I'm late to the game, but I finally got a slow-cooker this year and ever since I've been making up for lost time with it! I've made chili, stews, pot roast and even dessert in it. Today I am taking dinner to some friends, so I have the slow cooker going while I work. The thing is, I associate slow-cookers with cold weather and comfort food. And today is going to be one of the first spring-like days this year -- sunny and upper 60s. Fortunately, the cranberry-chipotle beef I am making is served with lime and tortillas, making it a bit less wintery.
Slow-cookers make it easy to take your hospitality on the road. Mine comes with a locking lid, so I can just unplug and go. I've probably taken my crock-pot out more than I've used it at home, delivering meals to the sick, the busy, and the pregnant among my friends and family. It stays warm a long time and easily heats up upon arrival.
Earlier this year, I bought a Better Homes & Gardens slow-cooker specialty magazine and I've been testing the recipes in there. The cranberry-chipotle beef recipe BHG has online is similar to what's in the magazine, but not exactly the same as it is served over brown rice instead of tortillas. The magazine edition recommends garnishing with lime wedges, salsa, and (de-seeded) jalapeno peppers over tortillas. That's what I'm trying today.
My favorite dish to make is the gingerbread pudding cake. It fills the house with a wonderful aroma and takes less time to make and cook than the typical slow-cooker recipe. Served warm with vanilla ice-cream -- yummy! Makes me feel like I am back in London for some reason.
What's next to try? Well, though magazines and cookbooks are helpful for finding new recipes, I'm more excited when people I know post online what they like and recommend. My friend, Rebecca, is an excellent cook and her latest series on her blog about her favorite slow-cooker recipes has my mouth watering. I am eager to try a few of her recommendations, too!
I have to say that the people of my church know how to celebrate the Christmas season! As a new church, we are still in the stage of getting to know each other and thus the holiday invitations are a-flying. So far, I've attended two Christmas craft events and an Advent brunch. This weekend I'm headed to a cookie exchange, caroling outreach, open house, and an "Elf"-themed bake-off -- all four sugar food groups required! (That's the fun stuff. I am also coordinating with one of the young men who lead our mercy ministry outreach to provide services to the homeless and critically ill. More on that later.)
All of this weekend's events require Christmas goodies, so I was glad to discover this list of 27 yummy holiday cookie recipes. The eggnog bars look especially dangerous. So do the chocolate chunk cookies with Nutella. YUM!
If you have a Christmas cookie favorite, please share it here. At least the online recipe exchange is not nearly as dangerous as the real cookie exchange!
I love summertime eating -- the fresh vegetables and fruits that make simple dining come alive. Right now, I'm putting big, ripe blueberries in nearly everything. Yum! But I'm also experimenting with summer salads. And that inspired me to ask you all to share your favorite twists on classic summer dishes.
One of my favorite salads is the classic insalata caprese, that flavorful tomato and mozzarella dish. My twist, which has less fat, is to use very ripe tomatoes sliced and dressed with low-fat feta cheese, dried dill, and sea salt. Some of you purists will say that's nowhere near the same dish. True! But it is a tomato-cheese-and-herb combo that is easy to make with just the right tangy taste.
I also picked up an idea from my friend, Jennifer, who puts vanilla bean pods in her sugar bowl. The sugar absorbs the vanilla flavor and provides a smooth, rich taste in your coffee. Much better, in my opinion, than the artificial vanilla of many coffee creamers. But you just have to explain to your guests what that black thing is in the sugar bowl before they recoil with distaste!
What summer cooking secrets or favorite dishes do you have?
Last weekend, I took a cooking class with world-renowned Italian chef and former Iron Chef contestant, Roberto Donna. Even better: it was conducted in his home and we were able to relax in his dining room afterward and enjoy the fruits of our labors. Five courses were way too much, however! By the time we reached dessert, I was too full of crostini, soup, fresh pasta, and saltimbocca.
Friends asked me to post what I had learned. So here goes:
1) I need remedial chopping instruction.
2) Fresh pasta rocks.
That's it, you ask? Well, it was a fast class. I was concentrating on not fulfilling my social role of Disaster Girl. There were so many ways to wreak havoc: open flames, sharp knives, six-foot trails of pasta. Did I mention sharp knives??
Seriously, chopping is important. I whacked away at my shallot, only to learn that uniform pieces cook best--leaving nothing burned from being too small and nothing undercooked from being too large. The best way to slice a shallot (or other items) is to cut it in half, place it face down, then cut into it horizontally (not all the way) so that then you can cut uniform vertical pieces. Like cutting squares in a sheet cake, only in 3D.
That probably makes no sense. You'll have to google a better description. The point is, make your mince uniform.
We also made both spinach and egg pasta. There were six of us in the class and it took all of us to feed the pasta through the machine. After we passed it through, Chef Donna let it dry a bit before cutting it. Then he tossed it in flour. The result was a firm pasta that stood up well to the sauce but was so wonderfully flavorful. What a revelation! No wonder people rhapsodize about fresh, homemade pasta. It also seemed like a great dinner party idea, to make fresh pasta together. (You may be interested to know I cooked in a dress and heels. I felt like a female from another era.)
So here's the point for you: chef Donna has posted some of his recipes and cooking tips online. So now you can try them, too. Visit robertodonna.com/recipes for better instruction than I have left you here!
So it appears the food series continues over infrequent blog posts.( I've now added a food category for blog posts for locating these previous pieces.) Today's entry steals its title directly from The Atlantic magazine article that pits Walmart against Whole Foods in the areas of sustainably raised foods and family budgets. I read this article over the weekend and was fascinated by the "Walmart effect" countering big agriculture. Even to write that seems counterintuitive. Yet, there are signs this is one way Walmart's buying power might be surprisingly benign. And in fairness, as we examine food safety and agribusiness issues, we should take a look at what some companies are doing right. In this excerpt, Atlantic senior editor Corby Kummer explores his own surprised reaction to Walmart's efforts:
I started looking into how and why Walmart could be plausibly competing with Whole Foods, and found that its produce-buying had evolved beyond organics, to a virtually unknown program—one that could do more to encourage small and medium-size American farms than any number of well-meaning nonprofits, or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with its new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food campaign. Not even Fishman, who has been closely tracking Walmart’s sustainability efforts, had heard of it. “They do a lot of good things they don’t talk about,” he offered.
The program, which Walmart calls Heritage Agriculture, will encourage farms within a day’s drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that now take days to arrive in trucks from states like Florida and California. In many cases the crops once flourished in the places where Walmart is encouraging their revival, but vanished because of Big Agriculture competition.
Ron McCormick, the senior director of local and sustainable sourcing for Walmart, told me that about three years ago he came upon pictures from the 1920s of thriving apple orchards in Rogers, Arkansas, eight miles from the company’s headquarters. Apples were once shipped from northwest Arkansas by railroad to St. Louis and Chicago. After Washington state and California took over the apple market, hardly any orchards remained. Cabbage, greens, and melons were also once staples of the local farming economy. But for decades, Arkansas’s cash crops have been tomatoes and grapes. A new initiative could diversify crops and give consumers fresher produce.
As with most Walmart programs, the clear impetus is to claim a share of consumer spending: first for organics, now for locally grown food. But buying local food is often harder than buying organic. The obstacles for both small farm and big store are many: how much a relatively small farmer can grow and how reliably, given short growing seasons; how to charge a competitive price when the farmer’s expenses are so much higher than those of industrial farms; and how to get produce from farm to warehouse.
Walmart knows all this, and knows that various nonprofit agricultural and university networks are trying to solve the same problems. In considering how to build on existing programs (and investments), Walmart talked with the local branch of the Environmental Defense Fund, which opened near the company’s Arkansas headquarters when Walmart started to look serious about green efforts, and with the Applied Sustainability Center at the University of Arkansas. The center (of which the Walmart Foundation is a chief funder) is part of a national partnership called Agile Agriculture, which includes universities such as Drake and the University of New Hampshire and nonprofits like the American Farmland Trust.* To get more locally grown produce into grocery stores and restaurants, the partnership is centralizing and streamlining distribution for farms with limited growing seasons, limited production, and limited transportation resources.
Walmart says it wants to revive local economies and communities that lost out when agriculture became centralized in large states. (The heirloom varieties beloved by foodies lost out at the same time, but so far they’re not a focus of Walmart’s program.) This would be something like bringing the once-flourishing silk and wool trades back to my hometown of Rockville, Connecticut. It’s not something you expect from Walmart, which is better known for destroying local economies than for rebuilding them.
Your comments are welcome. There aren't any Walmart grocery stores near where I live, so I'd like to know what you all have found.
Though tangential to this blog's focus, I'm continuing the food safety series today. Here's another appetizing article from the Washington Post that I read ... while eating chicken. Of course. The article carried the results of the latest Consumer Reports' food safety study. This time, the subject was chicken. And the results weren't that encouraging.
The Post reports that Consumer Reports had an outside lab test 382 chickens bought last spring from more than 100 supermarkets, gourmet- and natural-food stores, and mass merchandisers in 22 states. Three top brands were tested -- Foster Farms, Perdue and Tyson -- as well as 30 non-organic store brands, nine organic store brands and nine organic name brands. These were whole broilers, two-thirds of which harbored salmonella and/or campylobacter, the leading bacterial causes of food-borne disease.
The message is clear: Consumers still can't let down their guard. They must cook chicken to at least 165 degrees and prevent raw chicken or its juices from touching any other food.
Each year, salmonella and campylobacter from chicken and other food sources infect 3.4 million Americans, send 25,500 to hospitals and kill about 500, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
I had no idea that more than 3 million Americans are infected each year from these pathogens! The study was just a snapshot in time, but among the results were these findings:
Among the cleanest overall were organic "air-chilled" broilers (a process in which
carcasses are refrigerated and may be misted, rather than dunked in cold chlorinated water). About 60 percent were free of the two pathogens.
Perdue was found to be the cleanest of the brand-name chickens: 56 percent were free of both pathogens. This is the first time since Consumer Reports began testing chicken that one major brand has fared significantly better than others across the board.
Tyson and Foster Farms chickens were found to be the most contaminated; less than 20 percent were free of both pathogens.
Store-brand organic chickens had no salmonella at all, but only 43 percent of those birds were also free of campylobacter.
I used to only look for the best prices for poultry, buying organic whenever I could afford it, but now I have a reason to also be brand-specific.
If you are unsure of how to handle raw chicken safety, there are a number of best practices that will help minimize contamination, including how to protect your groceries from leaking chicken juices, what temperature chicken needs to reach, how to thaw chicken, and what to do with leftovers--all of which are outlined in the Post's article.
A new year introduces all kinds of possibilities. I did not make any resolutions this year, but over the last few months I have been trying to eat different kinds of vegetables. A few days ago, I tried Swiss chard. I've probably eaten it in many dishes and didn't know what it was. But this time, I bought it for myself and sauteed it with some olive oil, garlic, onion, and red chili pepper. It was delicious! And I understand it's incredibly good for you.
As we continue our series on food, I'd like to know what new food item or recipe you've tried. Post your new recipes for the rest of us to consider, and tell us why you are recommending it!
Have you ever noticed how often the Bible refers to food? From Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, food is present throughout Scripture. The Bible opens with God giving every seed-bearing plant and tree to us as food (Genesis 1:29). It closes with the promise of the wedding supper of the Lamb and the picture of the fruit-bearing trees next to the River of Life in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 22:1-2).
But in between, our desire for things beyond the nourishment of food corrupts our association with food. In fact, the first challenge to God's sovereignty was presented in a discourse about food.
He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden,but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:1-6).
God had created a lavish bounty of food for Adam and Eve, but with that question to Eve, the serpent challenged His provision, laws, and character.
As we continue our series on food, I wanted to turn now from an educational perspective about modern food issues to a view on how our relationship with food reflects our relationship with God. Jesus told us to pray for our daily bread (Matt. 6:11), knowing that this reminder each day of our creaturely limitations and our dependence on our Father's provision glorifies God. Yet often we approach that provision with the faithless question the Israelites asked in the wilderness, a charge they made while eating manna each day:
They tested God in their heart
by demanding the food they craved.
They spoke against God, saying,
"Can God spread a table in the wilderness?
He struck the rock so that water gushed out
and streams overflowed.
Can he also give bread
or provide meat for his people?" (Psalm 78:18-20)
Demanding what they craved, they voiced their unbelief in God's character and His abilities. Food is a universal desire and therefore a universal illustration of how our appetites test God. Knowing this backdrop in Scripture, the statement Jesus made about His food is in stark contrast to the collective whine of humanity: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work" (John 4:34). In other words, what nourishes, sustains, and satisfies Jesus is to do God's will.
This perspective on our daily bread has shaken up and broadened my prayers. I do need daily bread, but what I need more is to cultivate Jesus' perspective on His food.
As we continue our exploration of the changes in the food industry this week, I am grateful for the comment of one woman, Stephanie, who remarked on the last post that there are many hard-working, good-hearted people working in this field to provide feasible solutions for the many challenges of agriculture and food production. It reminded me of the perspective that the producers of another food documentary, "King Corn," introduced toward the end of their film: that many of these changes that we may regret now were introduced with the good intentions of feeding more at a lower cost. Thus, on this topic, we need to follow the Scriptural injunctions to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry (James 1:19), because the one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him (Proverbs 18:17).
"King Corn" is about how corn has become the staple of our diet, because its by-products are in nearly everything we eat. It is an important subject to understand because it may be a key factor in some of the dominant public health issues of recent decades. The filmmakers obviously have a concern about this widespread mutation in our food consumption, but they do include a poignant scene at the end of the film with former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, who was obviously proud of what he had introduced in the early '70s. In an editorial last year, the filmmakers write about this scene and the juxtaposition of perspectives:
Dr. Butz recounted the birth of the modern food system with pride. Cheap food, fueled by federal production incentives for corn and soy, had quieted protests over expensive meat and eased worries about hunger. It had untied the hands of entrepreneurial farmers who wanted to experiment with economies of scale. And, in a point Dr. Butz returned to several times, it had left Americans with so much disposable income that even kids my age could afford cars. At his alma mater, Purdue University, there was a parking shortage.
For the better part of an hour, Ian and I tried to muster up the courage to challenge a system that spent, from 1995 to 2005 alone, $51 billion subsidizing cheap corn. Why flood the nation with processed commodities that become fast food? Why drive family farms out of business for the sake of grain companies? Why not subsidize fruits and vegetables in place of corn syrup?
But as our meeting went on, I realized that Dr. Butz’s policies of abundance were somehow understandable. When Earl Butz finished college in 1933, it was the middle of the Great Depression; when Ian and I graduated, it was the obesity epidemic. I had never known scarcity, and had little respect for its power.
That's well-stated and it's just one of the many viewpoint conflicts that surround the issue of food. Therefore, I am recommending that you join me as I continue to educate myself on this subject and watch "King Corn." It is available on DVD, from iTunes, and is streaming for free from Netflix. Below is low-quality version of the trailer. If you want a better quality version, click here.
I can clearly remember my thoughts as a young child when I discovered that not all the world lived the middle-class American lifestyle that I did. My life was the normal one. It was reality to me. Therefore, to discover that others lived far more deprived lives was a shock, but one more in the category of discovering a zoo exhibit. It was "over there," not something that was part of my day-to-day life.
I had a flashback about this as I watched the reaction that my five-year-old nephew had as he looked at some of the footage from my trip to Africa this past fall. As he processed the fact that some children "over there" were sick and didn't have enough food, he began to cry. Then he ran to tell his sister and brother about it. I was moved by his compassion at a young age.
At five, however, all my nephew can really do is share his discovery. But as we grow older, I believe compassion requires action. And sometimes action gets right at the core of our assumptions about what "normal life" should be.
Therefore, I'm kicking off a series this week about food and consumption that straddles the perspectives of several communities. For example, I've used the term "global citizen" in the title because I'm intentionally getting at the insulated idea that how we live here, now, is unrelated to the rest of the world and our global witness as believers. Yet, some of these phrases carry the freight of ideologies with which I disagree as a Bible-believing Christian. (Kevin DeYoung's post on the term "social justice," unpacks a bit of this verbal confusion.) Therefore, I am asking for your charitable response as I wander into intersections of nomenclature, ideology, and practice in my attempt to process my initial thinking on these matters.
So, back to "what's normal." Here's my normal: I don't grow any food. I live in a suburban area overrun by deer and anything I plant in the ground is simply opening a deer salad bar. That's true, but what is also true is that I don't have to grow my own food. Ever since I can remember, my food was delivered to me shrink-wrapped or boxed and sitting on a grocery shelf. As I've gotten older, food has only become more convenient. I have no other reference to food except as a consumer.
And I've never given it any thought. Nor have I made a connection between my consumption habits and how it affects the very people that I am feeling compassion for. I support several charities that provide food and water to needy people in other parts of the world, but have no idea how my "normal" might affect them or how my consumption habits might undermine my Christian witness or even undermine my giving. It's just how I live.
However, over the weekend, I watched an acclaimed documentary called "Food, Inc." It is about the agribusiness industry that has exploded in our lifetimes. Like most good documentaries, it has a very clear point-of-view--which means it is examining an issue in-depth but not necessarily from all sides. (To the filmmakers' credit, they do state they tried to get interviews from all sides.) I highly recommend that you watch it (you can stream it for free from Netflix) and then do your own research . Certainly, it is important to watch because it explains the reason for the growing number of food-borne illnesses and fatalities from bacteria such as salmonella and E.coli--information that affects the health of your family. I will caution you, however, don't watch it before you eat. Some of the images of the beef and chicken industries are quite repulsive. Below is a section of the film (not with the repulsive images) that explains why these contaminations are happening.
If you watch the whole film, you may note one inconsistency that made me laugh out loud: when author Michael Pollan states that cows were designed by evolution to eat grass (not the corn they are force-fed now to make them fatter). Designed ... by evolution?! Designed is right, but the source is wrong. Nevertheless, his point is right. Cows were designed to eat grass (by a wise and loving God, not random, impersonal evolution) and the practice of feeding them grain has many negative by-products. Even so, Pollan makes some good points throughout the film.
So how do we process such information through a biblical grid? Food itself is a major theme in the Scriptures, including how the ways we eat can help or stumble others (I Cor. 8). Obviously, we need to be wary of a selfish entitlement that can arise because of our nation's overall prosperity. Humility should cause us to consider the interests of others as important as our own (Phil. 2:3-4). Toward the end of the documentary, the point is made that our subsidized agribusiness artificially lowers the price of some commodities, which hurts regional growers in other nations and contributes to food scarcity. As women, we need to consider that in a mechanized world, looking well to the way of our household (Prov. 31:27) may include becoming informed about such complicated issues. Equally as important is the biblical principle that what is honest is done in the light and that evil deeds are hidden in the dark. It is clearly evident from the legal chokehold that many leading companies in the agribusiness industry are not operating in the light.
At the end of the documentary, the filmmakers remind viewers that as consumers we carry a big stick. We can demand changes and affect corporate actions by what we do or do not purchase. This is highlighted in the dramatic movie trailer (which is a lot more hyped up than the actual film, and my apologies that the one I could embed is low quality).
I look forward to your feedback on both this topic and the film itself.
Wondering about the long time between posts on this blog? Well, most days I don't have much to say--I'm busy working on my third book and it's captured all my extra brain cells. But when I find interesting stories and links, I post them on my Facebook page. "Like" it and you'll get shorter updates via Facebook. Or just visit facebook.com/carolyncmcculley.
Quoting and Linking Unless otherwise noted, all contents copyright 2005-13 Carolyn McCulley. If you are quoting this blog, please provide a cite and link back. Thanks for this courtesy!
Bible Translation All Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (Crossway Bibles) unless otherwise noted.
