Oooh... pretty colors!

I figured that since it's been a while since I posted that I need to bring a peace offering. So, I bring you some photos of food I've made lately.

This was a portobella mushroom topped with brie and sun-dried tomatoes on a bed of bulghur. I brushed the mushroom with balsamic and pre-cooked it a bit in the oven before adding the brie. I added a little Italian spice mix to the bulghur. It was all delicious!

From Drop Box

This was a great stirfry with tofu, red cabbage, kale, and asparagus. I served it over brown rice, and it was delicious. It just tasted so clean and healthy and good, and I'll definitely make it again.

From Drop Box

Tonight's dinner was Corn, Potato, and Mushroom Soup from The Great American Detox Diet. I randomly paired it with a Roasted Veggie Quinoa salad from the same book. It's one of my favorite recipes.

For the soup, I used red potatoes and cremini mushrooms. A wonderful, hearty soup for a cold Memorial Day Weekend!

From Drop Box

Here are the onions, carrots, beets, and parsnip all cut up and ready to be roasted.

From Drop Box

This is the finished product:

From Drop Box

I spent some time making a list of meals today and doing a little shopping. I'll post that tomorrow in the "Meals and Checklists" section. I'm using the Moosewood cookbook this time around, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Organic Manifesto

No, not mine. Someone else's. Because my pile of books became bigger than my reading time would allow, I had to return several of the books to the library. I've put them all back on hold, though, so when I have more time on my hands (e.g. summer) I can read them. One of the only survivors of that purge was Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe by Maria Rodale.

I had heard the Rodale name because they're magazine publishers, but I had no idea just how important they have been to organic farming in the United States. Maria's grandfather started Organic Farming and Gardening Magazine and her father started much of the early research into organic farming. She and her late mother, Ardath, have continued that legacy and she has now written this "manifesto."

I can't go into too much depth as I haven't gotten that far into it. Not because it's a dense read or because I keep falling asleep reading it (okay, maybe a little), but because it's so depressing! I mean, the first two chapters are "We Have Poisoned Our Soil, Our Water, and Our Air" and "We Have Poisoned Ourselves and Our Children." See what I mean?!? And it's not just about the chemical pesticides and fertilizers we use on our food that then get into our bodies and the soil and water, it's about so many of the chemicals that we surround ourselves with. It's really making me think more about the antibacterial soaps, sanitizers, and other similar products in our house. We think the EPA and other regulatory agencies are protecting us, but that's not the case. They've changed their safety standards on certain products and have yanked funding on projects when it's clear the results aren't favorable. If they're not looking out for us, who will be?

I'm feeling that way about all I've learned, really. Agribusiness, marketing companies, and even our own government don't seem to have our best interests at heart when it comes to the food we're eating as a society and the products in our homes. It's really disturbing. I'm glad that I've started this journey and that I've learned so much, but I feel like I have a long way to go.

I found this list of "age-erasing" foods online today. I found it interesting and yet unsurprising that most of the foods on the list are ones I've introduced into my diet or eaten more because of what I've learned. The only one I can't do is yogurt. Ick.

Cause and effect? Or just correlation?

One of the things that stuck out to me in Food, Inc. was the statement that poverty is the greatest predictor of obesity. They really didn't go into the causes of that, but the film seemed to imply that it's due at least in part to the government's subsidies of corn and other crops. After I posted that in my notes on the movie, I had an interesting discussion with a friend about the potential causes of this correlation. Suffice it to say that there seem to be many forces at work.

In that same vein, today I read this article about pricey grocery stores and obesity. Basically, a survey was done of different grocery stores and their patrons' BMI. Whole Foods, one of the pricier stores, was found to only have 4% obese customers (BMI over 30). In contrast, Albertson's, the lower-cost chain, was found to have 40% obese customers. The article then gives the basic idea that people that shop at the pricier stores are more willing to buy more expensive, whole foods and are therefore thinner.

Because I am a masochist, I read many of the comments on the story. In the spirit of finger-pointing that is so prevalent in our society in this day and age, the commenters bounce back and forth between "It's their own fault they're fat!" and "The government/big business is making us fat!" without offering up any real insights or solutions. Not that I expected any treatises on maximizing health on a budget; I guess the average MSN reader isn't thinking about it on that large of a scale (no pun intended.)

As I said above, I think there are many forces at work here. Larger, cheaper chains like Albertson's do make shopping on a limited budget much easier. They have larger sales and lower prices in general. I can see that someone trying to feed a family on a small budget would do well to shop there. If poverty is a high indicator of obesity, then it stands to reason that a store with lower prices will see more people that are obese.

That said, people that are shopping at PCC or Whole Foods aren't necessarily willing to spend more money for the same exact product. What they're buying at PCC is usually organic and sometimes local. Plus, PCC has a larger selection of fruits and veggies than does Albertson's. So, the argument that it's just rich people spending more money on a bunch of conventionally-farmed celery doesn't hold water. Not entirely, anyway.

I do think processed food does have a lot to do with it. Processed foods are not necessarily cheaper than say some brown rice and broccoli, but it gives you the idea that you're getting a meal in a box and I can see how that would be appealing. Albertson's is rife with those products and all of the additives and fattening ingredients that go with them. On the other hand, PCC has less processed food, and that that it has tends to be better for you, with whole grains and less sugar. So, people buying there would be consuming fewer calories and fat grams, theoretically.

I also have to admit there's probably a status thing about shopping at PCC too. I honestly like being able to say that the potluck dish I bring is from there. It would make sense that people that seek out such status in their shopping would also want to have status in the way they look. Not that people that shop at Albertson's don't care about how they look, of course, but I've met a few people that shop at PCC and carry out their little reusable bag like it's a Coach purse. No one I know, of course. Just sayin'.

Anyway, it's interesting that they're looking at this. It seems like every day there are more and more such articles in the news. Obesity and the way we eat are always in the news, and I think that's a good thing.

Maybe I should be dressed as Ronald McDonald...

When I began this project, I had two major goals: 1) to change the way I purchased and cooked our food, both for our health and our environment, and 2) to expand Lauren's diet and move her away from the so-called "toddler foods." On count one, I'm having some pretty good success. On the second? Not so much.

I knew I had to start slowly, as forcing her off the chicken nuggets suddenly might be an incredible shock to her system. I figured that I would try small changes, like making some of her favorites with better ingredients. She would never know, right?

Wrong. Totally wrong. I started making the little pizzas that she loves with whole wheat English muffins, healthy tomato sauce, and organic mozzarella cheese. I thought they tasted really well, but Lauren disagreed. She won't even touch them, after the first bite helped her determine their impostor status.

So, I tried another tactic. I tried hiding some healthier things in the dishes she does like. I put flaxseeds in the peanut butter when she eats peanut butter and apples. Nope. She will eat them in peanut butter on waffles if I really try to hide them, but sniffs them out easily if they're not perfectly stealth.

Finally, I've taken the 1/3 approach. I've left her meals 2/3 of her old foods (which included a good dose of fruits and veggies in the first place) and tried to add something new. The other night, she has her regular chicken nuggets (and dip!) with mixed veggies and then I gave her mango with that. She tried a couple of bites and then mixed them in with the dip and put them in her milk, but it was a start, right? She hasn't been so kind to the other things I've put in front of her (quinoa, beets, kiwi, etc.), but she's being exposed to them.

I'm just trying for her to be willing to try new things at this point. Really getting her to move to a whole new diet, to be eating the things that we're eating is my goal, but this is a start.

The first taste is free...

I admit it: I'm slipping a bit. It just seems to be part of my personality that I will get a new project or topic I'm super passionate about, go full bore on it for a while, and then slowly let it go. I would be embarrassed to show you the number of unfinished craft projects around the house. Surely, some of you can identify with that. Right? Please?

Add on to that that work has been crazy busy lately and with the two half marathons I've done and the travel to them... I may have bitten off more than I can chew in terms of time and energy. My eating lately has been mostly in line with the principles I've been learning about; I've kind of been in survival mode with cooking and food prep. Not that I like admitting that, but there it is. I'm kind of a control freak if you haven't noticed.

This is something I care greatly about, though, and so I will persevere. I am continuing to plan healthy menus and cook the great, great majority of food at home. When I do eat out, I'm thinking carefully about what I'm ordering to make sure it's adhering to the principles in Food Rules. I plan only to be stricter with this this summer when I have more time to spend on it. Hopefully the learning and planning I do then will help me get through the more hectic times in the future.

Also, I had to return a couple of the books to the library unread since I ran out of time. As always happens to me, they all came in at the same time and I was drowning in reading material. Nice problem to have, though. I still have Bitter Harvest by Ann Cooper and have put the others on the hold list to come around again.

So, getting to the point, I originally wanted to make...

I was struck the other day by just how powerful the lure of sugar is for me, and probably for most Americans. I've been avoiding refined sugars almost entirely and using other sweeteners in moderation. While it was tough at first, I've adjusted to it and haven't really missed it.

The other day, I was at lunch with a couple of coworkers and they ordered Diet Cokes and on a whim, I did too. Drinking it reminded me of why I don't need it, but it did complement the meal (Mexican) nicely. What amazed me was how, instantly, I wanted more sugar. I wanted chocolate. I wanted more pop. I couldn't stop thinking about it and my body seemed to be crying out for it. It literally was instantaneous. I had heard that the Standard American Diet is essentially addicting and this demonstrated how true that is!

Not only did the effects last that day, but over the last two days, I've continued to crave sugar. I would kill for a cupcake right now. I don't like the idea that control freak me can be so controlled by food, but it's there. This is exactly why I don't keep that stuff in the house; I'd eat it all, all time!

Off to eat a piece of fruit to soothe the beast...

Protein intake check

In carrying on with the theme of protein this week, I decided to look at my protein intake for just a day. Since I read that most people get 4 or 5 times too much protein per day, I was interested to see where I fell in that. I was surprised at the results!

As a woman, I'm supposed to have 25 to 50 grams of protein a day (oddly wide range, huh?) For breakfast, I had my tea with milk (9g) and toast (5g) with peanut butter (1 tbsp.=3.5g) and flaxseeds (1 tbsp.=1.5g). I was shocked that my breakfast was already 19 grams of protein! I then had a cheese stick at lunch (6g) and the Thai Protein Salad with tofu (5.5g). For dinner, I had a portobello mushroom with brie (not sure) and bulgur (6g), plus a glass of milk (9g). So, just with that, I had had at least 36g of protein. That's with no meat and relatively little cheese or other major sources of protein. I can see how people overdo it.

Now, I'm not really going to change my intake, because I think it's fine with the running I do and for my lifestyle in general. I'm definitely not overdoing it. I was just shocked to see how quickly it added up. I will definitely consider my balance of protein to complex carbs and healthy fats.

A couple of news items of interest:

Someone on Facebook posted this article: 7 Foods So Unsafe Even Farmers Won't Eat Them. I was nodding along with these but am feeling a little panic at the canned tomato thing. I haven't yet found any non-canned tomatoes that are easy to store and use. Any ideas, anyone? (And yes, I know canning is an option. Just not a likely one for me.)

On a related note, I found this article "Pesticides on Produce Tied to ADHD in Children" quite interesting.

Checking In

I've been a little MIA the last week due to being just swamped at work with a big project. It's all done and submitted now, so I can get back on the blogging wagon. Not that I have a million followers of the blog, but I know a few of you are reading. Thanks!

I realized that though I've still been following the principles of The Great American Detox Diet, I haven't caught up on my reading! I'm in week 6, which is all about protein: how Americans eat too much of it, how dangerous some of the common sources can be, and what alternatives there are.

It seems like in society we're inundated with messages about getting enough protein. Just think about those milk ads and the whole idea of building strong bones and muscles. It is true that our bodies need calcium and protein for a strong body, but we Americans consume way too much of it! It's recommended that men eat between 30 and 60 grams of protein a day, while women should eat between 25 and 50. Most Americans eat between 100 and 120 grams a day, so well over twice as much as the recommended amount! Eating too much protein can have serious health effects, including certain cancers, asthma, and migraines.

Another issue is that our most common sources of proteins (animal products) aren't always the most safe. Many fish have high mercury content, which can be very dangerous if it builds up in your system. Cows can carry E. Coli, and chickens can carry salmonella. Many cows are treated with rBGH, a growth hormone to bring the cows to adult weight quickly. This hormone ends up in the milk and meat, and though long-term studies of this effects of this have not been concluded, it's certainly not smart to be adding unnatural hormones to our body.

In addition to the issue of protein, having too much calcium is bad. As I said, having calcium is necessary for strong bones and teeth, but too much in your system can actually leach calcium from your bones! How weird and counter-productive is that?

What it all boils down to is that people need to work on getting protein from non-animal sources. There are many yummy, healthy foods that are great sources of protein and calcium. Here is a great list of these sources.

Of course, now that I'm back, I will be off for a couple of days as I head to Spokane to run in the Windermere Half Marathon. I'll try to check in tomorrow, but I'll be back for sure Sunday night!

Outraged on behalf of cows

After eating a large piece of beef tenderloin Sunday night, I sat down to read the next section of The Ominvore's Dilemma. Big mistake. The section was all about feedlots and their effect on cows, and I immediately began to rue eating the meat.

It's interesting to think about, but humans used to only eat meat on the most special of occasions. The Easter ham or occasional steak really was something special; now, most Americans eat some sort of meat with every meal. To keep up with that level of consumption, this huge industrial complex has grown up to get the cow from the ranch to your plate.

I was surprised to learn that baby cows are actually kept with their mothers and grass-fed until they're weaned, usually before they're a year old. I had pictured tiny babies ripped from their mothers and put on lots very young, but that's thankfully not the case. They do get one blissful time on the ranch.

Once they're weaned, however, the story changes. They're trucked to a massive feedlot where they are fed roughly 32 pounds of corn every day until they reach their slaughter weight. Rough life, right?

Actually, it is, for a couple of reasons. First, as I've mentioned before, cows are not designed to eat corn. They have highly-specialized stomachs that allow them to eat grass; they're ruminants. Corn is much, much cheaper, though (Thanks, government subsidies), so down the hatch it goes. Feeding cows corn can cause them a multitude of health problems in their digestive tract and related organs. Officially, 15-30% of cows have an abscessed liver at slaughter, though the number is probably closer to 70%. Now, I've never had an abscessed liver, thankfully, but it can't be comfortable. Poor cows.

Their diet also includes certain binding elements and fats to get them to the weight and slaughter-ability that's so desired. What's really gross is that companies are allowed to feed cows fats of other animals, including cows. The practice was largely restricted due to mad cow disease, but it still does happen. We've turned the poor babies into cannibals!

The other reason it's a poor life for cows is the conditions of the pens. They live on a river of manure, which causes all sorts of infections, for which they're fed all sorts of antibiotics. (Which leads to antibiotic-resistance in humans.) The river of manure dries and raises a nasty dust that can harm their eyes. Terrible living conditions for any creature; it's ironic that we then turn around and eat them. You'd think we'd want better for ourselves and, consequently, for them.

Then there are a whole host of other issues that arise, whether it's the runoff from these plants that's poisoning local water resources and crops or it's that feeding cows corn makes them more susceptible to E. coli. And let's not even talk about the conditions in the slaughterhouses and the laxness of the USDA inspections and regulations. It's a wonder that people don't get sick more often!

It's important to point out that you don't have to become a vegetarian to do something about this. Choosing beef that is grass-fed is a huge step in the right direction. Many markets are beginning to carry grass-fed beef in their cases and you can find it in certain butcher shops. You can search using the Eat Well Guide to find local resources.

As for me, I'm continuing to work our way through the freezer full of cow we got from Idaho. It is all grass-fed, so I feel better about that. I'm not sure what I'll do when we've gone through it all; I'm just not convinced we need to eat meat. Stay tuned, I guess.

A Timely Topic

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last three weeks, you've seen the news about the oil rig explosion and leak in the Gulf of Mexico. 200,000 gallons of oil going into the ocean on a daily basis. That's 139 gallons a minute. I'm absolutely heartsick over this, and it's given me new reasons to work on eating better.

Originally, my reasoning for doing this was all about our health and welfare. Eating organically keeps pesticides out of our bodies and eating whole foods and more fruits and vegetables is just better for us. What I've found along the way is that eating this way has even bigger implications.

Nothing has brought this home more than the environmental disaster. The way Americans eat, our Standard American Diet, is hugely reliant on fossil fuels. Petroleum is needed to till the land, plant the seeds, harvest the crops, and transport it to sale. Then you have the fuels that go into processing and even more to transport to the store. Same for meats. The cows are born and raised to a certain age in one place and then transported to another to be slaughtered. The feed that helps raise them to full weight (corn) has to be brought to them. More fuels. The way we eat is making us more reliant on fossil fuels by the day!

Now, I get that unless you've growing veggies in your back yard, you're always going to be using fossil fuels. Eating organically and locally, though, helps to mitigate that. Ditto for eating seasonally. I've been doing better about the first two, but I need to learn more about seasonal eating.

Hopefully as this goes on, the media will help people think about all the things this oil is being used for in our everyday lives. I hate it that an environmental disaster is what it may take for people to wake up to this, but hopefully some good will come of it!

That said, I've been a little off the wagon this week. Between coming off the half, being sick, and J being out of town, I haven't done much cooking. Not much = once this week. I'm discovering that while all the changes I'm making are relatively small, I have to be really conscious about it and keep the focus on my eating. Next week, hopefully I'll be more able to do that.

Remember When Eating Was Easy?

Okay, so maybe it never was truly easy, but ignorance is bliss, perhaps? The more I learn about what we eat as a nation and the multitude of effects that diet has, the more confused and concerned I am. As my friend Marci said, "Sometimes it's exhausting to give a crap..."

Today's dose of irritation comes courtesy of the New York Times.

The first article I read was about the new growth of Round-up resistant weeds in our farmland. Basically, farmers have been using these "Round-up ready" seeds for years, ones that will allow you to spray a field with Round-up to get rid of weeds without affecting the crops. Farmers will do anything for a big yield, and this seemed just a gift from heaven. (Or Monsanto. Whatever.) Of course, Nature is smarter than we and has now begun growing these behemoth weeds that Round-up can't kill. Farmers are having to use even meaner, scarier weedkillers and old-school techniques of plowing and (gasp!) pulling weeds by hand. We've genetically engineered ourselves into a bit of a corner, haven't we?

I'm being flip, but it is sad that in our quest to produce more more quickly, we've messed with nature and it's fighting back. The even more ridiculous part is that we really don't need all the corn and soybeans being produced, so as I mentioned yesterday, we're doing all these unnatural things with the products. Hence the next article:

My second read is called,"For Corn Syrup, Sweet Talk Gets Harder". The gist of it is that corn syrup has gotten a bad rap in the media as of late and the corn industry is seeking to deal with that. For example, they're creating a new version of Hunt's ketchup that uses actual sugar, with a prominent banner on the bottle, I'm sure.

My irritation with this article was twofold. First, the article was one where I couldn't quite put my finger on what side the author was on, but I'm thinking they come down as not anti-HFCS, if that makes sense. There was an attempt to appear balanced, though it largely failed. They kept citing studies and quotes that say that HFCS is no worse than sugar. They also had more quotes of folks from the corn industry saying, "It's not us!!11! The consumers are just begging for it!!1!" (That's a direct quote, clearly.) Also, it's interesting that the header on the browser says "For High Fructose Corn Syrup..."

My second irritation is the underlying message. We are all so hung up on whether HFCS is bad or sugar is good that we're missing the big point: no sweetener is good for you in large quantities! Sweeteners have no business being in 90% of the foods they're in, much less in the quantities we're receiving. Instead of panicking over whether they should be eating Stevia or pure cane sugar or HFCS, people really need to just slow down, look at labels and really think about what they're putting into their bodies. If there's too much of something that's questionable, don't buy it! There are always alternatives. In fact, buying things that don't need labels (e.g., fruits and veggies) is always the best route.

Rant over. I'm going to go clutch my copy of Food Rules now and do some slow breathing exercises.

Thinking About Corn

Thinking entirely too much about corn, actually.

I'm reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and am really enjoying it. It's a dense read and takes all of the reading strategies I have to get through, but it's a topic I knew nothing about before and I'm learning tons. Ha. Literally.

The first section I'm reading about is all about corn and agribusiness. Up to now, my knowledge of corn has been limited to having seen it on the way to my grandmother's house in Kentucky as a kid and knowing a couple ways of serving corn at meals. Through the learning I've done in the last month, I've begun to understand a little more just how ubiquitous corn is in our diets, whether it's in its whole form, in HFCS, or in the meat we eat. Not to mention all the myriad corn products in our food, like maltose and xantham gum. Not that I really get what those are still, but I do know they're corn-based.

What I've learned in the first section of this book, though, is just how much the U.S. government has helped create all the cheap corn and cheap corn products that are flooding our market. I'd heard of farm subsidies growing up, and understood that they helped farmers with the expensive business of farming. What I didn't know what just how much some products, namely corn and soybeans, are subsidized.

It turns out that the government pays corn farmers the difference between the price they can get for their corn at the grain elevators and what the national minimum price is. For example, if the grain elevator is only paying $1.10 per bushel and the national price is $1.84, the farmer will get a check for $0.74 per bushel they sell. Now, multiply that times, well, a lot and you can see how this adds up. What happens, then, is that farmers set aside more and more acreage for corn and try to get higher and higher yields so they can make money. So, while these deficit payments were originally supposed to help farmers and the supply at the same time, it's ended up hurting both. The farmers are going deeper into debt to raise their yields and keep up production and the supply is flooded, meaning we have way too much corn in the world and we have to find ways of using it up.

What this means is that the scientists are always trying to figure out ways of making corn into new things. Hence, HFCS and all the other corn derivatives are being produced and shoved into just about every product imaginable. Ethanol is being produced and being put into our gas for our cars. (Does this mean we're paying for it twice, with the original subsidy and again with the tax we pay at the pump?) Also, cows and other animals (think: salmon) are being taught to eat corn which isn't a natural process for them. So, your dinner could be made up of corn-fed meat, side dishes made with different corn derivatives, and brought to your table by trucks fueled by ethanol! No wonder they've called us Americans "corn chips with legs"!

Dinner tonight was Indian food. Jeremy is out of town and I'm getting over a bug, so cooking seemed like far too much effort. Back on the wagon tomorrow.

Running Naturally

This weekend, I was down in Eugene, OR participating in the Eugene Half Marathon. Great town, great race, great time with a friend... pretty much my nirvana. The only bummer was not getting to hang out with my kiddo, but she was with Grandma and Grandpa and really couldn't have cared less where I was: they feed her Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes and therefore win.

Going into this race was an interesting one for me because I've been performing really, really well in my races lately and I was hoping to do the same here. My previous personal best in a half marathon was 2:14:something, and I'd had to walk a bit. My goal during this race was just to run the whole time and finish somewhere under 2:10:something. Well, the race gods were with me, and I ended up doing 2:01. And :17, to be precise. Wowza!

I'm going to go ahead and attribute most of this to my eating as of late and my eating right before and during the race. To be fair, I've been turning in better times since the beginning of the year and this little race series I did, but the times just in the last few weeks have really been above and beyond. I'm really starting to think that eating these whole foods and striving for the right balances of protein and carbs makes a great deal of difference.

I also was really careful about my eating leading up to the race, trying to make sure I had good complex carbs for energy and some protein to help my muscles recover. The day before the race, I ate my yummy oatmeal concoction and then had fish at both lunch and dinner with veggies and rice and bread. Oh, and a beer with dinner. :) (I'd really like to think that helped.) In the morning before I ran, I had bread (would have liked it toasted. Thanks, Best Western!) and peanut butter, along with most of a banana. I also was sure to hydrate really well. Feeling good, I went off for the race.

It's what I did during the race that was a bit different and seemed to work well. In the past I've used the various sports goo things and had Gatorade or whatever electrolyte beverage. In doing some reading on Runner's World, I saw a suggestion of trying honey instead of the goo. I did that on a few long runs, and I'm hooked. It tastes way, way better, is all natural, cheaper, and really does seem to work. It's lower in carbs than the goo, but you can just have 2 or 3 at a time. They go down really easily on their own, or some water is fine too. The only bummer is that the packets can be a little hard to open: I had to ask a spectator to open one for me in Eugene.

I also drank only water along the way and after the race, having read that the different electrolyte beverages aren't really needed unless you're a super elite athlete. Given that "super elite" is not a title I can put before "runner" in my context, I have been drinking only water and liking it. No artificial colors or flavors either, and certainly no extra calories.

All in all, this mixure of things I tried really worked, so I will definitely be doing it all again in two weeks for the half marathon in Spokane that I'm doing. Well, that and wearing my timing tag on my right shoe. I'm totally sure that helped as well.