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A Shopping Guide for Crackers

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In case you’ve been wondering which crackers should be on your plate, this printout will provide you with a head start. Click on the link above to download the printable PDF.
Rule #1: Don’t let the name of the cracker guide your decision making. Remember my special name for the information on the packages — advertising! “Stoned Wheat” sounds pretty good, right? Not. What about “multigrain,” which sounds like it should point you in the right direction, yes? No. “Organic,” “bite-size,” “natural,” or even “wheat?” “What about TLC?” That last one cracks me up.
Then, there’s one more thing. Notice also the big difference in the number of crackers that constitute a 1-ounce serving! Could be 3; could be 30.
I’m not saying anything here about the quality or the sources of the wheat and other grains used to make these crackers. More than anything, this post is a lesson in how to read packages.

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Lila’s Lovely Loaves of Almond Bread

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My dear friend Lila comes for dinner almost every Friday night, and she always brings a couple of loaves of this bread for us to enjoy. You might say that we are spoiled, and you would be right. This is a great recipe, flavorful and satisfying. She’s made it with almonds, and she’s made it with pecans. Both are great, though the crust of the pecan version, a cross between crunchy and chewy, is slightly more satisfying to me.
Dry ingredients:
  • 1 1 /2 cups almond or pecan flour*
  • 3 /4 cups tapioca starch (substitute arrowroot starch for a paleo version)
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 1 tsp baking soda
Wet ingredients:
  • 7 tbsp almond milk or water
  • 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
  • 1 tsp honey (substitute maple syrup for a vegan version)
  • 4 tbsp ground flax seed
Preheat oven to 350F. In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the wet ingredients and allow to sit for 5 minutes. In a separate larger bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Then add the wet ingredients to dry. If the dough seems stiff, add more water. Consistency should be more like a thick batter than a stiff dough. Don’t overmix.
Spoon into parchment-paper-lined small loaf pans. Bake 30 minutes. Turn out onto a cooling rack. Wrap up the loaves and share them with friends to enjoy together!  *Lila uses Bob’s Red Mill almond flour, but you could also grind blanched almonds (or other nuts) in a blender or food processor, as long as you’re careful not to overgrind them into almond butter. Pecan meal can be purchased at nuts.com.
Many thanks to Alea at myrealfoodlife.com for this recipe.  It won’t rise all that much since it’s gluten-free, egg-free, and yeast-free. But it’s still worth it. The flavor is beyond delicious and the texture of the crust is unbelievably good!

A Week of Chicken Soups & Chive Flower Vinegar

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Here is what you need to know as you read how I revived a spent chicken carcass this past week. From the time I was a young child, I was taught not to waste. It was a core value of my family. My parents were young children during the Depression, and my mother grew up with her own grandmother, an immigrant, in a 3-generation household. My great-grandmother was the family cook, and this is why my mother remains the only person in my world who knows how to make chicken fricassee with chicken feet. Her grandmother, for whom I am named, wasted nothing.

Now then, this week’s adventure. Last Monday evening I discovered a chicken carcass on the second shelf of the refrigerator. It had been pretty well picked over, but there was still lots of meat on it. Unfortunately, because those were bits that just don’t have a name, everyone else was done with it. But I saw opportunity.

I picked up the carcass and dropped it into a large soup pot. I covered it barely with cold water, and added 2 tablespoons of white vinegar. I turned on the heat to just 225F, and walked away. In the morning I found a lovely chicken broth, more full-bodied than expected, and almost sweet from the slow caramelization process initiated by the slow cooking. For breakfast, along with my scrambled egg, I ladled off a couple of scoops and drank the broth. I added a little more water to the pot to replace what I had taken. The broth continued to cook.

Tuesday evening I sliced a few leaves of kale into ribbons and put them into soup bowls. Then I ladled a few scoops of the hot chicken broth over the kale, which quickly turned bright green. I also scooped out a few large chunks of chicken. With white bean and cucumber salad, a great dinner. Once again, I added water to the pot to replace what I had taken, and the broth continued to cook.

The next morning, after I drank a mug of the warm broth, I added a few small white turnips (sliced thinly), a carrot (peeled and cut into large chunks), and a potato (scrubbed and quartered). Then once again, I left. Wednesday evening I ate a big bowl of chicken soup with vegetables. It was delicious. The soup was a warm caramel color now, full of flavor and body. The bones, especially the smaller ones, were beginning to crumble, so that if I missed one in picking out the chunks of meat, it didn’t matter, because it would simply disintegrate in my mouth.

The final morning of the experiment, after having filled a to-go mug with broth, which I later drank gratefully during an early-morning meeting in what turned out to be a freezing cold room, I dumped a large amount of kale into the remaining soup and left it to cook all day. That night, when I arrived home, I scrambled an egg and poured it into the hot soup as I stirred it in a large, slow circle. Egg drop soup, the final soup of the week. If I had had some tofu I might have cut it into cubes and added that, too.

At the end of this experiment, a few large bones remained in the pot, and not much else. Almost everything else had disintegrated. I had turned a chicken carcass, rich in calcium and collagen (the protein in the bones), into half a dozen meals. The collagen was what had made the broth so rich and full-bodied.

My great-grandmother would have expected no less.

[Note: I used plain white vinegar this time. Next time I will use the chive flower vinegar I made this week, which consists simply of stuffing lavender chive flowers into a glass jar and covering them with white vinegar. The resulting pink vinegar is visually stunning, with a magnificent aroma. You can see what I mean in the photo above.]

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Lemon-Sesame Kale Salad

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A kale celebration for kale lovers everywhere (!), this recipe comes (with many thanks) from Angela at vegangela.com. If you don’t happen to have any kale right now, you can still make this salad with any other greens growing in your garden or sitting in your fridge. Radicchio is a good addition, too.
Do I post a lot of recipes for kale? Maybe. But I know hardly anyone who eats enough green, leafy vegetables.
 
  • 1 head of kale
  • 1 cucumber (peeled, seeded, and diced)
  • 2 ripe avocados, diced
  • 2 medium tomatoes, diced 
  • 2 cups (1 can) chickpeas, rinsed well and patted dry
  • 2 Tbsp. sunflower seeds (shelled) for garnish
Dressing:
  • 1 /2 cup tahini 
  • 3 /4 cup water
  • 2-3 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
  • 1 garlic clove (med-large), minced
  • salt and pepper to taste
Prepare the veggies and beans, and toss into a large bowl.  Set aside.
In a small bowl, whisk together all dressing ingredients, adding just a bit of water drop by drop (one teaspoon at a time) if necessary. Remember the water in the veggies will thin the dressing further.
Pour the dressing into the vegetables, mix gently, and serve immediately.  Garnish with sunflower seeds.

A Four Million Dollar Gift

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Extraordinary news: The UCLA School of Law has received a $4 million gift from the Resnick Family Foundation to establish the Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy, with $3 million additional in matching endowment funds. The Resnick family has a history of commitment to projects that support the public health.

The press release states that this program is the first of its kind at a top tier law school. It “will explore ways to hasten improvements in the modern food system, focusing on reforming food law and policy for the benefit of the consumer. …This gift will support research, education and scholarship to promote public health and advance sound food law and policy.” It will address food safety, distribution, and access; reform of food law and policy.

Here, in a word, is what the Resnicks said: That since UCLA is located in the food capital of the world, and since California grows more food than anywhere else, and since the global food trade has changed the Western diet in an unprecedented way, with profound health implications, the goals of the gift include to help consumers understand what they’re eating, to improve the clarity and accuracy of food labeling, to broaden access to healthy food options, and, ultimately, to save lives.

That sounds good to me. The Resnicks are visionaries. Get in line, everyone. They were first, but they will soon be joined by more and more like-minded individuals.

This gift is expected as well to support consumer-oriented food law and policy, to help consumers learn to understand the food industry and central issues relating to food; to improve food labeling, to ensure food safety, and to increase access to healthy food. The Resnicks are committed to changing our awareness of food- and health-related issues, and to changing our eating patterns and associated health outcomes.

It’s time. It’s past time. This is good news.

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Roasted Broccoli with a Kick

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A few nights ago, I unwrapped five large stalks of broccoli from the tin foil in which I had safely wrapped them a full week earlier. If you did not know, tin foil is far and away the best way to store broccoli (and celery). I sliced off the bottom 1 1 /2 inches of the stalks, and then carefully peeled them all the way up into the florets. I sliced the stalk into 1 /2 inch slices, and broke the florets into generous, bite-sized pieces. Then I found this recipe from Lia Huber at Nourish Network. The addition of smoked paprika to this recipe gives broccoli, already a powerhouse vegetable, an extra-terrific “kick.”
  • 2-3 pounds broccoli (about 5 medium heads)
  • 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • generous pinch of sea salt
  • fresh ground black pepper
  • 4 medium cloves garlic
  • 1 /2 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Prepare broccoli as above, and place in a large mixing bowl.
Add oil, salt, and pepper, and mix very well until all pieces are well coated. Place broccoli in roasting pan, and roast for 10 minutes.
Smash and slice garlic, sprinkle on broccoli, stir carefully, and roast another 10 minutes. Sprinkle with paprika, toss again, and roast for 5 more minutes until broccoli is caramelized and tender. If you serve it now, hot and crispy, there may not be any left. But if there is, you may enjoy adding it to a bowl of rice and black beans, like I did for lunch yesterday.

For Memorial Day: Sweet & Spicy Baked Beans

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Before I left the house the other morning, I noticed that a mason jar in the cabinet had little more than a cup of navy beans remaining. I filled that jar to the top with cold water, and left. By evening, the beautiful beans had expanded to fill the jar completely. When I rinsed them I discovered, inside the jar, a lucky black bean that had stained several adjacent white beans a beautiful gray-blue. Why was it lucky? Wait ‘til you taste the recipe! Here is what I decided to make.

  • 1 1 /2 cups dry white beans (cannellini, navy)
  • 3 medium onions, diced
  • 1 /4 cup honey
  • 1 /2 cup ketchup
  • 1 teaspoon mustard seed
  • 4 shakes black pepper
  • 1 /2 teaspoon smoky paprika
  • 1 /4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 1 /2 teaspoon powdered ginger
  • 1 /2 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 /2 teaspoon allspice
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
  • 4 shakes hot sauce
  • 2 teaspoons salt

Soak the beans in water all day or night. Drain, and rinse. Chop the onions.

Add the beans to a slow cooker (crockpot or soup pot) and cover with water by 1 inch. Add onions, honey, ketchup, garlic, and all the spices. Allow to cook 8-10 hours.

Serve at your Memorial Day barbecue, or double the recipe to share at a potluck. If you put up the beans to soak this morning, they can cook all night and be ready in time for tomorrow morning!

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Pickled Veggie Salad (Curtido)

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When I was a little girl, I used to help my Grandma Rosie make pickles.  She pickled cucumbers, green tomatoes, and even garlic, which sometimes turned an interesting blue color as it soaked in the pickling juice. We loved her homemade pickles, and we still do in the years when I make them in the fall.
 
Curtido is popular in Latin American cuisine, and is great paired with stuffed tortillas. I never saw my grandmother make anything remotely like this, but I have a sneaking suspicion she would have adored it. It makes a festival of flavors on your tongue, and my Grandma Rosie was all about flavor. Here’s a great recipe for curtido, which is a little bit like sauerkraut but only lightly fermented, and with a whole lot of attitude.
If imagining how good this is going to taste isn’t enough for you, then you may be interested in the fact that fermented foods are especially good for our bellies. It turns out that fermented foods are rich in probiotics, the way nature intended. This recipe is basically a nutritional powerhouse.
 
  • 1 small cabbage, cored and outer leaves removed
  • 3 large carrots, peeled
  • 1 small-medium onion
  • 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled
  • 1-2 handfuls of kale, center ribs removed
  • 1 green apple, peeled and cored
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1 /2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 1/2 cups raw apple cider
  • 1 1/2 cups water (more as needed)
Shred the vegetables, ginger and apple in a food processor, or chop finely with sharp knife. Place in large bowl and mix in the oregano and red pepper.
Spoon the vegetables into 2 quart-size jars and press down hard with your fist or the back of large wooden spoon until they are packed down as tightly as possible. Leave a 1-inch space between the top of the cabbage and top of the jar.
Mix together the salt, vinegar and water, and then pour equal amounts into both jars. Add a little more water if needed so the liquid is rises just slightly higher than the cabbage mixture.
Cover tightly and leave to ferment at room temperature for 3 days. Then enjoy your curtido, and transfer any leftovers to the refrigerator.

The Crucifer Family: Leaves, Stems & Buds

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A few years ago a patient came into my office complaining of migraines. He said, “Maybe you’ll think I’m crazy, doc, but I only get these headaches when I eat certain vegetables.” Which ones? He wasn’t sure. Salads gave him a headache only sometimes, and usually only in restaurants. Cole slaw gave him a headache no matter where he ate it. The list seemed completely random, though it included Brussels sprouts, watercress, broccoli, and radishes. I grinned like an amateur holding a royal flush. The patient was naming only cruciferous vegetables.

Many common vegetables belong to the cabbage family in the plant genus Brassica. Edible plants in this family are called cruciferous vegetables, or crucifers, so named because their four-petaled flowers look like a crucifer, or cross. The importance of this family of crops for food cannot be overstated. Some cruciferous veggies include arugula (or rocket), bok choy, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, collard and mustard greens, daikon radish, horseradish, kale, kohlrabi, radish, rapini (broccoli rabi), rutabaga, turnip, wasabi, and watercress.

The Triangle of U theorizes that all the modern-day cruciferous vegetables evolved from three different ancestral plants that combined, in various configurations, to create many of the common vegetables known today. The wide variety of cruciferous veggies available today was also probably influenced by gardeners who, through the ages, selectively bred those plants that exhibited appealing characteristics. That is why some, like kale, are grown for their leaves, whereas others, like kohlrabi, are grown for their (swollen) stems, and others, like broccoli and cauliflower, for their buds.

Arugula’s unmistakably appealing and spicy flavor makes it a great addition to mixed salad greens in restaurants. A few years ago it seeded itself in my garden, and I loved it so much that, for a few glorious weeks, I headed straight for the garden after work every day to grab a few handfuls and stuff them into my mouth before entering the house.

Luckily, except for the patient whose unusual story I’ve shared above, most of us get to enjoy cruciferous veggies without suffering any negative consequences. Their versatility makes them a great addition to stir-fries, salads, soups and stews. Not only do they taste great alone, but their strong flavors also stand up against lots of distinctive spices, herbs, and garnishes. The sweet, spicy crunch of a pure, translucent slice of radish or kohlrabi is like nothing else.

Last year I found this fantastic sauce for chicken or salmon. First you layer the meat or fish over a thick bed of chopped, rinsed bok choy and cabbage. Then mix 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar with a tablespoon of honey; one teaspoon each of garlic and ginger chopped fine; one teaspoon of olive oil; one small tomato; and a few shakes each of salt and pepper. Spin together the ingredients in a blender, pour the sauce all over everything, and bake it at 350 until done. Cook approx. 30 min for salmon, or 1 hr for chicken, depending on the amount. Cover the pan loosely with tin foil about halfway through.

Or you could break apart a head of cauliflower and place it in a deep pan with ¼ cup water and 2 T olive oil. Add any combination of toasted sesame seed oil, lemon juice, soy sauce, cumin, coriander, anise or chili pepper, and cook on medium high heat for about 10 minutes. All of these additions have strong, distinctive flavors that taste great with cruciferous vegetables. Or you could grate some cheddar cheese over the cauliflower and cover the pot for the last 5 minutes of cooking. Or you could slice Brussels sprouts in half, spread them on a baking sheet with 1/2 teaspoon olive oil, and cook on high heat at 450 until the outer leaves begin to brown and caramelize. Just a few weeks ago, a 20-year-old told me that the Brussels sprouts we served that way were one of the most delicious things he’d ever eaten. No lie.

I am not a fan of ‘nutritionism,’ the widely shared but largely unexamined assumption that it is the scientifically identified nutrients in a food that determine its value in the diet. Nevertheless, for those who are interested, cruciferous vegetables contain lots of soluble and insoluble fiber, vitamin C, vitamin B9 (folate), potassium, selenium, and numerous phytochemicals. Cruciferous vegetables are also rich sources of sulfur-containing, cancer-fighting compounds known as glucosinolates. It is purely a guess, but I am going to conjecture that those sulfur-containing compounds were responsible for my patient’s headaches.

The scientific literature provides evidence linking the eating of a diet rich in cruciferous vegetables to decreased rates of a variety of cancers, including breast, pancreatic, lung, bladder, prostate, and colon cancer. Possible mechanisms of action include the presence in crucifers of several enzymes that protect cell DNA from damage, protect against oxidation of microsomes (a cell organelle), and counteract the cancer-causing properties of products of incomplete combustion like nitrosamines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Researchers at Oregon State University found that sulforaphane – a compound found in high levels in broccoli, broccoli sprouts (sold next to the alfalfa sprouts), bok choy, and brussels sprouts – may play a major role in preventing prostate and colon cancer.

So think about eating more broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables. It can’t hurt, and it might help. And they taste so good. As Michael Pollan says, “There’s something terribly wrong when it’s cheaper to buy a double cheeseburger than a head of broccoli.” Don’t let a fresh head of broccoli go to waste.

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Absolutely Vegan Vegetable Soup

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Once again, my friend Toby comes through with a delicious soup made with a creative combination of veggies and flavors. This soup is like gazpacho, raw and vegan; the creaminess comes from the cashews.
It’s great at room temperature, or stored in the refrigerator and eaten cold. You could take it to work for lunch, serve it with a green salad for a light supper, present it as the first course for a special dinner, or even turn it into a wonderful veggie dip, dressing, or sauce by using less water.
  • 2 red peppers, cored
  • 2 medium tomatoes
  • 1 cup celery, thinly sliced
  • 1 cup cashews, raw or toasted
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 Tbsp honey
  • 1 Tbsp miso
  • 1 /4 cup lemon juice
  • 2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • 2+ cups water
Blend together the first nine ingredients, and then add water to desired consistency.  If you feel inspired, you can garnish the soup with corn or chunks of avocado.