PHOTOS: My 11-year-old Canon point-and-shoot served me well this year, documenting the wonders of nature (well, mostly the backyard), the growth (and shenanigans) of the puppies, and the development of my cooking skills. It died a few days into the new year. While I will miss the good times we shared, my camera's death was probably the only way to get a cheapskate like me to buy a new one (even though I've been wanting one for a while) and to get an obsessive like me to break the habit of taking photos of my food (I've tried half a dozen new recipes in the past five days, and only one was documented!).
Here is my camera's swan song, culminating in some lovely photos I took after an ice storm:
(there's a squirrel on that tree limb--you may have to zoom in to see her)
(not Instagrammed--I simply shot the scene through the naturally frosted beveled glass in the front door)
(the backs of these leaves were coated in 3/8" of glossy ice--I staged this photo since the icy leaves that came down on their own shattered on impact with the slick compacted sleet on the ground)
(see my blog entry about the ice storm
here)
(that's the sun, just above the roof there)
BOOK REVIEWS: I read two books this month!
Eating on the Wild Side, by Jo Robinson
This was a book originally purchased by my dad of all people (i.e. not a health nut), who got bored with it and handed it off to my mom who got bored with it and handed it off to me. I had it around for a week or so, thinking, "This looks like a four hundred-page list of facts about fruits and vegetables." Then I actually started reading it and found myself wishing it could be an eight hundred-page list of facts about fruits and vegetables--and nuts and grains and mushrooms, too.
The author, Jo Robinson, whose qualifications appear to lie solely in the vast quantity and high quality of research she has done, is a veritable Malcolm Gladwell of food and health information (I did not know I would also be reading a Malcolm Gladwell book this month when I wrote this review). The book consists of an introduction outlining her idea that, in most cases, the ancient wild ancestors of our modern food crops were a great deal more nutritious than what is presently available in most supermarkets, followed by seventeen chapters (example title: "From Wild Greens to Iceberg Lettuce: Breeding Out the Medicine") which explain how different categories of fruits and vegetables came to be seen as food, how they were modified by selective breeding (or more drastic measures) to become more palatable and easier to harvest, how modern produce compares to its ancestors in terms of nutrition and flavor, and a breakdown of how to choose, store, and prepare these foods to get the most nutrition out of them as possible.
The thing that makes this book worth reading, though, is how Robinson goes beyond and frequently contradicts the rules of thumb that generally guide what we think of as healthy eating--i.e. more colorful food is more healthful, fresh is better than canned, heirlooms are always better than more-recently developed crops--and delves into the actual science of nutrition, supported by thousands of scientific studies (with references in the back!). It makes the "wild" thing on the cover seem almost like a gimmick meant only to get you to pick up what is in fact a very practical book with practical advice for choosing the best cultivated foods (although a few wild foods, like wild blueberries, are recommended).
Here is some advice from the book that I've already put into practice:
- Buy canned tomatoes, which have more bioavailable lycopene than fresh raw tomatoes. Canning and cooking tomatoes increases the amount of lycopene your body can absorb from them. If you buy fresh tomatoes, the smaller the better (I'm on the lookout for new "currant" tomatoes, which are actually modern tomatoes crossed with tiny wild tomatoes).
- Mince or crush your garlic ten minutes before you heat it up. This gives heat-sensitive enzymes in different parts of the clove time to produce the most possible allicin, a compound which, since prehistory, has been used to cure just about everything.
- Black beans and lentils are so much more nutritious than green peas and chickpeas that you may as well never eat green peas and chickpeas again (well, she didn't say that exactly, and I'll probably still eat them, but I'll definitely go for the black beans and lentils when I can).
- Iceberg lettuce is pretty much worthless. I haven't bought it in a while anyway, but red leaf lettuce is a much better choice. Spinach is even better, and kale is one of the healthiest greens you can buy in the store.
- Wild blueberries! Berries of all kinds are extraordinarily healthy, and I'm glad I've "indulged" in them for so many summers. Organic is better. Wild is best. If you buy frozen blueberries, thaw them in the microwave--apparently, if they thaw too slowly, the antioxidants break down.
- Roast your root vegetables whole to preserve the most nutrients.
I could go on and on. I wish I'd taken notes while I read! Other joys of the book include recipes (I ATE BEETS AND I LIKED THEM!), charts detailing the best varieties of plants to choose at farmer's markets or from seed catalogs, and absolutely delightful (and occasionally scary) stories about how wild plants came to be our modern foods (Alexander the Great and Thomas Jefferson play big roles; modern carrots are only orange because someone in Holland wanted to honor William and Mary of Orange; modern super-sweet corn was created by leaving bags of seed on a ship moored in the vicinity of an atomic bomb test, then sifting through all the weird progeny over a couple of decades; etc.).
My only real complaint about this book (aside from the fact that I want MORE of it) is that it doesn't have a lot of information about how the valuable antioxidants and other phytonutrients Robinson lauds actually affect the body. She mentions that this vegetable has a compound that lowers LDL cholesterol, and that fruit has a compound that destroys 90% of cancer cells in test tube studies, but never gives a good layman's-terms description of how these miracles actually occur. It's possible that science itself doesn't really know, though, so I'll cut her some slack and take her--and the scientists'--word for it for now.
UPDATE: I have since learned that shortly before the publication of this book, the USDA withdrew its ORAC tables, which were referred to often in this book, citing lack of evidence that the beneficial effects shown in the lab will actually occur in the human body. Much of the book's information can still be believed since several of the studies referenced were actual in vivo experiments, but you should keep in mind that the compound that produced results in test tubes may not necessarily be the same compounds producing results in the human studies.
So although this book is, in truth, four hundred pages of facts about fruits and vegetables, they are four hundred pages that will not only delight your mind, but potentially heal your body and change your life. I highly recommend it, and I hope enough people buy the book that Jo Robinson can afford a few research assistants to help her come out with a sequel as soon as possible.
* * *
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, by Malcolm Gladwell
This was the third Malcolm Gladwell book I've read, and it was similar in structure to the other two--a diverse collection of facts, anecdotes and statistics slowly and quietly explicated, then shoehorned into an overarching theme. I like Malcolm Gladwell books. They are quick, easy reads that still manage to make you think a bit. But this one seemed like little more than an addendum and partial qualification of his (far better) book Outliers (for example, Gladwell admits in the midst of the substantial notes and references in the back of the book that he has learned new things about the effects of affirmative action since writing Outliers and now has a more nuanced understanding of such policies).
Supposedly, the book is about how underdogs are sometimes more powerful than they seem, and the seemingly powerful can be vanquished more easily than we may think. Gladwell starts out by retelling the story of David and Goliath, fleshed out with details that are less understood now than they were in ancient times (i.e. that slingers were highly specialized killers who could do as much damage with a rock as modern folk can do with a handgun, and probably with more accuracy) and modern knowledge that may have been unknown to the ancients (i.e. that Goliath almost certainly suffered from a pituitary gland condition that not only rendered him nearly blind and uncomfortably tall, but also thinned the bone in his forehead, rendering him more vulnerable to David's sling).
It's an interesting telling of the story, but it makes you feel extremely sorry for the "giant" when David breaks the rules and basically runs out and shoots him (the only thing that makes it okay is that his homeland was threatened with ruin and his people with slavery--a situation in which all bets are off, in my book). But this moral uneasiness stays with us throughout the book. When we learn that certain entrepreneurs' childhood struggles with dyslexia forced them to learn to cheat and deal with work and people in the kinds of unconventional ways that give one an edge in business, it's not a pleasing revelation because the businessmen listed are for the most part nasty people--who cares that they are "successful" if they have used and hurt others? Likewise, the story of a doctor inured to suffering by a childhood of deprivation and neglect experimenting on and torturing dying children in order to find a cure for leukemia is similarly unsatisfying. And don't even get me started on how disillusioned I was to discover that the American civil rights movement knowingly and purposefully exposed children to danger and abuse in order to increase the shock value of news reports.
David and Goliath is worth reading for the information it presents, but don't expect to be uplifted or inspired or see the world in a helpful new light. If that's what you're looking for, (re)read Outliers.
100 RECIPES GOAL: I did it! I did it I did it I did it!!! Now it's no big deal for me to try a new recipe--in fact, I've done two or three in a single day. I've discovered I have a passion for cooking, though probably not enough to make a career out of it. I also have a new-found interest in cooking shows, even though I only used to like the fat Cajun guy who said "ON-YON", Yan of "Yan Can Cook" fame, and the French pastry chef who would say "cookie shit" whenever he tried to say "cookie sheet" (the audience would burst into giggles every time--it was PBS, after all).
On the downside, now, whenever I watch non-chefs cook, they seem like mentally handi-capable three year olds with missing fingers. They're like, "Why is it burnt? Why does it taste funny?" so I tell them what they did wrong, and yet they persist in making the same mistakes again and again. I'm starting to understand why big-time chefs are so arrogant, even though, obviously, I'm still a novice with loads to learn. I didn't even get around to all the recipes I wanted to try this year! Beer bread! Springerle! Pumpkin pancakes!
Here are the final twenty-nine recipes of the hundred (again, I've left the full recipes out because I didn't want to waste time writing them out. If you would like the recipe, just ask):
#72: Steamed Beets and Sauteed Greens with Balsamic Vinegar
From Eating on the Wild Side, by Jo Robinson. This is the beet dish mentioned in my review of the book. It's supposed to have blue cheese too, but I made it without and it was still so good that I ate the whole plate in one sitting, which is amazing because I've always hated beetroot (the greens are good when fresh, though).
A-
#73. Apple Crisp with Apple Skins
Also from Eating on the Wild Side, by Jo Robinson. I made it once with Granny Smith apples (and not the full amount of sugar), which I thought was perfect, and later with a variety of red apples plus one Granny Smith and more sugar, which my sister thought was better.
A+ (delicious and not very hard to make)
#74. Sauerkraut Mushroom Pierogi
From my 75th Anniversary edition of Joy of Cooking. I made this three times. The egg noodle dough is very hard to make from scratch (literally hard, nearly impossible to mix and knead) but tastes a million times better than store-bought egg noodles. The filling is best the next day and/or if you leave it sitting out for a few hours at room temperature. Surprisingly, it was best when I used some old and barely edible-looking cremini mushrooms and medium-fresh German sauerkraut (the real stuff (no vinegar), imported) so it's a good way to use up both of these ingredients. My pierogi dough was thick and tough, so it was best topped with extra filling, black beans, or spinach--anything to soften it.
A
#75. Egg Noodles with Sugar-and-Spice Blueberries
Joy of Cooking says pierogi are sometimes made with blueberries, but didn't give a recipe. I topped the leftover bits of pierogi dough with microwaved frozen wild blueberries and sprinkled sugar, cinnamon, and a little nutmeg on top. I thought it would be even better with store-bought noodles, but instead it was almost inedibly bland.
A (with homemade whole wheat dough)
#76. Anna Silver's Carrot Cake (with raisins and without icing)
This recipe was a contest winner that was printed on the Bob's Red Mill White Whole Wheat Pastry Flour bag (that made it easy to consult while mixing, since it stands up tall on the counter). I made this cake for several family members to share, and they all wanted raisins in it even though the recipe doesn't call for them. Also, I didn't have the ingredients for the icing and didn't want to add any more sugar to the recipe anyway (in fact, I used slightly less than was called for for the cake, too) so I served it without icing. It was so good that not only were seconds requested, but it was requested that I make the cake again a couple of times. If you use a pan larger than 8"X8", don't cook it the full forty minutes.
I like the cake very much with roasted beets and/or carrots, so I recommend it as a way of dressing up plain root vegetables.
A+
#77. Ginger Ale
I think I saw in a previous edition of Joy of Cooking that the by-products of ginger candy-making can be added to fizzy water to make ginger ale, but it wasn't in my new addition. I tried it anyway, and it came out as a very mellow yet flavorful, slightly burnt-tasting ginger ale (I got the syrup a bit hot a few times, impatient to get it boiled down). I was sad when it was gone.
A (could have added a couple other spices maybe?)
#78. Candied Ginger
Joy of Cooking recommended using very young, fresh pink ginger. I found a relatively pink one at the store, but accidentally forgot about it for a week. The candy still came out okay. I don't know how they make those big soft golden chunks you can buy in the bulk foods section of groceries--maybe they use younger, fresher ginger after all. Certainly a lot easier just to buy it, although boiling ginger in sugar for hours does make the house smell nice.
B+
#79. Cauliflower Pilaff
From Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. I had to buy a cheap brand of brown rice because I was unexpectedly out of my cache of the good stuff. As a result, I cooked it all wrong and it got to be more of a mush than a pilaff (that double F may be a British thing). On the plus side, I kept forgetting, because of the mushiness and the golden turmeric and the presence of cauliflower, that I wasn't eating cauliflower with cheese. If you're a committed vegan who misses cheese and hates cheese substitutes, I highly recommend this. Otherwise, it's a bit too much work for the outcome.
B+
#80. Roasted Beetroot with Horseradish Cream
From Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. This one was almost cheating since I used a prepared sauce (the store had no plain horseradish, and this seafood dip had everything called for in the recipe), but there was some work in cooking the beets and dressing them with parsley. I liked the method of brushing them with olive oil and honey and roasting them in foil (I cut them in halves instead of quarters and peeled them after roasting, which was more in accordance with what I learned in Eating on the Wild Side, and worked well). I liked this a little more than #72 above, and it was certainly easier, though maybe not as healthy because of the sugar and sour cream.
A
#81. Oatmeal and Raspberry Muffins
From Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. I think I substituted almond milk for regular milk, and I've noticed that doesn't always work well in baking. They came out a bit grainy and dry, like a scone, but the raspberry/oatmeal flavor was nice, and cooked raspberry in dough looks like bubblegum, which was fun.
B-
#82. Capiscum Rolled with Goat's Cheese, Basil and Capers
From Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. The filling alone was very good. Eating the rolls freshly made, they were good. After sealing some in a bowl filled with olive oil (as instructed) and refrigerating them overnight, the rolls were so good that I said some very colorful and naughty words when I tasted them. Highly recommended as an appetizer or snack that can be made the night before.
A++
#83. Blue Cornbread
I was excited to try blue corn after reading in Eating on the Wild Side about how much healthier it is than yellow or white corn, especially the super-sweet varieties. I bought some blue corn grits (very good) and also some blue corn meal. I used the cornbread recipe on the package and it was a bit dull and dense. I made it my own way and got it lighter and loftier, but the flavor suffered. Will keep trying.
B- (for the package recipe)
#84. Eggplant, Tomato, and Goat's Cheese Stack
From Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. These were so much fun to make, and lots of work (as demonstrated by my many process photos) but the payoff was only so-so. I think in the summertime, with in-season ingredients, it might be much better.
B+ (perhaps better in summer)
#85. Tunisian Eggplant Salad
Same book as above, a bit easier, so-so flavor.
B+ (perhaps better in summer)
#86. Banana and Cardamom Bread
From Vegan Recipes, ed. Nicola Graimes. I screwed this up the first time, getting the yeast so hot that it didn't rise. I salvaged the loaf by slicing it and re-baking the slices into "biscotti," but I only managed to eat about 2/3 of it (I hate throwing food away!). I tried again, again making a double recipe (maybe that's where I went wrong), accidentally dusting the puppies with flour as I tried to knead more dough than I could easily handle, and did a bit better, but I should have made two loaves instead of one megaloaf that couldn't cook through all the way without burning.
I was hoping this would be a good, non-sugary alternative to my family's favorite old banana bread recipe (more of a banana cake, from my mom's college home economics textbook). I may yet get it right, because the flavor is okay--it's just the crumb that needs work, and that may well be my fault.
B (probably my fault)
#87. Mediterranean Style Eat Your Greens
I was looking for good frozen veggies and found a bag of Seapoint Farms mixed green stuff (edamame (which I'd never tried), broccoli, green beans, spinach, and asparagus) that said "EAT YOUR GREENS" across the bottom. Whoever put that there knew what they were doing because I laughed my head off and threw it into the cart (I mean the bag of veggies, not my head). This recipe was on the back and I followed it, I think, to the letter, unless there was supposed to be cheese or something. Anyway, it was very good, especially with the fresh oregano all over it. Crisp, relatively nutritious, and flavorful.
A
#88. Dutch Baby!
I have been wanting to make this recipe for years, basically for as long as I've known it's existed. It's in Joy of Cooking, near the pancakes and waffles and such. It's described as a "puff pancake," when in reality, it's more of a crusty custard (I think if I'd whisked the flour into the egg and milk better, it would have been more evenly distributed rather than making so much of a crust over an eggy portion. I kept putting this recipe off because I thought it would be difficult, but it wasn't bad (although I did burn myself--don't forget that heat-resistant pot handles will get hot in the oven--I remembered until I was ready to cut into the Dutch Baby and grabbed the pot absentmindedly to steady it).
A+ (good with strawberry jam and powdered sugar--try to share it with someone, because I don't think it would keep too well, and it's way too much butter and sugar to eat alone in one sitting)
#89. Bitter Orange Soda
Similar to #77, but with the by-product from candied orange slices. The pith of oranges is bitter, so even though the syrup is full of sugar, it has a kind of elegant, grown-up tasting bitterness. I drank some of the soda right away, but keep meaning to get some liquor to add to the rest, to see if it makes an interesting cocktail (though it may have gone bad by now).
A
#90. Candied Orange Slices
I followed the Joy of Cooking recipe as well as I could, using (organic oranges and organic sugar) but the slices never hardened. I kept them in the refrigerator and used them over the next two weeks for Christmas Star Lebkuchen, panettone, and a phyllo pastry I made in the new year (by then, they were a bit overpowering). Having them soft may have made them easier to cut (I only used the outer rind), but I ended up throwing away the mushy, bitter centers.
B (probably my fault, somehow)
#91. Christmas Star Lebkuchen
I made lebkuchen before, but those were very plain, without the orange peel or icing. I intended this round as a Christmas treat. I was careful not to leave it in the oven too long, but it still got very hard, so I thought I had screwed it up. Then I made the icing too wet, and thought I had screwed it up worse. But then I cut it into stars and bars and sealed them in tins (the stars) and a glass container with a plastic lid (the odd pieces), and, amazingly, the humidity evened out, making the consistency perfect. The orange peel was still a bit chewy, so I could have chopped it smaller or soaked it in lemon juice first, but otherwise these were very good, especially with a mug of green tea to balance the sweetness.
In fact, I set the plate shown above (last picture) out on a table Christmas Day, and my grandma happened to sit next to it. I ate two of the pieces and then busied about. Several hours later, when I came back to call everyone to dinner, my grandmother held up the second-to-last piece and said, "Did you make these? They're really good!" I grabbed the last one for myself, to save her from a sugar coma.
A++
#92. Rosemary and Orange Blue Cornmeal Cookies
This recipe came from the back of the Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Sugar bag. Apparently, they were invented by a child in Chicago who owns her own restaurant or bakery or something (seriously, she looks 23, and she has her own f'ing restaurant). My sister said they taste like a cross between a cornbread muffin and a sugar cookie (obviously, being on the back of a bag of sugar, the recipe would call for a lot of sugar). I used blue cornmeal just because I still have some left over. I loved the orange zest and rosemary flavors together with the buttery, sugary corn. It made the cookies taste vaguely Christmas-ey, so I'd recommend them for holiday cooking, gifts to neighbors, etc. The second photo shows the first batch, made according the recipe, with its rough appearance, and the second batch, with water added to smooth the cookies. I don't know which I liked better. The flavor was a bit stronger in the rough ones, while the texture was better in the watered down ones.
A+ (except for too much sugar)
#93. Baked Pasta with Pumpkin and Spinach
I'd seen a couple of grocery ads that alluded to this kind of dish, but didn't have an exact recipe, so I got online and found
this one (that's a link). I didn't have ricotta or garlic, but it still came out highly edible (I topped it with toasted almonds, which was a suggestion from one of the ads). It's one of those things that you start eating and you think, "Yeah, this is okay for something healthy," but then you want seconds and thirds, and then you have to stop yourself before your stomach explodes.
A (probably A+ with ricotta)
#94. Cocoa Macaroons
This recipe is from the side of a tin of E. Guittard Red Dutch Process Cocoa. I used the optional ground almonds (Bob's Red Mill) and some very fine, dry, unsweetened Bob's Red Mill coconut. My only complaints are 1) the tin of cocoa wasn't very well sealed (two tiny stickers? come on) and the contents settled so much (or the tin was made so overlarge) that I thought at first (until I weighed it) that someone had taken out half in the store, and 2) the recipe only makes fifteen bon-bon-sized cookies that disappear almost immediately, especially if you set aside five for your mother.
A+
#95. Diamond-Cut Roast Sweet Potato and Slivered Garlic
Not worth writing home about, except to say that I'm still not forgiven for stinking up the kitchen. The tops were scraped off, and the potatoes repurposed in another recipe.
C-
#96. Pumpkin Soup
From Joy of Cooking, to use up the 29 oz. can of pumpkin opened for #93. I omitted the celery and didn't puree anything, but it was still very good.
A
#97. Panettone
From Joy of Cooking. I soaked the orange rind in lemon juice and the raisins in tart cherry juice, and I think that worked well. The cakes didn't puff up as much as I thought they would, considering the size of the tins I was supposed to use and the fact that the dough puffed so high at the rising stage that it almost came out of the bowl (two packets of yeast for this!). I shared it with my mom, dad, and sister, who are used to store-bought panettone, and everyone commented on the shortness of the cakes and the scarcity of "stuff" (orange rind and raisins). In fact, I used twice the amount of "stuff" recommended in the recipe, so go for four or five times as much "stuff". I used a whole wheat pastry flour (like always) and the recipe only calls for one stick of butter (which comes out to a teaspoon for each wedge like the one shown above) and 1/2 cup sugar total (not counting the "stuff"), so this is actually a relatively healthy dessert!
A+, with extra "stuff"
#98. Potato Salad with Kalamata Olives
From Eating on the Wild Side. I'd been looking for blue potatoes ever since reading the book, and suddenly, there they were. Surprisingly good recipe (I omitted the sun-dried tomatoes since they are gross and expensive).
A
#99. Red Cabbage with Green Apples
From How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, by Mark Bittman, a book my grandma got me for Christmas. I decided to call this recipe "surprisingly non-disgusting". Red cabbage and Granny Smith apples are very healthy. The dish was mostly flavored by three (yes, three) cloves. That was plenty of cloves. It took me a few days to finish this off, but by the end, it was still fairly edible.
B
#100. Cinnamon Texases
The Cinnamon Stars recipe from Joy of Cooking, but cut into Texas shapes instead. They're just egg whites, almond flour, cinnamon, and powdered sugar (maybe a couple other things). I didn't get the eggs warm enough before I tried to whip the whites into "medium-firm peaks," so it took well over 1,000 strokes, and I nearly died (this was getting close to midnight on New Year's Eve, and the cookies weren't out of the oven before my deadline, but I think they still count). I cooked them 3 minutes extra, and I'm still not sure they were done. They were more like damp meringues than cookies, but very, very, very delicious.
They didn't keep very well because the cinnamon/egg white topping sticks to plastic and everything else (I puffed up the bag they were in, but in retrospect, they should have gone in a tin in a single layer).
A+ (a good way to end my challenge)
