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Making Friends with Bacteria

I love yogurt, I always have and I always will. I confess, I buy my yogurt pre-made and then I try not to think about the plastic container that will soon up in the recycle bin. I bought a yogurt maker years ago, used it once and found the process a bit too time consuming and not really worth the hassle. Thinking about those plastic containers makes me feel a bit sheepish though, it sure would be nice to figure out a simple way to make yogurt at home, it doesn’t seem hard…

Harold McGee to the rescue! 

Posted by: Dan

Sweet Stuff

When I was a kid we weren’t allowed to have sugar because it was going to “rot your teeth,” “have you bouncing off the walls,” or “ruin your appetite.”

“Sugar’s” come a long way since then.  Mostly it’s come in the form of high fructose corn syrup which I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, probably because it’s in the media and my level of awareness has been raised http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/high-fructose-corn-syrup.htm , but also because there’s a 3 year old in my house and I look at labels a lot more than I used to. 

This stuff is everywhere!  Especially in things that kids most like to consume, like Ketchup, the favorite condiment of just about everyone under the age of 12.   We try to stay away from the overly process convenience foods where the high fructose corn syrup and other scary ingredients usually hide, but convenience is attractive because we have busy lives and things that take five minutes to cook…well, they take 5 minutes to cook, but that’s sort of another post.

Sugar’s not so bad when you make the choice to eat it, it’s when they sneak it in there and don’t go out of the way to tell you, that’s when it feels like a mean game.  And don’t we have enough to worry about already just keeping little people fed in general?

We’ve been working hard to keep the processed, sugary food out of our kitchen.  A major way we’ve done that at home is signing on with Community Supported Agriculture CSA http://www.localharvest.org/csa/ , we get a box of locally grown organic fruits and veggies delivered once a week at about the same price we’d pay at the store.  We always have a fresh alternative in the house now.   There’s still a box chicken nuggets there, too.  Real change happens slowly, but it does happen.

And if you’re curious about just how much corn may be hidden in your diet, here’s a great documentary http://www.kingcorn.net/

Posted by: Jessica

The Future Food Web

If you have followed this blog at all, you know we are locavores at heart – an easy stance to take in the San Francisco Bay Area – and we have high hopes for a future food system that relies less on industrialization and more on tradition. Wired has an interesting article on the future of food distribution and how small, local farms may benefit from an Internet enabled supply chain. More important than sales may be the impact that the Internet and in particular, social networking sites might play in elevating the profile of local farmers:

 “The potential effect is much bigger than the tons or dollar amounts of food that it impacts because it’s enabling people to know more about where their food comes and rewarding people who are taking those steps,” said Tom Tomich, director of the University of California, Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute.

You can read the rest of the article, here.

Posted by: Dan

Fighting Cancer with Food

Here’s a fascinating article on the role of food and nutrition in cancer treatment. Much of the advice is straighforward and intuitive:

“Patients who are well-nourished as they’re going through treatment have shorter hospital stays, are better able to tolerate treatment,” not to mention have better quality of life, says Colleen Doyle, nutrition chief at the society, which offers nutrition advice through its hot line at 1-800-ACS-2345.

At Open Hand, we offer prepared meals and groceries for clients living with breast cancer and we have sought to build our programs around the notion that proper nutrition in the form of tasty food is a vital part of treatment. Our grocery program has been particularly successful because it allows clients to choose from an array of healthy options while leaving the final preparation up to the client. We offer lean proteins like fresh and frozen fish, organic tofu and chicken breast. And we always have a rainbow of produce offerings like sweet potatoes, organic kale and chard and whole grains such as quinoa, brown rice and oats are in abundance.

Take a moment to read the rest of the article, it is a useful reminder of the importance of food to health and well-being.

Posted by: Flash

No Magic Bullets, Part Deux

The Atlantic has an interesting article on the FDA’s threats to regulate Cheerios as a drug if General Mills persists in marketing the potential health benefits of eating the cereal. Now, I’m not knocking Cheerios, I love Cheerios but let’s eat food because it’s food not medicine.

Posted by: Dan

Hooray for Pork Brains!

Or not. Our friend Paul points us to this fascinating review of pork brains in a can, something alleged to be food:

Only a handful of brave souls manned up and faced the brain, though everyone but Chang and Brett opted to go the Brains ’n’ Eggs route rather than eat brains straight from the can. Our courage wavered a bit once the can was popped open to reveal soggy pink chunks floating in a milky pink liquid, accompanied by a smell very akin to cat food and dead tissue.

You can read the rest of the story, here. Beware, the article contains some naughty language and horrifying descriptions of canned pork brains.

Posted by: Dan

Blind Taste: A food blog to rival ours

Our dear Andrew points us to a nifty food blog called, Blind Taste. We’ve been perusing the posts off and on today and liked what we saw especially this post on how to properly pour a beer. Ahh, beer.

Posted by: Dan

No Magic Bullets

As I write this, I’m sipping red wine, nibbling on some dark chocolate and popping Hoodia. I expect to live forever, thin and cancer-free. I’m kidding, of course but it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that each new day seems to bring news of another miracle food, guaranteed to grow hair, shrink bellies and prolong life. Acai is the latest wonder food to be foisted upon us and, as is often the case when it comes to “too good to be true,” the news is exactly that:

There’s some dispute as to whether acai juice has more antioxidants than the juice of other fruits; the Washington-based food industry watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest notes that acai is only a middling source of antioxidants, providing more than, say, apple juice, but less than pomegranate or Concord grape juice.

You can read the whole story, here. And to the larger issue, are there short cuts when it comes to nutrition? Well, yes and no, there is probably no single food item that will absolve you of your nutritional transgressions but there are some neat rules of thumb you can follow:

Eat the rainbow – eating fruits and vegetables of every available hue is a good way to ensure that you are receiving the most possible vitamins and nutrients.

Get the white out – which is to say, eat more whole grains and less refined flours. So, swap whole grain pasta for white pasta, whole grain bread for white bread and brown rice for white rice.

Moderation is the key – controlling portion size can be tough and we were all taught to clean our plate. Add in our tendency to eat on the go and you have the makings of an overeating nightmare. Step one is to slooooow down, give your brain time to get the message from your stomach that you are full; it’s just oo easy to eat way past the point of being stuffed.

These are just a few helpful tips and we’ll look to post more over time. Until then, beware of anything that markets itself as a “superfood.” Can it fly? Does it have x-ray vision? No? Then it’s not a super food.

Posted by: Dan

Resolarizing the Food System

Today is Earth Day (isn’t every day Earth Day?) and we were pleased to stumble across an article written by one of our favorite authors, Michael Pollan. Along wth Alice Waters, Mr. Pollan reminds us that some of the most progressive thinking on food and food systems comes from right here in the Bay Area. As usual, Mr. Pollan gets to the heart of the matter with plain, unadorned language that always serves to remind us that good food can and should be a simple proposition:

Resolarizing the food economy can support diversified farming and shorten the distance from farm to fork, shrinking the amount of fossil fuel in the American diet. A decentralized food system offers many other significant benefits: Food eaten closer to where it is grown is fresher and requires less processing, making it more nutritious, and whatever may be lost in efficiency by localizing food production is gained in resilience; regional food systems can better withstand all kinds of shocks.

If you have a moment, read the whole article and if you like what you read, buy his books, you won’t be disappointed.

Toward a Sustainable Food System

The Nimans’ are at it again. Today’s post provides the broad-brush outlines of a sustainable (non-industrialized) food system. The article is appealing for its optimism. You can read it, here.