Freshworthy Friday: More Pink Slime!

It's been a big week for food news, and while these first two links are important, the last—about our favorite, PINK SLIME, is the most important.

Are Food Blogs Over?
The Amateur Gourmet
First things first: please tell me food blogs aren't over. I really, really like writing this one.The gist of this article is this: food blogs that offer new recipes aren't enough—we food bloggers have to push the envelope, offering readers something fresh and different. For me, this means honing in on a very specific way of eating, and offering more than just recipes on my site (I profess in my bio to be a novice cook, anyway).



The last few months I've resolved to bring more to Sustainable Diet, by way of photos and more posts, and touching on news (Freshworthy is still in its infancy).

So I have to ask: what brings you here, what keeps you here, and what makes you come back for more?

The Chocolate Diet?
New York Times
Let's all take a moment to rejoice, yet again, in the health benefits of chocolate. This new study shows that people who ate more chocolate had lower BMIs (body mass index). It's the antioxidants, purportedly, that make this possible.

For the most sustainable chocolate enjoyment, purchase fair trade and organic chocolate bars. While they tend to cost a fair bit more than conventional, you can feel doubly good about helping those who harvest this superfood.

Amarillo 'pink slime' facility closing, employs 200
Amarillo Globe-News via TM Daily Post
An Amarillo plant that produced 200,000 pounds of pink slime every day has stopped its operation, along with similar plants in other states. While it is truly unfortunate that the people who worked there will have to find new means of employment, this is certainly good news for our food supply—especially since so much of these ammonia-washed beef trimmings were sent to schools for children's lunches.

This whole story has really blown up. Even Jon Stewart is talking about "Bovine Velvet." Governors of the states where the beef factories are shutting down (Perry included) have been trying to endorse "lean beef trimmings" left and right, urging consumers that ammonia-washed beef particles are healthy.

Don't buy it! Literally OR figuratively!

That said, any type of processed meat is essentially the same thing. If you and your household are omnivores, you can take small steps to cut processed meats out of your diet.

For the average home shopper, it's important to turn to grass-fed, organic beef products. Ask your local butcher to grind meat in-house for you, and purchase beef and other meat products from local farmers whenever possible!

Granted, these organic products are more expensive. DO buy them, but buy less than you normally would. Fill the empty space left in your diet with more vegetables, fresh fruits, and whole grains.

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Two Meals of Greens and Sweet Potatoes

Last week, we treated ourselves to a little stay-cation. While it involved one car breaking down, a 20-foot limb falling in the yard after a storm, and days upon days of hard work around the house, we surely ate like kings, going out for every meal. There were fancy drinks, tacos, queso, two separate tuna fish sandwich situations, multiple beers, veggie burgers, and more. 

So this week, our goal has been to eat clean. See that colorful bowl of dinner above? Clean, wholesome food never felt so good. 

While most of our winter gardens are gone, we have one bed still producing mounds of kale and collard greens. Snails have infiltrated enemy camp, but I've let them have go to town on some of the bigger leaves and have made a point to harvest every other day, so that new growth can have a chance to thrive. Stubbornly, I've resisted the urge to put out shallow pans of Lone Star.

After our week of pizza, we were craving beta carotene-rich foods and dark, leafy greens, and by golly that's what I made two nights in a row. In fact, they were two nearly identical dinners; one was met with gusto and praise by my dear husband, and the other was given a shrug and the aside, "It's tasty, but I won't be willfully requesting it."

That said, I loved both of the similar meals for different reasons. 

Sunday night, inspired by Smitten Kitchen's roasted sweet potato stacks, I sliced the sweet potatoes into half-inch-thick rounds with the peel, and roasted them at 425 for about 40 minutes (I flipped them once, halfway through). They were melt-in-your-mouth tender, and the peel was crisp and flavorful. I served them with a huge batch of kale chips—one of our new favorite foods. Kale chips are so easy to make and so healthy. They satisfy a salty craving while filling you full of vitamins and nutrients.

Monday evening, in an attempt to use up the rest of the sweet potatoes and finally eat some non-snail-slimed collards, I turned to this recipe from Whole Foods for Sweet Potatoes With Collards.

Happily, I had green onions from the garden and organic peppers from another grocery run still in the fridge; we lacked aduki beans but the can of kidney beans in the pantry stood in just fine. I loved this recipe because it was chock-full of nutrients and protein, low in fat, and had an interesting twist at the end with the lime juice. Better yet, it reheated perfectly for leftovers the next day at lunch. I didn't have sunflower seeds, but that extra crunch would've been fantastic.

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Wordless Wednesday: Zukes, Tomatillo Blooms...It Is Spring!

 

 

*Blogger users: this sad-looking photo format is what happens when you blog via the Blogger app. My apologies—won't happen again!

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Twitter Party TODAY: #YourMealMatters

Join a slew of food and green bloggers for a fantastic Twitter event today!

Follow me @sustainablediet and #YourMealMatters today at 11:30CST for tips on eating healthier food for yourself and the planet. Learn about sustainable food practices and share yours with everyone too!

Hope to see y'all there!

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Bring on the Bees!

I've been lobbying for-ev-er to put flowers in the garden. To grow something, anything, we don't actually have to eat. Why do I have to lobby? We've got limited space and so far, it's all been used to grow vegetables. All vegetables, all the time. 

But when spring arrived a few weeks ago, and the brassicas bolted, we noticed something wonderful happening in our backyard—something that was missing last year. 

See the bees?

Bolted and blooming broccoli plants.

They came, in multitudes, and were happily feasting on the broccoli blooms. It pained me to have to pull the broccoli plants to make way for the summer garden, but so goes the life of the backyard farmer.

See the bee?

Bees and butterflies—anything that pollinates—are wonderful bugs to have in your garden. They keep the ecosystem up and running and ensure that all the plants are happily pollinated.

Brussels sprouts and broccoli at the end of the season. Goodbye, brassicas...

Knowing how important these bees are, we are now planning a flowering herb garden. It will be a less structured, more colorful, sometimes edible, butterfly- and bee-attracting space with plants in every size, shape, and color.

I am so excited to get this new garden under way. Now that we have the summer veggies started, we can start work on this new bed. It's going to be in the backyard, and it will serve a double purpose: disguising the air conditioning unit. Aren't we clever!

We'll plant chamomile, lavender, rosemary, purple coneflower, and more. I hope to keep some perennials in the bed, and scatter annuals around that will change with the seasons: zinnias, poppies, ranunculus, and more.

What do you think we should plant in our flowering garden?

The baby pear tree boasts lovely blooms.

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Wordless Wednesday: Twisty Carrots and Forces of Nature

Well, not entirely wordless. 

This week I harvested the last of our winter carrots and came up with this gem. It's a lesson in symbiosis as much as it is a lesson in thinning one's seedlings.

Lovey dovey carrots. 

It's been a busy garden week. I built a-frame trellises for our cucumbers, snap peas, and pole beans from cedar. It took me about six hours total but these a-frames will hopefully last through plenty of gardening seasons.



A terrifying, awesome storm ripped through our neighborhood Monday night and sent this twenty-foot limb to the ground. We counted our blessings: nobody was hurt, and the City came out and took care of it (since it was resting on the electric line). Not to mention, our power stayed on and none of the gardens were harmed, either! Our little birdhouse needs minor repairs, but we are happy that it was as simple as that. That's the second twenty-foot limb that's been downed in our backyard in the last three weeks. Lesson: do NOT plant hackberry trees. Ours are nearing 40 years old and all need to be removed and replaced with native oaks or pecans.




Lately my mantra has been, "No complaining about the raining." Because it's bringing us such gems as these:

Our first strawberry of the season! It was delish; we split it 3 ways. Fin got the stem.

Fingers crossed for snap peas.

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Freshworthy Friday: Ghostwriters, Death by Bacon, and Dark Rye

This week I'm less enthralled by pink slime and more interested in the lighter side of food news. Well, except for this first story. Oye.

Death By Bacon? Study Finds Eating Meat is Risky
NPR
Seriously, I have to ask... What's good for us any more? But this is a study I find myself agreeing with. Spoiler alert, the takeaway lesson here is, "Everything in moderation." The study shows that people who eat more meat are less likely to avoid dying (well, that's the gist of it). It also finds that processed meats (like bacon, sausages, and hot dogs) are riskier. It makes sense; this goes back to the notion of eating pure, whole foods. A sustainable diet. Hmm, who knew?

I Was a Cookbook Ghostwriter
Julia Moskin, NY Times
This isn't so much newsworthy as it is just fascinating. As someone who, one day, would love to write a cookbook, this is an interesting glimpse into the behind-the-scenes. Maybe I'll ghostwrite, but I'd much rather be the person on the cover, touting my homegrown, home-cooked dinners. The only thing that baffles me is all the recipe testing. Oye, to have time to do that... What about you?

Dark Rye
Whole Foods
It should come as no surprise that I'm a huge fan of Whole Foods. Those folks have it down, and are always putting something out there that is exactly what I want to eat/read/see/hear. This week they launched their online magazine, Dark Rye. It's hip and refreshing, so check it out!

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Have Your Cornbread and Eat it Too

Texas never can make up her mighty mind. One minute, we're all frolicking around at kite festivals in shorts and flip-flops. The next, rain rolls in and the temperature drops 18 degrees in one hour, and we suddenly regretting wearing sandals to work today.

But the cold weather that blew in last week enticed me to the kitchen, where I had white beans soaking, a head of home-grown cabbage waiting for its debut, and a clean cast iron skillet beckoning from the countertop. Big night. Biiiiiig night.

I did what any sensible 20-something hipster would do: I threw on my PJs, texted the Hubcap our low-key dinner plans, and started making a meal steeped in my German heritage: Boiled cabbage and onions, white beans, and cornbread.

Healthy cornbread. With flaxseed.

I'll wait for a moment while you consider clicking on that ad over there instead of reading the rest of this post.

Let me tell you something: This cornbread will surprise you. It looks like a dry boring puck in the oven and it lacks the lovely golden color one normally associates with cornbread. But it's made in a cast-iron skillet, it's nutty, it's packed with ancient grains, and despite its aptitude for health, it is quite delicious.

So this cornbread is awesome because it's unconventional.

This recipe is based on Whole Foods' Flax and Pumpkin Seed Cornbread. I took the liberty of un-veganizing it, omitting the pumpkin seeds, and swapping the whole wheat for spelt. Here's how I did it, and if you want to ease in to the "healthy cornbread world," I'd say this is the way to do it.

Cornbread with Flaxseed and Spelt
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
1 3/4 cup spelt flour
1/2 cup stone ground corn meal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup nonfat or 1% milk
1/4 cup canola oil
4 teaspoons maple syrup

Preheat the oven to 350. Spray a cast iron skillet with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients (flaxseeds through salt). In a small bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients (egg through oil). Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the wet mixture, and stir until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared skillet and bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the bread comes out clean. The bread will just pull away from the sides of the skillet.

Serve warm, with butter if you must. Go ahead and put some honey on it, too, would ya?

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Healthy Homemade Larabars with Nutella

I'm not one for packaged foods. Most of the time, anything in a package contains so many processed ingredients, it's hard to refer to it as "real" food.

I'm also not one for health food bars because, no offense to anyone out there who makes/loves/occasionally dabbles in health food bars, many times they taste like birdseed.

But I do like Larabars, which offer simple and natural ingredients. The only drawback? They're expensive, and then you've got the whole package problem to deal with (who needs trash?).

I noticed a trend for homemade Larabars on Pinterest and my interest was, of course, piqued. Impulse shopping at the grocery store led me to pick up a bag of dates. The rest, my friends, are what we call "pantry staples" 'round these parts.

My first attempt at homemade energy bars made the husband ask for more. These are easy to make and give just enough of a natural sugar and protein boost to get me through the next meal.

Nutella Peanut Date Bars
2 cups whole, pitted dates
1 cup unsalted peanuts
2-4 ounces dark chocolate
2 tablespoons Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread
sea salt for sprinkling

Line an 8x8 square baking dish with parchment paper so that flaps hang off over either side. In a food processor, pulse the peanuts and chocolate until finely chopped up, like coarse cornmeal. Set aside in a mixing bowl. Put the dates in the food processor and pulse until they're finely chopped. Add the Nutella and process until it's fully incorporated. Finally, add the chocolate and peanuts back to the food processor. Pulse or process until a dough forms; it won't totally stick together, but that's just fine.

Dump the hunk into the prepared baking pan, and use the parchment flaps to press it down. Make it nice and smooth. Sprinkle the top lightly with sea salt. Refrigerate for two hours or freeze for one hour before slicing.

Variations on the theme:
Add cranberries, shredded unsweetened coconut, cocoa, or cinnamon. For a vegan version, omit the chocolate and use peanut butter or almond butter instead of the Nutella. Swap out peanuts for almonds or cashews.

Read more and find other adaptations around the web...
Girl Scout Cookie Larabars, Chocolate Covered Katie
Homemade Larabars, Foodie With Family
Homemade Larabar Recipes, Oh She Glows

The possibilities are endless!

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Fish Tacos with Cabbage Salsa

Fish Tacos with Cabbage Salsa and Black Beans

Opening up the meat and fish door again has led me to some surprisingly tasty fish recipes. Before my two-year stint as a strict vegetarian, I rarely cooked fish at home. For the last two years, I cooked meat at home twice, both times as part of recipe testing for a publication.

So it's been interesting for me to re-learn how to cook things. We're being careful to purchase sustainably harvested fish—if I'm bringing meat back into my kitchen, it's definitely going to be on my own terms, after all.

I have cabbage and cilantro begging to be used up from the garden, and this recipe was perfect for our tiny head of organic cabbage. My mom suggested this dinner plan, and I somewhat winged it. A bit of Googling, a little bit of Mark Bittman's advice, and an hour later, I had served up a fresh fish taco meal.

Cabbage Salsa

Fish Tacos with Cabbage Salsa

For the salsa:
1 small head cabbage, shredded or cut into thin ribbons (think slaw)
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
2 large jalapenos, seeded and diced
1/2 large red onion, diced
2 medium tomatoes, diced
juice of 2 limes
salt and pepper to taste

Prep all your ingredients and mix together in a large mixing bowl. Refrigerate until you're ready to serve.

For the tacos (adapted from Mark Bittman's instructions on how to pan-fry white fish fillets):
2 large tilapia filleta (or other white fish; the fillet must be less than 1 inch thick)
2 tablespoons blackening or Cajun seasoning
1/4 cup flour
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil for each fillet

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat for a few minutes. Meanwhile, combine the flour and seasoning together and dredge the fillet, shaking off the excess. Add the olive oil to the heated pan, and place the dredged fish fillet in the pan. Cook on the first side for about 4 minutes; carefully flip with a spatula and cook until the fillet is opaque and flakes apart easily. Wipe the pan out before cooking the second fillet.

Flake the fish apart and divide into corn tortillas. Top with the cabbage salsa and garnish with Greek yogurt, avocado, Cholula, and cilantro; serve with black beans to round out the meal.

This recipe makes about eight fish tacos on corn, or six on flour tortillas.

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Wordless Wednesday

Tiny garden carrots in a rainbow of colors.

Turnips and kohlrabi, ready for roasting.

Cabbage Salsa; recipe coming soon.

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Meat: A Reintroduction

It all began because someone (I'm looking at you, Katy Vine), had to go and write an article for Texas Monthly about two Austin pit masters. Leading up to its publication, emails would be sent around the office: "There's brisket in the kitchen. Mueller's and Franklin's. Help yourself!"

Being a vegetarian, I'd simply shun the kitchen for an hour while the meat disappeared. Colleagues walked back to their desks, taunting me with plates of moist brisket, singed on the edges. One day, after another email went out, I went to the kitchen and stared at the hunk of beef on the counter.

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It smelled like something I remembered so fondly—growing up, we had lunch at Louie Mueller's in downtown Taylor so often it felt like Saturday's church-going equivalent. I grabbed a piece of white bread (something that is probably worse for our bodies than a piece of meat, might I add), and dunked it in BBQ sauce.

A few colleagues caught me in the act. "I thought you were vegetarian?"

"It's just bread and sauce. I couldn't resist."

A few weeks later, I sat around a table at Stiles Switch BBQ with my entire family. They passed around the tray of meat while I was relegated to macaroni and cheese and coleslaw. I felt left out, shunned, passed over, alone in my non-omnivore (nominivore?) ways.

In more than two years of vegetarianism, I rarely ever thought I'd go back to the dark side. But suddenly, brisket was the only thing I could think about.

So after far too much soul-searching and debate, I settled on a new path. A new turn in my food journey. I was filling out paperwork for an acupuncture visit, and this question appeared on the page:

Are you a vegetarian? ___Yes   ___ No   ___Yes, but not that strict

I struggled to answer it and finally decided that a little meat, now and again, wouldn't hurt. Food is an experience, after all, and the answer "Yes, but not that strict," struck me as the perfect balance.

So I started simple, with salmon. It was terrifying and even though I'd made the decision, I was still conflicted. Then we went out for BBQ. I had one small slice of brisket that very well near changed my life. My Texan birthright (as one friend put it) was once again fulfilled.

In the last month, I've had BBQ twice, in much smaller amounts than I used to consume on my Saturday trips to Louie Mueller's. I have cooked the same salmon recipe twice, too, and quite enjoyed it. But 98 percent of the time, I'm still a vegetarian. I don't have any desire to eat chicken, actually; and while I'm sure I will soon be giving in to bacon, things like processed meats (lunch meat, etc.) won't ever be a part of my diet again.

"Yes, but not that strict" means I can make provisions for having wonderful food experiences. Like the rest of the planet, I am now excited to one day enjoy sushi at Uchi. At Thanksgiving, I'll put a piece of turkey on my plate, and better yet, enjoy a leftovers sandwich with sweet pickles that night. If Saturday calls for a trip to the BBQ joint, I'll enjoy my Big Red the right way—with a bit of fall-apart, melt-in-your-mouth, blackened-edge brisket.

So there you have it. I'm now a Vegetarian, Not That Strict. Thankyouverymuch, Katy Vine.

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