YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Root Vegetable Fall Soup

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I got this recipe from a woman that I used to work with. The color is divine; and the flavor is a celebration of autumn: both sweet and earthy at once.

I arrived home one day to find my daughter frying onions. “What’s for dinner?,” I asked. “I don’t know,” she replied. “This is as far as I’ve gotten.” It reminded me of something my dad used to say. “First I fry the garlic and onions. Then I decide what to make for dinner.”

So here’s what we made with those onions.

1:  Fry 2 medium-sized diced onions in 2 tablespoons of olive oil on medium-low heat in a soup pot until soft and turning clear.
2:  Peel 3 beets, 3 carrots, 2 sweet potatoes, and 1 turnip.
3:  Cut all the vegetables into large chunks, and add to the soup pot.
4:  Add water to just barely cover the vegetables, and boil 15 minutes until a fork or knife slides in smoothly.
5:  Use a slotted spoon to scoop the vegetables into a food processor or Vitamix, and swirl until smooth.
6:  Return the pureed vegetables to the soup pot, and add one teaspoon each of thyme, salt, and pepper.
The soup was heavenly. I put a variety of spices–turmeric, cumin, rosemary from this year’s herb garden, and hot paprika–on the table for my guests to choose from, and the additions were wonderful in all kinds of combinations.
Hearty appetite!

Meat Prices: The Bill Comes Due

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You’ve likely noticed that food costs continue to rise, including the cost of meat, especially beef. 

It happens that I come from a long line of butchers. My paternal great-great-grandfather arrived in New York along with a huge pile of sons, including my own great-grandfather, and they quickly set up shop on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. It was the family business, and I imagine it had been that way in Podhajce, Poland, for many generations prior. It skipped a generation because my grandfather declined to participate, but only one, because my father, his son, then decided that he wanted to raise steer on a small farm in northwest New Jersey, which is exactly what he did for the next forty-four years.  Continue reading →

Grandma Rosie’s Lunchtime Kitchen

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My Grandma Rosie of blessed memory had a saying: “Never cheat your stomach.” Until the day he died, my father still quoted her regularly. He especially enjoyed reminiscing about the meals that had him racing home from school every day at lunchtime. My dad didn’t eat a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, and there was no breakfast cereal in my grandmother’s kitchen. Here, instead, are a few inspired examples of my grandmother’s own creative cooking style. Continue reading →

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Bean Salad for Your Next Potluck

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Running out of ideas for what to take to the next potluck?  Run no more…
Nourishing, beautiful, colorful, full of flavor, fiber, protein. And leftovers, if there are any, will make a superb lunch the next day. Continue reading →

Breakfast Candy Revolution

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Breakfast cereals have a praiseworthy origin. They were invented by health spa owners to offer an alternative to the typical breakfast of the time: eggs, coffee, and meat, usually in the form of beef, bacon, or sausage. Initially, breakfast cereal provided an economical use for the crumbs that fell to the bottom of the bread ovens at the health spas. The word “cereal” itself means, simply, grain, and derives from Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture. We’ve traveled a long way from breakfast cereal’s origin, but unfortunately it’s been in the wrong direction.

The first mass-produced cereal, granula, was a product similar to what today we would call Grape–nuts. The name granula was derived from “granules” or “grains.” Granula nuggets were hard, and they needed an overnight soak to make them palatable. Its name, Grape-nuts, is derived from the fact that these early cereals, which were sweetened with maltose–also known as grape sugar,–had a vaguely nut-like flavor.  For several decades, a small number of whole-grain cereals similar to this one predominated. Continue reading →

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Black-eyed Peas & Corn Salsa

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Years ago, I attended a special lunchtime celebration honoring a co-worker who was expecting her first baby. This salsa was contributed by an exercise physiologist named Heather, and it was so good that the recipe was distributed by popular demand to the entire department the following day. It was sooo good! Its simplicity is a huge plus, and the combination of sweet ingredients with mild sour notes and aromatics gives it wonderful flavor. Balsamic vinegar is sweet, corn is sweet, red peppers are sweet, onions are sweet, and tomatoes are sweet. Plus, I like honey. Continue reading →

A Hierarchy of Carbohydrates

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I’ve been thinking about an idea that I am calling a “hierarchy of carbohydrates.” This concept divides the enormous category of carbohydrates into discrete groups, each of which affects insulin release differently. Read on to learn more about what this means for you. Continue reading →

YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Basil-Artichoke Pesto

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This year I grew a very respectable herb garden in pots out on the back patio. Years ago I used to grow all kinds of herbs, but life got in the way, and all kinds of other projects grew up in their place, so I didn’t have fresh herbs for a long time even though I thought wistfully of those long-ago days and wished I’d gotten organized enough to grow more than the chives and lemon balm that grow wild all around my house. And then it happened. Continue reading →

Middle Schoolers Take on Big Food: A Podcast Competition

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This past spring, I had the honor of being interviewed by two exceedingly thoughtful middle-school students for a podcast they are developing with the help of their teacher. The students are hoping to submit their final result to a podcast competition supported by National Public Radio (NPR).  Continue reading →

Your Friend, Dark Chocolate

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A few years back, I stopped in at Fantasy Candies (on Mayfield Road, for any Clevelanders out there!) to pick up some cashew bark, and to say thank you for the confections. Back when Fantasy Candies’ Dark Chocolate-Chia Seed-Cinnamon bar first came out, I went through a phase of eating a piece every day. This went on for weeks. Also, unrelated, I once ate a piece of leftover cashew bark for breakfast, and then polished off the last bits of a bar of almond bark with my lunch the same day. According to me, Fantasy Candies’ blueberry bark is in the running for one of the great inventions of the 21st century. Of course, there are many other bark flavors at the counter and, yes, I’ve worked my way through quite a few of them. Not just me. Sometimes, dessert consists of a plate of berries sprinkled with bites of dark chocolate. Continue reading →