It’s been a busy fall here in Northern California with a strenuous work schedule the likes of which I haven’t seen since I was in my twenties. I don’t mind the hard work – we all do it sometimes – but when you’re pulling long days something has to give, and for me it was my cooking. Sure, I still made something to eat, but when I pulled out the pot to boil water for rice pasta for the third time in a week, after justifying a dinner of cheese and salami just the night before, I realized I’d reached cooking rock bottom. So, over the past few weeks I’ve been attempting to reacquaint myself with the kitchen by cooking a few simple-to-prepare, gourmet-ish recipes. The results vary day by day, and I am patient with myself in the process, but every once in a while I come up with something so good I just have to share. What was this week’s specialty? Something I’m calling F’Au Gratin. Come and cook with us! Continue reading “F’Au Gratin”
Month: October 2012
Vegetables, a Love Story
One of the best gifts I’ve ever received is a subscription to Nutrition Action Healthletter. This fantastic bi-monthly health report was a gift from my mother-in-law and its pages – filled with current, detailed information on all things nutrition – keep me interested from cover to cover. The October 2012 issue has a particularly inspiring article about understanding the benefit of, and then scoring the nutritional value of vegetables. We hear the message all the time: eat more vegetables. But how do you choose what to eat? Eat what you love, but if you don’t love kale the information below may just inspire you to eat it anyway! Come and cook with us! Continue reading “Vegetables, a Love Story”
Arsenic and Old… Rice?
You’ve probably seen the recent news on high arsenic levels found in rice grown in the United States. As gluten-free eaters Jessica and I are big consumers of rice and its derivatives, so this news came as quite a shock. We wondered why arsenic levels are just being discovered now, and what it will mean for our diets. Realistically we understand this will be one of many “food issues” we face in our lifetime, so an all out panic and ensuing wide-scale elimination of this month’s offending food won’t work in the long term. Instead, we’re looking at the facts, weighing the consequences against other “food issues” out there, and setting a plan that will allow us to eat and live without fear. And, while this plan involves fewer grains of rice, we won’t eliminate the starch completely. We will, however, take precautionary measures with the rice we eat and use this as an opportunity to bring out our favorite, practical, non-rice recipes that allow us to explore some of the wonderful other grains that we can find. There’s the silver lining! Come and cook with us! Continue reading “Arsenic and Old… Rice?”
A Spoonful of Sugar…
Here’s an interesting piece of information: almost one quarter of all food and beverage ads viewed by children ages 2 to 11 were for cereals. This is according to the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, who, in 2009 issued a study called Cereal FACTS documenting the poor nutritional quality coupled with heavy marketing of sugar cereals to children, and challenged cereal manufacturers to do something to change this pattern. They’ve issued a follow-up study this year citing research that found not enough has changed. While some manufacturers have reduced salt and sugar in their products, total media spending to promote child-targeted cereals has increased by 34% and cereal companies continue to aggressively market their least nutritious products directly to children. We often say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but surely not if it contains one spoon of sugar for every three spoons of cereal. Read on to learn more about the Center’s research. Come and cook with us! Continue reading “A Spoonful of Sugar…”
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