It’s that time of year again those dog days of summer, when all you can think about is finding a shade tree and how fall can’t get here soon enough. It also means that we are coming into harvest season and all those beautiful vegetables filling your plate. I am giving you a taste of both autumn and summer with the recipes I am sharing today. In my last post, I spoke about how the carni world thinks all we vegetarians eat are salad. Well today, I will be showing you that sometimes that is correct. I am offering up a couple of special salads from the kitchen that would [...]
Rising Temperatures Raise Food Prices: Heat, Drought, and a Failed Harvest in Russia
Around midnight on Wednesday, August 11th, a group of commodity analysts will gather at a meeting site in the massive South Building of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Washington, D.C. Once they are assembled, the door will be locked. Cell phones will be collected. Phone and Internet lines will be disconnected. Short of a medical emergency, no one will be permitted to leave before 8:30 am.
USDA produces an estimate of world grain production, consumption, and trade by the 12th of each month. The gathered analysts will consult reports from a worldwide network of agricultural attachés, satellite images of crop vegetation, and the latest weather reports. The widely respected [...]
The Joy of Summer | Tomato & Basil Heaven
One of my very favorite parts of summer is having access to REAL tomatoes and an abundance of fresh basil! Tomatoes have to be one of the very most delicious foods on the planet. Summer tomatoes from the garden or the farmer’s market cannot be beat. Basil is just amazing and versatile in so many ways—raw or cooked. Try basil in a cheese omelette (and add a couple of slices of tomato). You’ll be in for a very nice surprise!
In honor of this fabulous pair, I feel inspired to share a couple of recipes that showcase their absolute harmony.
TOMATO BASIL SALAD
With invitations to many summer bar-B-Qs requiring us to bring [...]
The Population-Poverty Connection
Lester R. Brown
The 21st century began on an inspiring note: the United Nations set a goal of reducing the share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty by half by 2015. By early 2007 the world looked to be on track to meet this goal, but as the economic crisis unfolds and the outlook darkens, the world will have to intensify its poverty reduction effort.
Among countries, China is the big success story in reducing poverty. The number of Chinese living in extreme poverty dropped from 685 million in 1990 to 213 million in 2007. With little growth in its population, the share of people living in poverty in China [...]
Cars and People Compete for Grain
By Lester R. Brown
At a time when excessive pressures on the earth’s land and water resources are of growing concern, there is a massive new demand emerging for cropland to produce fuel for cars—one that threatens world food security. Although this situation had been developing for a few decades, it was not until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when oil prices jumped above $60 a barrel and U.S. gasoline prices climbed to $3 a gallon, that the situation came into focus. Suddenly investments in U.S. corn-based ethanol distilleries became hugely profitable, unleashing an investment frenzy that will convert one fourth of the 2009 U.S. grain harvest into fuel for cars.
The United [...]
Top Ten Ways to Cook Eco-Healthy
Get you and your family involved with the cooking and give your lives an eco-overhaul. Watch those lbs drop off whilst reducing your carbon footprint – and having fun (what more could you want?!)
1. Get your Five a Day – If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times, but getting your five a day is good for you (and the environment!). Filling up on un-processed fruit and veg helps your digestion, clears your skin, rids your body of toxins and keeps your blood-sugar level consistent – stopping you from snacking! The benefits of this are obvious. Un-processed food uses fewer chemicals, machinery, oil, energy [...]
You Can’t Go Back
How funny is it that we can go along for years and years blissfully ignoring truths around us? May it be health care, war, poverty—we choose to overlook anything we can easily get away with sweeping under the rug if we don’t think we’re really impacted by it.
My arrival into food awareness came on unexpectedly, but like a blast of fresh air. One day I was a semi-health-conscious mother of a handful of boys who very occasionally stopped by McDonald’s to treat the guys to a burger. Suddenly, I am conscious of the operations and impacts of the food industry on our health and our economy. Feed lots, poop in [...]
Unsafe Levels of Chemicals in your Canned Goods
Here’s a good reason why food manufacturers don’t want to test for harmful chemicals. If you test, you might find something you don’t want to.
Consumer Reports did just that It tested a bunch of canned juices, soups, tuna, and green beans and found bisphenol A (BPA) in almost all of them — even the ones labeled organic or bisphenol A-free.
BPA, you may recall, is a chemical in polycarbonate plastics that acts as an endocrine disruptor. How harmful is it? Debate rages. These new data will add to the debate.
CR says it found the highest levels of BPA in some samples of canned green beans and canned soups:
Canned Del Monte Fresh [...]
The time of year to do a quick check…
It’s getting chilly outside these days. This type of weather puts me into a purge mode. I’m not sure why, but the anticipation of snow makes me reflective of my living quarters. My focus this week is on my pantry. Through the past year, I’ve collected various foods– either for recipes that never got made or sales that hooked me into the consumer mode. Never-the-less my pantry is full and I have no idea what is in it. What a luxury! What an embarrassment! So my challenge this month– is to either eat or share the bounty I have collected. And to not purchase another thing until I have fully [...]
Yummy Sit Down Chinese Restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn
On Sunday as I was out and about with my photographer and sister-friend the lovely Janelle Tamara Bennett of Jantamabe Photography; we encountered an actual sit down Chinese restaurant worthy of blogging about in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn.
She had just captured a few shots of me at this cute little coffee shop called Connecticut Muffin when we looked down the block and saw Szechuan Delight’s restaurant front. See both I and Janelle’s stomachs had started to talk. She had spent the last hour or so taking photos of me for Lela Jefferson…the BRAND (stay tuned for more information about that.)
I had really wanted to treat her [...]