Friday Food for Thought: What's Your Favorite Food-Related Book?

Are you a food memoir fan?  Or do you prefer more scholarly books on food policy and agriculture?  Or maybe fiction based around cooking?

My favorite is probably The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan.  It's not as popular as In Defense of Food or The Omnivore's Dilemma, but it's an interesting series of "case studies."  Each of the four chapters examines how human desires affected the evolution of a particular plant: the apple for sweetness, the tulip for beauty, marijuana for pleasure, and the potato for sustenance.

I've also recently read Recipe for a Perfect Marriage, a story about a food writer unsure of her recent marriage, intertwined with her Irish grandmother's story and seemingly stable marriage.

Anything food-related on your summer reading list?  What's your favorite food-related book?

Friday Food for Thought: How Much Beef Do You Eat?

This isn't in the same vein as my usual Friday posts, but I had to share.  We recently went in on half a cow from a local farmer with friends again, and picked up the vacuum-packed, flash-frozen beef this week.  The cow we got this time was nearly twice as large as last time, with two families splitting it instead of four.  Since we only eat beef once a week on average, our share last time lasted us about six months, so we're expecting to get at least eighteen month out of this order.

I think the best example of the scale of the amount of meat here is the amount of ground beef: 77 lbs.  That's all of the meat in the door in the photo, some on the middle shelf, and what's in the small cooler in front of the freezer.  The rest is broken up into steaks and roasts (our share is on the top shelf), and bones for soups and stocks (on the bottom shelf).

How much beef do you eat?  Have any good recipes using ground beef?

Friday Food for Thought: Are Farmers' Markets More Expensive?

An recent article in The Atlantic called The Farmers' Market Myth contended that the general opinion that produce and other goods at the farmers' market were more expensive than their grocery store counterparts was in fact just that: a myth.  Over the last couple of months, I've been paying a little more attention to prices, and was a little surprised to find that this was true.  I'd always assumed that what little extra I might pay at the market was worth it for a fresher, better tasting product.  For me, the real luxury seems to be the time to go to both the farmers' market for produce, meat and other fresh items, and the grocery store for the rest of my list.

What's your experience?  Do you save or spend more at your farmers' market?

Friday Food for Thought: Do You Measure by Weight or Volume?

Food scales are one of those things that often seems to be all or nothing.  Some people use it exclusively, whether to accurately size food portions or because they like the precision, while others feel like it's an extra step that doesn't make a big enough difference to bother with.  I tend to fall into the latter category, eyeballing the ingredients as I add them or using traditional measuring cups and spoons. 

But this article from Slate is making me rethink this approach, especially with baking.  Michael Ruhlman's point that five cups of flour can be anywhere from 20 to 30 ounces makes it hard to deny that weight, rather than volume, is the way to go, especially in recipes where the proportions of ingredients make a big difference in the final product.

Do you measure by weight or volume?  When do you use a food scale?

Friday Food for Thought: How Clean is Your Kitchen?

According to this article from the Sydney Morning Herald, it's not necessarily the cleanliness of a kitchen that makes the difference, but the behavior of the cook.  Obviously, a home kitchen wouldn't be held to the same standards as a commercial kitchen (pets and toddlers would probably be a no-go in a restaurant prep area, but are a normal part of a private kitchen), but there is plenty of overlap.  Frequent handwashing and avoiding cross-contamination by using different cutting boards and dishrags for different purposes are just a couple of examples.

I think my biggest sanitary sin is tasting with the cooking utensil.  I don't do it when I'm cooking or baking for others, but tend to slack off when it's just immediate family eating. 

How clean is your kitchen?  Would it pass a health department inspection? 

Friday Food for Thought: Rising Food Prices

Have you noticed your grocery bill creeping up on you?  Along with rising fuel prices, the cost of food has been steadily increasing worldwide as well.  This article from the New York Times talks about some of the causes- increased demand for both food and biofuels, political unrest, and even global warming, to name a few.


From The New York Times, based on Bureau of Labor statistics

Does this affect what you buy and what you cook?  Are you doing anything differently to keep your food costs down?  I know I'm looking forward to the farmers markets opening here, where I can get better-quality produce and meat for the same, if not better, prices as the grocery store.

Friday Food for Thought: Earth Day 2011

Happy Earth Day!  Started in 1970 by Sen. Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day now has over 200 million participants every year, involved in projects ranging from local recycling drives and tree planting to seminars on going green and town hall meetings on environmental change.  This year's theme is "A Billion Acts of Change."  We can all do something small, and together they add up to something big.
 

Some small things you can do:

• change out your incandescent light bulbs for CFLs
• plant some flowers, vegetables or herbs
• shop with reusable bags
• buy local food whenever possible
• stop to appreciate the world around you!

Are you doing anything to celebrate Earth Day? 

Friday Food for Thought: Where Do You Get Your Calories?

As an engineer, I'm can usually be drawn in by a pretty graph; more so if it's interactive.  So when I saw a link for Civil Eats Infographic on where Americans get their calories on the Kitchn, and how that distribution has changed over the last 40 years, I was pretty sure I'd be interested.


Non-interactive graph from The Grist

Using USDA data, the infograph shows that while some food groups' shares of the American plate have remained stable, grains and added fats (among others) have tacked about 20% more calories today than the average in 1970.

Personally, I definitely lean towards proteins and fruit.  I feel like I could be getting more veggies onto my plate, despite my best intentions. 

What's on your plate?  Is the average shown at all representative of your calorie distribution?

Friday Food for Thought: Expiration Dates

What do you do when leftovers have been hanging out in your fridge for a while?  Do you open it up, take a look, maybe give it a sniff, trying to decide if it's still okay to eat?  What about cartons of milk, canned goods, and condiments?  Do you go by its sell-by/use-by/best-before date, or do you use your senses for those as well?

It turns out you may be better off assessing the food in your fridge on your own.  According to this article, Take Back the Trash, in the New York Times, these dates aren't federally regulated, but are determined by the manufacturers themselves, with no transparency into their methods.   And those dates cause Americans to thrown away a lot of perfectly good food each year. 

I have to admit, I often go on the purging rampages Bruce Feiler describes at the beginning of the article.  I get frustrated trying to find a spot for leftovers, and start tossing stuff.  For the most part, we do a decent job of packing up leftovers in a way that makes them convenient to freeze or grab for lunch the next day, and minimize how much is thrown away, but stuff definitely slips through the cracks.  

What do you think of the dates stamped on your food?  How do you decide if your food is off?  What do you do to avoid having to throw away food?

Friday Food for Thought: Single-Factor Nutrition Studies

A few weeks ago, I posted about Real Simple's list of 30 superfoods.  The more I thought about it, I wondered what made these foods super.  What research backs up these claims?  How do we know that the levels of antioxidants, vitamins, nutrients in these foods make a bigger difference in our health than other foods?  Similarly, when studies are done that link health issues to specific components of a food, like preservatives or artificial sweeteners, how do they isolate the effects of that from other environmental factors?

Luckily for me, someone asked this question of Marion Nestle in a monthly column in the San Francisco Chronicle.  As a nutrition and public policy expert, gives some great guidelines for understanding what the results of these "single-factor" studies actually mean, and what the potential pitfalls are.

I try to take studies like this with a grain of salt, on the assumption that the environment I live in is too complicated a system to be able to attribute any effect to one single factor, and it's hard to believe that a study can successfully isolate one part of that system. 

What do you think of nutrition studies?  How do they affect your eating habits?

Friday Food for Thought: What's in Your Garden?

We've had a few hints of spring here, tulips popping up, a few warm days, and our usual spring rains.  It's got me thinking about what I want to plant this year.  Our yard is very wet, so I stick to containers on the deck.


My first tomato

Last year I had a few types of tomato plants, some bell peppers and jalapenos, and a ton of herbs.  Surprisingly, it was the jalapenos that did best for me, and I still have a good amount of the pepper jelly I canned last year to use them up.


Baby bell pepper

I still can't decide what to go with this year.  What are you planting?

Friday Food for Thought: Hidden Vegetables

This article on MSNBC about a Penn State study on the benefits of extra servings of vegetables hidden in everyday food caught my attention.  The study's findings, that extra veggies may help weight loss, weren't surprising.  Replacing foods that have a higher calorie density with lower calorie foods of the same volume will result in a calorie deficit and therefore weight loss.  What was surprising was how the researchers tested this.  Steamed, pureed vegetables were included in food in a way that the test subjects did not see a difference.  Including extra veggies this way has been the basis of several cookbooks recently, mostly aimed at getting children to eat more veggies.


Personally, I don't like idea of hiding veggies in food.  I like a more positive attitude toward them, and finding ways to make them taste good.  But I'm certainly not against creative ways of including them in traditional dishes, like butternut squash in mac n cheese, or carrot puree in spaghetti sauce.  In fact, I think the veggies add a lot of sweetness in these cases, making the food taste better overall, with no need to cover up the fact that they're there.


How do you feel about hidden veggies?

Friday Food for Thought: Real Simple's 30 Superfoods

Last week while I was killing some time at the airport on my way home from a business trip, the cover of the February issue of Real Simple caught my eye- bright and fresh after a few damp and gray days in Seattle.  The accompanying article, The 30 Healthiest Foods, also had me curious what their list would be, and how much of it I ate on a regular basis. 

I already had plenty of reading material for the flight, but checked out the list over the weekend.  I was really surprised to see that with the exception of almonds, edamame, and sardines, this reads like my grocery list:

1. almonds
2. avocados
3. barley
4. black beans
5. blueberries
6. broccoli
7. bulgur
8. chard
9. chicken breasts
10. edamame
11. eggs
12. EVOO
13. kale
14. kidney beans
15. kiwi
16. lentils
17. mushrooms
18. oatmeal (old-fashioned or steel cut)
19. oranges
20. peanut and almond butters
21. pumpkin
22. quinoa
23. sardines
24. skim milk
25. spinach
26. sweet potatoes
27. walnuts
28. whole-grain pasta
29. wild salmon
30. yogurt

It just goes to show that healthy can be delicious as well! 

How many of these do you eat on a regular basis?  Anything else you think should have been on the list?

Friday Food for Thought: Where Do Chicken Legs Go?

Have you ever thought of where chicken legs go?  Boneless, skinless chicken breasts have for so long been marketed in the U.S. as the “healthy” part of the chicken, that the dark meat has become a second-rate protein here.   But in many places, it’s the more popular portion of the chicken.   This segment on NPR’s All Things Considered tells us that much of our dark meat goes (or at least went) to Russia.  

I Love Chicken Legs from Natalie Dee

Personally, I prefer dark meat anyway.  It’s richer, rarely dries out, and can stand up to flavorful sauces and accompaniments, plus it’s generally less expensive than white meat, all for just a few more calories than white meat. 

What’s your preference?  Why?

Friday Food for Thought: What Do You Think of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines?

Have you seen the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee Report recently released by the USDA?  These guidelines affect all government nutrition programs- school lunch requirements, Meals on Wheels, the Food Pyramid, food subsidies, and so on.  While I admittedly only read the Executive Summary and Appendix E-1: Major Conclusions, there were quite a few things that I liked about them.

• recommendations on how individuals can apply the findings in their daily habits
• more nutrient-dense foods as a opposed to energy-dense foods
• eat fewer processed foods
• limit TV time and be more active
• cook and eat at home more often
• expanding the findings from the individual impacts to environmental and societal considerations
• access to healthy food
• TV and other media
• the food service industry

There's a greater emphasis on general health, not just nutrition, and a more direct tone on the obesity epidemic.  The guidelines aren't perfect, but I think they're moving in the right direction.

What do you think of the new dietary guidelines?

Friday Food for Thought: How far do you drive for groceries?

Browsing thekitchn.com the other day, I came across this article from grist.com, about rural food deserts.  I don't know about you, but I've always heard the term "food deserts" applied to inner-city areas with few to no grocery stores.  But with changes in the agriculture industry and the economy, there are more and more rural areas seeing the same problem.  It's a little mind-boggling that the areas that supply the raw materials for our food don't always have access to the final product.

Quick trip to the Giant near our house

I'm lucky.  I have not one but three basic grocery stores within a mile of home, and could walk to any of them if I had to.  There's also a Trader Joe's and a Whole Foods within a 20-minute drive, and numerous farmers markets, pick-your-own farms, and farmstands in the area.  I aim for grocery shopping once a week, but if I forget or run out of something, no big deal, the store is right there.

How far do you go for groceries?  Do distance and time affect how you shop?