Making Wine

My husband came across an article in our local paper which featured three local wineries. One of them talked about having volunteers come in and help with the harvest, so he signed us up to go. Despite the hot weather, hard work, and sunburn, we had a great time. 

There were about 20 volunteers and we picked for almost three hours and got a lot of grapes. I am not sure, but I think the woman told us it was a half a ton, but it could have been more. There were lots of yellow jackets flying around, but they were more interested in the grapes than us.

As a thank you for picking , we were given a wonderful lunch, a t-shirt, and a bottle, each, of wine. We have not broken into them, but we had a sampling of some at the winery afterwards and they were very good. The winery is located in Douglassville, and they have a website. https://www.manatawnycreekwinery.com/

Health

I got the results of my bloodwork back from this new doctor I am seeing and they were really interesting. Apparently I have something called Leaky Gut Syndrome, among other things, which could be the reason I am having all kinds of digestive problems and weight issues. The bloodwork showed that I have several low level food allergies which were a little surprising.

Mt mother has had food allergies all her life and for a long while I thought I didn't have to worry about it. However as I have gotten older, at a point where the body starts to decline if you don't really pay attention to it, they have reared their ugly heads and begun to cause me issues. Like her, I have a sensitivity to wheat, gluten, and dairy. Interestingly enough string beans ranked very high - weird.

So my doctor suggested I cut all of that out for a month and see what happens. I am having a good time trying all kinds of substitutions in some if the recipes I use, and finding new ones, so there is a positive on that. But cutting out wheat and cheese is a big challenge for me. She is also going to start me on two new supplements and feels pretty confident things will begin to reverse themselves. I am glad she has confidence here, because I am a little doubtful. But we shall see. As my stepfather used to say, "we can only go up from here".w

Global Climate Change

I follow a vegan cook named Christina Pirello. I have blogged about her before and shared recipes with several people. I am truly inspired by her story; curing herself of cancer after following a vegan diet. It truly points to the fact that we are what we eat and what we eat impacts us and our surroundings.

Her March newsletter went so far as to talk of this global climate change we are experiencing and the fact that even though we are currently shivering through a very snowy and cold winter, our earth is getting warmer. You see as the atmosphere contains more greenhouse gases, some areas are getting wetter and others drier.

While it is hard for us individually to change the use of fossil fuels, there is one thing we can do and that is to eat less meat. I did read elsewhere that raising cattle, and even poultry to some extent, does contribute to methane gas production and that there are more heads of cattle now than ever. Makes sense to me and one reason why I am going to stick to eating less, or even no, meat. Not only is it good for my health, it is good for the planet.

Dreaming

I am reading the most wonderful book called Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cooking Mama's given to me out of the blue by a friend of mine.  He said he saw it and it reminded him of me. It is really interesting and has gotten me fired up on the aspect of not eating food that is highly processed. While I was reading yesterday the image of a community surrounded by farmland came to my mind.  I imagined a farm outside a little village where each person in that village got what they needed from the farmer.  In the village, there were little shops that carried local wares and in the village, there was a school, some churches, and the people of that village could walk to the central part to do their local shopping.  I thought to myself that if I were Queen that's how this world would work.

Wait a minute, that is just how things used to be way back when before we all got "civilized"!  It was like that before we took away all the farmland and built McMansions on it, before we decided that stores would carry cheap, easy-to-break crap from China, and before we started manufacturing food rather than enjoy what comes out of the ground. There were little villages like that where people lived and were healthy because they ate was God intended and not things that no one can pronounce. Furthermore, there are places like that still in Europe more or less. Why can't we get back to that?

We are close to having reached the point of no return (at least in my neck of the woods) in this country.  But there is hope.  We can model the village life in some of the small cities in towns in America.  We can have the community gardens and local CSAs grow the food, we can create walk-able communities, and we can buy locally produced goods.  It will take desire and the political will to do so.  In the meantime, I will keep dreaming, looking for local produce, growing what I can, and boycotting food I can't pronounce.

CSA

CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, is a way to have fresh, local produce available to you every week.  You buy a share in a farmer's yield in the beginning of the growing season, and they get the money up front so they can have what they need for the year.  In return you get locally grown produce.  Many times you get to try things you would not normally get from the supermarket. Since I found out about this concept, I have been trying to find one that is nearby and lo and behold there was an article in this week's paper about one right in my neighborhood!

I am most anxious to try this and plan to get a half year subscription for next year.  The share period is over for now as the growing period is pretty much over for the season, but I think the price they are asking is very reasonable for fresh produce.  I figure I spend twice that at the market for a year's time and there are things that I don't grow in my garden.

CSA's are growing (pun unintended) in popularity.  As of 2009, more than 12,500 U.S. farms reported marketing products through a CSA.  These local farmers don't just sell their own grown things, but things they get through people they deal with and some will have access to things like soaps, honey, and even meats.  I believe this is one way we can beat the conglomerates at their own game.  Buy local or go home.

Frankencorn

From the what have they done to our food section, the article I read this morning puts a lot of questions in my mind about the safety of our food.  Christina Pirello presents things about the wonderful summer corn that we all enjoy this time of year, and what GMOs have done is truly disconcerting.  I am not sure I want to engage in this game of Russian Roulette on my health.  I am taking the time to buy organic corn, when I can find it, and growing my own.

I have never grown corn before and this is really more of an experiment than anything else, but I can see little ears starting on my stalks.  The corn is sequestered in this new little raised bed surrounded by fencing so the squirrels don't get to it.  This picture is weeks old and the corn is now much taller than the fence.  My husband remarked when he got home from work the other day that the corn fields he saw were as tall as mine is, so we are on track.

I am excited to be able to pick my own corn that was grown under conditions I know about except whether the seed was actually organic because I bought these before I knew about the dangers of GMO seeds.  But next cycle when I plant more, not having had some experience, I will make sure to plant organic corn rather than treated corn.  Again, as I have said before, we need to speak with our wallets to make sure we are getting food that is helping us to survive and not making us sick.

Green Smoothie

A couple of weeks ago, my mother bought me a Vitamix blender.  It is a very high powered blender that can do much more than a regular blender.  I had seen them demonstrated at Wegman's when I went and they were doing all kinds of things with it.  The thing is pretty costly, and I was not going to buy one for myself, so when my mom called and asked me if I wanted one, I accepted.

This morning I made myself a green smoothie made from a frozen banana, two large kale leaves from the garden, some almond milk (also made in the Vitamix), a teaspoon of flax seed, and a half a mango.   It was delicious and I understand very nutritious.  My only complaint is that the bottom does not come off unless you have the special tool and that makes it a little hard to clean unless you make something that is mostly liquid.  My regular blender does that and it is very convenient for cleaning.

I have not done many of the things that the rather lengthy instruction manual suggested and I may not ever use it totally to its potential.  For example, you can even grind grains, which I may try if I ever grow wheat. But it sure grinds up a frozen banana quite efficiently.

Free Lunch

I was sitting in a staff meeting the other day at my place of work and our manager told us about some planning going on.  The planning involved a reward for the employees and our manager indicated that the reward was either a free lunch or breakfast.  While he was saying this I thought to myself that often rewards or perks in most office places involve free food.  Of course my mind wondered about that for a while.  Why is free food so desirable?

The only answer I could come up with was that food is generally expensive and having someone buy you lunch or dinner is a good thing because you don’t have to spend any money to eat.  Having someone prepare food for me is a really special treat in my world.  Even though I like cooking, I don’t always feel like doing it.  But I am sure that money is not the only reason people crave free food so much, but I can’t figure it out. Does free food taste any better?  I don’t think so because I have had some horrible stuff that passes for combustible goods in my life.  Thinking back even knowing it was free to me didn’t make it taste any better. Does free food fill you up faster?  I know that when our company offers a free lunch, people tend to get as much as they can, probably more than they would normally eat.  I don’t think free food is more gastronomically satisfying, but that could just be me.

I have often heard that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and if you think about it especially regarding the manner in which the food was given, that can be true.  One doesn’t usually get a free lunch unless you are being rewarded for something, or maybe in the dating world the person buying the food expects something, so it really isn’t free.  It might not cost you money, but it does cost you something.  Bottom line is that I think free food can be a reward that is satisfying on a level but I just can’t see it.  I would rather have the money.

Resolve

I stopped making New Year’s resolutions about three years ago when I realized that every year they are the same thing and every year by the second week, they are gone.  I usually have the top three that everyone has; eat less, exercise more, and be nice to people.  Since the last one is one that I usually try to live my life by, that one is not the problem.  It’s the first two that consistently give me issues.

This year I had a small neighborhood get together on New Year’s Day and there were so many wonderful things to eat that I ate way too much and it really hasn’t stopped.  However, I have been making what I am eating count.  My mother gave me a Nutri Bullet and I have been making green shakes in the morning so I am getting more fruits and veggies in.  I have had only a few cookies so that’s a good thing, and the chocolate that I have eaten has been the semi sweet kind without all those chemicals in it, but it’s is quantity that always gets me. I just like to eat too much.

The Mediterranean Eating Plan that I enrolled in this year helped rid my diet of bad, chemical laden foods.  They don’t call it a diet as it is really a life style change.  It’s not only fresh foods, but it concentrates on eating less.  For the most part I have been okay and I didn’t gain a ton of weight over the holidays has I have in the past so that’s a start. But I had gained a little back from what I lost originally on the plan.  The most important part of this plan is the type of food you should be eating.  It has to be good quality food with fresh ingredients and nothing fake.  To that end I made a pizza from scratch the other night for dinner and it turned out really good. I had never done that before and it was really quite simple albeit it took a little longer than popping a ready-made in the oven.  There are only a few ingredients but the taste is so worth it and you know since you made it there are no bad things in it. So this year rather than resolve to do things that I usually can’t stick to, I am resolving to continue to eat better quality foods. 

Lemon Tree Very Pretty

During the month of March I ordered a Myer Lemon tree online which was received very quickly.  I promptly put it into a pot and kept it in my dining room near the window.  As the weather got warmer I would put it outside from time to time and after all danger of frost passed kept it on the patio.  Shortly after receiving it, it broke out in a profuse of wonderful smelling blossoms, which have now turned into tiny prospective lemons.  Two of these lemons are now the size of a grape and two really tiny ones, no bigger than a nail head turned yellow.  I assume they are ripe, but they are way too small to do anything with. There are many others which I gather will fatten up shortly.

Yesterday I noticed more blossoms on the tree. It already has a plethora of tiny lemons and with the new blossoms it appears that I am going to have more lemons than I can use!  That is if all of them ripen.  I currently use lemons for my iced tea but I am looking into many more uses including making fresh lemonade now. 

There are also many other things that I have to start using lemons for in regular cooking such as steamed broccoli and other vegetables, not to mention fish.  I tend to forget about them since I am not a huge lemon user regularily. But lemons are quite good for you aside from being a large supplier of vitamin C.  Apparently they also have strong antibacterial, antiviral, and immune-boosting powers as well as containing many substances--notably citric acid, calcium, magnesium, vitamin C, bioflavonoids, pectin, and limonene. This is more about lemons than I ever knew and something you can read up on here.

So even if the lemon tree is very pretty and the flowers are wonderful smelling, the fruit gets a big thumbs up from me and something that I am going to add to my diet.

Age

They say that when men get old, they get distinguished and when women get old, the just get old.  Well I don’t know about that because some men I look at look really old.  But what I think it comes down to is lifestyle.  The rich and famous have the resources to live fabulous lives; they travel, they are able to exercise when they want to (and often have home gyms and trainers), but most importantly they are able to eat well.  They can afford good, nutritious, healthy food that is cooked from scratch and doesn’t contain hug fructose corn syrup and a myriad of chemicals.  Those chemicals preserve food, not humans.

As I have gotten more and more into my garden and buying fresh, local food, I take note of the people who shop at various markets.  Those who shop at Wegman’s for example, look better than those who shop at Shop Rite.  The ones that shop at Wegman’s seem healthier, they seem more put together, and they look less weathered.  I am totally convinced that it is because of money and that’s a shame considering the majority of us are in the 99% and don’t have a lot of money.  Is it because we have to be concerned with every cent and if you don’t shop carefully you will end up buying highly processed foods because they are cheaper?  Yes, good, organically grown vegetables are more expensive and fresh ingredients to make a meal can end up being more expensive if you aren’t careful, but look at the back end and the cost of the health problems if you eat highly processed foods as a daily fare.  I think it all weighs out in the end.

The bottom line is that we all need to continue the fight to make every American aware of the importance of real food.  In the long run it will save money on health care and I think it will make us happier.  We can all be a nation of people who age like George Clooney and reduce the possible prediction that 42% of our population will be obese by 2030.   

Scary Statistic

Here is a sobering fact.  I read an interesting article recently that stated that in about 18 years from now 42% of Americans will be obese.  It seems like far away and in some respects it is, but it really isn’t but the good news is that it allows us time to make changes.  Obesity is a growing (pardon the pun) problem in this country and will increase the amount we spend on health care for things like diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, and associated illnesses that come along with those things.  While the pharmaceutical industry is licking their lips with anticipation, the issue is a really serious one and one that can be changed.  We all must have the will power to make it happen.

First and foremost, we have to stop eating processed foods, especially foods with high fructose corn syrup.  We have to campaign with our wallets and purchase fresh food with ingredients we can pronounce.  If we demand the food industry will deliver.  We need to demand that people on social programs providing dollars, are able to purchase good food that is not processed.  We need to teach them to cook and perhaps to garden and grow their own foods.  We need to teach our children what to eat and what not to eat and teach them not to be swayed by Captain Crunch and others.

The municipality where I live now is one of lower economic means and we have just begun to introduce a community garden partnering with a local church to hold cooking lessons.  We got a huge contribution in the form of extra vegetables from a local gardener and will be kicking off a grand opening in two weeks.  Many communities in this country are doing the same so there is hope that this trend can be turned around.  We need to attack it nutritionally, naturally, and knowingly so that more and more people can work towards a healthier future.

Comfort Food

The other day I was craving some comfort food, which always means pasta of some sort to me.  This time I didn’t have much time on my hands to cook something cheesy, hot and gooey, so I settled for some really simple chicken noodle soup but I made it with Rotini.  It’s fast and easy and something you can do for a quick lunch or when you are feeling a cold coming on.  After making this my husband said the house smelled like a restaurant.

Really Simple and Quick Chicken Soup

Serves 2

EVOO

½ white onion, chopped

1 medium carrot, peeled and sliced into coins

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 can cooked chicken. drained

8 oz prepared chicken broth

1 cup cooked pasta, any type

Salt and pepper to taste

If you do not have cooked pasta, now is the time to do it.  Prepare as directed on the box, drain and set aside.

Drizzle some olive oil into a Dutch oven or large pot and heat.  Add the onion, celery, and carrot, and cook until the carrots and celery are tender and the onions transparent.  Add the chicken and season to taste.  Heat through and add the chicken broth, about 2 oz of water, and the pasta and bring to a simmer for a minute or two. 

Serve and enjoy.

Game

Usually I don’t go in for strange types of game meat.  Sometimes I will eat venison if someone gives it to me, but I have never made it myself and I don’t hunt so I am not experienced with different kind of animal meat.  Last night, my husband suggested we put a bear sausage in the spaghetti sauce that I made for dinner.  A friend of his is a hunter of sorts and had caught a bear and gave him three different flavored sausages over the holidays.  I had put them in the freezer and somewhat secretly hope he would forget about it.   The three we received were Italian, Hot Italian, and Cajun.  Since I was doing spaghetti, I used the Italian one.  I have to say it was not bad.

Once I got over the thought of eating bear meat, I didn’t mind it.  After all most of us eat pigs, cows, sheep, fish, and chickens so what is do different about bears, deer, and other things?   I don’t like the thought of hunting necessarily but if you are hunting because you are going to eat it then I guess it is okay.  A coworker, who is also a hunter, said that one has to be careful with eating bear because you can get very sick if it not prepared correctly.  Since I am just fine this morning I guess it was made right.

I tend to not think about where my food comes from when it is meat, and for a while I was a vegetarian, but that ended when I met my husband.  He is a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy and I just could not get him to eat tofu no matter how I disguised it.  So I went back to eating meat but I do try to make sure it is the best quality I can buy and doesn’t have all kind of unnatural things in it.  I guess you can’t get any more natural with something that roamed the forest but if I start scratching my back on a tree I am going to have to have a talk with someone.

Festive

This morning when I went to get coffee, the cafeteria had a new flavor for the Holidays.  The flavor was advertised to be bold and festive.  What exactly does festive taste like?  I wondered.  The coffee was bold and slightly strong, but festive?  Even after drinking the coffee I am still not sure what festive is supposed to taste like.

Sometimes the people who market products and food come up with the craziest stuff.   The best are the names that are thought of for cosmetics, especially the colors.  Lipstick shades as Icy Plum are quite descriptive and easy to imagine, but Sweet Surrender?  Really?

I suppose if nothing else it does warrant a blog entry.  Maybe that’s what they were going for.

A Quick Meal

I found the most wonderful product the other day at Wal-Mart’s. I found a package of “restaurant quality” fajita beef in the freezer section. You just have to add the fresh onions and peppers and after a while it’s all there. I have tried many times before seasoning the meat to get that taste, but have not been able to duplicate it. This is just so easy and simple, which makes it a great meal for those nights when I am rushed to get something on the table.

I really kind of hate using packaged things to make dinner, but I don’t always have the time to cook fresh, and the fajita beef is one of the few processed things that I will use. Generally my family eats fairly well, save my son who eats junk. But he basically still a kid. I try to make meals from scratch most every night and it can be a rush situation after work and bike riding. I hate to leave the dinner thing up to my husband who just goes out and buys hoagies or cheesesteaks. He is not much of a cook, content to make buttered noodles as a meal, so making sure I get home and get dinner cooked is paramount in my mind to making sure my family gets good quality food.

I really do love to cook – I love to eat too, as many who know me already have surmised. But I don’t always have the time to do it. I especially love the challenge of coming home and grabbing what I can out of the ‘fridge and pantry and making something up right there on the spot. A lot of those dishes have gotten rave reviews from my little family, but I am hard pressed to replicate it as I rarely measure or keep track of what’s in the creation.

Recently I have started creating a weekly menu and writing the main dish on a white board in the kitchen. It does help with the shopping and I hope it will end up saving money as so things won’t go to waste. But things come up and sometimes I don’t get to the meal I have intended to cook and then forget to put the meat in the freezer. Or maybe I do get it in the freezer but then it stays there and gets freezer burn and I have to throw it out anyway. At any rate the menu thing is working out pretty well and I would recommend it to anyone.

So give the frozen meat from Wal-Mart a try. It is called John Soules Food Beef Fajitas.  It is really quite quick and tasty. Make things easy on yourself once in a while.

Tomatoes and Things

Last night I attended a viewing of Food, Inc sponsored by the West End Association and Greener Partners. The film is a documentary produced by the same people who did The Inconvenient Truth, and deals with the food industry. It is a somewhat disturbing film because there are some rather graphic scenes in it of meat slaughtering and animals that have been warehoused for our use. It is also disturbing because it turns out that there is so little that is known about what we eat. I am sure most of us mindlessly go to the grocery store, bring things home, prepare them for our family, and never stop to think about where it comes from.

 

Food, Inc points out that our food is not grown, but really manufactured by four large conglomerates that run the factories that supply our food. Chickens are grown faster and re-designed to have larger breasts because that’s the way we like to eat them. The chickens are so fat that they can’t take more than a few steps because their bones have not kept up with the speed in which their bodies have grown. The cows are kept in pens, moving around in their own feces, shoulder to shoulder with one another. These animals along with pigs and even fish are fed corn rather than given grass because it fattens them up quickly. The different diet not only makes them fatter faster, but causes a particularly deadly E. Coli bacteria in cows. Above all, the FDA who are supposed to be overseeing everything have no real teeth and until recently were not even able to shut down a plant if there was contamination.

 

But the good news in all of this is that we have a choice. There are 10 things we can do to make a change, a change that is also better for your health:

 

1. Stop drinking sodas and other sweetened beverages. You can lose 25 lbs in a year by replacing one 20 oz soda a day with a no calorie beverage (preferably water). 
2. Eat at home instead of eating out. Children consume almost twice (1.8 times) as many calories when eating food prepared outside the home.
3. Bring food labeling into the 21st Century. Half of the leading chain restaurants provide no nutritional information to their customers. 
4. Tell schools to stop selling sodas, junk food, and sports drinks. Over the last two decades, rates of obesity have tripled in children and adolescents aged 6 to 19 years. 
5. Meatless Mondays—Go without meat one day a week. 
6. An estimated 70% of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to farm animals. Buy organic or sustainable food with little or no pesticides. According to the EPA, over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used each year in the U.S. 
7. Protect family farms; visit your local farmer's market. Farmer's markets allow farmers to keep 80 to 90 cents of each dollar spent by the consumer. 
8. Make a point to know where your food comes from—READ LABELS. The average meal travels 1500 miles from the farm to your dinner plate. 
9. Tell Congress that food safety is important to you. Each year, contaminated food causes millions of illnesses and thousands of deaths in the U.S. 
10. Demand job protections for farm workers and food processors, ensuring fair wages and other protections.

You can go to the film’s website for more information. Be informed and be healthy.

 

 

 

 

Food Blogging

There are a number of people that I follow on Twitter, one of them being everydayfood. Today, there was a tweet that said there is a food blog as part of the site. It reminded me of the move Julie & Julia, which I saw over the weekend and loved, and I wondered if maybe I should blog about the meals that I often spontaneously create when I am feeling particularity adventurous. So anyway, here it goes.

Last week the dinner I made was a last minute kind of thing. I had half a pork loin marinated in Portobello seasoning which was frozen and my son had requested tortellini, as that is one of his favorite foods. My husband and I had started a little late on the exercise treadmill and so I didn’t have a lot of time. So I defrosted the pork loin in the microwave, sliced it into medallions and melted some EVO and about 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan and began to sauté it. I realized it was quite naked looking so I sliced up a yellow onion and opened a can of sliced mushroom to add to the meat. While that was cooking, I made the tortellini and steamed some broccoli florets. In about 20 minutes the medallions were nicely browned and I served it up. I thought it might be nice to put some gravy on the meat as it was a little dry, but having no canned gravy or even an appropriate soup to use, served it as is. I was right, it was a little dry and my son even commented on it.

Note to self: get some canned or bottled gravy to use in a pinch.