denver metro area at select Whole Foods and King Soopers stores, and at several farmers markets.

How to Use Up Halloween Pumpkins

Small, round sugar pie pumpkins pack a lot more flavor than the big Jack-O-Lantern varieties

Picture Recipe:  Pumpkin Red Bean Tostadas

About now, there are likely a lot of pumpkins sitting around having the post-Halloween blues.   While most are the big Jack-O-Lantern variety with little flavor (and many of those are coated in candle wax), you may have a couple of the small, round sugar pumpkins left over from the day of the pumpkin.  Roast them and you have a good start on this easy recipe.

This recipe is a skillet recipe–the best kind in my mind.  Just throw everything in one pan, cook a while and voila! you have a complete meal.  It’s shared here in picture format.  See how you like that:

Substitutions and Variations:

Squash: Roasted acorn could be substituted for pumpkins

Tomatoes: A 28-oz. can of diced Muir Glen (or comparable quality) tomatoes could be substituted for fresh.  Include the juices.

Jalapeno: Canned diced chiles could be substituted, mild or hot and in an amount that suits your spice tolerance.

Tortillas: Use hard shell tostadas; warm on a pancake griddle or in the microwave.

The Cabbage Core Challenge

4 Tricks for Taking the Sting Out of Bitter Vegetables

There’s a reason grocery store displays of broccoli rabe, rutabagas and turnips go

Does my "waste not-want not" motto really extend to cabbage cores?

untouched for hours at a time.  Some members of the vegetable kingdom are just a little harder to like than others.  But we still want the flavor and nutrient diversity they offer.  Happily, there are ways of preparing these difficult specimens that make them more palatable.  Although the following article focuses on cabbage cores, a particularly challenging vegetable, its tricks can be used to form a good working relationship with any of the harsher vegetables.

Here’s an honest admission:  I have a “waste-not-want-not” thing going on. My Twitter column is filled with vegetable dishes fast enough for breakfast and lunch—a good many made with stems, stalks, cores and leaves that normal cooks would pitch.  But not me.  I have this thing about waste, so I set myself a personal goal of starving my compost pile as much as possible.

To date, things have been going pretty well.  I’ve been turning kale stems, cauliflower leaves, broccoli stalks and other such “refuse” into tasty dishes—boosting my vegetable intake and stretching my vegetable dollars.  But then came yesterday’s cabbage core.  Couldn’t I safely pitch that without violating my self-inflicted waste code?

Tasting a piece of it triggered deep, gastronomic memories of everything bad about cabbage.  I now knew why the cabbage itself was unbelievably sweet and light:  Every bit of the head’s strong, musky, sour and harsh taste had been sucked into the core!  And that foul taste is what I got upon testing a bite.

I immediately started to scrape the whole thing towards the compost bin.  Not until the last

The compost bin got the moldy end of the core, but the rest got chopped for a higher purpose.

second did my better self rise to the occasion.  The compost bin got the moldy end of the core (I do have some limits!), but the rest got chopped as I decided how to transform it into something I could stomach.  Working with vegetable parts that are frequently discarded, I’ve learned a few tricks to render them not only palatable but pretty decent-tasting.  This core was about to be my biggest challenge to date.

Trick 1:  Cook It Cooking is the best way to extract the bitterness from a vegetable.  In this case, I didn’t even consider steaming or sauteing but went straight to boiling, which is the preferred cooking method for really tough vegetable characters.

I know that boiling has lost favor over the years, probably because we get vegetables shipped in year round that are tender enough for just a light steaming or sautéing, which is generally better taste wise and nutritionally.  But imagine a pioneer farm wife faced with some garden remnant in November—it may be tough and gnarly, but it’s the closest thing to fresh that she will have for four months.  She is going to make those stalks or stems taste good no matter what, and boiling is the tool for the job.

Note, however, that boiling isn’t limited to throwing vegetables in a huge pot of water, cooking the vegetables to death and then pitching the water.  On the contrary, I simmer rather than boil my vegetables in a tiny, not a potful, of liquid.  This means any leached out vitamins and minerals get concentrated in an amount of liquid small enough that it can be fully incorporated into the finished dish, minimizing nutrient and flavor loss.  Also, I only simmer until the vegetables have lost their bitter or harsh taste, which is often when they are still crisp-tender.  My cabbage core had to be cooked beyond crisp-tender, but still far short of mush, before losing its harsh taste.

Trick 2:  Inject Flavor While water certainly works as a cooking liquid, experiment with

This broth has plenty of flavor, so little additional salt was needed.

different broths.  They can inject flavor into the spaces left by the extraction of the vegetable’s bitterness.  I used Imagine’s Vegetable Broth, which has plenty of flavor to spare.

Third:  Salt Salt is also good at both drawing out bitterness and imparting flavor.  Your broth might be salty enough as is, but if using a low-sodium variety or water, try adding a little (maybe 1/4 tsp. to 1/2 tsp.) of good sea salt.  I used about 1/4 tsp. of Celtic salt in my simmer water.

Fourth:  Combine with Other Flavorful Ingredients.

I always say that sausage is a miracle ingredient.  Add just a little and the entire dish tastes great—no work, little cost and no cooking knowledge required.  Sausage was the primary tastemaker I added to my simmered cabbage core.

We just received a shipment of sausage from pasture-fed pigs. It I had no fat, so I had to add olive oil to saute the onion. Less than 1/4 lb. is all I needed for a great-flavored dish.

I also added sweetly browned onions and sweet snap pea shoots (I rescued a few from thegarden before last week’s snow.)  Their sweetness balanced the trace amounts of bitterness left in the cooked core pieces, as would other sweet vegetables (red peppers, corn, etc.) or sautéed fruits (like pears and apples), or just rice, chicken, tofu or some kind of sauce with a little sweetness.

The end result?  I think I met the challenge with a delicious for lunch that wasn’t just another sandwich–not by a long shot!

For a little color, I added vivid green pea shoots at the end.

Danger in the Gluten-Free Aisle

Hold the celebration

These labels are a lot more common now than 20 years ago

Not long ago, a news article reported on a conference to support those of us who must live without gluten.  In a food world dominated by gluten products, lord knows we need support, as well as information on all the new gluten-free products coming to market.

One aspect of this gathering gave me cause for concern, however:  the celebration of newly created substances that better mimic white bread products.  The news report quoted one of the speakers gushing over new white flour substitutes–things that had a lot of “modified,” “refined,” and “white” in their names.  These modern miracles, she bubbled, could make soft, tender baked goods, just like white flour.

But does this miss the point?

Sure, we’re getting the technical part of the gluten free diet by eliminating the specific protein called gluten.  But are we missing the bigger call to action:  Eating a more healthful, whole, vividly varied diet.

As the conference speaker pointed out so enthusiastically, we can now go gluten free without having to change anything:

• No need to cultivate a taste for other grains and whole grains.
• No need to expand our food horizons to include lentils, leeks, Bosc pears, eggplant, cashews, tofu and the myriad other non-gluten vegetables, nuts, fruits, meats and oils in the food kingdom.
• No need to give pause and question the quality of our meals, the sources of our food and the sanity of our eating lives.

Just substitute white, gluten free pizza, bagels, French bread and cookies for their white gluten cousins.

So what’s the problem?  Why ruin the party?

Because there’s so much to be gained from moments of crisis! And believe it or not, moments of dietary crisis are as valuable as near-death experiences, divorces and job losses for propelling us off dead center and on to the better lives we deserve.

It’s a widely and well-known fact that we are killing ourselves at the dinner table, and this despite the fact that we come in contact with healthy eating information on a daily basis.  It’s an ironic joke among healthy eating professionals that there’s only one sure way a client will make serious dietary change:  by having a heart attack.

What if gluten problems are meant as teachable moments not just a medical diagnosis?  Gluten intolerance could be a life-changing catalyst, rather than just an inconvenience to be worked around as expeditiously as possible.

This idea is not just theoretical musing.  Twenty years ago, we received a wheat-free, diary-free diagnosis, long before “gluten” was a household world and when the number of non-wheat food products could be counted on my right hand.  With two small children and a full-time business, a transition of this magnitude seemed impossible, and I would have given my right hand for a gluten-free Betty Crocker cake mix at birthday time.  Yet in the way that our biggest challenges bring the greatest rewards, being forced from our comfort zone without a life vest brought unimaginable rewards:

Boring Alert I would never have guessed we were so boring—from a culinary standpoint.  Fully 75 percent of our diet involved some combination of white flour and cheese or milk:  Grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza, PB&Js, mac ‘n cheese, pasta & more pasta, pancakes, quesadillas, burritos . . .  need I say more?  While I was astounded at our monotony, my body was astounded at all the nutrients we had missed out on with such a limited food intake.

What’s a Whole Grain? Nor could I believe how ignorant I was.  Despite 21 years of schooling, I didn’t know what a whole grain from a peanut, why whole grains are important, that wheat is just one grain, that wheat is in practically everything we eat, and that there are lots of other grains that millions of people eat in other parts of the world.  When I was growing up, Wonder Bread and Twinkies were the extent of our exposure to grains.  Now I know that dietary knowledge is power—power to shape and direct my health.

Cheers to the Colorful Plate Forced out of my comfortable bread and cheese cocoon, my taste buds were stretched to the breaking point.  But they were a lot tougher than I could have guessed.  Polenta, bok choy, papaya, cannellini, lamb, buckwheat, kale and dozens of other strange-sounding foods became fast friends, adding color, flavor and delight to our meals.

No Picky Eaters Here Not only did my taste buds rise to the gluten free challenge.  My kids’ taste buds did, too.  As they got older, I never had to short-order cook, I could be as creative as I wanted, we could go out to interesting restaurants, and even to this day, our kids treasure family meal times, wholesomely interesting dishes and vegetable-rich meals.

So in a crazy way, it was good we weren’t able to simply swap white for white.  We were forced to take advantage of a big learnable moment, and instead of just simple substitution we got a complete gastronomic transformation!  Meal making is now an adventure.  Eating and wellness are intimately integrated.  New foods and cooking techniques continually beckon and keep life interesting.  And as we learn more about strengthening our diet, we learn how to eat in a way that feels more right environmentally and socially.

Hooray for teachable moments, even if inconvenient.