Seed Catalog Season

The Cook's Garden catalog arrived in the mail this week, just in time for dreaming about Spring.

Organic, dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes

Leafing through it took me back to the winters of my childhood, when the ground was too hard to sink a shovel into and bare trees reached towards bleak skies threatening (or promising, on school nights) snow.

We'd sprawl in front of the fireplace with catalogs from Burpees and Parks, making our wish lists and trying to imagine the feel of heat and humidity that the photos of verdant gardens evoked.

These days, I'm not jonesing to turn over damp earth and nestle seedlings into their beds. I'd rather be cooking the ingredients than raising them, a task I leave mostly (and gratefully) to local family farms who bring their produce to my local farmers markets.

But the Cook's Garden folks seem to know this about me, for they've included tempting recipes and alluring photos. And they've called out the heirlooms and the organics. Now the seed of doubt is germinating - what if I can't find purple asparagus or pink-and-white-swirled chiogga beets at the market?
Perhaps I should try growing just a few things this year . . .

The Kitchen Imp Gets Spicy

Are you a serious locavore, but love to cook with flavors from around the world?  Then there's two pieces of good news for you:

One of many Kitchen Imp spice mixes

1.  Chef Laura Stec, author of Cool Cuisine: Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming, understands just how you feel. She suggests a pragmatic approach - buy your meat, grains, and produce as locally as you can, and save your long-distance purchases for spices and flavorings not available nearby.

2.  The Kitchen Imp, a locavore cook based in Seattle, stands ready to help you spice up your culinary adventures with hand-ground and custom-blended flavorings.  When you order from her Etsy store, she'll even include a recipe to fit your selection. And the photos and descriptions alone are worth the visit.

If you want a glimpse into the Kitchen Imp's magic, pre- or post-order, you can Like the Imp on Facebook.

Last Holiday - Movie Review

Last Holiday did not make a huge splash at the box office; but for me it's keeper. Maybe it'll become a cult classic.

Watch it on Amazon Instant Video, too

Queen Latifah's character, Georgia Byrd, starts out as a self-depriving good girl from New Orleans. She rushes home from her job in a department store, making gourmet dishes while Emeril gives instructions on TV. Then she feeds them to her grateful teenage neighbor while she microwaves herself a diet dinner.

Pronounced terminally ill, Georgia cashes in her savings and flies off to a posh resort in the Alps, where others mistake her for a jet-setter. There she lives out her dreams, yet manages to keep her values and speak her truth, with some hilarious moments as a result. She gambles in a high-stakes casino, base-jumps, and shows such an appreciation for Chef Didier's cuisine that he invites her into the kitchen to cook with him.

Spoiler
The happy ending involves a realization of her dream to create beautiful food, in a way that affirms her local (hometown) community.

Summary
A fairly predictable vehicle for Queen Latifah - but so delightfully executed that I didn't care. Tellingly, the bad characters don't appreciate good food but only see dining as an extension of personal power.

Supporting Cast
Gerard Depardieu, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton, and Susan Kellermann particularly sparkle.

Holiday Tamales de Elote

Gathering in the kitchen to craft hand-made tamales with fillings to suit every taste is a time-honored family tradition for the holidays. Not my family, and not only the Christmas holiday.

Sweet corn tamale with a sprinkle of cheese, plus crema

Still, when I saw sweet corn tamales for sale in the local mercado latino, I knew right away what the perfect Christmas breakfast would be. Tamales de elote can be eaten as lunch or dinner, plated elegantly on a thin layer of salsa verde and drizzled with crema.

Or they can be found at street markets, like the one where I first tried them. Fresh off a plane from Seattle, I wandered the market overdue for breakfast. The sweet corn tamales smelled so good, I couldn't resist - and what a revelation!

Most of the time, one finds tamales of simple masa harina filled with savory or spicy meat or cheese mixtures. Whether in an open air market, at home, or in a restaurant, the sweet corn variety are a rare find. For me they will also be a treat, and especially good as a late morning breakfast.

Spooktacular Brains

If you are what you eat, this Halloween treat will make you brainier by the spoonful.

It's ghoulishly delicious, and delightfully jiggly.

Halloween Bag Monster Costume

It's not too late to be something truly frightening for Halloween - the Bag Monster!

Can you find some old clothes (if you don't have a Tyvek suit at home) and rustle up 500 plastic bags? Sadly, most of us only have to ask a few friends and neighbors to come up with the bag supply on short notice.
Then just follow these simple directions: http://smchealth.org/BagMonsterCostume

The suit will keep you warm and dry (but be careful - it's not wise to drive while wearing it). And if enough people in your social circles see the Monster this year, by next Halloween it may be difficult to rustle up enough bags to make another costume.

Andale at SFO

Getting ready to board my flight from Terminal 2 at SFO, my bleary pre-dawn brain saw the sign for Andale cafe and couldn't quite process it. Familiar, yet . . .  out of place.
Ahh - the Google shoot!

Hadn't realized there was more than one Andale when we shot the Google's Green Gourmets episode.

At SFO, it was too early too find out if the menu was prepared as well as at the Googleplex. Possibly. But I'm certain no one gets to eat at this one for free, not even with a Google employee badge.

Steampunks and Food Trucks

What do steampunks eat? (Besides tea and crumpets, of course.)

Well, if they are out at Craneway Pavillion in Richmond, CA after the Boilerhouse restaurant has closed, and they want to enjoy the first ever Steamstock music festival until all hours, they might subsist on any fare available.

Fortunately, the Naked Chorizo food truck allows one to not merely subsist but thrive. In addition to chorizo, they offer traditional Phillipine dishes such as lumpia and chicken adobo, as well as a yummy Arroz a la Cubana.

So all the fans of alternate histories got to travel around the world as well as through time, without ever leaving the festival.  A delicious happenstance, indeed.

Hot Harvest Nights Cool Off

Just a few weeks ago, I stopped by my favorite local farmers' market after work, and really felt the "hot" in hot harvest nights. At 6pm, it was 90 degrees outside! The market was bustling with shoppers, and full of vendors with height-of-summer produce like tomatoes, eggplant, corn and zucchini. Since then, the days have shortened noticeably and the temperatures have dropped to autumn cool levels.

This market is one of the Peninsula's many locations that keeps a short season, opening in May and closing down in late September. (I hope to catch the very last one, this coming Thursday.) Last year, I wrote an article for Patch.com about where to find markets open year-round, or later into the fall. Now I'll need to consult it again, myself.

While I always feel a bit sad when Hot Harvest Nights shutters for the winter, there is something that feels appropriately seasonal about the decision. Set up on the main street of San Carlos, with businesses on either side, the good light falling on the vendors visibly wanes in the last few weeks of the market season. Could the city bring in lights and draw shoppers throughout the fall and winter? Probably. But the crowds would certainly thin, along with the lovely anticipation of the market's re-opening in May.

Roller Derby Snacks with Style

Roller derby is a vigorous spectator sport, calling for sustenance to sustain the raucous cheering, clapping and sign-waving involved in being a worthy crowd. Enter the Penny Roller, the Peninsula Roller Girls peripatetic purveyor of snacks.

Roaming the throngs of beer and soda drinkers, she offers the perfect salty or sweet compliments at only a dollar a serving. Like McDonald's at the Olympic Village, this fare is not meant as fuel for the athletes, but treats for the loyal supporters of our homegrown team.

A Melon Named Charlene

Two reasons (among so many) to love your local farmer's market:
1. Really ripe, just-picked produce

2. Varieties of fruits and veggies you've never heard of before

After weeks of picking up cantaloupes in the grocery store, and being disappointed that they'd come off the vine so early the stem spots were still hard and no real aroma came off them, I was delighted to find a small, yellow-orange melon at my local farmers' market. I picked it up and the sweet smell leaped towards me. The sign by it read "Charlene." Never heard of that type before, but how can I resist a melon that self-advertises so vigorously?

Charlene was delicious - delicate and a little flowery in flavor. And she told me a joke, too:
Did you hear about the family with the sad puppy? It was a Melon Collie.
(Really, don't blame me for that one. Terrible puns are Charlene's only natural defense system.)

PB Chocolate Chip Cookies, Take 2

Batch 2 in front of Batch 1

Batch 2 of the garbanzo bean-based peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies came out really well! This time we followed Texanerin's recipe, but with three modifications.

First, we upped the peanut butter to almost half a cup.
Second, we used a little gluten-free flour (1/8 cup coconut flour and 1/4 cup almond flour) to make them a little more cakey and a little less doughy. Even that small amount stiffened the batter up enough that the food processor strained to mix it.
So we added a 1/4 cup of water, which took care of that issue.

Overall, I preferred the flavor and texture of this batch to the first. (As a side benefit, the dough was also less sticky, easy to scoop and drop onto the cookie sheet.) My co-conspirator and fellow taster, however, preferred the first batch.

Next time, we'll skip the coconut flour and halve the water. But for now, I'm delighted.

Gluten-free PB and Chocolate Cookies, Take 1

Cookies make with a garbanzo bean base, and no flour?

My first batch - not so pretty, but just as tasty

Once again, Pinterest proves the power of the picture. If I hadn't seen the luscious-looking photo of gluten-free peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies there, I wouldn't have given the recipe a fair chance.  But I tracked back to the source, Texanerin Baking, and found not just instructions but also her notes and more yummy photos.

If you like your cookies to stay malleable and more 'doughy' when they've cooled, this recipe may meet all your needs. For me, next time I plan to up the peanut butter slightly, and add a little brown rice flour, to compensate for  the increased oil and also give them a slightly more 'cakey' feel.

But don't take my propensity to tinker as criticism - these are tasty treats that seem pretty healthy. (When I report on Take 2, I'll add my estimates for calories, fat, protein, sugar, and carbs.) Try 'em!

Fabulous Food Photos on Pinterest

Warning: may be habit forming.

Pinterest has added a new dimension to my love affair with food - photos, photos, photos.
Not a lot of links to recipes for the items shown; but they are inspirational nonetheless.

Sometimes I have ingredients, and go a Googling to find a recipe to put them to creative use.
Sometimes I find a recipe, usually in the paper or a magazine, and just reading through the ingredient list gives me the nudge to get up and put something new together.

But photos of food on Pinterest (a social media site, where each account holder 'pins' photos found on the internet to their digital scrapbook, which other account holders can see, comment on, and even 'repin' to their own accounts' 'boards') work some other part of my brain. That part where images live, I guess, apart from words or smells or even the memory of foods indulged in in the past.

When I scan through a board of food pins, not everything looks good to me. And I don't have an irrepressible urge to get up and cook. I just re-pin what looks most attractive to my own board, titled Fabulous Food, and know I can go there any time for inspiration.

Soon I should be going back through my recipe posts here, pinning the photos from them, and giving folks on Pinterest a link to my recipe, in case the photo inspires them to make the dish.

Want to see what's in my scrapbook so far? Just visit http://pinterest.com/steamtour/

Polenta Indoors or Out

Polenta, which many Americans know as cornmeal mush, makes a quick and easy alternative to rice or mashed potatoes. It makes a nice side dish (especially with herbs and cheese added), or a base for a savory dish like ratatouille.

Ingredients and Amounts
Most stovetop recipes call for a 1 to 3 or 4 ratio, such as 1 cup coarse cornmeal to 3 or 4 cups water. Salt varies according to taste, additions, and the entrée planned.
The recipe for solar cooking found in Cooking with Sunshine calls for 1.5 to 3.5; but I liked it with more water for a softer consistency.

In the Solar Oven:

• Measure cornmeal and place in a mixing bowl
• Add salt
• Pour water into bowl and stir
• Place in solar cooker for 1 – 2 hours
• Stir occasionally, and check to make sure it does not dry out

Stovetop Method:

• Measure cornmeal and place in a mixing bowl
• Add salt
• Pour 1 cup water into bowl and stir
• Heat rest of water in a saucepan to boiling, then pour wet mix in and stir well
• Bring to boil, then stir and reduce heat to low
• Simmer until thickened, stirring occasionally (10 -15 minutes)

Variations

• In place of water, vegetable or chicken stock can be used (watch the salt!).
• For a richer, creamier version, replace some water with milk and add a little butter.
• For savory flair, add sautéed onions, roasted garlic or red peppers, cheese, fresh basil, or other herbs.

Serving
The easiest way is to place on a plate or bowl while still soft and hot.
As a gourmet alternative, spoon the hot mix into a pan, smooth out and chill. Then bake or top and heat to serve.
Baked polenta can be used as a gluten-free alternative to pasta, for instance layering with sauce and cheese in a variation on lasagna.

Eating your own Trash? Food for Thought.

An intriguing info-graphic that brings home the health issues created by plastic waste.


Created by: MastersDegree.net

Let the Strawberry Bonanza Begin!

Frosty freezer strawberries

After years of living in the Bay Area, the start of strawberry season still takes me by surprise. April just seems so early. But the berries in my local farmers' markets are the real deal; and they are plentiful.
This weekend I bought a three-basket set of organics, and enjoyed passing them out to neighbors on the way home. Then I ate some more, froze a bunch, and well - snacked on some more.
The frozen ones make great ice cubes, as well as smoothie and yogurt parfait ingredients.
Best of all? From now until the seasons wanes in early fall (really! it's that long), they just get sweeter. This year, I pledge to find even more ways to enjoy them.

Tuscan Bean Dip

Cannellini, also known as white kidney beans, are the star of any Tuscan bean dip. They provide the creamy base, to which just about anything complementary can be added for spice or texture.
They are also remarkably healthy. One 15-oz can has 0 grams of fat, 35 grams of fiber, 28 grams of protein, and only 3.5 grams sugar. They are also rich in calcium and iron.

You won't want to eat a whole batch yourself - it's too filling - but you could, without guilt.

Key Ingredients

• 1 15-oz can of cannellini beans, partially drained
• 2 cloves garlic (or two cubes frozen, or 2 Tbsp from a jar)
• Cumin, to taste
• Italian herbs (fresh, if possible; otherwise dried) to taste
• 1 Tbsp olive oil (unless you use an option, below, that has oil in it)
• Salt, to taste
• Optional Ingredients:
• 6 to 8 good black olives (such as kalamatas)
• Roasted red peppers
• Dried tomatoes
• Parsley

Easy Prep Steps
Toss the key ingredients into a food processor, and blend til smooth.
Add any optional ingredients desired, and blend lightly to leave some small chunks for texture and color.
Taste and adjust.

Serving Tips
As a dip:
* Pretzel chips, pita chips and thin bread slices all work well.

As a sandwich spread:
* Toast slices of a good bread (an artisanal olive or rosemary, for instance)
* Spead a layer on, as thin or thick as you prefer
* Top with raw or roasted veggies, such as sweet red peppers
* Enjoy open-faced, or with a top.

Ratatouille - Movie Review

Pixar's Brad Bird has outdone himself with Ratatouille, earning a well-deserved Oscar for best animated film.

The film's unlikely lead is a young rat named Remy, who is drawn to create taste sensations as he observes the late, great Chef Gusteau do on television. His dangerous attraction to the kitchen of the country home he and his extended rodent family inhabit leads to their discovery and flight down the river.

Remy finds himself in Paris, at Gusteau's restaurant. Much of the movie takes place here, where we learn how the back-of-house operations work. To save a pot of soup from awkward youth Linguini's unskilled additions, Remy risks life and limb, nearly ending up drowned in the Seine.

A highly unusual and hilarious collaboration between the two would-be cooks leads to Linguini's training by Collette, a beautiful and gifted cook. While Linguini garners undeserved fame, unscrupulous Chef attempts to market frozen fast food with the late Gusteau's image and reputation.

The biggest challenge comes when Anton Ego visits to critique the resurrected restaurant. They serve him peasant dish ratatouille; and it has a revelatory effect on him.

This is a Disney film; so all ends well. But it is also a Brad Bird film; so how every one of the complexly interwoven story lines resolves is not so predictable.

Key Lessons from Ratatouille:

• The importance of proper food handling. 
• The barriers to women in haute cuisine. 
• The many ways to create community. 
• What happens when differences within a family cause a split, and how love can overcome the divide. The ability of even the humblest creatures to live a hand-crafted life. 

And of course the film centers on the theme of cooking as a creative act. As Chef Gusteau says,

 "Great cooking is not for the faint of heart. You must be imaginative, strong-hearted. You must try things that may not work. And you must not let anyone define your limits because of where you come from. Your only limit is your soul. What I say is true: anyone can cook - but only the fearless can be great." 

An excellent analogy for life.

Hollywood Ratatouille

The traditional French ratatouille recipe is a stew. Mine is adapted from Rachel Ray's recipe; and composed in a similar manner to Remy's version in the Disney Pixar movie Ratatouille.

This dish cooks well in a dark-colored casserole, in a solar oven (as seen in the video demo, at the end of this post).

INGREDIENTS
•    2 tablespoons olive oil
•    1 medium onion, chopped
•    3-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
•    1 whole roasted red pepper, chopped (fresh, or from a jar)
•    1 small can tomato paste (8 ounces)
•    Salt and freshly ground black pepper
•    1 small yellow squash, sliced ¼ inch thick
•    1 small zucchini, sliced ¼ inch thick
•    2-3 small potatoes (baby Yukon Gold, or Red Bliss, or blue), sliced ¼ inch thick
•    1 small eggplant, sliced thicker than the other veggies
•    3-4 sprigs thyme, leaves removed

PREPARATION

1. Set up your oven and pre-heat to 425ºF.
2. Lay the eggplant on a baking sheet, and salt each side. Let it sit until the water is drawn out.
3. Place a large skillet over medium-high heat with about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the onion, garlic and roasted peppers to the pan and cook until the onions begin to get tender, 4-5 minutes.
4. Set up a food processor or blender and add the contents of the pan to the machine. Add in the tomato sauce and puree everything together (it should be about the consistency of thin tomato sauce). Season with salt and pepper and pour the mixture out into the bottom of a casserole dish or an ovensafe sauté pan.
5. Swirl your dish around so that the bottom is evenly coated with the sauce; then arrange your veggies on top in a spiral pattern, alternating each veggie type, until you've filled the pan.
6. Sprinkle the thyme leaves over the top along with some salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. Cover, and place the whole pan into the oven. Bake until the veggies are tender, about 45 minutes (may be as long as 2-3 hours in a solar oven).

Serve the ratatouille over polenta or rice, or with a nice, crusty artisan bread.

What are Grocery Lists For?

Earlier this year, I reviewed Living the Savvy Life from a green perspective (Does Savvy = Green?).  To the extent that being savvy means investing your time, energy and money on what matters to you, rather than just accumulating stuff, I found a close correlation of underlying values. And where food is concerned, the concept of keeping the kitchen a well-organized, clean, and joyful place to spend quality time making what you enjoy eating would resonate with most foodies, including the slow food-ists and locavores.

When I started to work through implementing the good advice from Chapter 10: Food, however, I hit a stumbling block right away. As I detailed in Kitchen Inventory Confessions, getting a handle on what's in my cupboards, fridge and freezer was both daunting and humbling. Loving food as I do, I'm prone to fall into the more-is-better trap here. While doing the inventory exercise helped me pare down a bit, it's got to become an ongoing task.

Hopefully the next step, creating a master shopping list, will help with that maintenance.  It should at a minimum keep me from ever winding up again with two open jars of peanut butter in the fridge, and one waiting in the cupboard. If I can find a really good smart phone app to move the items onto, that will really tip the scales in the battle against overstocking.

To simply the process, I skipped the recommended step of dividing staples by the best stores to acquire them from, meant to help reduce running-around time and increase trip consolidation (green points for driving less). Since 90% of my groceries come from Trader Joes on my commute home from work, the occasional Costco or Whole Foods item is easy to catalog mentally.

Looking over the list I came up with, some patterns are clear, and not always consistent with how I picture myself as an eater.  Most notably, lots of dairy. Half and half for tea, low-fat organic milk for nightly cocoa, nonfat yogurt for fruit smoothies, favorite cheeses, and eggs are always in stock. Breakfast and snack foods get replenished frequently; so they make the buy-now list regularly. In contrast, meat rarely makes the list, coming home occasionally almost as an incidental.  And with the exception of spinach for salads and favorite fresh fruits for snacks, produce comes home without being summoned by a list. Whatever's in season and looks good hops into the basket (then the trick is to make sure to use it quickly, before it wilts or goes fuzzy in the crisper). As farmers market season ramps up here, it will be interesting to see if we use the master grocery list more or less than during the winter.

The flip side of the list's usefulness, once you've gotten good at avoiding waste from accidental over-buying, is making sure to keep key foods in stock. For me the biggest key to eating well is having the right ingredients on hand when I need them. That includes healthy snacks, fresh fish and produce, gluten-free staples, and basic ingredients for quick dishes made from scratch. If I run out of the good stuff, I'll default to whatever else may be handy, including all the processed packaged foods that shouldn't be in stock at home anyway. So I'm arming myself with a good list to help me make good decisions between runs to the store.

If you've tried an app you really like to help take this tip paperless, please tell us about it!

Bite-size Green on the Menu at LA Webfest

We're going to LA! For a weekend (April 6-8). For a web fest. A what?

Well, it's like a film festival, but for web series. Bite-size Green submitted its series, was selected, and will be screened there.

 We might even win an award - stay tuned!

Angelina Le Grix

As we prepare to head south for the LA Webfest, it's time to re-introduce Angelina, the on-screen face of Bite-size Green.

Angelina Le Grix joined the Bite-size Green community when she graciously agreed to host our TV series. Her intelligence, humor and enthusiasm bring out the best in the guest experts and chefs, as well as the joy in eating local, seasonal foods.

Angelina was born and raised in Toronto, Canada where her parents instilled a passion for fresh and delicious food. She loves to cook because she loves to eat.

Her favorite cuisine started out with Cantonese and has now branched out to Indian, French, Japanese, and Californian.

Angelina regularly visits farmer's markets and loves to learn about local food. She is drawn to simple cooking techniques and recipes that bring out the natural flavors of the ingredients.

Other tidbits:

• Angelina is an electrical engineer.
• She is fluent in Cantonese.
• She has lived in Tokyo, Japan and speaks Japanese.
• She is married to a Frenchman and speaks French.
• She has lived on the East Coast (Boston area and Upstate New York) but considers California her home.

Vegetarian Tapas Recipes

Vegetarian tapas recipes alone can easily meet your appetizer needs or provide your whole tapas party menu. Though Spaniards love ham, sausage, and salt cod, they also revel in nuts, veggies, and cheeses.

Tapas are traditional Spanish bar food. Long ago, a wine glass arrived on the table with a tapa, or cover, to protect the wine. Now the word means any appetizer served on a small plate, to accompany your wine, beer, or sangria. Usually ordered a few plates at a time, each offers 3 to 4 people a nibble.

The fun of tapas lies in the variety; but it can be easy to fill up more quickly than you realize, especially with the salty stand-bys. For a party at home, make 6 to 10 selections, with enough for seconds on some.

My Favorite Vegetarian Tapas Recipes

Spanish Cheese Plate
Manchego cheese, cabrales, and mahon are the easiest to find in US stores. If they prove elusive, try a small wedge of a mild Romano, a creamy French chevre or blue, and a Dutch Gouda.

Roasted Garlic spread alone on bread, or paired with other tapas.

Roasted Almonds
A small bowl of lightly salted pre-roasted almonds will do. But if you can, find them raw and then oil, salt, and roast them yourself.

Almond Gazpacho
A creamy, cold soup with a touch of garlic. Savory and addictive.

Tosta
Similar to canapes, crostini, or bruschetta. Start with good, fresh bread thinly sliced and toast lightly in the oven at 275-300 degrees. Then top with:

• Goat or cream cheese with tapenade (olive paste) or strips of roasted red peppers
• Roasted Garlic
• Manchego cheese, or gruyere, with roasted red peppers
• Cooked asparagus spears with manchego or fontina cheese, lightly toasted.
• Aioli with fresh tomato slices, or marinated artichoke hearts, or roasted red pepper strips.

Catalan Spinach
A very simple medley of spinach, raisins, and pine nuts.

Olives
Buy an assortment of unpitted, marinated olives. (Usually near the deli, or in jars.) Kalamatas and manzanillas are favorites; but experiment with what you can find. Rinse off any excess marinade, microwave (10 seconds!) or saute very briefly to warm them. Place in a small pretty dish, 8 - 12 at a time. Refresh dish periodically.

What are your favorites?

Aioli - not your average Mayo

Making your own mayonnaise is pretty darn simple, and yields a noticeably fresher-tasting spread. You control the ingredients, including cage-free eggs, gluten-free mustard, or any other aspects of special importance to you. And you can add any flavorings you like, such as the garlic that defines aioli.

Image: Epicurious

Aioli is a staple of northeast Spain (land of tapas), southern France (the better butter of Provence), and parts of Italy.
For tapas, it is usually spread on bread, then topped with veggies.

Cooking Tip:
Prepare ahead and keep some on hand. Stores well for a week or more in the fridge.

To Prepare:

• Peel 4 to 5 garlic cloves and chop coarsely.
• Crush in a pestle, or blend in a food processor, with 1/2 tsp salt.
• Add 1 cup mayonnaise, 2 tsp lemon juice, 2 Tbsp olive oil, and a pinch of white or lemon pepper.
• Mix well.
• Use immediately, or refrigerate promptly.

Variation: for a milder flavor, try using roasted garlic instead of raw (may require a few more cloves).

Roasted Garlic

Roasted garlic is served many ways - spread on bread, added to homemade salad dressings, and mixed into any dish that calls for garlic but needs a creamier texture and milder flavor. Especially popular in recipes from Spain, France, and Italy. As a condiment or ingredient, the cloves add very few calories, no saturated fats, and both dietary fiber and phytonutrients.

Cooking Tip:

Image: Simple Daily Recipes

Prepare ahead and keep some on hand. Stores well for a week or more in the fridge.

To Prepare:

• Start with 2 to 4 whole heads of garlic.
• Remove a bit of skin, but not so much the cloves separate.
• Cut the top half-inch off of each head.
• Place in the oven on aluminum foil or a baking dish.
• Add 1 Tbsp water and seal the foil pouch or cover the dish.
• Bake 45 to 60 minutes at 375 degrees. (longer if temp lower)
• Test for doneness - they should be very soft to the touch.
• Cool and serve by squeezing cloves out.

Bonus Points: Try making roasted garlic in a solar oven.

Homemade Hummus Among Us

If you usually buy hummus at the grocery store, you may be surprised to find how easy and inexpensive this healthy snack can be to make yourself.

This Mediterranean food can be found in Greece, Turkey, and throughout the Middle East. I first tried it from the original Moosewood - the vegetarian cooking Bible at that time. More recently, it's become popular as a convenience food, and can be found or made in a wide variety of flavor combinations.

Ingredients

• 1 15-oz can (425 g) of garbanzo beans (or chickpeas)
• 1/4 to 1/3 cup tahini (pureed sesame seeds)
• 3 Tbsp lemon juice (fresh if possible - use more if Meyer lemon)
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic (fresh if possible, or the equivalent amount from a jar or freezer cube)
• 1/2 parsley, chopped
• A pinch of cumin
• Salt to taste
• Options for twists on flavoring (see below)

Preparation

1. Drain the beans, peel the garlic, and roughly chop the parsley.
2. Throw all the ingredients together into a food processor (a blender will do, in a pinch).
3. Blend until creamy. This may require stopping to scrape mix off the bowl sides a few times.

Makes about half a quart.

Variations for the Adventurous
Add any one (maybe two) of these to a batch, to acheive a new taste sensation:

• Black olives (pitted, of course) or tapenade
• Roasted red peppers
• Sun-dried tomatoes
• Fresh basil or a dab of pesto

Served As a Dip:
Place in a bowl, with a large plate underneath.
Surround the bowl with cut vegetables - carrots, cucumbers, bell pepper slices, jicama.
You can also offer pita bread sliced into wedges on a side plate.

Hummus as a Sandwich Spread:
Spread onto a slice of good bread, and top with an heirloom tomato layer, cucumbers, or sprouts.
Eat open-faced.

Tasting Club - Book Review

Dina Cheney's enjoyable book introduces socially-minded food lovers to a new concept: the tasting club.
Patterned after the better known book club model, members get together at each other's homes to sample one particular food at each meeting.
Dina teaches you how to host this type of gathering, including the ideal number of guests, how to set up the space, and what to serve as drinks, palette cleansers, and accompaniments.

Strong Points:

• There is very useful background provided on each of the highlighted foods (which have separated chapters).
• The how-to's for each would put any novice at ease.
• The recipes for accompaniments look tasty.
• Gorgeous photos dress up every section of the book.
• The perspective is well-educated on food, but not elitist - you need not be a 'foodie' to enjoy it.

Points to Improve:

• Stong bias for foods from New England may leave some readers at a loss.
• Local foods could be promoted much more strongly. The emphasis on imported foods serves to reinforce the 'good things only come from abroad' fallacy.

Foods Highlighted:
Wine
Chocolate
Cheese
Honey
Tea
Olive Oil
Cured Meats
Apples
Beer

My Twist:
Follow Dina's template, but highlight the best seasonal foods of your local area.

Kitchen Inventory Confessions

The very first step in Living the Savvy Life's Food chapter is to make an inventory of kitchen staples. The idea is to facilitate creating and using a master grocery list. That list helps avoid to forms of waste: overstocking items already in the fridge or cupboards, and making repeat trips to the store for forgotten items. I used to think I didn't need a written inventory, because I had a high-functioning mental one (like my now-defunct mental rolodex, with dozens of friends and family phone numbers). And to some extent that still holds true.

But attempting to inventory everything in my fridge and cupboards turned out to be less shopping preparation and more wake-up call. While our staples do rotate through the kitchen regularly, staying fresh and becoming ingredients in a range of favorite dishes, a surprising amount of space is bogarted by edible curiosities. A can of Quinault Pride canned salmon? Although it doesn't show a date, it's definitely from the last years of the last milenium. The glass jar of Moroccan Tagine simmer sauce (discontinued by Trader Joe's several years ago)? Likewise, no date. In a sense, both are on the shelf for sentimental reasons.

But our precious storage space isn't meant for keepsakes. It's there for food, serving dishes, tea cups to fancy to use everyday, and other assorted kitchen paraphenalia that later parts of the Food chapter will require me to confront. So before I complete the inventory, I'm taking on the culling step. If the Moroccan Tagine sauce smells good when I open it, we'll have a commemorative supper this week. And the Quinault can will live on as a photo only (for safety, the actual can's headed to the dump).

When the paring-down to actual staples (and a reasonable amount of extras) is done, I'll report again. I may even be brave enough then to share my master grocery list, as Melissa Tosetti does in the book.

Solar Cooking Basics and Benefits

In less than six minutes, here's the lowdown on how a solar cookers work, and why they are life-saving technology in the developing world as well as a good item to keep in your disaster kit at home.

Saute Secrets Video

The first cooking demonstration of the season focuses on fundamentals - how to bring out the best flavors of fresh, local produce.
Laura Stec, chef and co-author of Cool Cuisine: Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming, teaches technique to host Angelina Le Grix, using broccoli from the farmers market.

Cool Cuisine Highlights Video

In the very first episode of Bite-size Green TV, host Angelina Le Grix interviewed Laura Stec, chef and co-author of Cool Cuisine: Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming. Making a half-hour TV episode work as a webisode was challenging; but with some careful editing, the highlights of their discussion fit within the 5-minute limit recommended for web viewers. Included are some great tips for how to cook produce that's in season at the farmers' market in the winter.


Next webisode: chef Laura demonstrates how to bring out the true flavors of fresh, local vegetables.

Diet for a Small Planet

When it first came out in 1971, Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet was revolutionary, even a touch heretical. Americans had been 'going big or going home' in food production, institutionalizing the factory farm system, since the end of World War II. We were maximizing efficiency and exporting prosperity. Having plenty of meat was more American than apple pie.

How dare this woman come along and challenge our hard-earned standard of living? Accuse us of 'gross waste' and environmental destruction?  Not only suggest that we could enjoy a healthier, more sustainable way of eating, but explain why, and how, and provide recipes?

Apparently readers and eaters were hungry for the message, because the book became a best seller, now in its 20th edition. The newest version is available from Lappe's non-profit Small Planet Institute.

A dog-eared copy of the 1975 edition, and the companion book Recipes for a Small Planet, are available from me, for free, as part of my Healthy Food Books Giveaway. If you want them, speak up soon!

Does Savvy = Green?

Recently I met author Melissa Tossetti, heard about her book, "Living the Savvy Life: the savvy woman's guide to smart spending and rich living" (with co-author Kevin Gibbons), and picked up a copy. I was intrigued mainly because her approach to finance sounded so much like my approach to food - it's about living well, in alignment with your own values, not about following a formula (to save x$, to lose x pounds). And most importantly, the key messages about living intentionally seemed inherently green, again paralleling my key messages about eating and making food choices. Which brought me to the question of whether savvy living is the equivalent of green living, and vice-versa.

Some chapters strictly cover personal finance, with sound coverage of the basics needed for money management. No green spin in this portion (picking investments with tools like the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, for instance). But that seems appropriate for the scope of the tutorials.

The chapters that focus on key areas where most women (and arguably, men) spend most of their income each do have an underlying green thread, however. For instance, Chapter 6: Home, advocates for de-cluttering the home, employing second-hand treasure for decorating, sharing tools and other items instead of owning one of everything yourself, and enjoying simple pleasures at home.

Similarly, Chapter 8: Wardrobe, provides explicit steps for breaking the cycle of overstuffing closets with clothing that doesn't really look and feel great. The tips include a host of alternatives to trendy stores and malls, including but not limited to second-hand stores. While there is no 'shop green' message about finding fair-trade, sweat-free, organic fabric clothing, the basic messages of not wasting resources (time, money, storage, cleaning, etc) on things that don't really suit who you are is green in a more old-fashioned way.

The least-green feeling chapter for me was Beauty, but only because my usual first questions (What's in this product? Was it tested on animals? Is it safe? How's it rank on the SkinDeep database?) weren't addressed. On the other hand, the authors remind us of some fundamental issues that can prevent time and money wasted on buying inappropriate products - understand what your body needs, clean up your diet, and protect your skin from the sun, among them.

In contrast, I felt immediately at home in Chapter 7: Entertainment. Reminders about holding seasonal celebrations, exploring the sights of your own local area, recycling books and DVDs, and enjoying simple pleasures all resonated with me. And, like the Shopping chapter, it edged pretty close to a key principle of voluntary simplicity: figure out what really makes you happy, and let the rest go.

The big work (your mission, if you choose to accept it) recommended by this book is not to track spending, sock away a nest egg, or in any way meet someone else's standards of material success. Rather, it provides tools to help the reader asks insightful questions about what makes her happy and to consider where her personal resources are best spent. And while there's no guarantee that a reader's personal choices will be green ones, the authors make a convincing case for a resource-conservative approach (less clutter, more simple pleasures; less buying stuff, more sharing; and take care of what you value) enhancing both material security and emotional satisfaction in everyday life.

Diving Deeper on the Food Issues
The longest, most detailed chapter is Food. Like the other chapters on lifestyle, green is not the element at the top of the agenda. But it sneaks in as much or more so as it does in the other sections. For the next few months, I will be taking the recommendations one by one, implementing them at home, and sharing what I learn from the exercise.