Health

A much heralded character throughout history, the virtues of the pomegranate are extolled in the Koran, the Book of Exodus and Homer's Hymns. Punica granatum has been cultivated in the Caucasus since ancient times and continues to be popular amongst the antioxidant-slurping, fountain-of-youth-seekers of modern day. It's in season now in the Northern Hemisphere and widely available in supermarkets and Korean delis near you. The name comes from the Latin for "seeded apple" and, indeed, its leathery red shell breaks apart to reveal a spongy web nestling a treasure trove of glittering garnet jewels. So glorious is this fruit that the ancient city of Granada in Spain was renamed for the pomegranate during Moorish reign. The flavor is most often a combination of sweet and tart, with a mouth-puckering quality from the tannins contained in the juice of the aril, as the watery part surrounding the seed is called. These have a slight crunch to them and a hint of bitterness that adds to the complex flavor of this fruit, as delicious eaten out of hand as it is mixed fresh into salads, cooked in stews, or rendered into syrup to flavor all manner of drinks and traditional dishes from the Middle East.
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I'm not one of those people who's at a loss for what to cook. I have a repertoire of favorites and a list as long as my arm of new things I want to try. This is not bragging. There are plenty of things I do not have: Children. A Pulitzer Prize. Thin thighs. Yet on some nights even I don't have it in me to start whirling around the kitchen like a culinary dervish. On those nights, I just want something delicious to appear on my plate. But there's no takeout up here, remember? So I like to store a few tricks up my sleeve. Nothing wrong with a little help from your friends, though I can't recommend fast food. Nor canned food, for that matter. Not to harsh your mellow, but do you know about the epoxy liners in most cans? They're made with Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that can mimic human estrogen and is linked to breast cancer and early puberty in women. (The horror, the horror.) The Environmental Working Group tested canned food bought across America and found BPA in more than half, at levels they call "200 times the government's traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals." So much for those canned beans, my darlings.
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I have always had a passion for beets. Never a picky eater, I enjoyed these somewhat polarizing purple root vegetables from an early age. I can still remember the thrill of seeing my pee, subtly pink, circling the bowl. In college, I seemed to be the only one helping myself to Harvard beets, a sweet-tart staple of the dining hall salad bar. Although beets are now widely embraced as part of the unavoidable farm-to-table syndrome, they rarely make an appearance in our home as they are one of the few things for which my husband simply does not care. With their assertive color and distinctive earthy sweetness, they're not exactly the sort of thing you can just slip into a dish. Although I may roast a few on occasion for my own consumption, I am not in the habit of adding them to our morning juice or recreating the divine beet crumble from The Fat Radish. So you can imagine my delight when G urged me to go ahead and make that borscht I was daydreaming about. Not that I needed his permission, but it's kind of lonely to cook up a whole pot of soup and then have to eat it alone. Cooking for one is a very specific thing that lends itself more to simple pastas, elaborate salads and the occasional pot pie, don't you think?
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I'm about to pick a major bone, so if you're not in the mood—and I'm not talking about steak for dinner—turn away now. There's been a media pigpile on Paula Deen this week and I've got to get in my licks. It's not just that she has consistently used her Food TV show to promote unhealthy (and foul) food and been a longtime paid shill for industrial-meat giant Smithfield (whose inexcusably raised products are proven to increase the risk of diabetes), but now she's a spokesperson for Novo Nordisk's diabetes treatment Victoza (the 2010 FDA approval of which came amidst powerful evidence of a link to thyroid cancer), after disclosing that she was diagnosed with the disease three years ago. I find this all so deeply disturbing. And then I read a review by Nigella Lawson on the Piglet, Food52's wonderful Tournament of Cookbooks, where she writes about being suspicious of Heidi Swanson's excellent Super Natural Every Day "because I always fear a certain smuggery, and words like 'my natural kitchen' set off the alarm bells." How have we come to this place where natural and healthy are deemed "smug," and doughnut burgers for breakfast are the order of the day? As I used to say in junior high, gag me with a fork. I think you know where I stand on all this. Bacon and kale are both welcome in my kitchen...
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The opening of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco in 1979, under the auspices of the San Francisco Zen Center, forever changed the image of vegetarian food in this country. I began cooking from The Greens Cookbook in 1989, during the year I returned home to Santa Cruz as my father was dying from stomach cancer. It opened my mind to a new kind of cooking based upon vegetables, of which there was a constant, seasonal stream from our garden and local farmers markets. I also had a chance to eat at the restaurant, a beautiful spot overlooking the bay where a subtle message of health and harmony was offered in an elegant organic environment. The restaurant has since evolved toward a lighter, leaner cuisine, and I think the latest edition of the cookbook also differs somewhat from the one I have, but the essential philosophy of founders Deborah Madison and Edward Espe Brown remains intact. I have misplaced the book now (hopefully it's in storage somewhere), but I recall many of the dishes: saffron custard with eggplant; butter-fried potatoes with curry; baked polenta with tomato and gorgonzola; and a simple recipe for dried apricots poached with ginger and served cold with a dollop of crème fraîche.
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TO HELP STOP THE INTERNET CENSORSHIP BILLS, SOPA & PIPA, CONTACT CONGRESS NOW.
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Even though it may seem like I am the most organized kitchen bitch on the planet, there are definitely times when I reach for something and it's not there. Although once I was not above keeping canned (or boxed) stock in my pantry, I now resist that easy (and nutritionally challenged) out. Tragically, my source for chicken feet dries up in the winter and though I'll make stock from whole birds, it's just not as good. Dashi, the Japanese broth made with kombu and bonito flakes is one option, but its flavor is very specific. So when I came across a recipe in The River Cottage Preserves Handbook for a homemade vegetable bouillon, I got very excited. It's basically just a bunch of vegetables ground into a paste and preserved with salt. You stir a bit into hot water to make an authentically flavored stock for soups, stews, curries, whatever you like.
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Hoary old chestnuts. Those are well-worn aphorisms and anecdotes, close kin to the cliché. Curious as to the origin of this phrase, I searched online and found a long-winded reference tracing it back to an English play of the mid-19th century. I had thought it would refer to the fact that chestnuts, encased in their hard shells, last a rather long time. Did you know the chestnut is also called chinkapin or chinquapin? By any other name, it's still the nut of a tree that belongs to the same family as the beech and the oak. I'd never prepared chestnuts, nor particularly enjoyed eating them on the rare occasion they appeared on my plate. They're always so dry and chalky. People do seem to love them, though—Americans in their Thanksgiving stuffing, the French obsessed with their marrons glacés. Vendors with carts full of roasting chestnuts—a romantic throwback to sweeter times—are still a common sight in many cities (London, New York, Rome), but I have to confess that acrid and sooty smell has never been my favorite. So it's no wonder that the jar I convinced myself to buy last year sat forlornly at the back of my cupboard these long months, getting hoary. Then I came across a recipe for chestnut and parsnip bisque. A vegan recipe, no less.
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A while back, I believe I mentioned a desire to explore some lesser-known ingredients with you. I've been keeping a running list—including pickled tapioca, sorghum molasses and dried Persian limes—so do let me know if there's anything you're curious about. This is kohlrabi—from the German "kohl," meaning cabbage and "rabi," meaning turnip. It's a brassica, like cauliflower, kale and collards, and has all the same nutritional benefits: low in carbs and calories, high in fiber and antioxidants. It also comes in a deep purple color. Slightly sweet and fresh, with the faintest peppery bite, kohlrabi can be eaten raw or cooked. If raw, it needs to be peeled, but after cooking the tougher outer skin softens up plenty. With all the cozy soups and hearty braises we're eating at this wintry time of year, it's nice to have some cool, crunchy salads as a counterpoint, (here's one with celery root, and another with radicchio and grapefruit), so I used my kohlrabi in a crisp, sprightly slaw.
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On New Year's Eve, just before midnight, we went for a much-needed hike along a country road, four of us and a white dog that showed up like a ghostly spectre against the pitch-black night. We huffed and puffed in the bracing air, our stomachs heavy with brisket, risotto and many flavors of Jeni's ice cream, straight from the source and drizzled with various homemade sauces (salty caramel, bittersweet chocolate, raspberry). It was actually the second hike of the day for G and me. That afternoon, we'd walked deep into the woods as we had our annual chat, reflecting back on the year gone by and discussing our hopes for one ahead. 2011 got a mixed review, mostly due to a certain broken leg that took the better part of 8 months (and counting) to fully heal. We are both committed to getting into fighting shape this winter and planning some physically challenging trips in the coming years, possibly including climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. But in general we want to simply continue on our paths, doing more of what we love and getting better at it.Here are a few highlights from the year, as I shared it with you in this space we inhabit together. The first is the multi-tasking goddess, above, a new icon for my blog commissioned from illustrator extraordinaire Liselotte Watkins.
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