Just My Opinion by Steve

Have you noticed that restaurants are “squirting” their food onto the plate?  They use the kind of squirt dispensers that  held mustard for hot dogs at football games when I was a kid.

Lately, the fancier the restaurant, the more likely the main course will look  like a kindergartner’s plate project.  Squirty, squirt, squirt. I expect to see the sous chef’s first name scrawled below the entree. Call me old school, but I like my sauce “spooned” onto the plate.  Just my opinion.

One of our viewers shuns those  humble beans because of (ahem) gas.  Flatulence (see movie) occurs.  For some – bloating.  There are some simple things one can do when preparing and eating beans which will help eliminate the oligosaccharides. These sugars can exit the small intestines unchanged, leaving the large intestines to deal with them and in the process creating carbon dioxide (breaking wind).

One of the first things to remember when cooking beans is the phrase – low and slow.  Beans like to be cooked at a fairly low simmer for a fairly long time.  “Hurry up” is not a part of easily-digestible bean cooking.

Here are more tips:
1. Soak beans overnight and replace the soaking water with fresh water for cooking. I can’t stress how important soaking beans is.  Six to eight hours.

2. Don’t add baking soda to soaking water.  It destroys nutrients, particularly thiamine, and imparts a slight acrid flavor and mealy texture.

3.  Par-boil beans as a pretreatment.  Bring beans to boil, scoop off and discard foam which accumulates on top before continuing cooking.  Those contain the oligosaccharides.

4. Cook beans with a piece of kombu seaweed.  Kombu contains glutamic acid which acts as a natural bean tenderizer.  The kombu also adds vitamins and minerals, especially trace minerals, to any dish it is cooked with.

5.  Two tablespoons of the herb winter savory or four tablespoons of the Mexican herb epazote added to beans as they cook will reduce the effects of oligosaccharides.  Other seasonings that help are cumin and fennel.

6. Let beans cook slowly for a long period of time so they are very tender.  Low and slow baby. Can you easily mash the bean on the roof of your mouth?

7. Use a salt seasoning - sea salt, miso, soy sauce - at the end of cooking time.  Foodies argue about this.  Some say it makes no difference when you add the salt.  I always found it’s better to add it at the end.

8. Eat more beans. You can expect a digestive adjustment for 6-9 months when beans are new or infrequent in the diet.  Eat small amounts every few days to allow the body to get used to digesting them.

9. Improve your overall digestion.  Chew foods slowly and thoroughly.  Avoid washing foods down with liquids.  Eat fewer kinds of foods at the same meal.  Make sure your diet includes raw, pickled, fermented and cultured foods so you are getting plenty of enzymes and probiotics.

10. For persistent gas - try pouring a little apple cider vinegar or brown rice vinegar into the cooking liquid during the last stages of cooking.  Vinegar softens legumes and breaks down the protein chains and other indigestible compounds.  Another option is to marinate the cooked beans in a solution of 2/3 vinegar and 1/3 olive oil creating a salad-type dish.  Marinate while still warm.

Do you all have other tips?  Let’s add to the list.

You might consider applying for this fellowship.  For more details about this unusual, wonderful support of authors, see www.writerscolony.org.

The 2010 Duncan Eat-Write Fellowship
For Culinary Writing

The Duncan Eat-Write Fellowship will be awarded to an author writing a cookbook or work of fiction or nonfiction that involves a love of food or healthful eating.  This Fellowship provides a residency in the Writers’ Colony Culinary Suite equipped with full test kitchen.  The Culinary Suite and test kitchen were designed, sponsored by and featured in Renovation Home Magazine.

The Duncan Eat-Write Fellowship is a two-week fellowship entitling the recipient to free residency at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow in the historic arts village of Eureka Springs, Arkansas.  Each resident has a private suite with writing space, private bath, wireless and/or cable hook-up, uninterrupted writing time, dinner prepared five nights a week and served in our community dining room, the camaraderie of other professional writers when you want it, and a fully stocked community kitchen for breakfast and lunch.

Residencies may be scheduled through December 10, 2010 only and may be split into two separate stays.  Fellows may elect to stay additional time at the rate of $315 a week.

Please note:  This Fellowship will be awarded on a rolling entry basis, so applicants are encouraged to apply early.  Final application date for entry to be postmarked is June 15, 2010.  Fellowship applications must be accompanied by a non-refundable $35 application fee.

Just My Opinion by Steve

No one should ever be held accountable for damage to another person’s car bumper.  They are called bumpers for a reason.  They’re for bumping.  Some manufacturers have bumpers  that look like the rest of the car, perhaps counting on small minded people to be compelled to repair, or even replace them when scratched or “damaged”. Bumping is good.  That’s how you get into small parking spaces. Just my opinion.

Need another reason to buy organic?  A new study in the journal Pediatrics associates ingestion of pesticides commonly found on conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables with ADHD in children. In the U.S. 4.5 million children ages 5 to 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Led by Maryse Bouchard in Montreal, researchers based at the University of Montreal and Harvard University examined the potential relationship between ADHD and exposure to certain toxic pesticides called organophosphates.

The correlation may not be so surprising.  Organophosphates are known to cause damage to the nerve connections in the brain — that’s how they kill agricultural pests. The chemical works by disrupting a specific neurotransmitter, acetylcholinesterase, a defect that has been implicated in children diagnosed with ADHD. Many of the chemicals we use on our foods were developed during WWII as nerve toxins to be used in warfare.

Unfortunately many of the fruits and vegetables that children enjoy are on the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list.  Foods such as strawberries, celery, potatoes, blueberries, apples, peaches and spinach rank high in pesticide contamination.  The EWG also offers the “Clean 15” if buying all organic produce is not within your budget.

I was surprised by some of the comments on various posts announcing this study. Things like – “if you never go to the doctor, you’ll never get an ADHD diagnosis.  So don’t go to the doctor.”  Or the ultimate jaded comment “We’re all going to die anyway.”  Really?  Our children deserve the best we can feed them.  Worth every nickel to buy organic or grow my own.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

What about you?  Have you found dietary changes helpful in reducing ADHD symptoms?  Is it not that simple?  Would love to hear your experiences.

Baby food, dog food, cat food - why pay these crazy food manufacturers to make poor quality food for loved ones when everything you need is in your kitchen. Remember scraps?

Our national nutrition and food politics maven, Marion Nestle PhD, tackled this topic in her just-out-today book Feed Your Pet Right.  Thank you Marion!  Ms. Nestle reveals some of the secrets behind the pet food industry in a fair and even way.  Amazon description says, “A comprehensive and objective look at the science behind pet food, it tells a fascinating story while evaluating the range of products available and examining the booming pet food industry and its marketing practices.”  Plus there is a section on alternative ways to feed pets.  Here here.

I mean kibble is kibble, right?  Super-dried nuggets of stuff that was once living food.  One morning when I was speaking to a small crowd of parents at a K-3 school, questioning the ritual of feeding kids dry cereal for breakfast, a dad piped in to comment that the only difference between most kid’s cereals and dog food is that the cereal has sugar.  Ha.  The whole room got quiet because there was truth in his glib appraisal.

When I tell people that I have always fed my dog real food, they often roll their eyes.  How could I possibly know what I’m doing?  Trust me, Purina does not have your dog’s health and longevity as first priority. Why would I take the time? Honest it’s not  hard.   I just pick up a pack of raw meat each time I do my grocery shopping.  I chop extra parsley or cilantro or grate some extra carrot when I’m cooking and store it in a container.  There’s a battle about whether grains are right for dogs.  Certainly bio-engineered corn might not promote health but I have found that adding some freshly cooked brown rice to the food works well for my pets.  Eggs, bits of cooked fish or chicken scraps, vegetable leavings from making soup - all foods regularly used in the kitchen, nutritious for doggie.

Should we do a video on this?

Including the posts from our friends at  Seattle PI.com we had 42 entries to win The Whole Food Guide to Strong Bones.  Drawn from an orange bowl (not a hat) filled with numbered pieces of white paper the winner is #6.  Tracy wrote:

Mom, you are one of a kind
I love the way you can read my mind

Congrats Tracy!  We will get the book to you asap.

Next month we are giving away a stellar new book by Amy Pennington (her blog is  gogogreengarden) that just arrived on the scene.  It’s called The Urban Pantry and it is a gem.  Stay tuned.

Just My Opinion by Steve

I am never going to order another Caesar Salad “with chicken” again in a restaurant.  They give you way too much chicken!  It just indicates how cheap (and everything that goes with that) their chicken is.  They use it for filler! Chicken is the new potato! I like getting stuff cheap.  I LOVE getting stuff cheap.  But this has got to be an exception to the rule.  Just my opinion. Am I a snob?

Win the Whole Food Guide to Strong Bones
In honor of Mother’s Day we are offering another book give-away.  Yea!  The winner of the drawing will receive an autographed copy of Annemarie Colbin’s Whole Food Guide to Strong Bones.

Let me tell you what I love about this book.  Annemarie is a scholar and a student of nutrition.  She has an unparalleled ability to gather the scientific facts and research, apply some major common sense, and give the reader a clear, concise, readable guide. Bonus points for going over each macro and micro nutrient and laying out what it does for the body, how much you need, where to get it.  Thank you Annemarie.  You see, bones are not just about calcium, as the media might led us to believe.  They are malleable, living tissue. Sure we want strong bones, but we also want our bones to stay flexible, not brittle.  Her book lays out what are the best foods to eat to build bone mass, which foods actually weaken bones and why medication and estrogen therapy may not work.

So what do you have to do to enter the drawing???  Comment with two simple sentences about your mom (or your grandmom) where the last word in each rhymes.  Like “A big loving heart has Betty.  I drool when she makes spaghetti.”  That simple.  A rhyming couplet - you can do it.  This is a fabulous book that every woman should read.  Send us your mom day sentiment and get your name in the hat.

We’ll draw a winner on May 12th.