The Slow Cook

A new favorite blog -- The Slow Cook. This blog is written by Ed Bruske, a former reporter for the Washington Post who is now a personal chef, lecturer, and teacher. He and his family have turned their front yard into an urban vegetable garden and he records their gardening adventures along with some investigative journalism articles on school food and food industry issues. He also has lots of links to other good resources and videos.

I'm in the midst of reading "Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen" which are articles he wrote after spending a week in the kitchen of his daughter's elementary school.

You must go check out this blog -- so much great information! It's going to take some time to get through it all.

The Omnivore's Dilemna

Of all the food industry related books I've read over the past few months, I think this may be my favorite -- The Omnivore's Dilemma. It may have somewhat to do with my crush on Michael Pollan, but it really is an awesome book.

Pollan follows 4 different kinds of meals from the earth to the table -- industrial, big business organic, local organic and finally foraged. It is truly fascinating to see where our food is coming from and what impacts what food we eat has on the environment and our communities.

My favorite part of the book was when Pollan visits Joel Salatin's farm--Polyface Farms-- for a week. Salatin is one of the farmers that makes an appearance in the documentary Food, Inc, which is where I first heard of him. He is so passionate and quirky and just cracks me up. I mean, take a look at him. The perfect farmer!



If you only read one book on the topic, please read this one. My second favorite would be Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck (my review HERE).

Summer Loving

Did you forget about me? Here I am! The month of May just whipped past and left me spinning in its wake. I'll try to better about posting from now on.

Summer seems to finally be here and as much as I complain about the hot weather, I am LOVING all of the new fruits and veggies that are showing up at the farmers market and in our CSA box. The sugar snap peas were here and gone in a flash but I enjoyed every second, as with the asparagus. My favorites in the last couple weeks have been beets, cherries, peaches, nectarines, strawberries, tomatoes and we even just got our first taste of blackberries thanks to some generous friends who have a grandma with a blackberry bush.

A local pick-your-own farm has blueberries ready for harvesting and we will be all over that sometime this week or weekend. I am so excited -- it's one of my favorite times of the year, not to mention a certain 2.5 year old boy who is obsessed with blueberries!

I must go take the granola out of the oven but I'll be back soon with all kind of new goodies. In the meantime, eat good food!

Some Favorite Blogs Regarding Food

Just wanted to tell you all about a couple of blogs that I'm obsessed with right now. Reading through their archives is keeping me from finishing the books I desperately need to finish before they are due back to the library.

The first one is Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project. It is written by a public school teacher (I think middle school) who is annoymously documenting the lunch kids are being served everyday for the entire school year. It's really interesting and disturbing. There are also lots of guest blogs from all kinds of people -- other teachers, teachers in other countries (the guest bloggers from France and Japan are fascinating! Such a contrast with the US), other people who have anything to do with food service or moms trying to change food served in their own kids' schools. Apparently, she's pretty internet-famous! And she even got a call from Jamie Oliver himself, who just wanted to chat!

The other is Dissertation to Dirt "The story of a former PhD-track graduate student and her new fiancee, Travis, who decided to leave behind an emergent life in Boston to pursue a career in organic farming."

Go check them out! I have a few more to share, but I want to get back to reading. :)

In Defense of Food

Have I mentioned how much I love Michael Pollan? He is so fantastic. I just read his book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. The book is about this: Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

I've been trying to write a summary of the book now for an hour and I'm failing miserably to communicate anything. So I'll just quote from the book cover. :)

"...most of what we're consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it --in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone--is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances"--no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan called the American paradox: the more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

But if real food--the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food--stands in need of defense, from whom does it need defending? From the food industry on one side and nutritional science on the other. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat, a question that for most of human history people have been able to answer without expert help. Yet the professionalization of eating has failed to make Americans healthier. Thirty years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals."


I especially like his rules for eating. They include...

Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food

Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than 5 in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup

Get out of the supermarket whenever possible

You are what you eat eats too

Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism

Pay more, eat less

Do all your eating at a table

Try not to eat alone


Go read this book! And also, if you haven't already, you can read a ton of articles Michael Pollan has written for The New York Times on his website HERE. He is my my favorite!!

Challenge Re-Cap

Holy crap April went by fast! Did it for you, too? May just totally snuck up on me and I'm actually kind of disappointed -- there are so many other things I wanted to do for this blog during April! I'll just have to keep it going so I can get to everything. :)

So, I feel like my challenge to cut out processed/industrialized foods and only eat from-scratch food for the month of April was a complete success. True, there were a few instances where I was in a position in which I didn't have many choices and a couple times where I chose to sort of cheat. But overall, I'm very happy and feel like I'm in such a great space mentally and physically.

In order to be 100% honest, here's a list of my cheats:

2-3 Chipotle meals (traveling)
2 In-n-Out meals (also travel)
1 gelato
3 cupcakes
2 meals at weddings
2 meals at LA Farmer's Market
2 meals in Sequoia Nat'l Park
prepared chicken salad and rolls from Whole Foods

What I'm most proud of is making meals ahead of time to take on the road with us. I believe there were about 6 times where I made sandwiches and fruit to bring along to eat while traveling in the car or to eat as a picnic after getting some place. It was fantastic! Cheaper in some instances, and WAY better quality in all instances! We will continue doing this for sure when at all possible.

I learned to make my own tortillas (and can't ever go back to store-bought), have nearly perfected my yogurt making method, discovered an excellent pizza dough recipe, my butter making skillz are killer, we wasted much less food, and I learned to be even more organized in my meal planning and preparation, along with eating with pure enjoyment.


These photos are of yet another Jamie Oliver recipe, that I mentioned once before. This is the Shrimp and Avocado with an Old-School Marie Rose Sauce (his dishes always have these long names. :) I had no idea if we would like it or not, but we all ended up loving it. Very tasty. Can't wait to make it again, in fact!

So anyway, I hope everyone had a successful April and is inspired to continue eating well. I will keep on with my research and I'll share what I learn in case you want to continue on this journey with me! Coming up also are a couple more tutorials and lots more recipes. Thanks for visiting!

Classic Tomato Spaghetti

Oh bliss. This Classic Tomato Spaghetti was another perfect Jamie Oliver recipe. If you haven't bought this cookbook yet, go get it asap. Truly, everything I have made from this book has been incredible. I'm in love. It's all my favorite food to make and to eat.


And now it's May! My challenge is officially over. I'm working on a post recapping the month -- my trials and triumphs -- so watch for that coming soon!