Tag Archives: healthy food

June 11, 2012 · 7:59 am

Reader Q&A: Why Ditch Table Salt?

I was inspired by The Kitchen Counter Cooking School, but I was wondering why you’re so against iodized table salt? I’ve heard that people need a certain amount of iodine so it is added to salt because it’s impossible to get otherwise. Any clarification would be helpful! – Sally B., Madison, Wis.

Kathleen says: I’ve had a few people ask about this, and even one person posted a comment on the site. So let me clarify. I’m not against iodine in salt, I’m just not a fan of highly processed table salt in which natural trace elements have been stripped out. I recommend unrefined salt for home cooking instead of highly processed table salt. There are many affordable, healthier and ecologically better options out there, as I recently learned from the excellent book Salted by Mark Bitterman.

Unrefined or natural salts, such as mineral or sea salts, contain a variety of trace elements, often mirroring the makeup of these minerals in the body. These include magnesium and potassium, both of which help the body metabolize sodium. Bluntly put, unrefined salt has minerals that help you process the sodium better and flush out what the body doesn’t use.

Refined salt has been through an arduous chemical transformation to strip away these trace minerals to leave it pure white and pure sodium paired with an anti-caking agent and added iodine . So you get a wee bit of iodine, but none of the trace minerals that help you break down and use the sodium more efficiently. If you’ve had that container of table salt in your cupboard for more than a year, the iodine may have likely evaporated, too.

Another reader asked, “Why do they strip all the trace mineral elements out of table salt?” Only a single digit of processed salt – about 7% - is used in food or sold to consumers as table salt. The rest is sold for a wide range of industrial applications that require chemically pure sodium chloride. Pure sodium is required to make various pharmaceuticals, baking soda, fertilizer, injection-molded plastics and explosives, among other things.

Why do they add the iodine? Some areas of the world, including the Great Lakes region of the United States, don’t have iodine as a naturally occurring mineral, so in the 1920s salt manufacturers began to add it to fight against disorders related to iodine deficiency, notably thyroid disorders such as goiter and cognitive development in infants and children. But not every area is deficient in iodine; for instance, South Carolina is sometimes referred to as the “iodine state.”

The World Health Organization combats iodine-deficiency by promoting iodized salt globally. In a famine setting, the lack of iodine — among many other nutrients – is a serious health issue. At that point, what salt tastes like or how much it’s refined doesn’t matter.

But in most industrialized countries where people have an adequate diet, there are other options for getting iodine. Some argue that salt isn’t the most effective way to get iodine in your system, and eating foods with iodine are a better bet. Most dairy products contain iodine, as does seafood, kelp and seaweed, such as the kind used in sushi rolls. For the non-seafood eaters, you can also get iodine by eating spinach, asparagus, garlic, strawberries, lima beans, mushrooms, sesame seeds, zucchini, Swiss chard, collard greens and turnip greens. Another option is to take a multi-vitamin with iodine.

I used to advocate kosher salt, but after reading Salted, I learned that it too can be highly processed with most of the minerals stripped out. So I now recommend sea salt or sel gris for daily cooking which includes important minerals that your body needs, notably magnesium, calcium, potassium, and sometimes – depending on the provenance – many more. In my kitchen, I used a variety of salts and one of my standards is Trapani’s a natural sea salt with iodine from Italy.

Try this: Get some table salt and some sea salt. Put them in a bowl and compare the color, texture and taste. This is fun to do with friends; ask them to bring whatever salt they have at home if they’ve got something other than table salt. You don’t have to eat highly processed sodium that doesn’t taste good. Salt is used in such limited quantities in cooking, and life is short. Buy decent salt, get yourself some real flavor and extra minerals.

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July 29, 2011 · 6:11 am

Fish en papillote

Cooking en papillote (French for “parchment”) is a wildly overlooked method of cooking in America. It’s an easy method for a quick weeknight dinner that’s also elegant enough for guests. The smell that escapes when the package is reason enough to try it. This works well for salmon and mild-flavored white fish such as snapper, cod and so on. The best part? No dishes. Just throw the paper away. To assure thorough cooking, fish fillets or chicken breast slices less than a half-inch thick. This works best in parchment paper, but you can also use aluminum foil. Choose ingredients to get a flavor you like. For instance, to get an Asian flavor, use sesame in place of olive oil, add lime, cilantro and ginger to the package, and possibly finely sliced water chestnuts.

You’ll need 2 (10 x 12) inch pieces of parchment. I prefer to use the unbleached variety on the roll; it’s available at most supermarkets for less than $3. You can use foil, but don’t use too much vinegar or wine as it may react with the aluminum. Don’t use wax paper; it will become gummy and sort of “melt,” and frankly, no one wants wax with their chicken. Serves two.

Ingredients
2 (4 oz.) piece of fish or thinly sliced chicken breast
4 teaspoons olive oil
Few sprigs of fresh herbs (dill, basil, thyme, rosemary) or a ½ teaspoon dried
1/4 cup of white wine (or water)
Few thin lemon slices
Pinch of cayenne

Garnish (optional): About ½ cup of vegetable for flavor and garnish: shallots, onion, garlic, zucchini, carrot, broccoli, fennel, mushrooms, etc. each finely chopped or sliced

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 200 Celsius. Fold each sheet in half.On one half of each paper heart, drizzle half the olive oil (two teaspoons per sheet) and add generous pinches of of coarse salt and pepper. Add the fish and turn over to coat. Place herbs, lemon and vegetables on top of the fish and drizzle some wine over each. Crimp the edges of the parchment or foil and shut carefully to avoid allowing any liquid or steam to escape from the package during cooking. Place the packages on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes. Allow to sit at least one minute, and then open carefully.

Other good papillote recipes:
-Food 52: Shrimp and roasted tomato fettucine
-French Cooking for Dummies: Whole trout in foil
-Sophistimom: Chicken in paper

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July 15, 2011 · 11:24 am

Summer Berry Tart

Someone asked me recently why I didn’t study pâtisserie at Le Cordon Bleu. The honest reason? I’m not keen on most sweets and I don’t like chocolate. (Yes, you read that correctly.) If there’s a choice of dessert or a cheese plate, I always go for the fromage. When I started to review restaurants back in the 1990s, I routinely left a report on desserts out of my reviews. I was working then with Tom Sietsema, now the restaurant reviewer at The Washington Post. Tom said, “Kat, you have to write about dessert. That’s the reason why some people go out to dinner.” For years I trudged through all the classic dessert clichés, the endless variations on cheesecake, carrot cake and creme brulée. I died a thousand deaths by chocolate.

Last month, I was a guest chef at Rancho La Puerta in Mexico, a health-focused spa straddling the U.S. border at Tecate an hour from San Diego. As part of the hands-on classes I taught to guests there, I had to develop dessert. The recipe had to fit certain parameters: less than 80 calories a serving, no white sugar, preferably no white flour. I decided to use it an excuse to finally find a dessert that I like well enough to make it routinely. I’ve been making a whole wheat tart crust for ages based on a recipe from Clotilde Dusoulier’s blog Chocolate and Zucchini. I know they grow beautiful berries at the ranch, so after some trials, I developed this recipe as a way to balance out the fresh, sweet flavors of the fruit in a light custard sweetened by honey aided by a savory bite of pine nuts, a twist on a recipe in Patricia Wells’ excellent cookbook, At Home in Provence. My mother says this tart is now her favorite dessert, and I think it’s mine, too.

Mixed fruit tart with pine nuts, thyme and honey
with a whole wheat olive oil crust

This works best in a tart pan with a removable bottom, but if you don’t have one, a standard pie plate will be just fine. The dough makes enough to line an 11- to 12-inch tart or pie pan. Any mix of fresh fruit will work; it’s excellent when made with bananas. Makes about eight servings.

Crust
2 cups (250 grams) light whole wheat flour
       or a 50/50 mix of all-purpose and whole wheat
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 60 ml (1/4 cup) olive oil (or the oil of your choosing, provided it withstands cooking)
- 135 ml (1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon) cold water

Filling
1/2 cup (120 ml) heavy cream
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons raw full-flavored honey
1/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted, then crushed
Enough fresh summer fruit such as strawberries, peaches, raspberries and blueberries and plums to fill your pie plate or tart tin (typically about 3 cups when prepped)

About a tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves

Preheat the oven to 400° Fahrenheit (200° Celsius).

Prepare the crust: Grease the pan lightly or coat with cooking spray. Combine the flour, salt, and herbs in a medium mixing bowl. Add the oil and mix it in with your fingers until the olive is distributed evenly. It should have the consistency of coarse cornmeal. Add the water, mix until absorbed, and then knead lightly by hand until the dough comes together into a ball.

Turn the dough out on a lightly floured work surface. Sprinkle a little flour on the dough and a rolling pin, and into a circle large enough to fit your tart pan. Do this by turning the dough slightly every time you roll it, adding a little more flour underneath and on top when it seems on the verge of becoming sticky. Avoid overworking the dough.

Transfer the dough carefully to line the bottom of the prepared pan and trim the excess. If you’re using a traditional French tart pan, you can just run a rolling pin across the top to trim it against the sharp edges. Let it rest in the fridge for 25 minutes while you prepare the fruit and the filling.

Prepare the fruit and filling: Wash, pit, trim or slice the fruit needed, and cut into roughly similar sized pieces. Combine the cream, eggs and vanilla extracts in a bowl. Add the honey and whisk to blend. Toast the pine nuts lightly and stir into the cream.

Get the crust from the fridge. You’ll probably notice small white dots in it. That’s good. It means the olive oil and the dough are chilled through. Prick the crust with a fork. Neatly overlap large chunks of fruit in circles around the edges, working toward the center.

Pour the cream filling carefully around the fruit. Sprinkle the herbs on top. Place in the center of the oven and bake until the filling is firm and the pastry is brown, about 40 minutes. The fruit may shrivel slightly. Remove to a rack to cool.

French Tip: Press the crust into the pan with a small remnant pie of dough. It provides more uniform pressure and you’ll avoid piercing it with your fingers by accident.

Other fruit tart recipes I like:
-Bake or Break: Fresh berry Tart
-The Gourmet Project: Tart with marscapone
-Smitten Kitchen: Strawberry lemon tart
-Cheeky Kitchen: Super quick berry tart
-Gluten Free Goddess: Gluten-free berry tart
-You’re Gonna Bake it After All: Berry tart with sweet cookie crust

Amazon: My favorite French gadgets

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March 22, 2011 · 6:17 pm

Recipes: Deviled Eggs & Easy Thai Curry

Tofu veggie red curry

Tofu is widely regarded with suspicion by those on low-income budgets as it can smack of sprout-loving vegans, but I think it’s often overlooked. It’s high in protein, low in fat, endlessly versatile and inexpensive, about $1.50 a pound, or 38 cents per four-ounce serving.

What to do with it? Mike makes great Thai food, so I’ve never tried it. But inspired by the most recent issue of Fine Cooking, I wanted to see if Thai curry could work as a vehicle for budget cooking. At an Asian grocer, I found small tins of curry for 79 cents, a can of coconut milk (99 cents) and a can of chicken stock ($1.10). Since you use half of each can per four-serving meal, the three cans together can be leveraged for two meals up to eight servings.

Instead of using the more expensive lemongrass or lime leaves as an aromatic, I grated the skin of the lime (25 cent each) and then later added lime wedges. We loaded the curry with a pound of diced tofu and inexpensive vegetables including a quarter onion (20 cents), two large carrots (18 cents), a wedge of cabbage (20 cents) and a handful of mushrooms (25 cents). I skipped the fish sauce, kind of heresy for Thai food but I couldn’t justify the cost of getting a $3 bottle to use one teaspoon. I did add in some chili flakes in bulk (16 cents for a full ounce) and added in a few pinches for heat. I keep a basil plant on my window sill year round, so I chopped up a few leaves to add in at the end. I served our curry with a wedge of lime over brown rice, slightly more expensive than the white variety ($1.65 per pound versus $1.20, in bulk) but a better nutritional choice.

Skinny deviled eggs

Breakfast: We opted for what I refer to as “skinny deviled eggs,” a simple preparation of boiled eggs stuffed with the mashed yolks, dry mustard (purchased in bulk, in place of the Dijon I’d normally use), cottage cheese ($2.10 per pound) and salt and pepper. I decided I couldn’t live without coffee, and bought some in bulk to make a pot (60 cents). Cost: $2.40 for two servings.

Dinner: Ok, I’m just going to fess up. I had to go to a business dinner on Monday night. (I realize this ruins everything.) However, Mike was virtuous and ate half the leftover curry for dinner. We both had a small bit of cottage cheese and a carrot as a late-afternoon snack.

Cost for the day: If you counted the rest of the curry as my dinner and add in my coffee and our afternoon snack, $9.86. 

Observations: I’m a big believer in protein at breakfast, rather than carbohydrates such as cereal or toast, as it keeps you satiated longer. I missed fish sauce in our curry. I used packets of Sugar in the Raw shamelessly pilfered from a coffee bar, a tactic that I picked up years ago as a college student. I had major guilt eating out and while I ordered a simple chicken dish, even that single entrée exceeded our daily budget. I never cease to be grateful for a basil plant in the kitchen. Every few weeks, I start a new set of plants with seeds from a $1 packet I bought a year ago. Although there’s an investment in the soil, pot and seeds, in the long run growing herbs is a big money saver.

Recipe: Skinny Deviled Eggs

I love deviled eggs, but when they’re loaded with store-bought mayonnaise, they’re not so good for you. This is a guilt-free staple in our house, especially at breakfast.

4 large hard-boiled eggs
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1 ½ tablespoon Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon white wine vinegar
1/8 teaspoon Cajun seasoning (optional)
coarse salt, fresh ground pepper

Slice the hard-boiled eggs lengthwise and remove the yolks. In a bowl, mash the yolks with the other ingredients and season with salt and pepper. Stuff the mixture back into center of the eggs.

Tip for hard-boiled eggs: Start the eggs in a pan with cold water. Bring to a boil, then cover and remove from the heat and let sit for 12 minutes in the hot water. Shock with cold water and peel while still warm.

Recipe: Thai Curry

This is from the nifty “RecipeMaker” app for Thai Curry found on the Fine Cooking site. We make Thai curry regularly. It’s quick and you can keep the foundation for it in your pantry, plus it works well for using up leftovers. We normally keep some frozen lemongrass and lime leaves in our freezer, too. Although I didn’t use it, I left the fish sauce in the recipe.

½ of a 14-oz. can of coconut milk
1/4 cup red curry paste
1 cup lower-salt chicken broth, or homemade chicken or vegetable broth
1 tablespoon light brown sugar or light brown palm sugar; more as desired
1 tsp. fish sauce; more as desired
Couple pinches of red chili flakes
6 whole fresh or thawed frozen wild lime leaves
(or substitute 1 tsp. finely grated lime zest)
1 lb. extra-firm tofu, drained and cut into bite-size pieces
½ cup sliced button or cremini mushrooms (1/4-inch-thick slices)
1 cup sliced cabbage (1-inch-wide bite-size strips)
¾ cup sliced carrots (sliced 1/8-inch thick on an angle)
¾ cup sliced onions (1/2-inch-thick slices)
Lime wedges, for garnish
A few basil leaves, chopped
Fresh red chiles, cut into 1/8-inch strips or sliced into rings, for garnish (optional)

Shake the can of coconut milk or stir it well to mix the solids and liquids. Add a half cup of coconut milk to a 3- to 4-quart saucepan over medium heat. Reduce by half, stirring occasionally. This should take about five minutes. Whisk in the curry paste, stirring for about a minute. Then add in the broth, sugar, fish sauce, chili flakes, lime zest and another half cup of coconut milk. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.

Add the carrots and onions continue to simmer. After 2 minutes, add the tofu, mushrooms and cabbage. Simmer until the vegetables are tender, about three more minutes. Serve over rice, garnished with chopped basil and lime wedges.

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February 20, 2011 · 5:01 pm

Why you should eat insects

The Wall Street Journal reports that if you’re really serious about sustainable food, you might want to consider  adding insects to your diet. ”

Raising insects requires relatively little water, especially as compared to the production of conventional meat (it takes more than 10 gallons of water, for instance, to produce about two pounds of beef),” reports WSJ. “Insects also produce far less ammonia and other greenhouse gases per pound of body weight. Livestock is responsible for at least 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions.”

The thing that struck me the most was that you’re probably already consuming bugs as a part of your diet, yet don’t know it. “The average person consumes about a pound of insects per year, mostly mixed into other foods,” the story says. “In the U.S., most processed foods contain small amounts of insects, within limits set by the Food and Drug Administration. For chocolate, the FDA limit is 60 insect fragments per 100 grams. Peanut butter can have up to 30 insect parts per 100 grams, and fruit juice can have five fruit-fly eggs and one or two larvae per 250 milliliters (just over a cup).”

They mention the restaurant Archipelago in London, one of my favorite restaurants, but I’ve never tried the baby bee brulee, although anything coated with cream and sugar can’t help but taste great, right?

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February 7, 2011 · 3:01 pm

What’s in your fridge?

For my next book, my friend Lisa and I spent a lot of time with other people’s kitchens. There’s something deeply intimate about what’s lurks in the fridges, freezers and cupboards of strangers. As the site TrendCentral.com notes, the interiors of fridges have become happening places. Last November, NPR devoted one of its Food Photo Fridays to the subject, while the site FridgeWatcher catalogs what people buy and keep cold around the world.

In an interest of disclosure, I took a couple of photos of my fridge interior here at our Florida house this morning. It’s not thrilling. No foie gras, nothing too exotic except an aging bottle of champagne that we’re fairly sure is ruined from heat. We’re big SodaStream drinkers, so there are several bottles for our fizzy water and stuff to flavor it. Bread products are notably absent since we’ve been cutting down on carbs and gluten the past month. One of the produce bins is empty, save a bag of vegetable trimmings for stock. The freezer is fairly minimal: half a bag of IQF Florida scallops, a bag of organic peas, a last container of homemade chicken stock, a few portions of soup, a single grass-fed sirloin steak and a couple of boxes of Junior Mints (for Mike).

So the question now is, what’s in your fridge? What does it say about you? How much produce do you expect to throw out this week? Pay attention the next time you open the door. Thinking about your fridge can help you pay attention to what you eat, what you buy and what you waste, all important things that we don’t think enough about these days.

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December 22, 2010 · 8:54 am

Books from the No Knead Bread Phenomenon

We rarely buy bread anymore. As I write this, a vat of whole wheat bread dough languishes in our fridge. Mike made the dough over the weekend and has since fashioned four loaves for various holiday eating events. All of this is possible due to the no knead artisan bread phenomenon.

Most people credit the whole thing to Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery in New York. Food writer Mark Bittman documented Lahey’s method in  2006 in The New York Times. As Bittman noted, breakthroughs are rare in something as fundamental as bread making, so developing a strategy to transform freshly made bread into almost a convenience food counted as a major achievement. I tried Lahey’s version, included his book My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead
Method (Norton, 2009), and other versions from a variety of books on the subject, most notably Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (Thomas Dunne, 2007) by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. The result: a crusty, artisan-style loaf for about 60 cents. Mike loves the stuff, and plays the role of primary baker for our small household.

Numerous titles have sprung up on the subject, so just find one you like. In addition to the two above, there’s also Kneadlessy Simple by Nancy Baggett which utilizes similar techniques but with more variation such as beer batter and “pot” breads, and they’re virtually foolproof. I’m also a fan of Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day (Ten Speed 2009) which involves a process slightly more involved than other no-knead methods but yields more complex flavors. All these books are available at most booksellers, so I recommend checking them out and selecting the one that appeals to you most. Lahey’s book strikes me as the most soulful, while Artisan in Five as the simplest basic method. Kneadlessly Simple may have the most foolproof recipes while Peter Reinhart’s book is probably the most technical (although still simple to follow).

Why no knead bread books are important: We should all remember that traditional bread has just four ingredients: flour, salt, yeast, water. Here is the ingredient list for one best-selling brand of “whole wheat” bread:

Refined white flour, refined whole wheat flour, water, high fructose corn syrup, contains 2% of less of: wheat gluten, soybean oil, salt, molasses, yeast, mono and diglycerides, exthoxylated mono and diglycerides, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium iodate, calcium dioxide), datem, calcium sulfate, vinegar, yeast nutrient (ammonium sulfate), extracts of malted barley and corn, dicalcium phosphate, diammonium phosphate, calcium propionate (to retain freshness)

Aside from ingredients, there’s cost. A loaf of artisan bread at a nearby bakery cost about $4. I still visit that bakery for occasional loaves of complicated sprouted grain sandwich bread. Still, it’s hard to beat the smell of baking bread, not to mention the pride that goes along with fetching a hot, crusty loaf from the oven.

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December 15, 2010 · 10:13 am

The End of the Line

What would the world be like if there were no more fish? It’s a possibility based on current fishing practices laid out in the excellent, if devastating book The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and What We Eat by British journalist Charles Clover (University of California Press, 2008). The book is the foundation of an utterly depressing documentary The End of the Line that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009.

This book is one of the few that I would refer to as a “must-read.” Clover makes a compelling case on the impact of the voracious nature of “mining” the ocean’s fish. Consider this passage: “Imagine what people would say if a band of hunters strung a mile of net between two immense all-terrain vehicles and dragged it at speed across the plains of Africa…. left behind is a strangely bedraggled landscape resembling a harrowed field… this efficient but highly unselective way of killing animals is known as trawling… it is practiced the world over every day, from the Barents Sea in the Arctic to the shores of Antarctica and from the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean and the central Pacific to the temperate waters off Cape Cod.”

Why It’s Important: A major takeaway is that, like anything in a capitalist society, consumer demand drives action. So if consumers change their habits to avoid overfished species, it can make a major difference. This book completely changed my buying decisions when it comes to fish. I now shop for seafood aided by the Seafood Watch recommendations by the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

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September 1, 2010 · 8:14 pm

What I read at #ifbc

Last weekend, I took part in the International Food Bloggers Conference in Seattle, a three-day fiesta of food, drink, writing, technology and information overload organized by Foodista.com.

The cavernous warehouse at Theo Chocolates was draped in black, lit by strings of lights crisscrossing the room along with a handful of vaguely gothic chandeliers. We sat on gilded chairs. A sea of white roses leftover from a wedding held in the place on Friday night may have lent a gentle floral bouquet, but who could tell over the scent an endless parade of amazing food ranging from Top Pot donuts to Skillet’s blue cheese hamburgers to sous vide salmon to vats of red wine.  

Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock encouraged everyone to extend their blogs to offline events as a way to build community. James Oseland of Saveur confessed his addiction to food blogs. Debate arose on whether or not to give recipes away for use in books or use by companies. The incomparable Penny de los Santos inspired everyone with the way she lived life passionately behind a camera lens.

But what struck me most was the delicate fury that Twitter had on the proceedings. People greeted strangers they recognized from their Twitter photos. A steady clacking on keyboards and phones made up a kind of back beat as everyone “aggressively” tweeted the events. The blog BringtoBoil artfully describes the air during a session that I taught on writing with all five senses.

“My fellow participants shared aloud some gorgeous, evocative descriptions of these lemons. Kathleen wasn’t afraid to point out places where the descriptions bordered on erotic, even beyond the navels, protrusions, juices, and nipples. Because so many people in the room were already in mind-meld mode, the sexual tension in the room was palpable.  Reminder: we were writing about lemons.”

I could feel that on stage, too. Within the space of a few hours, the ubiquity of Twitter helped to develop a collective mindset. As a speaker, you normally look for physical cues from the audience; it’s difficult to tell what’s happening as everyone types intently, the light of screens reflecting expressionless faces. More than once, the audience laughed in unison at a silent joke. Penny de los Santos got a deserved standing ovation, but she almost didn’t need one since half of the room had already Twittered they were in love with her. (I’m fairly sure that I was one of them.)

In the past, I’ve left conferences in a daze, just trying to remember the names, faces and what was said. But when you go to a conference with 250 bloggers, you can locate reports on everything from what was in the swag bag to what people thought of the opening reception to a detailed list of food served to Publisher’s Weekly take on the event to a personal account of what one individual took away from the experience — all announced on Twitter. The ability to relive the experience, not to mention see it from different perspectives, made it all the more powerful. 

Most people don’t realize that I’ve been writing about the online world since 1993. I edited a magazine called Internet Underground in 1995-96, before I went on to work as an online editor for Microsoft until 2003. Twitter is often described as “passing notes in class,” and the concept of doing this online while gathered physically at an event isn’t exactly new. I remember a 2001 meeting at Microsoft where a huge group of people connected online via MSN Messenger, mocking and debating the various ideas offered in the heavily stage-crafted presentations. 

But we were tech world geeks. The folks at IFBC were food lovers from all manner of backgrounds. Yet, technology managed to bring them together as one in the form of a sometimes lusty, snarky, observant, charitable, feisty, bored or inspired beast. 

As one Twitterer noted at some point in the weekend: “So funny, people keep tweeting just what I’m thinking as I’m thinking it! #ifbc.” Exactly.

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May 18, 2010 · 9:46 am

What I ate this week, or what passes for dinner at my house

After my Bullshit Revisited post, I received mail and comments suggesting that what I was advocating was spending hours in the kitchen everyday. No, I just want people to cook. If it’s for 10 minutes or 110 minutes, I don’t care. Just leave the boxes on the shelf and prepare a meal with real food.

Real food doesn’t have to be complicated. As an illustration, here’s what I ate last week. A week ago Sunday, we had a friend over for a big fillet of salmon on a plank on the grill, with asparagus and pearl barley “risotto” based on a recipe from 101 Cookbooks.

Honestly, most of our meals are quite zippy. I leverage a couple of bigger meals cooked on the weekend for use throughout the week. I eat a lot of leftovers. We endeavor to use everything in our crisper drawers. Every other week, Mike makes a batch of no-knead bread dough that we dip into a couple of times during the week, most often on the weekend.

One thing that truly speeds up dinner? Good knife skills. It’s the most essential lesson that I learned in culinary school. If you’re lacking knife skills, find a local cooking school and sign up. It’s the best $35 to $50 you can spend in terms of feeding yourself better.

Would this look different if we had kids? You bet. I could never take a bath at midnight while making an artichoke. Would I cook as much if I lived alone? Probably. Mike and I eat different breakfasts. While I eat most lunches in my writing office, he goes out for lunch often, in part as an excuse to get out of the house. I made my own dinner three nights last week after getting home past 10 p.m.

Monday:
Breakfast: Small egg sandwich made from a slice of whole-grain toast, mustard, a slice of cheddar cheese and a fried egg. (Less than 10 minutes)
Lunch – Leftover barley risotto
Snack – An apple, some rye crisps
Dinner – at almost midnight after late night writing, so dinner on my own. A whole steamed artichoke, slice of leftover salmon and an arugula salad with spritz of lemon and bit of olive oil. It took couple minutes to prep pan of water, put in artichoke and then let it steam for 40 minutes while I took a bath, then spent less than four minutes prepping leftovers, salad, and lemon-butter for the artichoke petals.

Tuesday
Breakfast: Two-egg omelet with the last of the leftover asparagus, shredded swiss chard (six minutes)
Lunch: Last of the barley risotto, small side salad with half an avocado
Snacks: Cottage cheese, couple rye crisps, slice of gouda cheese, an apple
Dinner: Salmon cakes made with the last of salmon served with avocado dressing, steamed peas, green salad with shredded basil (25 minutes)

Wednesday
Breakfast: Greek yogurt with berries leftover from Sunday night dessert, handful of almonds
Lunch: Half packet ramen noodles in miso soup with green onions
Snacks: An apple, couple handfuls of Kashi high-fiber cereal, some almonds
Late-night dinner after long writing day: Stir-fry with results of vegetable drawer raid, zucchini, onion, carrot, asparagus and cilantro, plus peanuts and frozen peas. Served with brown rice that Mike brought home from Thai place.  (About 15 minutes)

Thursday:
Breakfast: High-fiber Kashi cereal with soy milk
Mid-morning snack: Half a mango, cottage cheese
Lunch: Steamed broccoli with grated cheese, almonds, leftover brown rice
Snack: Couple walnuts, a handful of Triscuits, rest of the mango
Dinner: Whole grain linguine with clam sauce (using canned clams), with garlic, baby tomatoes, parsley and fresh basil. Mixed green side salad. (Less than 20 minutes)

Friday
Breakfast: Omelet with tomatoes, arugula and garlic
Lunch:  Went out for chicken fajitas that did not sit well with either of us
Dinner: Whole wheat penne with tomato sauce spiked with garlic, olives, last of the arugula and fresh basil (about 20 minutes)

Saturday
Breakfast: Applesauce, later a protein smoothie with greek yogurt
Lunch:  Rosemary carrot soup (recipe test) with greek yogurt garnish, fresh no-knead bread. (Took about an hour total, but 20 minutes active time to prep carrots and bread)
Snack: Two plums, later a piece of bread with peanut butter
Dinner: Went out to eat with my regular date guy.

Sunday:
Breakfast: Homemade French toast (from leftover bread) with cinnamon and honey (about 15 minutes)
Lunch: Baked ham, baked sweet potatoes, fresh no-knead baguette. This took about 1 hour 30 minutes, but only about 15 minutes active time. Meanwhile, we prepped our rental apartment for viewing.
Dinner: Ham, fresh mozzarella and basil sandwiches (about eight minutes)
Late-night “30 Rock”-watching guilty pleasure snack: Little bit of homemade mac and cheese (12 minutes)

Now cooking: Big batch of white bean soup, carrot and swiss chard soup made with the leftover ham bone. Let beans soak overnight. Chopped up vegetables and put into refrigerator while watching TV. This morning, drained beans and sauteed vegetables while coffee brewed. Added in ham bone and water, some herbs and it’s simmering away.

Now freezing: four six-ounce batches of chopped up ham for future soups, omelets, quiche, pasta, braised dishes, whatever.

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