Lodge Cast Iron: What’s old is new again

Lodge Cast Iron cookware—hefty, oldfangled and enjoying a resurgence—is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post.

Whenever I’m shopping for a new skillet or sauté pan, the first thing I do is lift it. Usually, the cheaper the pan, the lighter it feels. Meaning there’ll be very little metal between the flame and whatever it is you’re cooking. You want a pan with a satisfying heft to it—otherwise, you’re going to be scorching stuff on the bottom before the rest of the food even has a chance to get warm.

Cookware doesn’t come much heftier than cast iron. That solid, lift-with-your-knees weight assures even heating, great heat retention and generation-spanning durability. This sturdy, no nonsense cookware is enjoying renewed popularity these days among a whole new generation of cooks. Continue reading “Lodge Cast Iron: What’s old is new again” →

Cooking in Cabo II: Tuna Watermelon Ceviche

Citrus juice quickly “cooks” sushi-grade tuna for this light, fresh, colorful first course, Tuna Watermelon Ceviche. Recipe below.

As American psychology professor Abraham Maslow once said, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Los Cabos, at the southernmost tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula, is surrounded on three sides by water. To the lucky inhabitants there, everything looks like a seafood buffet.

I saw this firsthand on a recent culinary press trip to Los Cabos (yes, I’m on about that again). Did you know that there are flights at 5:30 in the morning? Me neither. But being on one meant I grabbed an airport breakfast sandwich and cursed when a mad dash for my connecting flight in Atlanta precluded getting something more. So late afternoon found me at my hotel, the Grand Solmar Land’s End Resort & Spa, desperate for a light meal to tide me over until the group dinner. I found it at the hotel’s oceanside restaurant, La Roca. It was called, quite simply, Seafood from the Pacific. Continue reading “Cooking in Cabo II: Tuna Watermelon Ceviche” →

Healthier lunches go back to school

Sending kids back to school with healthier lunches—and actually getting them to eat them—is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post.

I was not a lunchbox and thermos kid growing up. My school lunches were strictly brown bag and consisted almost invariably of a peanut butter and jelly (almost invariably grape) sandwich, a banana of questionable vintage (or a box of raisins, similarly carbon dated) and, on rare occasions, a cookie or piece of candy. I bought milk at school, unless I found more interesting uses for my milk money at the confectionery across from the playground. This would have been a healthy, if boring, lunch, if I had eaten it. More often than not, I made it about halfway through my food before bailing and heading for the playground.

As someone who taught elementary school for a few years (and did my share of lunchroom duty), I’m here to tell parents that my school lunch experience was not uncommon. So as we hear more and more about how school performance is linked to nutrition, how do we get kids to actually eat lunch at school—and eat healthy? Continue reading “Healthier lunches go back to school” →

A healthy cooking technique made fragrant, delicious: Chinese-style Steamed Fish

Steaming infuses fish fillets with the flavors of ginger, star anise, garlic, cilantro and other aromatics for Chinese-style Steamed Fish. Recipe below.

STEAMING FOOD IS A HEALTHY WAY TO COOK. As practiced in Western kitchens, mostly on vegetables, it’s also often a bland way to cook. In Chinese kitchens, it is an art. Chinese cooks use both steaming and smoking to infuse foods—especially meats and fish—with delicate, complex flavors. Continue reading “A healthy cooking technique made fragrant, delicious: Chinese-style Steamed Fish” →

No. 246 takes a less meat-centric approach to Southern cooking

A new Decatur, Georgia restaurant focusing on pasta, pizza, seafood and farm-fresh produce is the subject of a recent USA Character Approved Blog post.

I remember a Southern Sunday dinner years ago, at my Aunt Veta’s house in Mississippi. I can’t even recall now why we were visiting, but I remember the meal. It was mid-afternoon, and there were more than a dozen of us crowded around a long, oilcloth-covered table on her screened in back porch. And there were three kinds of meat!

Fried chicken, barbecued pork chops and a ham all vied for my attention—and all got it, in turn. I was in carnivore heaven. Much of Southern cuisine still reflects this meat-focused view, especially with the farm-to-table movement and its emphasis on nose-to-tail eating driving a lot of restaurant kitchens. But a pair of chefs just outside Atlanta are taking a less meat-centric approach at their new restaurant, No. 246. Continue reading “No. 246 takes a less meat-centric approach to Southern cooking” →

Sweet meets tart and savory: Grilled Chicken with Strawberry Balsamic Vinegar Sauce

Grilled chicken breasts get a flavor boost with a simple, jam-based sauce. Recipe below.

I read somewhere recently that chicken growers are having trouble marketing chicken parts that aren’t skinless, boneless breasts. And it’s not because chicken breasts are more convenient to cook, or that chicken thighs and legs are more fatty than breast meat. It’s that skinless, boneless chicken breasts don’t have bones and therefore seem less like they came from an animal and are therefore somehow less icky.

Seriously? If you’re going to eat meat, own up to it. You can pretend all you want, but that boneless, skinless bit of animal protein was just as much a part of a living chicken as a bone-in thigh or drumstick.

If you’re not ready to give up eating meat (I know I’m not), but you want to feel better about doing so, there are a number of things you can do. Continue reading “Sweet meets tart and savory: Grilled Chicken with Strawberry Balsamic Vinegar Sauce” →

The vegan grill: Spicy, smoky peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, zucchini and peppers with dill

Homemade Strawberry Jalapeño Jam adds a grown-up kick to the classic kid food, PBJs, and dill gives grilled vegetables a fresh, summery finish in this satisfying vegan grilled meal. Recipes below.

Peanut butter sees almost daily action at our house, often as a simple spoonful scooped from the jar for a quick snack while dinner is cooking. And we’re not alone in our love of the stuff—Americans eat almost three and a half pounds of peanut butter a year per capita, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center. (Given our consumption, I have to admit that sounded low to me.) Continue reading “The vegan grill: Spicy, smoky peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, zucchini and peppers with dill” →

Small Bites: Snow cones, cocktails and seven pounds of chocolate

Snow cones going artisanal with small batch syrups is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post. And Marion and I are asked to judge chocolate. Lots of it.

Snow cones are a primal summer pleasure. I remember staring at the spouted bottles of colorful syrup at the snow cone stand as a kid, agonizing over my flavor choice. If the stand allowed you two flavors (or sometimes even three! three!), the decision became exponentially harder.

Now a former Chicago restaurateur is making the decision a lot more interesting. Melissa Yen used to run one of our favorite weekend breakfast haunts, Vella Café. Frustrated by the limited choices in syrups for flavoring coffee for the café, she started experimenting with her own. Out of those caffeine-fueled adventures, Jo Snow Syrups was born. Continue reading “Small Bites: Snow cones, cocktails and seven pounds of chocolate” →

Too hot to cook? Not with this quick Peppery Pork Cucumber Stir-fry

Ground pork, English cucumber, red bell pepper, scallions, lemongrass and ginger come together quickly in Peppery Pork Cucumber Stir-fry—perfect for hot summer cooking. Recipe below.

Extreme weather puts us in the mood to take it extremely easy in the kitchen. I’ll let Marion tell you about a quick stir-fry she whipped up that tastes far more delicious than the short time spent in the kitchen would suggest.

All my complaining about the cool, non-summery weather has led to it being miserably hot and humid and weird. This month alone, we’ve had a giant hailstorm that swept across the city accompanied by lightning (we heard it coming, this low drumming advancing toward us in the dark, long before we figured out what it was, and then so much hail, no rain, just hail); then a derecho uprooting trees and hurling around heavy objects on its thousand-mile path; then, this weekend, a day of basement-flooding, record-setting rainfall.

And in between all of this, most of the time it’s been hot—at times so hot that my colleagues in places like Florida and Arizona and California have been helpfully pointing out that it was actually being cooler there, in all those places. (Guys! Thanks, guys!) And along with the heat is a chemical veil over everything, so that when the wind blows, you actually feel worse.

So we have been hunting for dinners that cook up fast. Things mostly made from ingredients, not products, things refreshing to the eye, and nothing including the word slow. Continue reading “Too hot to cook? Not with this quick Peppery Pork Cucumber Stir-fry” →

Purple Asparagus: Changing the way kids eat, one classroom at a time

Purple Asparagus, an organization that’s teaching kids to eat in ways that are healthier for the body and the planet, is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post.

The numbers on obesity in America are staggering. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than a third of us are considered not just overweight, but obese. And while obesity rates have doubled for adults from 1980 to 2008, they’ve tripled for children. A frightening 17 percent of children aged 2 to 19 are now classified as obese.

Overweight kids tend to become overweight or obese adults, and that puts them at risk for associated adult health problems, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and several kinds of cancer. In fact, some overweight and obese children are starting to show signs of cardiovascular problems formerly only seen in adults. Purple Asparagus is one of a number of organizations working to get kids—and communities—eating healthier. Continue reading “Purple Asparagus: Changing the way kids eat, one classroom at a time” →