Lori, Author at Fake Food Free

Will Learn for Food

June 15, 2009

As most of you know I just finished reading Food Politics by Marion Nestle not too long ago. While it took me a while to get through the book, I enjoyed it thoroughly and I learned a lot. One specific section that has stuck in my mind was that which addressed food brands and companies in schools.

Aside from my growing issues with the influence food companies have on our children and their health, this topic brought up some things from my time in elementary school – food related incentives.

Candy was a big deal in third grade. We were asked to learn things like our spelling words or memorize bits of info in exchange for taffy or a candy bar. Even as a kid that age, who struggled with weight ( as in a little on the chubby side), I often told the teacher I didn’t want to participate. Then, I blamed it on not wanting the candy, which they thought was weird, but I think it may have been more that I didn’t want to do the homework!

Despite these little candy rewards here and there, looking back I don’t feel that this was quite as powerful as the influence of food brands. According to the book these are growing beyond belief. Isolated schools are making changes, but it still remains a powerful force when it comes to lunches and rewards.

I was a big reader in grade school, I still am. But at that time in my life all my reading paid off in the form of individual pizzas from a popular pizza chain. I loved that program. I would read and read all summer in order to get my pizza.

Then, it all seemed so innocent. My parents didn’t view it as a big deal either. I mean, hey, I was reading and increasing my knowledge and all foods in moderation, right? I try not to overreact to these types of things now days, but it is difficult when you look back as a health conscious adult and realize how much that company was trying to brand me and how my school was letting them do it for money.

There were other food-based programs when I was in school, but for some reason this one really sticks out in my mind. Maybe it was my favorite, I don’t know. It is just another one of those realizations I have that I am fortunate to have become a healthy adult who knows the value of nourishing food. I, of course, had my mom trying to get me to eat healthy and my dad providing fresh foods from the garden, but some kids aren’t so blessed.

If you don’t have kids, what programs do you remember from school and how do you feel about them now?

If you do have kids, I’m really interested in knowing how you handle these food brands and incentives when it comes to your own children.

PS. Much to the likely disappointment of that pizza chain, their branding didn’t seem to work. It is by far my least favorite pizza today. Not sure why that is. Maybe some others had more influence on me.

Photo of one of my favorite pizzas in Lexington, KY from Mellow Mushroom. So many veggies it weighs a ton!

Links to a Healthy Weekend

June 14, 2009

Wow, this week blew by without many new posts from me. Sorry about that. I guess I’ll chalk it up to getting settled back in. Between work, laundry and catching up on sleep I didn’t do much cooking (of anything new) or research for my own blogs. I’m hoping the ideas start flowing again next week though.

I did have time to do a little reading this week. I also did a recap today about the Corpus Christi holiday here in Maringá on my expat blog if anyone is interested.

Now on to a few great recipes from the past week!

No Meat Athlete’s Sweet Potato and Chickpea Curry sounded so good when I came across it this week. It has been a long time since I’ve had some good curry so I may whip this up soon. I completely agree with him that coconut milk is essential in a great curry.

Whisk: a food blog had some fantastic looking bagels. They are Montreal-style and I have to say that this post did as much to educate me as it did to get my bagel craving going. I’ve never made my own bagels, but these sound great!

The Reluctant Vegetarian’s Sweet Potato and Black Bean Wrap looks wonderful. I love how she shredded the sweet potatoes. Such a great idea!

And this, well it is just plain funny. If you love animals, check it out. It is hilarious how the dog acts only mildly interested in the whole thing.

Café & Cream Shortbread

June 10, 2009

First I have to say that it wasn’t my intention to bombard you with sugary snacks this week, but there were a couple contests I just had to enter. All I could think of were desserts so it turns out this week is focused heavily on desserts. That’s okay. More reason to get in some good workouts towards the end of the week!

Ever since I saw Chow and Chatter’s contest, I’ve been trying to come up with a coffee inspired creation. I finally got the idea the other night and went to work making Café & Cream Shortbread.

A great thing about Brazilian coffee is that is ground into a fine powder. This makes for a very strong cup of joe, but it also makes it ideal for adding directly to baked goods. It dissolves without leaving a gritty texture and adds a lot of coffee flavor. In addition you don’t have to worry about brewing and cooling it ahead of time and it doesn’t add moisture to the recipe.

I decided to start with a traditional shortbread and this is more like a brown sugar shortbread. The reason being that instead of white sugar, I used mascavo sugar. It is possible to find this in the US at Latin Markets, or so I’ve heard. It is an unrefined sugar which is dried and sifted after the sugar cane is harvested. It acts much like our processed brown sugar in baking, but adds a stronger flavor. Sometimes I like the flavor sometimes I don’t, but on this occasion it worked well.

In half the dough I added cocoa powder and ground coffee. In a perfect world these would have come out as a more defined checker board, but it has been forever since I’ve made checkered cookies and my skills are apparently a little rusty.

That didn’t affect the flavor though. This shortbread is soft and flaky melting in your mouth almost immediately. The sugar gives it just enough sweetness which is slowly overtaken by the strong coffee flavor with each bite.

Café & Cream Shortbread

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temp
½ cup mascavo sugar
½ tsp vanilla
2 cups flour (I used white, but others may work well too)
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tbsp ground coffee (espresso powder would work too)

Cream butter and sugar. Add in vanilla. Slowly mix in flour. Dough will be crumbly. Press dough together and split into two equal parts.

Transfer one half to a sheet of plastic wrap. Press together to form the dough more and wrap in plastic as you shape it into a square log. Refrigerate for about 15 to 30 minutes.

To the remaining dough, mix in cocoa powder and coffee. Repeat the same process forming it into a square log shape. Refrigerate for about 15 to 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Remove dough from fridge. If it is too hard to work with allow to sit at room temp for a bit to soften. Cut each log into four equal strips. Arrange the dark and light strips so that they alternate, make two stacked rows. Wrap in plastic and from into a square log, pressing the dough together slightly. Unwrap and cut cookies about ¼ inch wide.

Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Let cool for 1 to 2 minutes and carefully transfer from cookie sheet to cooling rack. Makes 12 to 15 cookies.

Raspberry and Rhubarb

June 8, 2009

Well, I’m back at my laptop in Brazil. A bit groggy and jet-lagged, but settling in okay. Thanks for all the well-wishes regarding my trip!

A few days before I left the US I got the baking bug so I decided to experiment with a few new flavors. I’ve been seeing a lot of rhubarb cupcakes out there and my parent’s still had a ton of it available in the garden. The new raspberries were just starting to come on, but there weren’t enough to do much more with then eating fresh so I turned to some frozen ones from last summer.

Rhubarb and strawberry is such a popular combo, so I thought I probably couldn’t go wrong with raspberry as strawberry substitute. I was right. Rhubarb and raspberry is every bit as good as the old standard.

My experiment started with finding a Rhubarb Cupcake recipe from Coconut & Lime. I wanted mine to be a bit different though. I don’t like chunks of rhubarb so I cooked mine down with just a teaspoon of water and a teaspoon of sugar. The transformation is shown below. Then we had some buttermilk to use as well so I substituted that.

The frosting is a traditional butter cream with some raspberry sauce stirred in. The raspberry sauce came from extra I had left over when making a fresh batch of the Raspberry Oat Bars I posted about a few months ago. I put some of this directly in the frosting and ended up with a vibrant pink cupcake topping that was sweet with an underlying tartness.

Due to the extra moisture from my cooked rhubarb this cupcake has more of a sponge cake consistency. This can be changed by adding more flour if you desire.

I was thrilled with the results and I will make these again. Next time I plan to turn it into a sheet cake. The tartness balances nicely with the sweet flavors and it is a perfect combination of ingredients that represent this time of year well.

Raspberry Rhubarb Cupcakes

Cupcakes

Adapted from a recipe at Coconut & Lime

½ cup rhubarb, chopped
1 tsp water
1 tsp sugar
½ cup sugar
3 tbsp butter, room temperature
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla
½ to ¾ cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ cup buttermilk

Place the rhubarb, sugar and water in a small saucepan. Cook at medium high heat, stirring occasionally until the rhubarb cooks down into a jam-like consistency. Remove from heat and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line a cupcake tin with six liners.

Cream the sugar and butter then mix in the egg and vanilla. Add in the flour, baking powder and salt and mix just until combined. Finally mix in buttermilk and then fold in the rhubarb.
Distribute batter evenly into the six muffin liners and bake for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until cupcakes are lightly browned and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let cool.

Raspberry Frosting

¼ cup butter (1/2 stick), room temperature
2 ½ – 3 cups powdered sugar
½ tsp vanilla
¼ cup raspberry fruit filling (from Raspberry Oat Bars)

Beat the butter and powdered sugar until smooth. Add vanilla and raspberry sauce. Beat until all ingredients are combined and frosting is smooth. If making the frosting on a hot day, you may want to refrigerate it until your cupcakes are ready to decorate.

This recipe will serve as my submission to the Let’s Celebrate Event at Ria’s Collection!

Links to a Healthy Weekend

June 6, 2009

Hello, friends!

Even though I had been collecting links all week, I thought I was going to have to skip this installment of links due to my travel. However, here I sit in the airport during an incredibly long layover and I find myself with time to post them.

I hope you are well this weekend. As with most of my comings and goings between the US and Brazil, the feelings are bittersweet. I miss what I am leaving, but excited for what lies ahead (especially my husband!).

I arrive in Brazil in the morning and in our town tomorrow night. I have only four months left of this abroad experience and I have vowed to cook up a storm incorporating all the local ingredients I can so it should be exciting around here in the near future.

Enjoy these great reads and I’ll see you next week!

The Reuben Bread from Food and Life Encounters impressed me greatly. This is actually from last week, but it was just too wonderful to skip over when I found it this week. A Reuben is probably my favorite sandwich variety and this is an incredibly interesting twist.

Creating a Healthier Food Culture for Less Money on Care 2 Make a Difference was a thought provoking post with lots of great tips for how to take the steps to start making your foods from scratch. This one is from last month, but I just discovered it this week and thought it was well worth sharing.

Wheat Berry Salad with Cranberries, Feta and Mint from Not Derby Pie was a recipe and blog I discovered this week when searching out some ideas for how to use my wheat berries.

Eat Local. Die Trying? from Zompaa presents an important question we all have to answer when it comes to where we buy our produce and how it is grown.

Peanut Butter Boy is hosting The Great Peanut Butter Exhibition #6. The theme this time? Barbeque! The deadline is Monday.

Coconut & Lime is hosting a 5 year Blogiversary contest! You need to make one of her recipes or create one using coconut and lime to enter.

Photo of my pug, Macy Mae, taken just a few days ago. One of the things I will miss greatly the next few months.

Savory Wheat Berry Salad

June 5, 2009

Well, I’ve finally crossed over into the world of wheat berries. You know, I get to experience a lot of new foods due to my living abroad, but at the same time I miss out on some new and upcoming things here in the US. Wheat berries have been all over food blogs the past few months and I have yet to find them where we live in Brazil. So during this visit I picked some up to cook and to take back with me so I can experiment some more.

I tried them for the first time a couple weeks ago. I was in Whole Foods and needed a quick, to-go dinner so I stopped by their deli and decided to get a bit of their wheat berry salad made with curry. The consensus – love them! Not that I had any doubts. I’m a huge fan of grains and grain-based salads.

Because wheat berries are the whole wheat kernel without the hull they provide the nutritional benefit of the bran, germ and endosperm, much of which is missing from the processed variety. Wheat berries are a very good source of fiber and manganese, and a good source of magnesium. The presence of the germ also gives you a boost of B vitamins and vitamin E.

Some other interesting research that has arisen the past few years is that whole grains may hold as much antioxidant power through phytochemicals as fruits and veggies. Phenolics are a group of antioxidants present in whole grains in their bound form, unlike those in fruits and veggies which are free. What may have been overlooked in the past is that the bound phenolics in whole grains are released during digestions so we still benefit from them.

It took me a while to decide what to make with my wheat berries. There is no shortage of recipes on the web and I loved the curry flavor in the salad I had from Whole Foods. What I didn’t like was the added fruit. I’m not a big fan of golden raisins in grain salads. I wanted something that was savory all the way. So using some things from the garden this is what I came up with.

Savory Curry Wheat Berry Salad

1 cup wheat berries
3 ½ cups water
1 cup grape tomatoes, chopped
1 spring onion, sliced
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp curry powder
Salt and pepper to taste

Place wheat berries in a large sauce pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered for 45 min to one hour. Drain and rinse with cool water.

In a bowl whisk together olive oil, lemon juice, curry powder, salt and pepper. Set aside.

In a serving bowl toss together wheat berries, tomatoes, onion and parsley. Pour dressing over salad, toss to coat and serve. Makes about six servings.

More on the health benefits of whole grains and references for this post – WHFoods: Whole Wheat

Why Eating Real Food Is Important to Me

June 3, 2009

I went for a family visit today. My mom and I stopped by to see my Great Aunt and two of my Great Uncles. They still live in and near the house of my Great Grandparents and although they are in their 80s we drove up to find them working in the yard and nearby garden.

As we talked about the family and looked through some old pictures I was reminded that much of my roots reside there – the recipes I ate through my childhood and have since learned how to make in my adulthood as well as using the land for food and keeping it plentiful during the winter months through canning. My mom tells me stories about collecting the chicken eggs and watching cows being milked as a child.

While I didn’t have exposure to such extreme farm life during my own childhood, I was exposed to extensive gardening through my Dad and home cooking through my Mom. This visit brought memories of days passed which always bring me to the present and how I currently feel about food.

Getting to the point of supporting the growth, cooking and consumption of real food was a long journey for me, but here I am. Days like today get me thinking about why I’ve evolved into this person, this place. I realize again and again that it really isn’t about health for me. My interest in health made me take the path in my life that I have traveled, but my real reason for supporting natural, sustainable foods is memories.

These memories I have are not all that common anymore and growing rarer by the day, especially for upcoming generations. I know that everyone can’t live on a farm, but everyone from toddlers to adults can take a break from this multi-media reality we live in and experience a portion of this old fashioned life. We just have to make a bit more of an effort. It can be growing your own garden, supporting a local agribusiness through a u-pick adventure or simply walking through a farmer’s market and talking with local producers.

When I think about my family who lived long before I showed up I realize that this wasn’t a choice for them. It was a necessity. In addition, when they were my age those now popular fast food and soda companies were just coming into view. However, as opposed to being known for their greedy efforts to take over the world that now seem so prominent, they were still viewed as entrepreneurial endeavors, part of the American dream.

Oh how things have changed, for the worse of course, but lately I also think they are changing for the better. Why? Just take a look through all the fabulous food blogs out there using natural, nourishing ingredients eliminating our need for processed ingredients.

I’m fortunate to have these memories because they are what keep me wanting to learn more about real food, to make the extra effort to prepare it and to share that with others. I know we can’t go back in time completely, but we can pull those positive things from the past to our present way of living.

Why is eating real food important to you?

This post has been submitted to Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday.

Apples, Carrots and Zucchini in One Tasty Bread

June 2, 2009

I am a huge fan of zucchini bread. What better way to enjoy a vegetable, right? While I’ve also had apples in bread as well as carrots, I can’t say I’ve combined them all together before. Well, until yesterday.

We came across this recipe for Garden Harvest Cake in the April 2009 issue of Cooking Light. My mom and I (well more my mom than me) decided to give it a try. Since we didn’t change the recipe at all I will leave it as link for you to check out.

Although the recipe says it is a cake it has every characteristic of a quick bread. I always come across recipes that call for applesauce instead of oil and I’m never incredibly impressed with the results. However, as opposed to applesauce, this recipe uses a fresh Granny Smith apple to cut the amount of oil a bit and the results are fantastic! You will end up with a moist, tender bread full of cinnamon flavor with the slight crunch of toasted walnuts. A great breakfast for a hot summer morning.

Links to a Healthy Weekend

May 30, 2009

Happy Saturday! I hope you have some fun plans this weekend to close out the last days of May. I’ve got some meals planned with extended family to celebrate my last week here in the States and I hope to catch up with a few more friends.

The best news is that I’m finally done with my portion of the first draft for the book I’m coauthoring! It’s about planning charity fitness events and in conjunction with my work for Charity Mile. It feels so great to be at a breaking point! There is sure to be more revision ahead, but knowing I have so much already completed is a relief.

In the midst of my work this week I was able to read my way through some great stuff.

Speaking of Charity Mile I was able to do an interview with Healthy Ashley about her involvement in charity fitness events. She is so inspiring! You’ll be ready to lace up your shoes and get in a workout after you read what she has to say.

The school lunchroom grows green was an article on The Christian Science Monitor this week. It talks about lots of wonderful changes schools are making from organic gardening to reducing waste. It is so great to see some positive news in this area!

With the post Every little love adds up, Michelle at Find Your Balance offers some great advice for positive thinking. This post really hit home for me. This is an area I’m always trying to improve with myself.

If you haven’t heard about the Food, Inc. Movie, get ready. I cannot wait until it opens! I was hoping so much that I would get the chance to see it while in the States, but it looks like I’ll have to wait until the fall.

Three Cheers for Beans was a post by Kitchen Courage this week. Check it out for three tasty bean salad recipes perfect for warmer weather. I especially like the one with maple syrup. Sweet beans are a big joke between us and our Brazilian friends. Rice and beans are so common there, but the idea of sweet beans horrifies most of the people we know. Too funny!

Photo of a super cool wine glass that belongs to a good friend of mine.

Strawberry Cinnamon Toast

May 29, 2009

Long before cinnamon toast became a popular breakfast cereal my mom was making her version of it for us. She likes to tell stories about how her older brother loved to make multiple pieces of it for himself while he was on babysitting duty and then refuse to share even one bit with the rest of the siblings.

We savored cinnamon toast as if it were a delicate baked good taking weeks to prepare. The truth is it couldn’t be simpler to make. The end result is toasted bread with a caramelized sugar top that is crisp on the top and soft and sweet in the middle.

I’ve made it numerous times myself and as my tastes and eating habits have changed over the years I find myself getting more creative with the process. This morning I headed out to the strawberry patch and was saddened to find that only a few remained. However, I had the perfect handful to create a Strawberry Cinnamon Toast.

I swapped the standard white sandwich bread for a hearty whole grain variety. While I left the white sugar along, I did change up the fat. Instead of butter I used organic extra virgin coconut oil. This is a product that I still need to do a post on and it is coming soon.

It turned out great and now I have the wheels turning out how I can use other fruits for this breakfast treat. It is such a simple thing with a flavor that far surpasses the effort put into making it.

Strawberry Cinnamon Toast

Slice of whole grain bread
¼ cup strawberries diced
Sugar and cinnamon
Extra virgin coconut oil

Toss the diced strawberries with about ¾ tsp of sugar and a few dashes of cinnamon. Set aside. Spread the bread with a light layer of coconut oil. Sprinkle a little more cinnamon on the bread. Top it with the strawberries. Give it one last sprinkle of sugar. Broil until browned and serve immediately.