The Cleaner Plate Club

My, my. Whole Foods is getting a lot of press these days. The Whole Foods saga is an important story, even if you, like I, don’t have a Whole Foods anywhere within 90 minutes. It’s an important story even to those of us who cringe when we see the per-pound prices of their edamame salads, made-on-the-spot sushi, or wild atlantic no-dyes-added salmon. It’s an important story, because Whole Foods is a market leader. Where it goes, lots of other retailers may go, as well. This story may well have implications for what, and how, many of us eat in the future.

If you didn’t happen to be awake early Sunday morning, nursing a pee-soaked baby while listening to the radio, you may not have heard this Marketplace Money interview with Whole Foods founder John Mackey, in which he explains new efforts they’re making to promote local agriculture: welcoming direct-to-consumer farmer’s markets in their parking lots, establishing a $10 million annual budget to support local, small-scale agriculture, and changing job descriptions to encourage more purchasing from local suppliers.

If you didn’t hear that interview, you may not have done a little digging, and discovered the extent to which these changes are being made in response to Mackey’s smackdown with Michael Pollan. I won’t detail all of that (though you should, absolutely, read Pollan’s book. Have I mentioned that?). However, it’s worth looking at this smart, tough letter Pollan wrote to Mackey last year. Pollan’s letter, which Mackey posted on his blog — kudos to him for being so open — chastises Whole Foods for selling only the IDEA of local, decentralized agriculture, rather than truly local products.

And if you weren’t aware of that brouhaha, you might not have gone out of your way to watch this webcast of a live debate between Mackey and Pollan at U.C. Berkeley, or paid much attention to this article in today’s New York Times about whether Whole Foods has lost its way.

The possible future implications for you? The fact that local foods are getting so much press, and that a market leader like Whole Foods is making such an investment in helping promote local agriculture, means that it may — may— soon get easier for you to get locally grown food…in your supermarket. Which could mean more nutritious food, as well as food that is fresher, better tasting, and likely grown with fewer chemicals.

People are watching where Whole Foods is going. You can bet that Wal-Mart is watching it, and possibly the produce manager at your local Safeway or Piggly Wiggly is watching as well. Do you want local agriculture at your local supermarket? Then let your produce manager know that you’re watching it, too.

It’s not impossible for supermarkets to embrace local agriculture. My babysitter, the huge-hearted Becky Darling, runs a small family farm here in southern Vermont. Her summer sweet corn is some of the best I’ve ever had. And while I love going out of my way to her farm stand, I don’t have to; our local Price Chopper sells Darling’s corn fresh, every day, during corn season. It’s a huge commitment for the supermarket chain; produce managers go out of their way to refresh their supply of Darling’s corn on a daily basis. Price Chopper also now guarantees a price that makes it worthwhile for the Darlings to sell to them. Other supermarkets in the area won’t do this. It’s too hard, too much effort, too unlike the normal way of doing business. But Price Chopper will, and it’s possible that your supermarket could do something similar, as well — especially as they see market leaders doing this.

At any rate, it’s a story to watch.

Funny, but I once thought that having kids in the house would make us healthier. Like, we’d be the parents who say, “potato chips? No, we never have those in the house. No, our kids hate those!” And of course we’d be eating at home (my fantasy always involved pleasant, calm family dinners), filling our plates with a bounty of pesticide-free lettuce.

Then I had kids, and I noticed that the opposite was true. Things like goldfish crackers and sandwich cookies started appearing on our shelves (well, they didn’t exactly appear. I put them there, at least some of the time). And we often went out - for pizza, or Chinese food, for things that were easy and fast. Because I was tired. And because we didn’t have enough time, or the right ingredients, to actually prepare something.

That’s why it doesn’t exactly surprise me that a recent report determined that parents eat less healthfully than other adults. According to the report, published last month in the online Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, adults with kids under 17 eat a full pepperoni pizza’s worth of added saturated fat each week. Even if you’re not concerned about the fat, you can bet that the saturated fat goes hand-in-hand with other not-so-good characteristics: highly processed foods, foods that are filled with additives or grown with chemical pesticides, foods that are less fresh, and foods that are otherwise unsavory or unhealthful.

In our house, we’ve gotten a little more mindful how and what we eat. It’s tough, though. We have never enough time, never enough hands. Often — not always, but often — someone is crying while I cook. Truth is, on some nights, that someone is me. I understand the temptation to put something, anything, on the table, just to have it be done, just to get them to bed, just because I’m tired, I have laundry to do, I have phone calls to make. But I want good, wholesome healthful food to be a priority. I do. Even if it means sacrificing a clean house. Or even clean socks.

I like this blogging thing, because you all have made me feel like I’m on the right track. Like maybe what goes in my body, in my family’s bodies, is more important than dust-free shelves or dog-hair-free floors.

Sounds like you’re thinking along the same lines. Many of you have kids. Some of you have other beloved creatures in need of your attention. All of you work - in the home, or out. All of you have laundry, errands, and a zillion things to think about beyond healthful, nutritious snacks and meals. But you’re thinking about those meals, and I am too, and I’m glad we’re thinking about them together. I’m glad you’re sending me ideas. I’m going to continue to send ideas your way. I like this virtual community thing.

Maybe together we can avoid being one of those whole-pepperoni-pizza-full-of-fat-and-junk statistics.

Okay, first: I want to be honest. I am generally honest. Sometimes I am honest to a fault. Just ask my ex-boyfriend’s mother, who once gave me a holiday sweater decorated with nutcrackers and sparkling stars and trains and tassles and oversized buttons and red plaid ribbons (She asked me if I liked it. I responded “it’s not exactly my taste.” She never forgot it. The relationship didn’t last).

I wanted to be honest with you this evening. So before beginning this post, I did a little research. A Google search, actually. A Google Search on “I hate parsnips.” It yielded 817 results.

But hold on there. Wait just a moment. Because — GET THIS! — I also ran a search on “I love parsnips,” and guess what? That one got 1,280 results. Don’t stop to do the math. I’ll just tell you: that’s 57% more “love” results than “hate” results.

I tried parsnips this weekend. It wasn’t my first time. Perhaps you recall I added them to a disastrous beef stew a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps you also remember that I compared the soup’s “old parsnip” flavor to that of feet. So, when I tell you that I went out and bought some more parsnips…and then made a dish with them…and then ate it…you will understand that I am not only honest to a fault, I am also sometimes just a little bit brave, as well.

I want to like parsnips. If you live in a cold weather climate like I do, and you want to eat a little more locally, like I do — to support local farmers, decentralize the food industry, reduce food miles, lower greenhouse emissions, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and generally make the world a better place — you’ve got to figure out this parsnip thing. Parsnips are great for cold weather dwellers, because they actually get sweeter and tastier when the weather gets cold, and they can be stored well for long periods of time.

Parsnips are also plenty healthy. Potassium, vitamin C, an array of depression-fighting-immune-boosting-stress-decreasing B-vitamins, …yeah, they’re packed with good stuff.

(another reason to like parsnips? Many people, from the ancient Romans through today, consider the vegetable to be an aphrodisiac; a Google search on that one yielded 919 results. I didn’t know that yet when I cooked ‘em, though).

I went with a recipe from Andrea Chesman: Balsamic Glazed Parsnips, which I selected both because of its relative ease, and the fact that it looked simple. Here’s my summary:

6-7 parsnips (about 2 lbs), peeled and thinly sliced on the diagonal
Half cup vegetable broth
Quarter cup extra virgin olive oil
Quarter cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce.

Combine all ingredients in a pan. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until parsnips are tender-crisp (20-30 minutes). Serve hot.

The result? Good. Surprisingly good. NOT LIKE FEET AT ALL. Very sweet, soft, with some sour tang from the vinegar, all the flavors blended well. But here’s the thing: it tasted like something else entirely.

When Blair and I lived in West Africa, we knocked about from village to village, sampling the food that women cooked at tiny roadside markets. Our favorite snack food was something called alloco, which was basically chopped plaintains, deep fried in palm oil. Women served them wrapped in large palm leaves, and they were sweet and warm and greasy – a kind of West African comfort food.

And here’s the thing: this recipe tasted just like alloco. Exactly like alloco. Why this is, I cannot imagine. Perhaps a food scientist can explain to me why a root vegetable that doesn’t grow in warm climates, combined with ingredients largely not available in West Africa could taste like a West African banana cooked in an oil that’s largely unused here. It makes no sense. But man, oh man, was it a trip back in time for our taste buds.

I served the parsnips with Expat Chef’s green beans, some leftover white-bean-garlic soup (better still after 24 hours of sitting in the fridge), as well as some free range boneless turkey breast from Misty Knoll farms. The turkey was expensive at $11.38 for the package, but we immediately stored more than half of it of it, and have been eating leftovers all weekend; so far, we’re at 5 adult servings and 3 child servings, with a little still left in the fridge ($1.42 a serving so far).

Blair repeatedly said things like “this meal is so good. This is a great meal. I mean, I love this meal.”

Merrie wouldn’t try the parsnips. But she was a pill on parsnip night. She was a mighty pill, a master pill, the Grand Poobah of Pills. As such, I didn’t push her to taste the parships. No. What I pushed her to do was to get upstairs, brush her teeth, and get her pillish self into bed. Immediately.

As for the parsnip’s love-enhancing qualities? Well. Hmm. It was no Viagraesque-4-hours-of-unrelenting amorousness. No, not that, not at all. But I won’t lie to you (remember? I’m honest). It’s possible, just possible, that the dirty-dishes-and-laundry-and-News-Radio-rerun routine may have been traded on parsnip night for a little (wholesome! marital! accepted by pastors and puritans alike!) late night somethin’ somethin’. It’s possible. Just one of many reasons I’d be willing to try them again. That, and the fact that they didn’t taste like feet.

And here’s our parsnip dinner - the parsnips are the glazed-looking things. Kinda’ yummy looking, huh?

Exhibit A: See this photograph? That’s me. And that thing I’m holding up? That’s the sharpest knife in the drawer. You will note that we are not the same. The knife is not me, and I, most definitely, am not that knife, the sharpest one in the drawer.

Exhibit B: Way back when — I believe it was all of about 2 weeks ago — I posted a recipe for kale chips. Some of you responded that you were eager to try them. And some of you did, to mixed results. Melle.ca said that they were “surprisingly tasty,” whereas Gen described the stomach-clutching histrionics in which her child engaged upon trying them, and wifemothermaniac diplomatically noted that they didn’t work for her family. Expat Chef, however, posted a comment in which she offered a recipe for a “similar trick with green beans” that her family “eats like popcorn.”

Now, if I WERE the sharpest knife in the drawer, I would have recognized it as something very similar to another recipe — one that I have made several times…and one that I even subsequently posted. But as made clear by exhibit A, I am not that knife. I saw the words “similar trick,” and “popcorn” and thought - “Wow! Expat Chef knows how to make popcorn out of green beans!” So, for two weeks, I have been promising Merrie that we would make green bean popcorn (”No, really, Merrie…it’s going to be JUST LIKE popcorn!”).

Last night, Merrie and I started to make Expat Chef’s recipe. “Green bean popcorn on a Friday night, Merrie! What fun!” The further I got into it, the more I thought, “well, this is kind of like roasted green beans…” Then, suddenly, the light bulb went on. It wasn’t a single bulb above my head, the kind you see in a cartoon, the kind that makes you look like a genius. No. It was more like a flashing neon bulb that spelled out the word “Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!” over and over again.

(Then, almost immediately after, it turned into a spotlight, shining directly in my eyes, as a gravely voice demanded, “what makes you think you can write a food blog, woman? Doesn’t this prove how little you know?” Then, inexplicably, it became a flashing strobe light, and I was at a disco as Boogie Oogie Oogie played overhead. But by then I wasn’t in the mood to dance).

We forged ahead, though, and made Expat Chef’s recipe (Merrie’s disappointment in it not actually being popcorn only a momentary setback). And folks? If you liked the roasted green beans recipe I already posted, you’ll like this one even more. The difference is (1) balsamic vinegar, which adds a nice tangy flavor to the whole thing, and (2) the fact that it cooks with the salt, so the flavor is soaked in. I post her recipe here, along with her notes:

****
1 lb. fresh green beans
2 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. Balsamic vinegar
kosher or sea salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400° or use 350° Convection roast if you have a convection oven. Toss green beans with the oil and vinegar and spread them out on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with coarse salt. Roast in oven for about 15 minutes, watching carefully to be sure they do not over-brown. Look for nice golden brown color in patches. Be sure you get a good first helping. These are as addictive as popcorn, even for people who generally don’t like green beans.

********

Blair loved them. Merrie liked them (”mmm. They’re surprisingly salty!”). I loved them, too. Many thanks to Expat Chef, who hopefully is bearing with me, despite the fact that I probably made an enormous blogosphere faux pas by posting a recipe for roasted green beans without so much as mentioning the fact that SHE HAD ALREADY SENT ME ONE. She seems kind. Kind enough even to gently make reference to her recipe in the comments section of my Green Beans 1.0 post, without including the words, “you stupid jerk, you!”

(The good news about this for all of you? The fact that I am unskilled enough to recognize a recipe as being only a slight variation of one I have made several times means that when I say something is easy, you can bet that it really, really is).

I’ll note that there were other suggestions on the Green Beans 1.0 post that are probably also worth trying: Mir uses fresh black pepper, and has been eating them with “wild abandon.” Dave Pitelli suggest adding cumin, or other curry-related spices (cardamom, coriander, ginger), or green herbs (fresh or dried), and notes that you can make a similar thing with mandolin-cut zucchini, or peppers, onions, etc. cut into slivers of similar size, or any mix thereof. Loving Annie prefers them with a little fresh pressed garlic and butter, too.

Anyhow, here I am with the plate of Expat Chef’s un-popcorn-like-though-you-WILL-eat-them-like-popcorn green beans.

That big pile? See it there? The one in front? That’s rice. Hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of it, all uncooked. And each grain of rice represents a person. A person who ate at McDonald’s today. Today! The pile behind it, equally sized, is the population of England. That’s a lot of Big Macs.

By way of explanation: went yesterday to see Of All the People in All the World, a show at MASS MoCA. The basic idea: piles of rice, and every grain of it represents an individual – a clever way of bringing statistics to life. Some of the statistics are bizarre (people who flew to Columbia for plastic surgery last year, people who claim their religion as “Jedi” on the census), some of them are educational (births this year vs. deaths this year, persons per square mile in Alaska vs. California). Some of them are downright tragic (the number of HIV infected individuals in Sub Saharan Africa).

For obvious reasons, I found the golden arches pile pretty interesting. Here are a few others that struck me:

Above, the grains of rice represent children who will die this year from a disease for which a vaccine already exists.

The above pile represents the number of citizens of Chad who generate the same amount of carbon dioxide as a single American (don’t know if you can tell, but that’s not a single layer of rice, either).

And that one? It’s more curious than troubling: individuals who watched a final episode of American Idol.

If you’re in the area, the show is up through Sunday, and I believe the galleries are open until 10pm. If you’re somewhere within a couple of hours drive, it’s worth the trip on a snowy February weekend. Want it to come to something near you? Check out the artists’ collective, Stan’s Café, and let them know.

So I’ve spent the week mostly eating leftovers, or trying some things that didn’t turn out all that well. Last night, I made a so-so-but-has-potential white bean soup. Which wouldn’t have been all that noteworthy, except that it led to a MILLION DOLLAR IDEA!

(What is this MILLION DOLLAR IDEA? Hmm. Shall I reveal now? Shall I make you wait? I’ll make you wait. A little. In the meantime, get out your pens; even if the recipe isn’t up your alley, you might make a mint with my MILLION DOLLAR IDEA!)

The soup I made was a variation of Peter Berley’s Creamy White Bean-Garlic Soup with Rosemary. Berley is the author of The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen, an innovative cookbook that makes vegetarian food trés trés chic. He calls his version a “very simple, very classic” soup. He’s a full-time chef, though, and his definition of “very simple” apparently includes cooking dried beans from scratch, deglazing pots, and passing soup through the fine holes of a food mill. Me, I’m more of a “put it all in a pot” sort of gal. So I tried the Lazy-Folk-Busy-Mom-No-Fuss-Version-of-Creamy-White-Bean-Garlic-Soup.

My (not Berley’s) ingredients:
3 cans of Great Northern or other white beans
Water or vegetable broth
1 celery rib with leaves, halved
1 (3-inch) piece of kombu (optional - it’s a kind of seaweed that adds minerals to a bean dish; if you’re using dried beans, it helps them soften faster)
1 bay leaf
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion + 1 small onion
6-8 plump cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary
Lemon juice to taste
Salt and pepper to taste

My (not Berley’s) directions: Heat oil in a saucepan. Toss in onions, garlic, bayleaf, rosemary, celery rib, and a pinch of salt. Turn the vegetables several times to make sure they are coated in oil. When the onions are translucent, toss a splash of vegetable broth in the pan, turn the heat to low, and cook gently until everything, garlic included, is “meltingly tender.” Remove bay leaf, kombu, and celery rib. Drain and rinse the beans (do not forget this step, lest you receive, in the words of my ever-charming five year old, “a gassy message from your butt” for the next day. Sorry to be crude, but there it is). Add drained, rinsed beans to the pot. Cover to the top with veggie broth or water. Simmer until beans can be easily crushed with the back of a spoon. Puree with a hand-held immersion blender until it’s got a puree-like consistency. Add additional water or broth until you get a soupy consistency. Add the lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste.

How was it? Well, I cut corners, even on my own version (dried rosemary of questionable age instead of fresh, for example). But it was decent — not fabulous, but decent — once the lemon juice was added (Merrie preferred no lemon). I served with rice; next time, I’d serve with crusty bread and some kind of soft, mellow cheese. Interestingly, it was tastier today; somehow, the extra time just made the flavors gel better. So that got me thinking about doing it in a crockpot next time. And that, my friends, is what brought me to my MILLION DOLLAR IDEA!

Here it is (drumroll please…ready? ready?): A crockpot with a “sautee” setting.

Okay, I just heard all of your shoulders fall in disappointment. I HEARD IT, I tell you. And admittedly, it’s not the next Google, perhaps, but it would sell. I swear, it would sell. Here’s why:

People like crockpots, because they want to be able to throw all of the ingredients into a single pot, with minimal clean up and fuss. Crockpot people are single-pot people. They are few-dishes-as-possible people. They are I-want-my-dinner-cooked-while-I-do-other-things people. But maddeningly, nearly every crockpot recipe requires that you first use a pan. Use a pan to brown meat. Use a pan to sautee onions and garlic. Use a pan to soften leeks. I am willing to believe that these are necessary steps. But people, they MISS THE POINT.

A crockpot with a sautee setting would allow us no-folks type to do a quick sautee/browning without adding any extra work to our day. Once browned, we could toss in all the other ingredients, and get on with the rest of our lives. The sautee setting would need to have an automatic shut-off, obviously, so that no one accidentally leaves meat browning for eight hours. But if they can create this for irons, they can create it for my dream crockpot.

Any industrial designers out there? Any engineers? Make it happen. Go forth and patent my MILLION DOLLAR IDEA. Grow rich. I send this idea out into the universe, and hope it comes back to me in the form of a device that makes my life simpler. (why do I not go forth and get rich? Because I won’t. I know me. I’m filled with MILLION DOLLAR IDEAS, people. And instead of making them happen, I change diapers. Or read about food. Or stare out at the hills beyond my home hoping that a snowy owl will pass by. So in the end, I need that device more than I need to cling to an idea with which I’ll realistically never do anything).

Let me know when you’ve got a prototype. I’ll be happy to beta test it right here.

(Here’s the soup: plain-looking I know. But what if it makes you a millionaire?)

You sound ugly. Like
Drool from a large, hairy beast,
Snorting as he walks.

In fact, you’re a seed;
Ground endosperm (I’m blushing…)
Tasteless. Bland. No smell.

Gelatinous goop,
Eight times thicker than corn starch
You bind. Make things gel.

But for your presence,
Ice cream would be crystalline;
Hot dogs would crumble.

You thrive with monsoons;
India and Pakistan
Both export you with pride.

(They may not agree
On Kashmir; They can on this:
You’re MONEY, baby.)

Wish Newton saw this:
You’re no harder to swim in
Than plain old water.

Natural. Vegan.
A sign of processing? Yep!
But harmful? Guess not.

No studies imply
That you’re unsafe as used. Phew.
One less food to fear.

It’s been a tough week for eaters, both human and feline. In addition to the peanut butter recall, there are some new ones to be aware of. For a little more context of why this is happening, check out this several-months-old-but-still-relevant article by my man Michael Pollan (have you noticed? he just keeps springing up in my world…). You’ll need to click an add to read the whole thing for free; it’s worth it.

But now, the recalls:

1. This just in - BJ’s warehouse is recalling pre-packaged mushrooms. The recall affects mushrooms purchased between February 11 and February 19. The fear is E.coli, so you don’t want to mess around.

2. Four days ago the Dole company announced a voluntary recall for cantaloupes sold in the Eastern U.S. and Quebec. The cantaloupes may be infected with salmonella.

3. Yesterday, Oscar Mayer chicken was recalled due to concerns about listeria. The chicken in question is “Oscar Mayer/Louis Rich chicken breast strips with rib meat, grilled, fullly cooked - ready to eat.” Each package has the number “P-19676″ inside the USDA inspection mark on front and a use-by-date of “19 Apr 2007″ on back.

4. And a product we use in our house: Earth’s Best Baby Food announced a recall of their organic apple peach barley variety baby food. The concern is botulism.

Finally, if you have cats, you’ll want to check out this recall for frozen cat food.

Seriously, folks. Take the time to read Pollan’s article. Then go check your cabinets.

Wait. Don’t go yet. I know this post is about green beans. There’s no faster way to send people away from my blog and toward the all-you-can-eat buffet. But seriously. Hang on. The recipe I’m about to give you is actually pretty good.

I’ve got a couple of recipes up my sleeve for green beans. But why, you ask? (I hear your disappointment out there, I do). Why green beans of all things? Four reasons:

1. They’re insanely healthful. Want vitamin C? They’ve got loads. How about Vitamin K, or A? Plenty. Or how about potassium, folate, iron, magnesium, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, copper, calcium, phosphorous, and even protein? Yep, they’ve got those, too. They’re even filled with omega-3 fatty acids, those wonder-nutrients that most people think you can only get from eating salmon.

2. They’re incredibly easy to grow, if you want to take a stab at planting your own. Really, if you want to plant something in dirt and watch it turn into food, green beans should be one of the first things you try. I know almost nothing about growing things, yet I did it with amazing success last year (on my deck!) using an EarthBox.

3. They’re inexpensive, particularly in the summer, if you go to farmer’s markets. A dollar or two per pound, generally (and a pound of green beans is quite a bit).

For years, I tried serving them to the family. And I failed. Again, and again, and again, I failed. I’d sautee, boil, microwave, you name it. My green beans would turn out chewy. Or stringy. Or soggy. Or starchy. But always, always, they were inedible.

The best recipe I’ve tried turns out to be the easiest. I got it from Andrea Chesman’s great book, The Garden Fresh Vegetable Cookbook, which offers simple recipes in the order of when a vegetable might appear in a garden or farmer’s market. Her recipe for Roasted Green Beans is great, because there are only 3 ingredients. Here’s my variation:

2 lbs green beans, trimmed (small hands can trim with scissors)
Extra virgin olive oil (big dollop - enough to coat beans)
Coarse-grained salt or kosher sea salt (yes, you do want this kind of salt instead of table salt)

Preheat oven to 450. Lightly grease a large sheet pan or shallow roasting pan with oil. Arrange green beans in a single, uncrosded layer. Drizzle the oil over the beans, and roll beans until they are evenly coated. Roast for about 15 minutes,or until the beans are well browned, shaking the pan occasionally for even cooking. Transfer to a shallow serving bowl or platter and sprinkle with salt. That’s it. THAT’S IT.

What I like about this recipe:

- it’s very easy to remember. Just three ingredients, and the exact proportion of these ingredients really doesn’t matter that much. Which means you don’t need to follow a recipe, step by step, every time you make it.

- They’re versatile. They turn out well as a side dish; when I served these beans over the weekend, everyone - all 6 adults - ate all the beans that were on their plates. At the same time, roasted beans are also fine for a 5-year old to pick up and dip in Ranch dressing…which means that the nutritional benefits can be given to wee ones, as well (okay, those nutritional benefits might be masked by the dressing’s saturated fat, but in our house, any eating of green beans is a victory).

- They only take 15 minutes to prepare. Folks sharing my own culinary tendencies will note that’s the precise time it takes to whip up a box of Annie’s Mac and Cheese. With no major peeling or chopping, clean up is a breeze, too.

- They’re the kind of side dish that makes it look to guests like you actually know how to cook.

My guess is that they’re better in the summer, when the green beans haven’t had to make a several-thousand-mile journey to your plate. But still, even in February, even from a bag harvested in California, they turned out pretty well.

Try them. At least once. If you’re still there, that is. I mean, if you read past the words “green” and “beans.”

We have found the healthy-breakfast bargain of a century this month: organic steel cut oats.

Let’s talk about steel cut oats for a minute. Wait, first let’s talk about oatmeal in general. Oatmeal is a great source of all kinds of good things: vitamin E, zinc, selenium, copper, iron, protein, magnesium. Studies have shown that people who eat more oats are less likely to develop heart disease, and it’s thought that oatmeal’s phytochemicals and soluble fiber can help fend off cancer.

Most folks associate oatmeal with the instant stuff – either the big Quaker tub, or the little packages of the sweetened instant variety. What we have discovered this month is that steel cut oats are sooo much yummier than either of these. What exactly are they? Steel cut oats (also called Irish oats, Scottish oats, course cut oats, porridge oats, and pinhead oats) are the whole oat “groats” - (the inner parts of the oat kernel) that have been chopped into smaller pieces.

Anyhow, this month, they’re on sale at our local food co-op, thanks to the Co-op Advantage Program, which tries to make healthful foods more affordable by combining cooperatives’ buying power. The price? A mere 69 cents per pound. We typically use about a cup and a half each morning to prepare the family breakfast (and we are hearty, hearty eaters, let me tell you). This seems to be the equivalent of a half pound. Let me do that calculation for you: that’s 35 cents – 35 CENTS! – for a big, hearty, healthful breakfast for the three of us. That would be…well…about 12 cents a bowl. At that price, we can afford to drizzle real maple syrup over the top. Even when not on sale, they’re just 99 cents a pound in the bulk bin.

But I’ve never paid attention to them before, precisely BECAUSE they’re located in the bulk bin – that scary, unpackaged part of the store where you get no instructions on how to prepare the foods, and you have to decide for yourself how much to buy. It’s a quiet part of the store, a humble part of the store. The bulk bin items don’t scream about their health benefits on their packaging, or describe all the ways they’re helping make the world a better place. They have no packaging, and so they (and their health benefits, and better-world benefits) sit mutely, and hope that you are brave enough to try them.

Well, it took until this month for me to try, but I’m glad I did. (”But wait,” I hear some of you cry! “What if we don’t have a food co-op near us? What then?” Look for a Trader Joe’s, or a Whole Foods, or a health food store. You can find packaged steel cut oats in the grocery store, too, generally McCann’s, though the price is quite a bit higher; you can start that way, and if you like them, stop at one of the above stores the next time you’re passing through a metro area).

Anyhow, I hereby pass my newfound knowledge on to you. My tips:

1. Cooking on the stovetop, steel cut oats require at least a 3-to-1 ratio of water-to-oats. In other words, for every one cup of oats, you’ll need at least three cups of water (I’ve seen other people online say that they use even more water; 3-to-1 seems to work just fine for us).

2. We actually use more than a cup, though – generally more like a cup and a half to 4 and a half cups of water.

3. Directions: boil the water, add a pinch of salt, put in the oats, bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat to simmer. Different recipes tell you what to do at this point – we usually let cook for about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Generally, that’s about the time required to unload the dishwasher, set out orange juice, vitamins, napkins, spoons, lay out a lunchbox, backpack, boots, hat, and coat (so getting Merrie out the door goes a little faster), and pull a grumpy 5-year old out of her bed.

4. If you want, you can add dried fruit, cut apples, cinnamon, etc. Otherwise, serve with a touch of milk, and something to sweeten it (maple syrup or brown sugar would be my picks).

The oats turn out creamier, nuttier, and more textured than rolled oats (especially the instant kinds, which are pretty pasty by comparison). They also lack the guar gum, caramel color, and refined sugar that are in the flavored instant packages. Check out Dawn’s fitness blog for a comparison of steel cut oats with instant oatmeal.

Best of all, all three of us love them. Love. Them.

If the extra time is an impossibility, you can check out this recipe for using a slow-cooker. Or this discussion thread, which includes lots of ideas, including some tips for microwaving them.

If you’re really worried about time, I’d recommend making a large batch on Sunday, and then scooping it out as needed during the week.

Seriously, they’re worth a try. If you live near me, get thee to Wild Oats before the sale ends at the end of the month. If you don’t live within driving distance, keep your eyes out for a bulk bin of steel cut oats at store near you.

To entice you, just look at this: a small person happily taking big bites of a healthful breakfast!