Healthy Recipes

Eat-out Nation

Each year, the US Department of Agriculture compiles and publishes data about America's food habits and purchases. 2005 represented a turning point in the way Americans eat: for the first time since statistics were kept in this area (i.e. 1953), we ate more foods prepared outside our homes than ones we cooked ourselves at home. While the US has been famously dubbed "Fast Food Nation", it seems like "Eat-Out Nation" might be a more accurate term.

For those interested in seeing the raw data, you can find it here

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Added on: Jul 29, 2007 in Category: From the Garden

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NHJ: The natural ingredients I'm thinking of are the products of Southern Italian fields and gardens, the vegetables and fruits especially, that have such extraordinary depths of flavor, quite unlike those available elsewhere in the world. I put this down primarily to geography--also climate to a certain extent. Mild rainy winters and hot dry summers seem to be ideal for vegetable gardening. But the volcanic geography of much of the south--I think especially of the areas around Etna in Sicily and Vesuvius in Campania, but also, lesser known, the Monte Vulture in Basilicata. In Campania they call the soil arapilla and it means specifically soil that evolves from volcanic ash. In some places it goes down as much as three meters and it is peculiarly rich in minerals. That to me is one source of the flavor of tomatoes from the slopes of Vesuvius or the great array of citrus from around Etna, not to mention the wine grapes from all three regions. 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While the US has been famously dubbed "Fast Food Nation", it seems like "Eat-Out Nation" might be a more accurate term. For those interested in seeing the raw data, you can find it here Category:   From the Garden 4. Garlic's Unexpected Gems   By Barbara Damrosch, published Thursday, September 6, 2007 in The Washington Post Some of the best garden discoveries are made by accident. Last fall a friend gave my husband and me some family heirloom garlic. Against the standard advice, he hadn't removed the flower stems, known as scapes, when they appeared, and when he harvested he pulled up the whole plants -- bulbs, stems and flower heads. Inside the flower heads were tiny bulbils (above-ground bulbs) the size of rice grains. We broke apart the regular garlic bulbs at the base of the plants and poked the individual cloves into the ground the way you normally would plant fall garlic. On a whim, we also planted those tiny bulbils, one by one, just to see what would happen. 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Ingredients 2 1/4 cups sifted all purpose flour 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 1 3/4 cups sugar 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature 1/2 cup vegetable oil 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/2 cup buttermilk 2 cups grated unpeeled zucchini (about 2 1/2 medium) 1 6-ounce package (about 1 cup) semisweet chocolate chips 3/4 cup chopped walnuts Procedure: Preheat oven to 325°F. Butter and flour 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into medium bowl. Beat sugar, butter and oil in large bowl until well blended. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla extract. Mix in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk in 3 additions each. Mix in grated zucchini. Pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips and nuts over. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Cool cake completely in pan. Serves 12. Recipe source: Bon Appétit, November 1995 Photo credit: Tania Ho Category:   From the Garden

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September 2007 Newsletter To read the full newsletter, please see: http://www.kitchengardeners.org/newsletterseptember07.html     Dear Kitchen Gardener, I hope you're either enjoying or planning bumper harvests.  We harvested a great crop of participation and awareness raising at this year's Kitchen Garden Day celebration and have put together a short video to share some of what happened that day.   While it'd be nice to bask in the warm glow of those harvests, October is too busy a gardening month to kick back.  In Maine, there's pesto and sauerkraut to be made, squash to be cured, apples to be picked, and tomatoes to be canned or frozen.  October also offers some of the crispest, best-tasting salads of the year just ready to be cut, rinsed, and spun.  Garlic traditionally goes in the ground on or around Columbus Day, but that day seems to be slipping back a week or two in our brave new, globally-warmed world.    October's also a month for adding new life to tired beds through the addition of compost.  For those of you who don't have a heaping pile of chocolate cake-like compost to dig into, autumn's a great time, the best time in fact, to start a new pile using all those vines and stems that have stopped delivering, fallen leaves, and the lush, nitrogen-rich grass clippings that suburban lawns so effortlessly produce in the fall.    The fall is also the best time for planning and starting new garden projects.  Last week, I paid a visit to the French School of Maine to help them identify a site for a new "potager".  Monsieur le Directeur and a group of professeurs directed me to a rolling, field available for the school's use just a three minute's walk from the school.  I felt a bit envious glancing over the grassy expanse, doing quick math in my head at all the food that such a large plot could generate.  While the field was gorgeous and had very tall weeds (usually a reliable sign of soil fertility), I urged them to scope out a spot closer to the school.  What holds for home gardens holds for school gardens too: the closer to the kitchen, the better.    We ultimately chose to site the new garden in a high profile and high traffic spot right in front of the school.  Not only is it the best spot in terms of sunlight and promixity, but it sends a strong message that health and good food are high on the school's agenda.  Once they've got their potager dug and their systems in place, they can consider turning the larger piece of land into a true farm capable of supplying their cafeteria.    This experience and some others I've been a part of recently have got me thinking about where our schools' priorities are now and perhaps ought to be.  A few years back, Maine boasted being the first state to prepare its children for the "information age" by providing every 7th and 8th grade student and teacher with a laptop computer.  Several years into the program, it's amazing to see how comfortable and skilled Maine's young people have become with this important tool.    This, of course, got me pondering new "firsts" for Maine and other forward-looking states or regions, in the US or abroad.  Which state or region will be the first to prepare its students for the coming "ecology age" by mandating that every primary or intermediate school in its area have an organic kitchen garden and age-appropriate garden curriculum?  Surely, there is no better way to teach health and healthy eating than to engage young people in the process of heathy food production.    As with the laptop initative, such an idea would surely encounter resistance, but what revolutionary idea hasn't?   Wishing you a delicious October,       PS: It's still not too late to win your chance at over $1000 in prizes through our Grow-Off Show-Off Contest, but the clock is ticking.  As an added bonus, the first 50 entries automatically win a free subscription to Mother Earth News.  Deadline for entries is November 1st.  Note sure what you can enter, then see here. Category:   From the Garden Jerk Pork Recipe: Jerk PorkRecipe Description: This recipe is a simple way to add a little flavor to your grilled pork chops.Related Recipes:Mushroom Garlic Pork ChopsRandy's JerkyFoodClassics.com Tools:Submit your favorite recipeSearch for a specific recipeBrowse recipes by categorySubscribe to our free recipe newsletterShop for cooking related books Category:   Cooks Discussion Litchi / Lychee Recipes The litchi, also known as lychee, is a fruit that looks like a strawberry with alligator skin. Its delicious sweet flavor is likened to a fusion of strawberries, watermelon, and... Category:   Cooks Discussion