You are what your produce eats. . .

Industrial food production cares little about the soil that their food is grown in except as a conduit to supply the plants with all the chemicals that they spray on it.  The pesticides, chemical fertilizers and lack of rotational planting has greatly depleted our soils of all things nutritional.  A good farmer knows that in order to have healthy plants healthy soil is vital. 

The produce we buy at the supermarket is nutritionally depleted for several reasons.  The soil industrial produce is grown in is most likely depleted of nutrients and plants derive their nutrients from the food they eat just like we do.  If a plant is eating a malnourished diet then we in turn are getting that same malnourished diet by eating that fruit or vegetable.  Industrial produce tends to travel very long distances, an average of 1500 miles, and the longer produce is picked before it is consumed the more nutrients it loses.  Produce is most nutritious just after it is picked and because produce travels from so far away farmers must pick it before it is completely ripe.  Ripe fruits and veggies would never survive the jostling of their long journey and would spoil before it reaches the supermarket bins. Produce has the most nutrition at its peak of growing and is vitamin and mineral deficient otherwise.

It has been discussed among nutritionists and scientists that part of the obesity epidemic is caused by this lack of nutritious food.  Our bodies will want to continue to eat more and more of the nutritionally depleted food because our bodies demand that we consume enough vitamins and minerals to be healthy.  Our brains do not turn off the "hungry switch" until we have consumed the desired levels of nutrition that we need.

Most organic farmers spend many years building up their soils with compost and manure in order to bring the land and soil back up to its healthy levels.  This is a big reason why everyone should eat organic - organic produce has been found to be at least three times more nutritious than the same industrially grown produce.  Nutritious eating also backs the argument for buying locally.  Local farmers can pick their produce the night before or the morning of a farmer's market, which means they can pick when fruit is ripest and most nutritious and consequently most flavorful as well.  The ripe fruit will survive the journey to your kitchen because it is only traveling a few miles.

Something you can do on your own to increase the nutritiousness of your own food is through composting.  Household compost is made up of organic material - egg shells, veggies, fruits, coffee grounds, etc - and is broken down by microbes and worms.  Use this compost in your vegetable or herb garden or even your window boxes if that is all you have.  For those of us without a yard composting is still possible and smarter people than myself have invented the electric kitchen composter that I'm currently saving up to purchase!  I tried to compost in boxes on my balcony and transport them to my in-laws on the weekends to add to their compost but unfortunately unsavory bugs moved in as well as a putrid smell.  We quickly ceased all composting at our house until a better system was brought in.

My next big purchase:  http://www.naturemill.com/

Ratatouille with Eggs

This is a recipe I got from Eric Ripert, the world renowned chef at Le Bernadin in NYC.  It's a very satisfying meal and can be changed up in order to add your favorite veggies or whatever is really good in the market that week.

 

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

  - 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

  - 1 large white onion, 1/4" dice

  - 1 red bell pepper, seeded and 1/4" dice

  - 1 banana pepper, seeded and 1/4" dice

  - 8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

  - 3 tomatoes, seeded and 1/4" dice

  - 2 small zucchini, 1/4" dice

  - 1 tbsp tomato paste

  - 1 medium eggplant, peeled and 1/4" dice

  - 8 eggs

  - 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

  - 1/4 cup julienned basil

  

Special Equipment:  4 - 6" ramekins or coccettes, the pyrex glass dishes for storage work wonderful!

Side Note:  I sometimes take out the eggplant and substitute with zucchini, squash or both.  Eggplant can be an acquired taste to some people.

Heat the olive oil in a dutch oven over medium-high heat.  Add the onion, peppers and garlic to the pot and saute until tender 5-7 minutes.  Add the tomato paste and continue to cook 3-5 minutes.  Add the tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant and cook until tender, about 10 minutes.  Add water as necessary.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  You can do these steps up to 2 days ahead of time.

Preheat oven to broil.  Spoon 1/2 cup of warm ratatouille into the individual dishes.  Crack 2 eggs on top of each dish.  Place the dishes in the broiler for 5 minutes or until the egg whites are just set.  Serve with parmesan and basil on top!

Water, water everywhere. . .

Continuing on the theme of water quality in America, I would like to discuss a very disheartening and scary trend.  Pharmaceuticals - estrogen, testosterone, anti-depressants, antibiotics and others - are showing up in alarming levels in our drinking water.  My mother-in-law was the first to really bring this to my attention and she is working very hard with the agriculture departments and non-profits here in California to maintain and restore our water quality.  It turns out that these pharmaceuticals are getting into our water through human and livestock waste, as well as leaching from landfills where people have thrown away extra pills.  When laboratories develop birth control, anti-depressants or other drugs they are processed to such a minute level that the conventional water filtration systems, be it the local municipality or mother nature's aquifers, cannot filter out the molecules and they end up in our drinking water.  It may seem a trivial thing at first because they are at such small levels of contamination but there are some very frightening things happening in response to this.

  The Potomac River that runs along Washington DC and empties into the Chesapeake Bay has been found to be so contaminated with pharmaceuticals that they have actually found asexual fish.  These fish were not previously asexual but due to the estrogen and testosterone levels, they have evolved to become asexual.  The Potomac River is the drinking water supply for the DC metropolitan area.  Yes, it is treated but living there I noticed a very sad trend.  Of the seven couples at my office that were trying to start a family, only one couple was able to conceive naturally and have a healthy and complication free pregnancy.  Five of the seven couples had multiple miscarriages and the sixth couple had a baby born that died minutes after.  I'm not saying that all the complications were from pharmaceuticals in the water, the couples were mostly in their mid to late 30's so that could have had some effect but those ratios seem extreme even for that.  We all know that pregnant women and fetuses are more susceptible to medication and environmental factors and our drinking water would seem a good place to look towards finding an answer to all these couples' heartbreak.

  There is a way to filter out these molecules through reverse osmosis.  Being an architect, I always encouraged my clients to install a whole-house reverse osmosis water filter.  Unless you live at the top of the mountain and drink the snow melt there is no doubt that you have pharmaceuticals in your drinking water.  There seems to be less of an affect on healthy adults so I don't mean to alarm anyone into buying all bottled water.  In the event my husband and I ever decide to have kids, however, we will definitely purchase a reverse osmosis filter beforehand.

  As consumers of pharmaceuticals there are things you can do to help remedy this toxic trend.  By eating better you help your body better defend itself against infection and systemic problems like depression.  The less pharmaceuticals we need the less it will end up in our water.  If we pledge to eat organic and pasture raised meats this also reduces the amount of antibiotics from livestock operations that wind up in our water supply.  Do not throw away unused medications or flush them down the toilet, please call a local authority on disposal of pharmaceuticals and consult with them about the best way to get rid of them.

  Everything seems to come back around to eating better and supporting the natural local way of producing our food.  With your vote for the local sustainable food supply it becomes apparent how many other ways it  improves our lives!

Garlic Lemon Hummus with Crudo

I love to have people over and while they are at my house I always like to have things to munch on.  This is a wonderfully healthy snack and full of flavor.

Ingredients:
  - 2 cans of organic chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained - reserve the liquid
  - 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
  - 8 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
  - 1/2 cup tahini (sesame paste) found near the peanut butter
  - 6 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice (2 lemons)
  - 1/4 cup chickpeas liquid
  - 12 dashes of tabasco sauce

Place all the ingredients in a food processor with a steel blade and process until pureed.  If it remains to thick add more lemon juice and reserved liquid.  Taste for seasoning and place in a serving dish.  I like to sprinkle paprika on top for color but a drizzle of garlic olive oil or lemon slices would be nice as well.

Crudo Platter:  Hummus is great with raw vegetables and whole wheat pita wedges.  I like to use Belgian endive, sliced carrots, sliced red bell pepper and cucumber slices.  You can toast the pita wedges in the oven on a baking sheet at 350 for about 10 minutes until they turn brown around the edges - this will give them a nice crunch!

The alarms are sounding and people are starting to listen. . .

With every new deadly outbreak of E-coli, the curtains are being pulled down and exposing industrial food production for the monster that it is.  More and more people are being pushed towards choosing organic food, they can no longer hide from the industrial food realities.  1,733 people have become sick in Germany from a new even more deadly strain of E-coli and 18 have died so far, with nearly 500 people still in danger of dying.  The World Health Organization is attributing this E-coli outbreak to cucumbers, tomatoes or lettuce.  Does this seem absurd to anyone else but me?  Neither cucumbers, tomatoes or lettuce have the cabability of producing e-coli; as previously mentioned in this blog, e-coli comes from the digestive system of animals and the mutant strains are developing because of all the antibiotics and unhealthy diets we feed our livestock.  It will come as no surprise to me if this mutant strain of E-coli is found to have originated in feed lots or chicken houses and the feces from those operations somehow found their way on to the plants that were grown non-organically.

The WHO and German government are currently asking everyone to thoroughly cook all vegetables and other foods as well as peel and wash well all vegetables you plan to eat raw.  That's a good precaution if you plan on buying non-organic but thoroughly cooking vegetables at a heat to kill all germs renders them tasteless and texturely displeasing, not to mention it cooks away a lot of the nutrients in the food.

On the economic side people in the EU have been scared away from buying produce until the source of the outbreak is found, which means farmers are losing millions of dollars a day.  Vladimir Putin has completely banned all EU vegetable imports into Russia until the problem is solved and Germany is begging Russia to again open up its doors to their farmers; Chancellor Merkel is accusing Russia of overreacting to the outbreak.  Can anyone really blame Russia for taking such a strong stance to protect its citizens? 

Another EU blame game is going on between Germany and Spain.  Germany, trying to take the limelight off of its own farmers was blaming Spain for the E-coli, saying that it was their cucumbers that were infected.  It turns out that the cucumbers were infected but not with the current strain of e-coli that was causing the illnesses.  Wonderful, we see that when the government pays attention to its food production and does the testing that should be required we find even more harmful bacteria!  What a great time to be an organic farmer in the EU - while your industrial farmer neighbors are going broke, your profits are rising!

As we continue to see these outbreaks and deaths caused by the industrial food system, I believe that sustainable organic food will become the majority of our food intake and the industrial system will become a thing of the past.  Unfortunately the industrial food system likes to solve its problems by injecting the animals and vegetables with new technology instead of changing the way they produce food - in their minds solving the problem and saving their profits.  The only way this will change is if you, as a consumer, make your vote for organic and sustainable food by purchasing it in the grocery store, from your local farmers market or by growing your own food!

Chicken Pesto Pasta

This is a go-to dish when I'm just not feeling like cooking.  I usually keep a few tubs of pesto in the freezer for instances just like this.  Pesto always tastes fresh and it has lots of flavor!

Serves:  4-6

Ingredients:
  For the pesto -
  - 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (can substitute pine nuts but my husband dislikes them)
  - 1 head of garlic cloves, chopped
  - 5 cups of fresh basil leaves, tightly packed
  - 1 tsp salt
  - 1 tsp black pepper
  - 1 1/2 cups olive oil
  - 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Place the nuts and garlic in a food processor with a steel blade.  Process for 30 seconds.  Add the basil, salt and pepper.  With the processor running slowly pour the olive oil into the feed tube and process until it is finely pureed.  Add the cheese and puree for a minute.  Use immediately or store in freezer.  To keep the pesto green (it will turn brown if exposed to air for too long) pour a small amount of olive oil over the top to seal out the air before putting in freezer.

 For the pasta:
  - 1 lb of dried fusili, farfalle or tube pasta (something with some ridges to hold the sauce)
  - 1 lb of chicken breast chopped into bite size pieces
  - 1 tbsp olive oil
  - 1 medium white onion finely diced
  - 1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved or a 1/4 cup of sliced sun-dried tomatoes in oil
  - 1/4 cup fresh basil, julienned for garnish

In a medium skillet place the oil and bring it to medium-high.  When the pan is good and hot place the onions and chicken in the pan and cook until the chicken is browned and the onion translucent, about 10-12 minutes.  Meanwhile bring a large pot of salted water to boil and boil pasta until al dente, about 2 minutes less than package recommends.  Place a cup of the pesto into the skillet with the chicken and stir to coat chicken and onions.  Pour the skillet contents over the hot pasta, along with the tomatoes and mix well.  Add more pesto to coat the pasta entirely or to taste.  Serve with a little julienned basil on top.  Enjoy hot or at room temperature.

Feeding the world versus feeding ourselves. . .

Whether our American farmers should produce enough food to supply the growing international populations or whether their focus should be on growing good food for America is always a hotly debated topic at my family dinner table.  We cannot have it both ways.  In order for American farmers to be able to supply food to impoverished nations, like we do now, we have to farm monoculturally and industrially - using genetically modified seeds, massive amounts of fertilizer and pesticides in order to get the yields from the land that we need.  This has many negative impacts on the land, our water, the economies that we are giving all this free grain to and other health implications. 

Another outcome of our nation paying American corn farmers subsidies and the North American Free Trade Agreement is that we put 1.5 million farmers in Mexico out of work.  Mexican farmers can no longer compete with the influx of cheap U.S. corn and therefore began flooding across our borders looking for other jobs.  This is not a singular occurrence.  By feeding the world's impoverished and starving nations with our cheap grain we have put what few farmers there were in these areas out of business.  This is great for American farmers because we now have a new market in which to sell all the excess grain that is produced but it is a horrible situation for everyone else involved.  The more charitable thing to do would be to teach the impoverished nations how to farm their own land (the old adage "give a fish, teach a person to fish") but politicians are elected by their American constituents and it is good business to sell grain to other nations.  There is no money to be made by teaching other nations to be self-sufficient.

Why would farmers choose to grow a diverse range of plants when they can sit in an air conditioned tractor, take vacations during the fall and winter months and are guaranteed a check no matter how good or bad the growing season?   No one said being a traditional farmer was easy but there has to be a new breed of farmers that take a stand and choose to farm the more labor intense way - plant organically, without pesticides and fertilizers, not use GMO's, and grow regional specific diverse plants.  There are financial and ecological incentives for a farmer to do this.  We all know that buying organically is more expensive; it's more expensive because it is more labor intensive but an organic farmer will make more money per pound produced than does a non-organic farmer on the open market.  Corn and soybeans are falsely cheap, six billion dollars a year are paid in subsidies to corn and soybean growers, which reduces the price of these products to consumers but you're still paying for it out of your tax money.  Think about what we could do with six billion dollars in our national budget:  repair our failing infrastructure, keep our space program going, invest in renewable energy, and a slough of other worthwhile endeavors.  Without subsidies the farmers would be forced to go back to the more ecological and traditional ways of farming.

The ecological benefits of discontinuing our "feed the world" campaign are many.  Over one billion tons of pesticides and 27.8 million tons of chemical fertilizer are used every year in the U.S by industrial farming practices.  The excess chemicals run-off into our water supply and make their way down into our oceans.  The amount of fertilizer and pesticides spilling from the Great Plains into the Mississippi river has created a 6,000-7,000 square mile dead-zone where nothing but algae (that feeds and multiplies exponentially on nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer) can live because algae depletes all the oxygen in the water.  This has always been my main argument against the industrial farming advocates who say that we must feed the growing population of the world.  I applaud their desire to make money off of the growing populations by supplying their basic need for food but without potable water we cannot sustain human life.

If we teach the other nations how to farm ecologically and stopped all farming subsidies for corn and soybeans we could make huge leaps towards having a cleaner, more sustainable environment.  Farmers are governed by how much money they can make (as we all are) and if we as consumers buy organic products, the demand will rise and farmers will make the change toward better farming practices.