The 30 worst foods in America, 4 ways to boost vegetable nutrition and one good burger

A Blue Kitchen round-up: Eat This Not That—30 appalling foods and appealing alternatives, four ways to get even more out of the produce we eat and a great find for when you just need a burger.

Eat This, Not That is a long-running, practical feature in Men’s Health and Women’s Health magazines. It’s also been a successful book series, the latest edition being Eat This Not That! The Best (& Worst!) Foods in America!: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution.

Both the columns and the books provide real-world solutions to the food decisions and dilemmas we face every day. As noble as packing an apple, a yogurt and bean sprouts instead of grabbing a fast food burger may be, for instance, we’re more often faced with choices between mall food court options or places at an interstate exit. One in particular that I remember compared two McDonald’s Egg McMuffins and a bagel with two tablespoons of cream cheese [a modest schmear by most noshers’ standards]. The Egg McMuffins were healthier! Fewer calories, less fat, more protein… And that was two of them.

Marion came across The 30 Worst Foods in America at the Women’s Health website. Among the scariest findings on the list: A children’s lunch with the sugar equivalent of 10 jelly doughnuts, a pancake breakfast with 4-1/2 times your daily limit of trans fats Continue reading “The 30 worst foods in America, 4 ways to boost vegetable nutrition and one good burger” →

Healthy eating with your iPhone, grilling tips for the 4th and all the Blue Kitchen that’s fit to print

A Blue Kitchen round-up: Look and Taste launches an iPhone app for healthy eating, award-winning grill master Neil Strawder shares his secrets and a Blue Kitchen recipe is featured in the Chicago Sun-Times. How cool is that?

look-taste-iphone-app Okay, a Luddite confession here. My cell phone is a phone. It makes calls, takes messages and, when absolutely necessary, sends text messages. No camera, no Internet connection and certainly no “apps” [as in applications—the kids are crazy for them].

Apple’s iPhone is a veritable playground for apps, as my iPhone-wielding colleagues are only too willing to demonstrate. Essentially, Apple created a certain number of apps, then told independent Web developers to go nuts. And nuts they went. Continue reading “Healthy eating with your iPhone, grilling tips for the 4th and all the Blue Kitchen that’s fit to print” →

Lively, refreshing Mexican fruit salad brings LA street food to the dinner table

A popular treat offered by Los Angeles push cart vendors, fresh fruit sprinkled with salt, chili powder and fresh lime juice makes a quick, healthy snack or a vibrant side for a barbecue. Recipe below.

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A story in the current Chicago Reader reminds me once again that Los Angeles just gets street food. In “Legalize It,” Claire Bushey reports on the plight of Chicago’s mostly Mexican push cart food vendors, who face fines and other legal problems because the city won’t license them. Even though it already issues licenses to the same kinds of vendors in Chicago’s parks. And even though it would allow the city to regulate sanitation and collect license fees and taxes.

By contrast, LA embraces street food as part of its culture. Mama’s Hot Tamales Cafe, for instance, is more than just a charming, welcoming place to enjoy an everchanging menu of regional tamales from all over Mexico and Central America. According to the Institutes for Urban Initiatives that operates Mama’s, it’s a training ground to help low-and-moderate-income residents “begin a career path toward success in the culinary world.” For many, the road to success leads back to the street, operating their own street food business. Significantly, Mama’s is “approved by the County of Los Angeles Department of Health Services and the City of Los Angeles Building and Safety Department.”

Street food is everywhere in LA, available in a dazzling array of flavors and cultures. From all stripes of Latin American to fiery curries, tamales, tacos, chicharrones and the latest sensation, Kogi BBQ, Korean fusion tacos sold from a truck that announces its locations via Twitter. And then there’s this fresh, slightly spicy fruit salad that Marion first discovered outside a fabric store in LA’s fashion district. But it is truly ubiquitous, sold on random corners all over Los Angeles County. Continue reading “Lively, refreshing Mexican fruit salad brings LA street food to the dinner table” →

Politics for dinner: A scary new documentary and a 26-year-old celebration of food and pride

Food, Inc. explores where the food we eat really comes from. And the 26th annual Garden Party kicks off Gay Pride Week in New York with celebrity chefs and Gourmet Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl.

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The documentary Food, Inc. opens June 12, and according to Miranda Purves in Elle magazine, it “will have you running from the supermarket for the hills, preferably ones dotted with grass-fed cows.” Let me start with a given here: Feeding the more than 300 million people who call the United States home is a monumental challenge. But as filmmaker Robert Kenner shows, the way America’s industrialized food system goes about it, with the acquiescence if not outright complicity of the federal government, threatens us all.

The issues are many and complex. The Food, Inc. official website spells them out. Factory farms raise animals under inhumane conditions, are dangerous for their workers, pollute surrounding communities, are unsafe to our food system and contribute significantly to global warming. Foodborne illnesses sicken an estimated 76 million Americans and kill an estimated 5,000 each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control Continue reading “Politics for dinner: A scary new documentary and a 26-year-old celebration of food and pride” →

Fighting injustice with coffee, combating cancer with food, part two

A Seattle-based coffee company will donate 100% of its May revenue, up to $1 million, to fight slavery, human trafficking and other forms of violent oppression. And the delicious results of Mele Cotte’s Cooking to Combat Cancer III.

Storyville Coffee gives it all away in May to fight slavery

For many of us, the word slavery conjures up the past, a dark chapter in America’s history. Unfortunately, for millions of people worldwide, it is a harsh daily reality.

“There are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history,” says Ryan Gamble, co-president of Storyville Coffee Company. “More than 27 million people are held in slavery, nearly 2 million of them children exploited in the global commercial sex trade each year.”

So this month, the Seattle-based Storyville is giving it all away—100% of its revenue for the entire month—to International Justice Mission, a human rights agency that works around the world to rescue victims of slavery, trafficking and other forms of violent oppression. Continue reading “Fighting injustice with coffee, combating cancer with food, part two” →

Spring greening: Lively Broccoli Mint Soup

Mint and a drizzle of curried yogurt give healthy, creamy [but cream-free] Broccoli Mint Soup the vibrant, fresh taste of spring. Serving it room temperature makes for an elegant, surprising first course. Recipe below.

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Sometimes watching television can be good for you. On a recent Saturday morning, I was flipping through the channels trying to get a weather forecast [answer—it started raining as we pulled out of our parking place later that morning]. Suddenly, I saw someone cooking and was of course immediately glued to the set [we don’t have cable, so moments like this are rare for me]. It was New York chef Paul Liebrandt making a version of this lively, lowfat soup on the Early Show on CBS.

Chef at the critically acclaimed Tribeca restaurant Corton, Liebrandt has been branded both a tempestuous diva of the old school and an English wunderkind, by the same publication, no less. On the Early Show, he seemed gracious and poised as they hurried him through three dishes in what seemed like 2.3 minutes. The soup was the one that caught my eye. Broccoli is one of those insanely good for you cruciferous vegetables. The problem with most creamy soups made from broccoli is that they’re loaded with cream—or cheese. Delicious, of course, but suddenly less healthy. This soup is broccoli, water, mint, salt and pepper, with a lively flavor boost from a swirl of lowfat curried yogurt with lime zest.

Marion is fond of quoting Robert DeNiro’s character in the thriller Ronin. He’s part of a crew that’s supposed to take something from some really bad men who really don’t want it taken from them. He insists on doing reconnaisance on the attack point and is told they already have a map. To which he says, “The map is not the territory.” The soup Liebrandt described as he made it on TV was not the recipe posted on the CBS website. I took that as license to put my own spin on it. Well, my spin aided by Marion. Continue reading “Spring greening: Lively Broccoli Mint Soup” →

Bees, pigs and swine flu in the news

A possible cure for the colony collapse disorder currently decimating honey bee populations and threatening horticulture and sustainable agriculture farms. Is “the other white meat” really red meat—and does it matter? And stocking your pantry for a potential swine flu pandemic.

A breakthrough in saving bees, saving agriculture

Over the last few years, honey bee colonies have been dying off in record numbers. Not just bees within the colonies—entire colonies. This is bad. As an article published this month at EurekAlert! puts it, “The loss of honey bees could have an enormous horticultural and economic impact worldwide. Honey bees are important pollinators of crops, fruit and wild flowers and are indispensable for a sustainable and profitable agriculture as well as for the maintenance of the non-agricultural ecosystem.”

But finally, there seems to be some hope. In a study published in the new journal from the Society for Applied Microbiology, Environmental Microbiology Reports, scientists from Spain have isolated a parasite Continue reading “Bees, pigs and swine flu in the news” →

Fighting cancer with pizza. Seriously.

This Tomato Spinach Mushroom Pizza is chock full of ingredients rich in antioxidants, vitamins and nutrients all thought to fight cancer. Recipe and suggested variations below.

We have all been touched by cancer at some point in our lives. Friends, loved ones, family members, colleagues… Chris over at Mele Cotte says that her own diagnosis eight years ago, coming close on the heels of the loss of her beloved grandmother to cancer, “rocked my world in a way that profoundly changed my view on many things.”

First, she made some changes in her own life, quitting smoking and making other healthy lifestyle choices. Then she set out to help others make changes too. In March of 2007, she launched an annual food blogging event, Cooking to Combat Cancer. Now in its third year, this event is both a celebration of her beating the disease and a call to arms to eat healthier. Chris invites bloggers—and even non-blogging food lovers—to submit recipes using cancer-fighting ingredients for a round-up she then posts. The deadline for Cooking to Combat Cancer III is Wednesday, April 29, so get cooking!

Turns out eating healthy really is good for you. It seems that every day, we hear that eating good stuff and avoiding bad stuff is even healthier than our mothers ever imagined. Choosing the right foods can lower cholesterol, reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes, fight the onset of Alzheimer’s… And according to a growing list of scientific studies, a whole raft of foods can help fight cancer. Continue reading “Fighting cancer with pizza. Seriously.” →

Six blogs, websites, etcetera about food, health, etcetera worth checking out

We’re always on the lookout for new or new-to-us food-related blogs, websites and resources. Here are a half dozen that have recently caught our eye. They range from helpful to health-oriented to hip to hmmmm. Found a new site recently? Share it in the comments below.

1. Still Tasty: Edible or not?

I don’t know about you, but our fridge is usually chock full of leftovers, ingredients waiting their turn to become meals and partial containers of all manner of foodstuffs. So one of the most frequently asked questions in our kitchen is “Think this is still okay?” Well, now there’s a site that answers those questions without looking like a warning on a cigarette pack.

Still Tasty delivers loads of useful food safety information in a stylish, friendly site. You can search foods and beverages by name or browse by category. You’ll also find tips on expiration dates, safely thawing frozen foods, getting the most flavor and shelflife from fresh fruit and more. Bookmark this site now. Thank me later. [Speaking of which, thanks to Thrillist New York for bringing Still Tasty to my attention.]

2. The Daily Plate: Eat right, live strong

As frequent headlines and countless blogs remind us, obesity is a daily struggle for far too many of us. Underlining the fact that this is not just an aesthetic issue but a serious health concern, The Daily Plate has teamed up with Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG.COM to provide guidance and encouragement Continue reading “Six blogs, websites, etcetera about food, health, etcetera worth checking out” →

Pistachio recall: Recent updates

The pistachio recall in the United States continues to evolve, but it turns out that not all products are affected. Here is recent information from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other sources.

First things first. If you have pistachios or foods that contain pistachios in your house, do not eat them without contacting the retailer where you bought them to see if they are part of the recall or not. But as you read below, you’ll see that not all pistachio products are part of the recall—there are plenty of sources of these delicious nuts that are safe to eat.

Okay, let’s start with the current official word from the FDA’s website: “The FDA and the California Department of Public Health continue to investigate Salmonella contamination in pistachios and pistachio products. Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella Inc., Terra Bella, Calif., is voluntarily expanding its recall of roasted pistachios to include all lots of roasted in-shell pistachios and roasted shelled pistachios that were produced from nuts harvested in 2008. The firm is also recalling those raw shelled pistachios from the 2008 crop that are not subsequently roasted prior to retail sale. The pistachios may be contaminated with Salmonella.”

Salmonella is nothing to mess around with. It can cause a moderate illness with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and headaches, and may even come back a few weeks later as arthritis. In young children, frail or elderly people and others with weakened immune systems, it can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections.

That said, while the FDA initially warned consumers to not eat any pistachio products, they’ve now modified this warning on their site: “FDA is advising consumers not to eat pistachios or food products containing them [such as pistachio bakery goods and pistachio ice cream] unless they can determine that the products do not contain pistachios from Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella, Inc.“

So where do you find non-Setton pistachios? Continue reading “Pistachio recall: Recent updates” →