whole food

Are You Ready to Start an Evolution?

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Lia Huber — No Comments ↓

I dug into the January issue of Bon Appetit over the New Year break and was psyched to see it dedicated to “The New Healthy.” I felt like the NOURISH site was lifted to the Bon Appetit pages, and am SO psyched that the conversation about enjoying a life free of processed food and full of fresh, seasonal, real food has reached the mainstream.

But something stood out that made me say, “I beg to differ.”

Dan Barber, the Executive Chef and co-Owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns and one of the pillars of the modern sustainable food movement, states in a chef photo spread, “The future of healthful eating is going to be in the hands of chefs, much more than nutritionists or doctors.”

I agree that lasting change is not likely to happen at the hands of doctors or nutritionists, but I personally don’t think it’s going to happen at chefs’ tables either. You know who’s going to make the tidal shift in America?

You are. You and me and every home cook doing what it takes to get dinner on the table during busy weeknights.

I don’t dispute that chefs will inspire us, and I am grateful for that. Here in Healdsburg, I’m continuously in awe of how Spoonbar Chef Louis Maldonado elevates local, seasonal vegetables and sustainably caught fish to a fine art (I just recently made this Brown Rice Mushroom Porridge as a riff on his version at Spoonbar). And I’m psyched to see him get national acclaim for doing so on Top Chef … did you see what he did with broccoli on episode nine of Last Chance Kitchen?

But real, lasting change across America isn’t going to happen with sous vide carrots. It’s going to happen with dishes like this Leek, Lemon and Cauliflower Fettuccine (I used whole wheat spaghetti last night and it rocked). With dishes loaded with vegetables that are easy to cut up and get in the pan. With dishes packed with so much flavor that the whole family tucks in happily without goading, and that reheat for easy, healthy lunches the next day. With meals that use only a couple of pots and a cutting board so they don’t take forever to clean up afterwards.

I happened to make this pasta last night with a gorgeous head of organic cauliflower grown in the garden of our local Shelton’s market, and I’m thankful to have that choice. But if that makes you roll your eyes and think it’s too hard or too expensive to buy local and organic … don’t feel judged! That’s OK. Do what you can. If you’re committing to buying organic at Whole Foods this year, terrific. If you’re just getting familiar with the outer perimeter of your local Safeway, good on you … you’re forging into new territory and that’s a good thing.

The point is, no matter where you are on your NOURISH Evolution, taking one step forward this year will make a difference. So make this cauliflower pasta … you’ll be changing the course of history when you do.

Waste Not: 5 Steps to Skip Food Waste

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Alison Ashton — No Comments ↓

The first day of the new year found me cleaning out the refrigerator, evaluating produce, sniffing the last of a bottle of cream, examining cheese. After a busy holiday season of cooking, things had piled up. Some of it could be used. Much of it couldn’t. Let’s just say it was an object lesson in food waste.

I’m not alone in this, as food waste expert and blogger Jonathan Bloom details in his new book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (DaCapo Press). Collectively, we toss an estimated 40% of our food, including a third of our vegetables. Food scraps are our second largest source of waste–and a significant source of greenhouse gasses.

Such food waste is as hard on your wallet, too. The USDA estimates that the average family of four throws away $2,275 worth of the food every year (or, more accurately, sends it down the drain since 75% of wasted food disappears down America’s garbage disposers).

Waste occurs throughout the food system, of course, from the farm (where less-than-perfect-looking produce is left behind in the field) to supermarkets (which dump tons of food past its sell-by date) to restaurants. But your own kitchen is the best place to start addressing the issue of food waste. As with so many goals, small steps yield powerful results.

“The most important step we can take to trim our home food waste is to shop smarter,” says Bloom. “Most of us buy too many fresh foods, making it difficult to use everything before it goes bad. Planning meals, writing detailed shopping lists and making smaller, more frequent shopping trips can all go a long way toward minimizing this problem.”

With that in mind, here are 5 strategies drawn from Bloom’s book:

Plan ahead. We’ve talked about the beauty of planning meals for a healthier diet. It’s also a key strategy to reduce kitchen waste, says Bloom. Start by planning meals to use up what you already have on hand in the fridge and pantry. If you need to buy ingredients for a specific recipe–especially items you’re not in the habit of using regularly–consider how you can use them up. Extra herbs can go into pesto, leftover buttermilk is great in baked goods or salad dressing, day-old bread is delicious in bread pudding and so forth. As always, make a list and stick to it.

Avoid impulse purchases. From special end-of-aisle promotions to deep discounts on items approaching their sell-by dates, stores are cunningly designed to encourage you to buy more food. True, such promotions can be real money-savers–if you actually use them. Otherwise, it’s money down the drain.

Know your dates. These days, all kinds of food is stamped with a “sell by” or “best by” date (sometimes both), which confuse retailers and consumers alike, says Bloom, and lead to unnecessary waste. “Infant formula and some baby foods are the only items required by federal regulations to carry a ‘best-before’ date,” he notes. Otherwise, dates on food lead many consumers to toss tons–literally, tons–of perfectly good food. Properly stored perishables should be fine for at least a week after their sell-by date; nonperishables have an even longer shelf life. Best-by dates are nothing more than a suggestion from the manufacturer. Don’t be afraid to use your senses–if it looks and smells fine, you’re good to go.

Buy whole food. Supermarket produce departments are filled with chopped, grated and otherwise prepped fresh ingredients, which can be welcome time-savers for busy cooks. But prepping ingredients also hastens deterioration, which shortens their shelf life and leads to waste. Unless you plan to use that whole bag of grated carrots or cubed butternut squash promptly, buy the whole version instead.

Avoid food packaged in bulk. From shrink-wrapped vegetables to prebagged fruit to “value” packs of poultry, the growing trend of prepackaged fresh foods annoys Bloom for two good reasons. 1) When one item in a package goes bad, the whole thing is tossed (stores rarely break up and repackage fresh goods). 2) Shoppers are forced buy more than they want and often end up throwing away the extra.

Instead, shop at venues that allow you to buy only as much you need, whether it’s a farmers’ market that sells loose produce or a store with a full-service butcher and bulk bins so you can buy smaller amounts of dry goods.

Also in this series:
Nourishing Resolutions: Fruit of the Day
Nourishing Resolutions: Plan Ahead in 4 Steps!

Think of Food as Food

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Lia Huber — 9 Comments ↓

Several years ago I was interviewing the highly-respected Greek nutrition scientist Dr. Antonia Trichopoulou. She had studied thousands of Greeks over a span of several decades in order to understand the nutritional effects of a Mediterranean diet (defined by an abundance of healthy oils, whole grains, vegetables and legumes) on long-term health. “So just how healthy is olive oil?” I asked, eager to codify the benefits of each food group for the article I was writing.

“Olive oil is an essential part of what makes the Mediterranean diet healthy,” she answered. But as I scribbled notes and scanned studies, she continued on. “If we look at one nutrient at a time, though, we miss the way they interact. It’s a cocktail of everything that makes this type of diet so good.”

As I tried to deconstruct food into its building blocks, Dr. Trichopoulou kept bringing them back into context, talking about how tasty greens are when sautéed in olive oil with garlic and a squeeze of lemon, or how Greeks like to snack on simmered beans. “It’s much more effective to look at the health of your whole lifestyle rather than individual foods.”

That interview changed the way I thought of healthy eating. Yet amid the constant barrage of diet and nutrition advice here in America I sometimes find myself slipping back into that old reductive view of food. Avocados and olive oil cease to be really tasty things and instead turn into “good sources of monounsaturated fats” (with a tinge of guilt because, well, they’re fats). Tomatoes morph from luscious little orbs into things that are “packed with lycopene,” and whole grain bread goes from being a textural marvel to being “heart healthy.”

While it’s important to understand the impact that certain food groups and nutrients have on our bodies–and we have and will continue looking at them from several different angles on –what Dr. Trichopoulou taught me is that it’s even more important to carry that information back up to 35,000 feet and remember that, ultimately, if your plate is full of things that didn’t come out of a box or container it’s probably a healthy meal.

Most important of all, though, is to remember to think of food as food.