Pesticides in imported produce

I read this opinion in yesterday’s NYT. It says that migratory birds are dying in Latin America because of the use of pesticides there. This is bad for US consumers because this produce contains far more pesticides than we would allow if  it was grown in the US, yet it is allowed to be sold in our markets anyway. Whole Foods is good about listing the country of origin for its produce, but most grocery stores do not.  On the Ethicurean, I learned that the 2002 Farm Bill required mandatory labeling for meats and produce but meatpackers and supermarkets were able to get Congress to delay implementation of mandatory labeling and are trying to implement a voluntary program instead (source link here). So most consumers have no way of knowing where their food is coming from. This is pretty scary, seeing what problems we have had with China – poisoned dog food, toys with lead paint, and unregulated use of pig intestines for the drug heparin – which has lead to 19 deaths in the US because drug companies are getting the pig intestines from small producers who literally work out of their kitchen –not the sterile environment that you’d think would be necessary for drug manufacturing. Don’t get me wrong, I think global trade is good for the world economy as a whole, but the quality of goods is going to have to be up to our standards. Anyway, here is what the opinion says you should avoid buying from South America.

Pumpkin soup test-drive

I made the pumpkin soup from kitchn.com last night. It was really good, but my picture was blurry so you get a picture of El Jefe instead. My pictures often turn out blurry if I don’t have natural light, so I guess I better take more pictures of Jefe to put on here when my dinner pictures don’t turn out so good. In case you were wondering, Jefe is most decidedly NOT a vegetarian, but he keeps kosher – he eats Hebrew National hot dogs for dinner. When we take him out for breakfast, I order something with meat so he can have a treat. He loves pork, so he’s not very good at observing the whole kosher thing, but we aren’t Jewish anyway, so it doesn’t bother us.

Anyway, the soup was really good! I would only make one change – use smooth peanut butter instead of peanuts. Even though I used a spice grinder on them before I put them in the soup, they made it taste a little bit gritty, even after blending the soup. Otherwise, it was easy and tasty and I will make it again.

Another soup, from LA times

This looks good. I’ve never actually seen black kale at the supermarket, but I’ll have to look for it now so I can try this. Here’s the link to the recipe

Pumpkin soup to try tomorrow

I found this on one of my favorite sites - apartment therapy. They have a section and website called the kitchen. This looks tasty. I’ve been doing a lot of soups as part of our vegetarianism. Here’s the recipe link if you want to try it,too.

Cauliflower Soup and Broccoli Risotto

Last night I made Cauliflower Soup from “Sunday Lunch” a book I picked up in England a few years ago, written by Gordon Ramsay. I love watching Ramsays TV shows, but of course I would never want to work in his kitchen – I’m sure I would dissolve into a blubbering idiot in the first 5 minutes. But I like his emphasis on simple, fresh food, even though his one restaurant I’ve been to – The London in NYC, was anything but simple! Still, he understands that people need simple recipes to cook at home, and that’s what this book offers. The book uses English measurements, but I converted as follows:

(4 servings)

17 oz vegetable stock

17 oz milk

2 pinches of saffron strands

salt and pepper

1 head of cauliflower, chopped into florets

2 T butter

2 T chopped parsley

olive oil for drizzling

Combine the stock and milk in a saucepan and add a pinch of saffron and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then add the cauliflower florets. Lower the heat and simmer 5 -8 minutes until the cauliflower is tender. 

 

Using a slotted spoon, take out 1/4 of the cauliflower, drain and set aside. Put the remaining cauliflower in the blender, adding enough cooking liquid to make a puree (this can be done in 2 batches if your blender is small).

Return the puree to the pan and add enough cooking liquid to make a soupy consistency. Add another pinch of saffron and reheat, seasoning with salt and pepper.

Melt the butter in a pan and add the reserved cauliflower and saute until golden brown. You can add half the parsley if you’re using it and saute that, too (I don’t always use parsley in recipes – it’s kind of pain and I don’t think you gain that much for the effort).

Place sauteed cauliflower in the center of soup bowl then pour in the soup, drizzling with olive oil before serving.

I forgot to drain my reserved cauliflower this time, so it didn’t look as nice as the picture in the book (first picture), but it was still tasty, and it’s a pretty fast recipe. We also had broccoli risotto, from Bittman’s “How To Cook Everything Vegetarian” (sorry, no recipe – one is all I can handle!). Luckily, Mark was home and could help with the stirring. I love risotto because it’s so hearty yet the cooking liquid makes it taste so luxurious and velvety. I have another cookbook that says it has an advance prep technique that may make risotto a little less arduous – I’ll have to try that next time.

Why dining out as a vegetarian is so boring

This is why I never wanted to be a vegetarian. All you can eat in a restaurant is tofu, tofu, tofu, fake chicken, fake beef… yesterday we were in a vegetarian Thai restaurant and I saw fake shrimp on the menu! There are so many more things to eat than tofu. Of course, Asian cuisine does not have a lot of legumes in it, so I can see why they focus on tofu, but what about the other types of cuisines? They seem to rely a lot on tofu as well. I don’t cook tofu at home because I  don’t think you should eat too much of it, and I figure I will get plenty by eating out.

How do you get enough protein if you don’t eat meat?

This is a question that friends have asked me. I decided to do some research today on this issue. There is some differing information on the web, but I’ll go with the US RDA’s for the sake of argument. These say you should eat .8 grams of protein for ever kilogram of body weight (source link here). Using a pounds to kilo conversion calculator that I found , I determined that I should eat 53 grams of protein a day.

For breakfast, I generally eat a whole wheat English muffin with peanut butter and one egg. That’s 22 grams of protein right there. Then for lunch I might have an Amy’s frozen pizza or some vegetarian frozen entree from Trader Joe’s – 3 of these items currently in my freezer show an average protein amount 18 grams per serving. That 40 grams, not including a mid-morning snack (and I almost always have a mid-morning snack – usually trail mix, which means nuts, which means more protein). To make this easy, let’s say I have 1 cup of black beans, 1 cup of rice, and 1 cup of broccoli – a purely hypothetical example, because it sounds like boring diet food, but my real dinner would be a much tastier version of this. That dinner would give me 23 grams of protein for a grand total of 63 grams of protein for the day, which puts me over the RDA for my weight.

As you can see, I’m getting more than enough protein. I think people under-estimate how much protein there is in foods we don’t think of as being a protein source – like bread or broccoli.

Why am I doing this?

I’ve tried doing blogs before, but I always lose interest because I don’t know what to write about. For his New Year’s Eve resolution, Mark decided to become a vegetarian. He’s done this before a couple of times, but at some point, usually about Jan 6th, we go out to eat and he orders chicken and I remind him that he’s supposed to be a vegetarian – since he’s already ordered the chicken, and doesn’t want to annoy the waitress by changing his order, he officially ends his vegetarian foray. This year, my resolution was to eat more vegetables, so I bought Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop, mainly because Mark Bittman was quoted on the back cover, and I am a fan of his. I wasn’t completely satisfied with the book, so I went searching the bookstores again. Most vegetarian cookbooks turn me off -too much tofurkey and other fake meats. I believe there is a link between breast cancer and tofu (because of its phytoestrogens) so I don’t want to eat too much of it (that will be another post). I decided I should look for a vegetarian cookbook that focused on Mediterranean food, since my favorite types of cuisine come from this part of the world. I found just the thing – Mediterranean Harvest by Martha Rose Shulman. Lots of recipes that sounded good, but I kept thinking that I would love to find a vegetarian cookbook by Mark Bittman. Lo and behold, B&N had a display of How To Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman, with an enticing yellow and green cover.

Armed with 3 new cookbooks, I decided to join Mark in his vegetarian adventure-since he wasn’t going to eat meat, there didn’t seem to be much point in cooking it just for myself. I eat meat and chicken when I go out if I don’t see anything vegetarian that I like on the menu. Years ago, when I was working, I always looked for the diet-friendly dishes on the menu; now I look for the vegetarian options. I haven’t cooked meat since Christmas (I made a roast with yorkshire puddings which turned out really delicious). For the last 10 weeks I’ve made a lot of different meals of veggies and legumes. It’s been really fun trying different recipes, so I thought I’d start writing about what I’m cooking. And since I cook often, I should have a steady stream of stuff to blog about.