Preparation time: 15 minutes
Shopping: none
Have you ever had broccoli fresh out of the garden? This is nothing like what you buy in the grocery store. Even at the farmers market. It may be an entirely different vegetable, the flavor is so much more intense and, well, cruciferous like.
Unfortunately, our hot and humid springs here in [...]
Entries from June 2009
Breakfast: Cheese Omelet With Fresh Broccoli
June 30th, 2009 · 2 Comments · breakfast, garden
Fat Is Back
June 30th, 2009 · 5 Comments · Wellness, food news
Kudos to Bon Appetit magazine for including bacon, duck fat, whole milk and anchovies on the Top-10 list of healthiest foods.
Even the American Heart Association (AHA), a leader in the campaign against dietary fat, recently revised its nutritional guidelines, increasing the daily recommendations for fat. “”The science just wasn’t there” to support the anti-fat campaign, acknowledges [...]
Pickles!
June 29th, 2009 · 8 Comments · Recipes, garden
Yes, we were so organized this year we already have our first pickling cucumbers of the season. As we know only too well, we will soon be inundated. These cucumber plants are stealthy fellows. No sooner have you picked a bucket of them, they are making new ones overnight.
How fast can you mix salt and [...]
Tags: cucumbers·dill·fermentation·pickles
Carbs To Die For
June 28th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Wellness
We’ve written lots about how carbohydrates–not fats–are behind the so-called diseases of civilization: obesity, diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis. The problem is, plant foods, especially refined starches and grains, trigger an insulin response in the body. Besides being the hormone primarily responsible for fat storage, insulin has a corrosive effect on the body. Too many Americans are [...]
Tags: carbohydrates·heart disease
Breakfast
June 27th, 2009 · No Comments · breakfast, garden
Fried eggs over braised greens with beef tongue.
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Shopping: None
I recently conducted a final harvest of our spring bed of collard and mustard greens. It was quite a haul. After sauteeing an onion with bacon grease in a heavy pot, I dumped in the greens and braised them slowly with a little cider [...]
Is Fructose Poison?
June 27th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Wellness
Finally, here is a medical researcher who warns that carbohydrates are behind the obesity epidemic. Worse than most carbs, Robert Lustig of the University of California at San Francisco says that fructose, because of the insulin response it generates, is the metabolic equivalent of poison.
An obesity expert who has worked extensively with children, Lustic says [...]
Lobbying Against Junk Food
June 26th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Wellness, kids, politics
My mother didn’t raise me to be a lobbyist. But there I was on Wednesday, jawboning congressmen and aides to the U.S. Senate on the virtues of legislation that would give the U.S. Department of Agriculture authority to prohibit junk food in the nation’s schools.
Say bye, bye to vending machines spewing chips, candy bars, sugary sodas.
If [...]
Tags: Congress·food news·school lunches·USDA
Green Beans!
June 25th, 2009 · No Comments · garden
This morning I picked a big bowl full of green beans, the first to mature this season. Planted May 21, these are a Blue Lake bush variety that looks awfully similar to the Italian green beans we like so much. They are flat-ish and full of meaty flavor. Just picked off the plant, they are [...]
Tags: green beans·steaming·summer
Pork Chop With Homemade Sauerkraut
June 25th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Recipes, dinner
Thick, Niman Ranch pork chops were on sale at Whole Foods this week for less than $5 a pound. I grabbed a couple in anticipation of this dinner: chops braised in our homemade sauerkraut.
The kraut was fermented months ago and has been waiting in the fridge for the appropriate moment. I sliced an onion and [...]
Tags: braise·pork·sauerkraut
How Factory Farms Breed Disease
June 24th, 2009 · No Comments · Industrial agriculture
The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that this country’s agribusinesses feed more than 24 million pounds of antibiotics to beef, pigs and poulty every year primarily to make them grow faster. Scientists now believe that this routine, non-therapeutic use of antimicrobial drugs in livestock is creating perfect conditions for breeding potentially lethal strains of drug-resistant [...]
Tags: antibiotics·CAFOs·disease·food safety
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
