Snack Time with a Young Visitor

When Anna came over for a sleepover last weekend, she ate what we ate. I always get a little nervous when other kids come to our house because every house has different food. I worry that they won't like my food and go home hungry and never want to come back. Anna seemed to love all our food. She climbed up the two-step ladder to see all the clear glass jars filled with food. For snack, she dug up this delicious mélange:

Nate bar
Almonds
Frozen banana
Date
Rice milk (She calls it strawberry milk)

After snack we hunted for snap peas and blackberries in the backyard. We pulled a carrot out of the dirt and rinsed it off under the hose and she ate the whole thing.

Yes, I still live in San Francisco :)

Slate: Why family dinner makes working parents (especially moms) feel better.

An article in Slate magazine talks about the results of a recent study that shows that eating as a family makes parents happier. My working mom was always good about making a family dinner. I was always starving because she wouldn't let us snack before dinner. My childhood experience and my experience living in Belgium and France sealed the deal for my family eating two meals a day together.

When I was 18 years old, my Belgium host family ate breakfast together. When I lived in France in my twenties, my French friends didn't throw keggers, they had dinner parties!

It is noteworthy that although longer work hours predicted significantly greater perception of success in work life, work interference with dinnertime predicted lower perception of success in work life," Jacob and her co-author write.

Eating together in the morning takes about 10 minutes. It's nice to have that moment of calm before the day begins. And in the evening, Mikey loves the direct attention that he gets from the both of us.

My sister told me once that she couldn't figure out why her girls weren't eating, and then she started eating with them and their eating improved. "Now that we're eating together, I can't believe we weren't doing it before," she explained.

Pizza with Bacon

Lately I like to buy Vicolo organic corn meal crust. Mikey likes to eat the crust so I feel better that it's corn rather than wheat. Read why eating wheat, wheat and more wheat isn't that great for us here. Wheat is everywhere. If I don't make a conscious effort to branch out, we would only eat wheat products. I like corn pasta and spelt grains as well. Read my posts here and here.

I make pesto weekly for pizzas and pasta. I sprinkle a little mozzarella cheese on top of the pesto. I use Precious cheese. I should really use fresh mozzarella because it isn't so processed, but I'm having a hard time parting from my cheesy American-style pizza. Precious cheese grates well in my food processor. The toppings are the fun part. Tonight I added bacon, spinach, and corn.

Corn meal pizza crust
Homemade pesto
2 cups mozzarella
Five slices of bacon
2 corn ears
2 cups spinach leaves

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees with the pizza stone inside. A pizza stone is really key to making tasty pizzas. Fry the bacon on the stove top. Chop and set aside. Pour bacon fat into jar. I want a little bacon fat left in the pan to act as my cooking oil for the corn and spinach. Shave corn kernels off the corn ear. Roll spinach into ball and chop. Cook corn and spinach in the unwashed bacon pan until soft, about five minutes.

Coat the pizza crust with pesto, then mozzarella, then the spinach and corn, and lastly the chopped bacon. Pop in the oven for 10 minutes and dinner is ready!

Cooking with Lard (Bacon Fat)

From what I've read in Michael Pollen's book, "In the Defense of Food," and Sally Fallon's book, "Nourishing Traditions," among others, the main point that I am hearing over and over is to eat like we did before huge processing plants started making our food. For example, stop eating Cheese Puffs and go back to eating nutritious lard!

Politically Correct Nutrition is based on the assumption that we should reduce our intake of fats, particularly saturated fats from animal sources. Fats from animal sources also contain cholesterol, presented as the twin villain of the civilized diet. (Fallon)

My breast milk contains more cholesterol than almost any other food. It also contains over 50 percent of its calories as fat, much of it saturated fat. And remember that in earlier days, woman breastfed their children until they were much older. Nature seems to think that both cholesterol and saturated fat are essential for growth in babies and children.

There are recent studies coming out to contradict the whole gag reflex when it comes to lard and other fats, read In the "Defense of Food" for more information. We just need to remember to eat it in real food not junk food. This isn't a free ticket to pig out on Snicker Bars.

Lard contains omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids plus Vitamin D. If Mikey doesn't want to eat meat and only wants his bread, I dip his bread in the meat drippings and he's getting a ton of vital nutrients without eating the meat. It's a win, win!

So, how do I cook with lard? There's a way to preserve lard for storing beyond under the sink, read here. Personally, I haven't made that jump yet but I have changed the way that I think about lard and use it to my advantage. Cooking with bacon fat only needs a slight change in the cooking process. It just means that when I am cooking bacon, I use the bacon fat instead of another choice of oil from the pantry like olive oil, butter, or coconut oil.

When I cook bacon like I did for my family's pizza lunch today, I use a tablespoon of the bacon fat for the onions and another tablespoon for the greens. So the idea is that since I am cooking bacon and it is producing a natural cooking oil while it cooks, I don't need to use my other oils.

First, I stick the bacon in a pan to pan fry it. Then I chop the onions and wash and chop the greens. By now there's some grease in the pan from the bacon, and so I can use a tablespoon to cook the onions and greens in a separate fry pan. I cook the onions for about five minutes and then add the greens. I season the greens with a little more bacon fat and cook until wilted. Then I add them to the pizza.

I discard the rest of the bacon fat into a jar under the sink to later toss in the trash. From my readings, meat fat goes rancid so I'll make sure to store it the right way if I want to start saving it for a later date. I also don't put bacon juice down the kitchen sink because it could harden in the pipes.

Cook Corn with the Husks On

Corn is in season and a weekly purchase at my house. I love shaving the corn off the cob with a knife and lightly sauteing it before putting it on pizza or in a salad (see my posts here and here). But when I don't want to do anything, I just put the whole thing in the oven. I don't even bother soaking the husk in water to prevent burning. I don't mind if the husk gets a little black, I take it off before eating the corn any way.

Keeping the husks on is a no-waste, natural way to avoid using tinfoil. I also cook my corn like this on the grill. I am starting to wonder why I ever used tinfoil with corn on the cob in the first place.

I am saving my money and the environment and just popping the whole thing in the oven. I turn it a couple times while it is in there. I know it's done when the husk is browned and shriveled up from drying out in the oven, about 15-20 minutes on 350 or 375 degrees. They turn out delicious!

Picture shows a whole Mary's chicken roasting along side cubed rosemary potatoes (see my post here).

Saving Vegetable Water

Tonight I cooked green beans by blanching them for a minute in boiling water, straining them, putting them into a serving bowl and mixing them in the bowl with melted coconut oil and salt.

In my old days, I would just toss the water that I use to blanch the beans. Now, I save that nutrient rich water in the fridge or freezer for three reasons.

1. The water has nutrients that I boiled off the beans for the sake of a tender bean. I want to eat those nutrients in another dish if I can.
2. I just made a quart of vegetable broth with zero extra effort. It's not fancy but it works.
   
3. I am saving water because I am not throwing the boiling water down the sink drain. I am going to reuse it in another dish.
   

Enjoy the beautiful beans out there this summer!

Fish and Pigs and Chicken, Oh My!

I didn't know this: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/27/123228/109

Excerpt from article linked above:

Each year we feed 14 million tons of wild-caught fish (including anchovies, sardines, mackerel, and herring) to pigs and chickens around the globe. That amounts to 17 percent of all the wild fish we catch. Pigs and chickens eat double the amount of fish that Japan consumes annually and six times more seafood than the entire U.S. population eats each year.



What are these pigs and chickens paying per pound for their fish? I can barely afford a single .4 lb. fillet a week!

Chicken Salad with No Mayonnaise

Most weeks I cook a whole chicken. It's an affordable way to eat chicken and it's great to have the leftover meat for things like this chicken salad. And yes, chicken salad can still be nice and moist without mayonnaise!

4-6 cups shredded chicken
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 head of lettuce
1 onion or two shallot cloves
1 tablespoon butter
1 tomato

Salad Dressing
1 tablespoon pesto (optional)
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

I strip all the leftover meat off the bones and put it into a bowl. I put the bones into a pot and set aside to make chicken broth. Mix the canola oil, salt, and lemon juice in with chicken. I want to taste the lemon juice when I eat a sample of the chicken.

Then I chop the onion or shallot and cook it on medium heat for about 10 minutes. I want the onion soft and brown but not burnt.

While the onion is cooking, I clean a head of lettuce and put about half of it in with the chicken. I save the rest for a quick salad later in the week like this one here. I chop the tomato and add it to the chicken. And finally, I make the salad dressing. I could really do any type of salad dressing but I like to use my homemade pesto if there is some already made in the fridge. The salad dressing should be more on the olive oil side of taste rather than the vinegar side because of the chicken. Sometimes I need to drizzle more olive oil over the top of the salad. I also mix in extra salt at the end if it isn't salty enough. This salad needs more of a salty taste than a typical salad without chicken.

And then I stir in my caramelized onions and the salad is done.

Mary's Free Range Chickens

I rarely post about meat. But my family does eat meat. I usually shop for meat once a week. I buy a whole chicken (cut up in pieces), fish, and sometimes bacon or sausage. I have toured around the city to the different places that I list here, but I haven't fallen in love with any one store (that sales meat) or brand until now. I am really enjoying Mary's Free Range Chicken. These chickens are so moist and juicy. With each sitting I find myself saying, "Yum, this chicken is good!" If I were a cat, I'd purr as I ate it. I've eaten organic meat exclusively for the past two years but it wasn't until Mary's Chicken that I felt like I was back in the French Alps. (The meat in France is noticeably better tasting.)

I can find Mary's Chickens at Faletti's, Avedano's and Cal-Mart/Antonelli's.

How to cook Swiss Chard?

I think that it's a good idea to branch out from broccoli and spinach and reach for a leafy green that just looks delicious and in season. I use to be afraid of how these greens would taste or how I would cook them. Childhood memories plague me. Now, I have my full trust in garlic, shallots, olive oil, and salt to make anything taste delicious. Whenever I pick a green leafy vegetable that I have no idea how to cook, I always know that I can sautée it for a few minutes in those ingredients and Zack's dad might even take a bite!

1 bunch chard
1 shallot clove
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt

Heat the olive oil and add the finely chopped shallot. Put heat on medium low to allow the shallot to caramelize but not burn. Finely chop the garlic and have it ready and waiting. While the shallot is cooking cut the green part of the chard away from the white stem. Rinse and dry. Brake apart leaves into smaller pieces. When the shallots are a golden brown in about eight minutes add the garlic, do a quick stir and then add the chard. I dislike the taste of burnt garlic so I make sure to add the chard right after giving the garlic one stir. Mix, mix, mix on low heat and add salt to taste. I don't cook these leaves to death but pull them out with a little spring still left in them. I taste while cooking and pull out when they're cooked to my liking.

We ate these with mild Italian pork sausages cooked on the grill and a cup of potato kale soup that I made earlier in the week. Fast, simple, and healthy!