The Cleaner Plate Club

Okay, so following last week’s plea to have folks contact their reps in support of the Kind-Flake amendment to the Farm Bill, I never gave the update about the House debate and vote. News-wise, it’s been done elsewhere very well, including some good reports in the Washintgon Post, and a somewhat more satisfying NPR story this morning. But I thought I’d report in the best way I know how: in haiku form.

Kind-Flake defeated.
Subsidize crap! Five more years!
(oh, yeah, reps. We noticed.)

It really pissed ticked off
Rural America Blog,
Deliberate. You?

Small victories:
Conservation, food stamp gains.
Meat imports labeled.

Bush threatens veto.
Senate starts debate this fall.
Yeah, the beat goes on.

(Contact your senator.
Before September’s debate.
Say: “House sucks! Do more!”)

Subsidies: Two-thirds
Go to just 30 districts.
And we get? Corn. Fats.

(oh, and obesity,
ecological dead zones,
and cynics, too. Lots.)

But here’s the thing, guys:
They know we’re watching. They do.
So don’t stop…no! no!

And in the meantime,
CSAs, farmer’s markets,
And whole foods remain.

It is worth the price
To opt out, if you can:
Buy fresh, bulk. Cook more.

In other parts of the world, does a person attend a business meeting and get handed a dozen eggs from chickens that the Executive Director raises himself, in his backyard? It happens here. Blair recently went to a United Way meeting, and was rewarded with a dozen, free-range, farm-fresh eggs. Naturally, he was delighted, knowing that I would be delighted.

Here are the eggs:

Not sure if it’s translating, but they’re really, reallly beautiful. Some are speckled, some are aqua-colored, some are both (and, yes, one is brown). I decided to take Robin’s recipe, which she was kind enough to post in a recent comment, and try my hand at a frittata. Since we are drowning in zucchini, up here, my attempt was to make a fabulous summer squash version. Frittatas seem good thing to master, because they are simple to make, filling, and mighty inexpensive. Here’s what Robin says about making her frittata:

Let’s see, take some broccoli, summer squash and zucchini and slice them into pieces. The squashes I cut into small thin coin shapes and slice the bigger ones in half. Then, I saute them in a bit of olive oil until tender. While they are cooking I took 6…maybe 8 eggs and wisked them. Added a few herbs (whatever looked good in the garden), salt, pepper, etc. Tossed them into the pan (make sure it’s an oven safe pan) and let the bottom settle. Be sure to move the eggs around a little bit (it’s a lot like making an omlet). When the bottom is set, I put it in the oven until the top was set and a bit golden brown. Sorry, can’t remember the temp, but there are lots of online recipes that can give you the general guidelines for a fritatta. It’s a great idea for summer dinner because you can put just about anything you want in it and it’s very much a go with the flow dinner.

So, that’s pretty much what I did. I don’t have a sautee pan that is also oven safe, meaning I can’t take the step that Robin, and other recipes noted below, recommend: start cooking the frittata on the stovetop until the eggs are set, and THEN transfer to the oven. It seems clear that this method is the easiest, fastest, and possibly most delicious way to go. Lacking an oven-safe pan, however — who knew when we got married that we should care about registering for good pans? We did takeout, only takeout, back then — I’m out of luck. Hence, my directions differ a little bit. I also added some bread crumbs, since I know that my favorite restaurant (BrewHaHa for you local yokels) always puts some bread crumbs in theirs. And milk, because - I don’t know, I guess because we had some.

Here’s what I did:

Chop about this much summer squash, and this many fresh herbs (doesn’t have to be fresh; I had ‘em fresh from my CSA, though - scallions, basil, oregano, garlic):

Sautee squash and herbs. Pour into the bottom of a buttered oven-safe dish. Then mix together 8 or so eggs with a splash o’ milk:

Whisk, whisk, whisk. I didn’t do this, but I think it might have been lighter if I did. Add about 2 teaspoons of breadcrumbs, because BrewHaHa does it. Mix in some shredded or crumbled cheese if you have it (I used about a quarter-pound of this local Crowdie cheese). Pour over the top of the vegetables in the baking dish. Bake at 350 until the center comes out hard. This took longer than I thought - it was a full 30 minutes, though you could use a shallow dish and probably cut that cooking time in half, and if you’re doing the oven-safe pan method, you’d use the broiler and take no time at all.

When you’re done, it looks all golden and beautiful, like this:

I enjoyed it, though I wish I’d whisked, and in retrospect I would have added a half-teaspoon of salt, as well. Merrie picked around the zucchini (no fooling that kid). But it was tasty, and filling, and considering the herbs and zuchinni were from our CSA, and the eggs were a gift, the whole thing cost us…umm…almost nothing. At least nothing on top of our CSA membership.

But people, here is a really, really important thing about frittatas: you need to eat them within a day or so. A couple days later? NOT. GOOD. I think it might have been the cheese that turned, I’m not sure. But I repeat: Days later, NOT GOOD.

Anyhow, if you’re looking for more precise directions, here are some good-lookin’ recipes:

Here’s About.Com’s lesson in how to make any type of frittata.

Here’s a highly rated asparagus and ham one, courtesy of Alton Brown.

Here’s Elise’s take on an asparagus version.

And here’s a slightly more complicated recipe, involving olives and potatoes and other vegetables.

Thanks to Robin for the inspiration. And if anyone has an oven-safe frying pan they want to send my way, I’ll be glad to try it the correct way next time.

There’s not much that can rouse me from slumber before 7:00 AM if my kids are still sleeping — especially not when I returned from an emergency room visit with Baby Charlotte at nearly midnight the night before (worry not, friends; Charlotte has a simple ear infection it turns out; fortunately not the horrifying blood infection that they feared, and that had me quaking in my flip-flops as I drove through the darkness to the hospital).

But this story on NPR? The one about the farm bill? It is, like, one of the few things that might make me sit up in bed, saying, “Who needs sleep?? This is so much more important!”

Then, when I finally got around to checking email, I have this comment, from Tamara Landre:

There is a vote in congress tomorrow on an important Farm Bill. A proposed amendment to that bill is the Kind-Flake amendment, which proposes subsidies for organic farms equal to those provided for conventional mega-farms. Here are some links to information about the bill:

http://www.azcongresswatch.com/?p=3358
http://www.mulchblog.com/2007/07/the_new_york_times_onthe_antir.php
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-25-2007/0004632581&EDATE=

She also did a nice post on the subject.

You can read more about the Kind-Flake amendment in this Washington Post editorial.

Here’s the thing: our current farm policy is geared toward special interests more than the national interests. We subsidize giant corporate food systems — the folks who give us high fructose corn syrup and e. Coli-tainted meat. We do this at the expense of the smaller family farms who give us a diversity of healthful food that might actually help your family stay healthy. Don’t like that? Here’s what you do: You call your representative, or you shoot them an email.

You can find your rep, and his/her phone number, or an email contact page here. I know, it’s a step that you’re not used to taking it. But this is a hard time to be an eater in America. And it can get easier, if enough people contact their rep.

They won’t ask you lots of questions, I promise (and if you do it via email, they won’t ask you any questions). You won’t need to be an expert. You just need to be who you are: a citizen, who’s tired of subsidizing the crappiest, lowest-nutrition food available. You’re ready for the government to stop paying farmers to grow the very food that they’re telling us not to eat. Here’s what you say:

I want real reform of our current farm policy. The Kind-Flake amendment should be a minimum start. Beyond that, please vote against the current subsidy program for mega-farms, and in favor of small family-owned farms.

Seriously. That is all you need to say. That’s it. Just “Reform the current farm subsidy program in favor of small family farms.”

It’s easy. Okay, it might be a little scary if you’re doing it the first time. But it will be over quickly, and then you will feel good. And at least your rep will hear that there are people in his/her district who actually care about this issue.

Go forth! Participate in this great democracy of ours! Be heard!

I’ve heard plenty about this fella. But I haven’t yet shelled out the $35 for his cookbook.

Now? I’m gonna’. What sold me is Mark Bittman’s article, Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less, from today’s New York Times. After this, you’ll want to start throwing dollar bills at him, too. The man delivers. He’s actually provided 101 ideas for meals that can be prepared that quickly.

I’m looking through the list, thinking: Oh, my family might eat that! Oh, my, that looks easy!

Check out #4, for example:

Open a can of white beans and combine with olive oil, salt, small or chopped shrimp, minced garlic and thyme leaves in a pan. Cook, stirring, until the shrimp are done; garnish with more olive oil.

Or, if you happen to like sardines (which, by the way, have the “good-fish-trifecta”: they’re sustainable, low in contamination, and high in omega-3s), you might want to consider #17:

Soak couscous in boiling water to cover until tender; top with sardines, tomatoes, parsley, olive oil and black pepper.

He leaves things flexible, as with #41:

Raita to the rescue: Broil any fish. Serve with a sauce of drained yogurt mixed with chopped cucumber, minced onion and cayenne.

With tomato season on the way, you might want to give #88 a shot:

Cut the top off four big tomatoes; scoop out the interiors and mix them with toasted stale baguette or pita, olive oil, salt, pepper and herbs (basil, tarragon, and/or parsley). Stuff into tomatoes and serve with salad.

Some aren’t exactly meals — “Canned sardines packed in olive oil on Triscuits, with mustard and Tabasco” strikes me as a dinner-time stretch. But you know, even if we can use only some of those 101, I’m loving those, as well as the general idea:

Good food, made fast.

Mark, baby. Many thanks.

My cultural isolation is sort of profound. We don’t have television, just some old videos and a Netflix account. We still use dial-up connection at home (laugh if you will; we get by). We have extremely limited shopping in these parts — some supermarkets, convenience stores, a handful of boutique retailers, and a Wal-Mart that I avoid like the plague. Otherwise, it’s an hour-plus drive to anything resembling a Gap store. As a result, I sometimes miss out on cultural trends, like new blockbuster pharmaceutical products.

Like alli. Surely you’ve heard of alli (small-case intentional; it’s very trendy that way), the new weight-loss drug. I recently made a trip to the mall, and kept seeing these happy-looking colorful displays for alli. Colorful, so colorful, that the signs made me want to laugh with glee. No, wait. That’s not right. I laughed, because I had had already seen this hilarious and horrifying post about the drug. You want to read this post. That is (and here’s where the lights should be flashing WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!), you want to read it unless you are offended by foul language and graphic imagery, repeated over and over and over. And you know what? If you’re even considering taking alli, even just once, just to try it, you should read the post anyway, even if you are offended by foul language and graphic imagery repeated over and over again. Consider yourself warned: it’s hilarious, it’s horrifying, but you’re going to see some bad words while you’re there.

When you’re done, let’s think about what a bass-ackwards world we’re living in that we take it as normal that junky food should be so ubiquitous that our only salvation is a pill that requires we carry spare changes of clothing, since it’s highly likely we’ll poo ourselves after taking it (yeah, you read that right). Oh, and by the way, if soiling yourself isn’t enough of a troubling side effect, it might also block your ability to absorb vitamins, and it’s linked to colon cancer. But, you know. At least the displays are colorful.

If you’re looking for a less horrifying alternative, you might find some relief at the One Local Summer web site, where folks are showcasing some of the great foods they’re making with local ingredients. This is where you’re going to find real color. I’d post to One Local Summer, but lately all my entries would be the same: salads. Lots of them. Greens are in season, so our default meal are salads, filled with cut-up turkey breast, roasted vegetables, fresh herbs, crumbled cheese, you name it, and served along side heaps of bread from our CSA. Simple? Yes. Delicious? Yes. An alternative to fast-food-followed-by-poo-inducing-diet-pills? Oh, I hope so. But…worth posting about week after week? Maybe not.

Regrettably, many of the posters to One Local Summer are not providing the recipes they used required to create such delicious stuff (Local Summer folks! I hereby respectfully request that you give more directions, on behalf of kitchen dense folks like myself). Nonetheless, I’m gonna’ do my best to recreate some of these yummy-looking things, starting with the Squash Fritatta that Molly tried. We’ve got piles of zucchini, and we’ve got great local eggs, and can make this one, like, tonight. Or at least tomorrow morning.

No matter what, I’m not gonna’ try alli. Nope. Not me. I don’t do laundry frequently enough to be able to handle those kinds of side effects…

So, there’s this robin that built a nest in the rhododendron bush outside my kitchen window. Through the early spring, I watched her sitting on the nest, fluttering away in fear each time I forgot myself and opened the window. Then, after the chicks hatched, I watched her care for them, bringing them grub after grub, worm after worm, all day long, day after day. Feeding a nest of baby robins, it turns out, is an all-consuming affair.

You know what? So is feeding my kids.

I’ve really been identifying with this robin. Since I made the committment to eat more real food, less processed stuff, I’m finding myself in the kitchen more often than I ever — ever — expected to. They are hungry, these kids. They are hungry all the time.

Prepare. Feed. Clean. Repeat. Prepare. Feed. Clean. Repeat. And mind you, my definition of “clean” is pretty loose.

The kitchen is just never where I expected to find myself. I was raised in the era of “Free to Be You and Me,” and I knew that I could do anything, go anywhere, be anyone — even if I had kids. You remember that song, don’t you? yeah, mommies can be almost anything they want to be… (go watch the video here. You know you want to). There were all kinds of things I planned to be doing at this age: Digging up remains of early hominids in Africa. Organizing nature hikes for kids. Running a Fortune 500 company. Playing for the New York Yankees.

I was not going to be in the kitchen. Why would I go there? The days of mothers in aprons were over. It was to be mothers in surgeons’ scrubs, mothers in construction hats, from there on in. We had come a long way, baby. We had overcome.

(What would we eat? I had no idea. It just never occured to me that I’d have to think about food.)

But I have these small people who wander around my kitchen in the early evening, begging like little huns for food, as Vikki once described her own kids. And so I behave like that bird in my front yard: I get them some food, again and again and again (Prepare. Feed. Clean. Repeat.). I haven’t quite resorted to feeding them earthworms yet, but that day might come. And while Blair is game to help, that whole health insurance thing means that we just can’t “share” these duties. Most nights, his job requires that he come home far too late to participate in any sort of cooking.

We do simple things. I’m not a great cook, nor do I aspire to become one. This week, for example, I made a turkey breast on Sunday night, and each night have added chunks of turkey to some fabulous local lettuce greens, along with a bunch of other stuff (cheddar cheese, apples, scallions, herbs, what have you) thrown in. That, with some hunks of bread, makes a decent, if humble, dinner — one that even Merrie will eat if she can douse it with some of Drew’s buttermilk ranch dressing.

I am not making magnificent feasts here. And yet it still takes time, and effort, and patience and sometimes compromising of other goals (overheard in my kitchen last night: “Can you PLEASE just go watch a video while I finish dinner???”).

And even for all this: I’m fortunate. My work day ends early enough that I can prepare a meal, even if it’s just a quick one, even if it’s not a special one. But the fact is, food takes time. It just does. I wish it didn’t. And for many of us who are just building up our food planning and prep skills? And who are really shooting for something better than a frozen Hungry Man dinner? Well…it’s hard. It’s getting easier — it gets easier, more intuitive, with each new thing that I cook — but it’s still hard. And it’s certainly not what I expected of myself at this age.

Commenter Laura was kind enough to send me a link to this terrific post, The Feminist in My Kitchen, by Jennifer Jeffrey, which talks about similar issues. Noting that even though she has a flexible job, she still finds eating locally/healthfully a challenge, she asks:

what about women who, voluntarily or not, log 8 to 10 hours a day, five or six days a week, in an office or hospital or courtroom? What about women who, in addition to working long hours and commuting back and forth, also have children at home who need love and affection and help with homework? What about women who, in addition to work and kids and a significant other, also think it might be nice to hit the gym two or three times a week? Or have a social life? Or read a book or take a judo class or become a better photographer?

Some of her conclusions about these challenges, in Part 2, are just as savvy.

For a different perspective — a mom who is (refreshingly! ahh, hope!) no longer quite so challenged by the prospect of preparing foods nightly — you should check out this article, Mom Puts Family on Her Meal Plan, in today’s Times. There are no recipes, but she does offer great ideas for very simple meals that can be quickly assembled, or kept on hand — a very basic roasted chicken, or quickly-seared meat over greens. She also recommends that you have 5-6 basic dishes memorized, so you can prepare them without any thought at all.Want some more help? Check out Expat’s ideas on planning meals that make you look like a superchef.

And if you need a little help with the planning, hop on over to download FrugalMom’s Menumaker (I downloaded it — it was far easier than I expected, and I’m now starting to get it loaded up with recipes).

I guess the thing is, if you want good food, you’ve got to prioritize it. Some other things have got to give. Neatness is one of the things that I’ve moved to the bottom of my priority list these days. If my house makes a statement, it’s this: We’re busy, we actually live here, we make messes, get used to it.

Don’t believe me? This is our bed on a typical day:

We rarely make the beds. Some days I have trouble finding something clean to wear. I am almost always overdue for a haircut, and my nails are never done. Mail piles up on our kitchen table. The check engine light has been on in my car for months, and I’ve got a crack in my windshield that needs fixing.

But the thing is, for the last few nights, we’ve sat down to a dinner that includes heaps of local, organic, nutrient-dense salad for dinner, and no one has even thought to complain.

I can’t prioritize it all, so I’m choosing to prioritize this — choosing to be like that robin outside my window (Prepare. Feed. Clean. Repeat.) and mostly — mostly — feel good about it.

Years ago, pre-kids, I made Blair a 4th of July basket. Like an Easter basket, sort of, but everything was red, white, and blue. I filled it with all kinds of things I’m trying to stay away from these days: a can of Pepsi, a can of Budweiser, Nestle crunch, Bazooka gum…it’s amazing how often these colors are used in packaging, really.

Anyhow, last week, for the holiday, I wanted to do something similar, but that would support my new vision for this country — the one in which we are overflowing with a bounty of fresh, healthful foods. Hence, our Fruit Salad for America. It’s not fancy, but it was a great way to start the day.

The raspberries came from a farm down the road. The blackberries came from our garden — they are taking over our garden, actually. Lots of people would have cut them back by now, as they are thorny and not particularly beautiful. But given my push for a more healthful, local food system, that just feels like the wrong move. Should we cut down plants that are giving us food, just because we don’t like the curb appeal? I don’t know…I just can’t quite bring myself to do it.

The blueberries…well, they were from California. Not blueberry season here yet.

And the cream? We whipped ourselves using heavy cream from High Lawn Farm, a dairy not too far from here. I learned something, too: You can make whipped cream from heavy cream…it doesn’t just have to be called whipping cream (who knew? You did, perhaps, but I didn’t).

If you’re curious about the difference between heavy cream and whipping cream, you can find it here. The short story: heavy cream has more fat, but no additives or emulsifiers. Whipping cream is lighter, more melt-in-your-mouth, but not as tasty. Say these kitchen testers: “Evidently, the additives, as well as the process of ultrapasteurization, compromise the sweet, delicate flavor of cream.”

Merrie whipped all the cream herself, the old fashioned way:

Anyhow, I wanted to post this, oh, almost a week ago. But, you know…holiday and all. Hope yours was great.

A belated happy birthday to America.

Okay, first: I’m visiting family right now, and we have spoiled here by their food. They’ve got two huge refrigerators, each of which is literally bursting with organic vegetables, pounds upon pounds of grilled grassfed beef, and homemade deserts that are just out of this world. In this house, when something falls out of the refrigerator, it is unlikely to be (as it would be in my house) a carton of sour milk that I have kind of forgotten about. Instead, it is more likely to be (manna from heaven!) a giant bowl of the plumpest, freshest organic blueberries you’ve ever seen.

Their house is also very clean, so you can pick those blueberries right up off the floor and pop them in your mouth. Yes, I did that.

Second: I’m SO TOTALLY digging Dr. Maring. He’s the guy who started the farmers’ markets at Kaiser Permanente sites. He also has a rockin’ weekly email newsletter that you can sign up for here. I totally recommend you do it — not only will you receive weekly tips on staying healthy, you’ll also recieve a weekly recipe based on whole, healthful foods. To give you a little taste of what you’ll get from his recipe, I’ve copied this week’s newsletter below:

People regularly ask me about the cost of food at farmers’ markets. In many instances, the prices of comparable fruits and vegetables from a grocery store are more expensive. Organically grown heads of red leaf lettuce may cost $2.99 at the store and $1.50 at the farmers’ market. Organically grown heirloom tomatoes are less than $3 per pound at the market but $5.99 at a grocery store near me. Peaches may cost 40 percent more at the store. You rarely know which farmer grew the food you buy at a store. You can often meet and talk with the farmer at the market. The food at the market was probably picked the day before you get it so it even lasts longer in your refrigerator. You don’t have to pay for marketing, packaging, and transport of the food from thousands of miles away.

Clearly, farmers’ market food may not be able to compete pound for pound with food you can buy at fast food outlets. The buns, the beef, even the high fructose corn syrup in the ketchup in those convenient little packages–many of which get discarded unopened–all benefit from the Farm Bill subsidies. The cost is kept down because of the government payments and the food is cheap. The price you pay, however, is not reflective of the true cost of the food. Long term, we all have to at least consider how the food was grown as well as the broader effects on the environment. Organically grown local food reduces harm to the planet. And it is good for you and your children.So go to your local market and bring home a bag of cucumbers. Most of the varieties I have seen at the local markets are not shiny and waxed. You can eat them without peeling. Now, get ready to enjoy a chilled cucumber soup.
Chilled Cucumber Soup Serves 42 big cucumbers, about 24 ounces total.
I really like the contorted Armenian cucumbers.
1 small clove garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 cups nonfat plain yogurt
1/2 cup nonfat milk
1 tablespoon lemon juic
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
Garnish:Diced tomato
Diced cucumber
Chopped mint
Optional curry oil (this is a great addition but the soup is fine without it)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
Puree the first 6 ingredients. Chill at least 2 hours before serving. Dice and chop the garnish. If you decide to try the curry oil, heat the oil, curry powder, cumin, and red pepper in a small skillet over low heat for about 3 minutes. Strain it. Garnish the soup as desired and drizzle a little of the curry oil artistically over the garnish. This one is good for company as it feels special.

What are you waiting for? Sign up for the man’s newsletter, stat!