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Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Prepare chard by washing well, removing and discarding the thick part of the center core, and finely chopping or slicing the leaves. Add chard to 1 tablespoon oil in 8–10 inch skillet with an oven-proof handle and saute for three minutes till softened. Remove from skillet and add remaining oil, add onions and fennel, and sauté until softened and lightly colored, about ten minutes.
Peel and thinly slice potatoes crosswise and layer slightly, overlapping in concentric circles over the onion and fennel. Salt and pepper lightly and put in oven for 10 minutes. Remove from oven carefully and lower oven temperature to 375 degrees. Sprinkle chard over potatoes and arrange tomato slices over chard. Gently pour seasoned eggs over mixture and place mixture back in oven for 25–30 minutes or until puffy and lightly brown on top. About ten minutes before you remove from oven, you may sprinkle with grated cheese.
]]>Whisk together ¾ cup of a good mayonnaise such as Hellmann’s or, even better, your own homemade mayonnaise; three tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice; the grated peel of one bumpy lemon (about one teaspoon); 1 teaspoon of salt; and 1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper. Mix into the fennel and let macerate for 30 minutes. Serves six to eight as a side, unless your family likes it as much as mine and can only stretch it to feed four.
This recipe is only a guide; you may like it more or less lemony with more or less salt and/or pepper. Adjust to your own taste and enjoy with grilled seafood or as part of a vegetarian meal. It goes well with other meats, especially pork, and is an outstanding accompaniment to salmon.
]]>According to Ron Winslow’s April 29 story, children as young as 10 years old are contracting diabetes as a direct result of obesity, and recent studies have demonstrated that the drugs prescribed for the containment of the adult disease are not working in children. Early in the story, Winslow describes how this fact is “heightening worries about the fast-growing and largely preventable disease” — preventable being the key word here.
Stating the obvious, Dr. Phil Zeitler of Children’s Hospital Colorado said, “It would be much better if these kids didn’t get diabetes in the first place.” And Dr. David Allen at Wisconsin American Family Children’s Hospital also reminded us that “children 50 years ago did not avoid obesity and its complications by making healthy choices. They simply lived in a more active and less calorie-laden environment.” Surprise, surprise!
Even if you do not have children at home now, you may have grandchildren or see them on the horizon. You may know your neighbor’s children. You may at least be aware of children who are out there somewhere hopefully running around a little bit — all needing the grown-ups to change that environment for them. And we cannot blame just the parents; most of the choices out there are not good ones. It is harder and harder to find them in a grocery store crammed with prepackaged foods that are cost-attractive and nutrition-deprived.
Help is on the way, but only if we take on a little of the burden ourselves. Jamie Oliver is still going strong working to create and nurture the food revolution worldwide, and check out what the Senate did for the small farmer and farmers’ markets. But this is a project that needs a real grass-roots effort, kind of like the old No Littering campaign of the ’50s and ’60s. It needs a repetitive, persistent drumbeat, or we are going to get sicker and sicker as a nation and be paying more and more in health costs for a preventable condition.
I am beginning to think that apart from my doing more to make our markets available for education and exposure, we can all become more involved in changing the nutrition environment in our schools by advocating for school lunches that offer only good choices and only real foods, by using only healthy foods as rewards, and by teaching nutrition and its relationship to preventive health to young people in every grade. We can all do this because this is our dime — this is our money that is paying for those unhealthy choices, that unhealthy environment, and that instructional curriculum that ignores one of the biggest threats to our nation’s future health.
It’s time to get crackin’! I’m channeling my mother again, but I think it would amaze her that we have come to this. I will provide you with some local names and contacts soon for those who want to reach out and get involved.
In the meantime, continue to do the best for your own family, spend your $10 weekly on locally grown produce, and help keep our small farmers alive to sell more good choices to our school children, once we all figure out how to make that happen.
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As we approach the opening of market season across Northern Virginia, I want to devote this post to issues that directly affect the success of farmers’ markets all over Virginia and the country, and that in a variety of ways also affect the farmers that come to our markets. There will be no test on this information, but I hope you will follow these links, read the material, and absorb what you feel you need to make you a better shopper. And of course, we always encourage grass-roots activism because we know it works and because it is good for the soul.
When I rant about something, which in my house we often refer to as “Nanna Losing her Mind,” I do try to inform myself from several sources about the topic at hand. I am less educated about the following topic than some others, mainly because there is a lot of science involved that is usually not explained well in alerts I receive or even in newspaper articles I read. This latest alert from the producers of the movie Fresh! is worrisome, though, for two reasons.
Dow Chemical is developing a new genetically modified seed because of problems with the previous one, and they seem to be putting the new seed on the market soon after those initial problems presented themselves. So how much could we possibly have learned from the initial failure? It also worries me in the same way that the original Roundup-resistant seed bothered me: No long-term studies have yet been released on the effects of these food crops on the animals and people that ingest them. We just need to know more.
Secondly, I want to refer you to the latest update from the Farmers’ Market Coalition, a great Virginia-based organization devoted to supporting farmers’ markets of all shapes and sizes across the country. Evidently, the grass-roots effort to influence the Farm Bill legislation has had an effect on the Senate, and I agree that we need to thank those Senators who led the charge for the small farmer. But we need to say and do more if we want more of our government’s resources to support sustainable farming. This is good information and a great summary of the bill, and FMC has made it easy for you to express your own feelings and opinions.
Thirdly, I invite you to visit the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution website, especially if you are concerned about what children are being fed at school. You can learn everything you need to know about putting together a successful campaign to change the menu. You can also sign up to receive a regular newsletter. If you really want to be inspired, watch Jamie’s speech at the 2010 TED awards.
I take this approach because I realize how much these resources that come to me almost every week keep me motivated and inform not just what I say and write but what I do through our markets to pass along what I learn. And they often provide information that can lead to better farming practices or access to financial help or expertise for our vendors. Just today I sent Max Tyson of Tyson Farms and Orchards an alert about money to help farmers who want to begin using more sustainable and organic farming methods. I do not expect you to find all of this information inspiring or even helpful, but I hope that you will blaze a trail of your own — in your own kitchen, in your child’s school, or in a political campaign.
Photo by really short
]]>Place bread pieces on a large cookie sheet or baking tray and spread with melted butter. Mix cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle on bread. Toast in a 325-degree oven for 12–15 minutes.
For dressing, mix well:
3 Tablespoons light oil 1 Tablespoon finely shredded orange peel 2 Tablespoons fresh orange juice 2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar 1 teaspoon kosher salt
Thinly slice 2 large heads of Bibb lettuce and add 2 cups of fresh strawberries. Add bread cubes and toss lightly with dressing. Add spiced pecans and serve.
Serves 4–6
Toast 1½ cups pecans in a 375° oven for 8–10 minutes.
Combine 2 tablespoons sugar, 1¼ teaspoon five-spice powder, ½ teaspoon kosher salt and ¼ teaspoon red pepper. Set aside.
Combine 2 tablespoons maple syrup, 1 teaspoon dark brown sugar and 1 tablespoon butter. Bring to a boil and stir in toasted nuts. Lower heat and cook while stirring for one minute. Add warm nuts to sugar-and-spice mixture, mix well and cool completely.
Add to Strawberry Salad or serve as hors d’oeuvre.
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This is one of the best-tasting things you will ever put in your mouth! I promise. If you have a motorized ice-cream maker of any kind, it should do a good job with this mixture, but I have always made it the old-fashioned way because I like the texture of the finished product as well as the taste.
Combine rhubarb and water, bring to a simmer and simmer, covered, for five minutes or until soft. Let cool slightly.
Puree sugar with rhubarb in food processor and pour into a large bowl. Puree strawberries, press through a fine sieve to remove seeds and add to rhubarb mixture.
(This is where you can empty the mixture into an ice-cream maker and process until nearly frozen; then finish off in the freezer.)
Place mixture into two loaf pans and chill in the freezer until mushy. Remove and beat with an electric mixer until smooth and light but not melted. Repeat chilling and mixing. Scoop into a refrigerator container and freeze solid. Thaw 30 minutes in the refrigerator before serving.
Photo by La Grande Farmers’ Market
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Smart Markets Inc., managers of farmers’ markets with flair, and the membership of the Vale Club invite you to join us for Cooking Through the Seasons with Annie Sidley, the demo chef for Smart Markets and a personal chef and caterer in Northern Virginia. Working with produce and other ingredients from Smart Markets farmers’ markets, Annie will teach a menu the last Thursday of every month for the next six months at the Vale School using a large, fully-equipped kitchen as the classroom.
The introductory class will be Thursday, May 24, from 10:45 a.m. to 1:45 p.m., at a special price of $30. Lunch will be included.
Annie will adapt her menus to use what is available at the markets each week. She will teach you how to do the same, shopping first and then planning a meal or menu. The classes will be interactive, and questions and comments will be welcomed. Feel more comfortable about shopping seasonally and locally during the year and more confident using your purchases for healthy and delicious home-cooked meals for you and your family.
After this Introductory Class, the fee will be $60 per 3-hour class with lunch. Reservations are required three weeks in advance. You may also sign up in advance for all six classes for $300.
To sign up or for more information, email jean@smartmarkets.org.
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Dear Shopper,
This week I am going to talk about greens about three weeks earlier than I would normally be able to talk about them. But then I will probably spend the entire growing season catching up — thank goodness my food magazines all arrive about a month early, or I would really miss out on the timely new recipes.
We provide a handout at our markets in the spring and fall that provides basic instructions for cooking greens simply and quickly, and now I have another good one clipped and copied from the April Eating Well magazine that has good pictures and short descriptions of the different varieties. This page about kale has links to pages about chard and other greens.
I can wax eloquently about greens. I spent several years of my youth in South Georgia, where greens were treated with reverence — even if that did mean cooking the flavor out of them and substituting the smoky flavor of a ham hock. That was still good, but not nearly so fresh-tasting and flavorful as the greens cooked the way I and others now recommend.
We now have examples at the market of those early greens and some of the best baby kale I have ever eaten. A package that will easily serve three people costs $2.75; it has been prewashed and is so easy to prepare.
We also have chard, which has many uses in sides, salads and soups. Here is a good spring recipe for young chard. Don’t worry about separating the stems in young chard, though — just treat the soft stems as part of the leaves.
I want you to hear from an expert on the nutritional benefits of greens, which make them one of the most effective products in your preventive medicine pantry. Greens are essentially medicine on the plate, which of course is the case with all healthily prepared vegetables. Please learn from our friend and occasional speaker at our markets, Debra Dennis of Indigo Lifestyle Solutions, who works with clients who want to adopt healthier lifestyles, including changes in diet.
Green vegetables are the foods most missing in modern diets. Learning to cook and eat greens is essential to creating health. When you nourish yourself with greens, you will naturally crowd out the foods that make you sick. Greens help build your internal rainforest and strengthen the blood and respiratory system. They are especially good for city people who rarely see fields of green in open countryside. Green is associated with spring, the time of renewal, refreshment and vital energy. In Asian medicine, green is related to the liver, emotional stability and creativity.
Nutritionally, greens are very high in calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, phosphorous, zinc and vitamins A, C, E and K. They are crammed with fiber, folic acid, chlorophyll and many other micronutrients and phytochemicals. Whenever possible, choose organic. But eating non-organic greens is much better than not eating any greens at all!
There are so many greens to choose from. Find greens that you love and eat them often. When you get bored with your favorites, be adventurous and try greens that you’ve never heard of before. Broccoli is very popular among adults and children. Each stem is like a tree trunk, giving you strong, grounding energy. Rotate among bok choy, napa cabbage, kale, collards, watercress, mustard greens, broccoli rabe, dandelion and other leafy greens.
I hope that you will seek out greens to brighten your Easter feast this week and learn to eat them more often as part of a seasonal diet. They really are tasty!
See you at the market!
]]>More often than not, the threat comes the food industry itself, and probably more often than we would like, the governmental institutions that are in place to keep us safe and healthy fail to do that until after the facts have been revealed. In this case, we did not even know what we were eating.
This time, the backlash was enough to initiate a grass-roots check on the pink slime. The story did have legs; it moved to the Web and a petition drive begun by a mom in Texas also kept the story alive. And it worked. Almost all of the major food chains have announced that they are no longer selling beef with the additive or that they are letting us know which beef in their stores includes it. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture has stepped up big time and announced that school systems who buy beef from the government will now have the option to buy “pink slime-free” beef for our children.
A Tyson Food executive was quoted in the Wall Street Journal this week as saying that he expected this “fight” to affect short-term beef demand. In the same article, Cargill, Inc. indicated that “processors will have to secure other cuts of meat to replace the filler,” which hopefully would have to come from more of the meat in beef. Sounds to me as if those two predictions will create a zero-sum outcome. The best news is that Beef Products, one of the largest producers of the additive, is closing two of its three plants. And yes, the ground beef you buy at the grocery store may cost more, but at least you will be buying 100 percent meat this time around. You can always make up the increase in cost by eating ground meat one less meal a week.
Before I move on to my next point, let’s look at the last paragraph. First of all, in order to make myself clear I was forced to distinguish between beef and meat. We have been reduced to this parsing of terms because the beef industry wants us all to know that the pink slime is really beef. Hopefully that’s true, but the USDA scientists who named this “pink slime” make clear that it is not meat — it is not made from the parts of the cow that we would choose to chew if we saw these bits and pieces on the plate with our burger or steak. The industry spokespeople have yet to call it meat. And how many of you in your wildest food fantasies imagined eating beef with “additives” that our own government decided we did not need to know about?
According to an article by Jess Bidgood in the New York Times, larger school systems in the country are removing the ground beef they have on hand from their warehouses until they learn whether it contains the additive. As the Centreville Patch reported March 23, Fairfax County Public Schools has announced that it will switch to all-beef hamburger patties after it runs out of its current patties, which do contain the slime.
I will leave you with a quote from the New York Times article:
Even if removing pink slime quells the queasiness of some parents and school officials, it does not mean much to Fernando Castro, 14, who stood outside Brighton High School on Tuesday, waiting to leave school with some friends.
“I don’t eat school lunch anyway,” he said. “It looks weird.”
Some things never change. But we now know that we can change some things that alarm us, and in relatively short order, too.
See you at the market!
]]>You may read the same piece and come away agreeing with the recommendations. But we all know that in this climate, science and logic will not win the argument or change the laws. On the other hand, we have also seen firsthand just this week that we the people still have a voice and can still make things happen. And having science on our side can only help.
In last week’s newsletter, I wrote about the ABC news story about “pink slime.” This food additive had previously received attention from the media, but not from a national news source such as ABC. ABC News did not let go of this story and continued to report almost daily about the reactions and responses to their original story. The petition they linked to on their own website garnered over 200,000 signatures in a few days. This attention eventually prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture to decide not to automatically provide the product to schools across the country. From now on, individual states or school system must request the cheaper additive if in their wisdom they decide their kids should be eating this stuff.
I certainly hope that the outrage will filter down rather than dissipate and that the protests will focus on school systems around the country. The USDA has made a public-relations decision to diffuse the issue and reduce its national profile. In doing so, it has hopefully made it easer for us to rally, speak, act out and rid school lunches of this stuff.
I was particularly outraged by the spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute, who kept reminding us that this stuff is “beef.” She said this over and over. Of course it is beef; it comes from the cow. But the argument is not whether it is beef, it is whether it is food and worthy of being served to our children as an additive to regular, unadulterated ground beef. If we need leadership on this, note that Whole Foods does not permit its use, and McDonald’s has recently decided to remove it from its products. Talk about strange bedfellows. We will be sure to notify you if and when a petition is made available for the Northern Virginia school systems.
Which brings me back to my point — even when the science is unassailable, it takes the passionate voice of the public that reverberates these days through the Internet to take that science and and bring it to bear on the discussion. Don’t count on the politicians doing it. It still helps to be informed, to act from fact rather than passion alone, and to be a true believer in logic. I am happy to see that it still works.
We provided earlier guidance on how to sign on to some of the reforms in the Farm Bill that will help support local agriculture. Feel free to use those same contacts to speak out again about the other suggestions in the Union of Concerned Scientists’ policy brief. Somebody out there may be listening — or at least recording our input.
See you at the market!
]]>Bon Appetit gives us insight into the architecture of the egg, from which I learned about the chalazae, those little white squiggles that anchor the yolk to the egg. And I now know how to recognize a fresh egg from an older one — the inner white of a very fresh egg will be cloudy. But that doesn’t mean that older eggs don’t have their uses. In the informative section, Jean-Georges Vongerichten imparts the secret to the “softest scramble” of eggs, and we are treated to yet another foolproof guide to the perfect boiled egg. In addition to some great recipes, we also learn how to interpret the language on an egg carton. Need I remind you at this point that we have our own secret? Buy fresh eggs from the the farmer, and not only will those eggs represent the best of what an egg can provide naturally, but if we wish, we can meet the chickens that laid them.
In addition to laying out all kinds of lovely ways to present eggs at an Easter-egg-hunt party, Living magazine includes a lovely essay by Rory Evans about the “odd couple” of egg and yolk in one shell. The recipes are presented under the title “Divide and Conquer,” and all of them highlight either the whites or the yolks, or a combination of the two, but used separately.
And if you like egg salad and remember your mother’s fondly, check out the variations in Eating Well including Cobb, Niçoise, veggie and sweet southern.
I hope you pick up at least one of these magazines to learn more about using eggs as protein in a balanced meal. The introductions to all of the articles reiterate that the cholesterol “scare” some years ago was just that. And some caution about looking for eggs that are labeled cage-free or omega-3 enhanced. Here again, if you buy them from a farmer, they are already healthier eggs from healthier chickens. Eggs are easy to work with unless you are trying your first pavlova — and do stay away from meringues on a humid day. Even at this time of year, they can be a centerpiece of a frittata (like this one or this one) or poached or hard-boiled and added to a salad of sauteed greens and a lemon juice-based vinaigrette. We will have more egg recipes at the markets this week and at our seasonal markets, which start opening in April.
I have given you lots of leads today and welcome your own creative takes on the egg as the answer. The question being: According to Bittman, “Eggs are simple, almost infinitely useful … why do people have trouble embracing them?” Good luck with transforming them from incredible to embraceable in your own kitchen.
]]>Then the story got worse. The Washington Post announced that even though several fast-food chains are no longer using the “pink slime,” “the US Department of Agriculture, schools and school districts plan to buy the treated meat from Beef Products, Inc. for the national school lunch program in coming months.” The mistake in that sentence is the use of the term “meat,” according to Gerald Zirnstein, a former microbiologist with the Food Safety Inspection Service who first called the stuff “pink slime.”
So what can you do about this? We have the answer: Change.org has a petition that you can sign, and you can email ABC News to comment, too — though they have not mentioned the school-lunch plan in their reporting. But they did do a follow-up to their first story, which you can read here.
The more I learn about what the food industry and our own government have decided to label as food, or in this case meat, the dumber I feel. I am becoming a little paranoid about what we don’t know about our food because everything we learn these days is revealed by reporters, documentary producers or advocacy organizations who must surreptitiously obtain the facts. Think about this: They have to go undercover or wait for a whistleblower to find out what is in our food. At this point, I no longer trust what is presented to me in the store or on the plate.
And yet regulators are spending our money running around the country busting small farmers who sell raw milk — this is real, unadulterated milk just like every one of our ancestors drank until the late 19th century. I know I drank it as a child and when it was just called milk. We ate meat that was just meat and we ate fruits and veggies that were just that. But I grew up in a small town surrounded by farmers, many of whom were my relatives who brought into town just about everything we ate. My grandfather also owned a lot in the middle of Harrisonburg, Va., where he grew enough to feed his children and grandchildren — and, knowing him, lots of other people too. I imagine that many of you reading this — whether you grew up in this country or elsewhere around the world — had a similar relationship with your food as a child.
We should be grateful that some of those same farming families are still tilling the soil, harvesting eggs, and raising cattle, pigs and chickens, doing the real work of bringing us real food. It’s news such as the ABC story that reminds us how far we have come and how far we need to go, back to the future where food was food and meat was meat.
It’s just another reason — and they seem to be bubbling to the surface fast and furiously these days — to step up your own support for your market vendors, spend a little more each week on locally produced food, bring a friend to the market or pass the word through your church, garden club or, even better, community groups organized around children. We need to get to them before the fake-food people do!
See you — and your entourage — at the market!
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Serves 4
In a large sauté pan or Dutch oven, brown the pork pieces, which you have patted dry with paper towels, in 3 Tbsp of oil. You may need to do this in more than one batch.
Remove the meat when brown on two sides, add the onions and fennel to the pan and sauté for 5 minutes; add garlic and sauté for another 2 minutes and then add back to the pan the pork and its juices. Add the stock or broth and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook slowly for about 45 minutes to an hour until the pork is very tender.
In another pot, blanch the carrots, potatoes and sprouts in boiling salted water for 5 minutes. Add these to the simmering mixture about 30 minutes into the cooking time and season to taste. I used dried thyme and fresh rosemary. Just before serving, add to the mixture a slurry of 1 Tbsp cornstarch and 1 Tbsp water, stirring constantly until the liquid thickens. Serve on rimmed plates or in wide soup bowls with good bread and country butter. Enjoy!
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