History Under A Harvest Moon

Posted by guest blogger, Laura

Though only a few days into autumn, already the air has cooled and farms around the country are preparing for the Harvest.

When I lived in the Garden State, harvest season was the highlight of the year. The last tomatoes are brought to the farm stands, the corn finishes ripening, and the bright pumpkins swell in the fields.

The Harvest, Robert Zund (1827 - 1909)

Few people ever consider the historical circumstances that allow us to enjoy these fruits and vegetables around the world today. Most people know that Amerindians cultivated corn (maize) for thousands of years, and introduced it to the Europeans who arrived on America's shores in the 15th century. However, corn wasn't the only "New World" vegetable to impact Europe.

For instance, though tomatoes are today considered an integral part of Italian sauces, the British and North American British colonists refused to eat tomatoes for years because they erroneously believed them to be poisonous (only the leaves are toxic). Anyone who has been hiking or enjoys the outdoors probably has heard that brightly colored berries are typically bad to eat. The vibrant fruit of the tomato made some Europeans nervous, so when Spanish explorers brought back seeds from Tenochtitlan around 1519, the British only cultivated them as decorative plants. Obviously since the Spanish had seen the Amerindians eat the tomato with no ill effects, the fruit caught on quickly in Spain, with Italy following closely behind. The myth of the poisonous tomato persisted among the British and Americans until less than 200 years ago.

Ripening Tomatoes 4, Cindy Revell (Contemporary)

Were you aware that the Irish didn't farm potatoes until recently? Native to Peru, the potato is first mentioned by Spaniard Pedro de Cieza de Leon in 1540, when he writes that the native peoples have, in addition to maize, another "plant that supports a great part of their existence: the potatoes...." After making its way around Europe, Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) first brought the potato to Ireland when he planted them at his estate near Cork. The new crop gained so much in popularity that "cooking any food other than a potato had become a lost art. Women hardly boiled anything but potatoes" [Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger: Ireland, 1962]. This dependence on the potato directly lead to the starvation of millions when the blight destroyed nearly all the potatoes in Ireland.

Gathering Potatoes, Jules Bastien-Lapage (1848 - 1884)

Perhaps the crop most associated with autumn is the pumpkin. We make pies and soups from it, roast the seeds, and even fry the blossoms. While pumpkins today are grown on every continent save Antarctica, they are believed to have been first cultivated in Mexico thousands of years ago. In addition to using pumpkins as food, Amerindians would pound the tough rind into strips and weave it into mats. Colonists first created the pie when they hollowed out a pumpkin and filled the inside with milk, honey and spices, then set the squash in the fire to cook.

Gathering Pumpkings: An October Scene in New England, ca. 1860

In the spirit of harvest, I'd like to share my very simple pumpkin soup recipe that I enjoy making with fresh pumpkin, then serving in the shell.

3 tbsp. butter
2 cups cubed fresh pumpkin
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
3 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup fat free half and half.

I cook the pumpkin in a pan (to soften it), then place all the ingredients in a blender (I'm sure a food processor works as well). I then return it to the pan to continue simmering for about 20 minutes. Some people pour the soup back into the pumpkin and bake for a little while - it keeps the soup warm.

I'd like to thank the lovely Stephanie and "Ninja-hot" Mark for graciously allowing me to sully their otherwise excellent and informative blog. When not annoying my friends or searching for decent beer, I write drivel over at The Angry Historian.

Thistle

Milk Thistle enjoys wide human use throughout the world as therapy for livers taxed or damaged by disease, such as hepatitis, or chemical/drug exposure. Its cousin, the Musk Thistle, grows in my backyard and enjoys many of the same benefits.

Many thistles end up on "noxious weeds" lists. Such lists largely indicate that the "weeds" are simply contrary to local agricultural interests, and say little about whether or not the plants are actually useful to humans in other ways.

I hope you enjoy my time spent with the "noxious" Musk Thistle in my backyard.

Real Food Wednesdays!

Check out this week's Real Food Wednesday over at CHEESESLAVE. Links to lots of wonderful food ideas, recipes, and nutritional information.

Tomatillos have arrived.

There is so much good food in season right now that it's hard for me to make choices when I go to the farmers market: lush greens, huge bouquets of broccoli, cauliflower, and romanesco; purple bulbs of kohlrabi, cabbage, beets and other new roots; beautiful varieties of sweet heirloom tomatoes; and then there are all of the berries and stone fruits. The donut peaches and sugar plums barely make it back to my house without being devoured on the way home. But these little green beauties wrapped up in their own natural parchment were just screaming out at me this week - tomatillos!

Tomatillos are like husked tomatoes but they are actually from the gooseberry family. They taste like a cross between a tomato, a plum, and rhubarb - slightly lemony and tart. If you have ever had good salsa verde in a Mexican restaurant, they are the staple ingredient.

I first made this dish about a month ago while I was visiting Mark in Utah. We found these gorgeous tomatillos that were from California and some fresh bay scallops in his local grocery store. We roasted a bunch of vegetables in the oven, blended them up into sauce, and served it over pan-seared scallops with a little sour cream and avocado. It was so light, fresh, and summery that I decided to recreate it once I was home, only this time I substituted fresh calamari (squid). The sauce is just about the most delicious summer salsa on the planet!

PAN FRIED CALAMARI (OR SCALLOPS) WITH ROASTED TOMATILLO SAUCE

1/2 lb. of cleaned squid chopped into 1-inch thick slices or 1/2 lb. of bay scallops

2 Tablespoons of bacon fat or clarified butter (ghee)

Sea salt, freshly ground pepper

2 cups roasted tomatillo sauce (below)

1 Hass avocado

Creme fraiche or sour cream

1. Using a saute pan, render a few slices of bacon into about 3 tbsp. of fat.

2. Once the bacon is crispy and there is enough fat in the pan, remove the strips and save to crumble over a salad. You can also use clarified butter (ghee) for this dish since it also has a high smoking point, which in that case you'll want to season your squid with salt and pepper before frying. If you use bacon fat, it will already be salty so you can just season with black pepper.

3. Once fat is good and hot, drop squid into pan and saute over hi-heat until the white parts begin to brown a bit and the tendrils begin to curl up on the edges (3-4 minutes). You can taste it to be sure it's tender. Don't overcook the squid since it can become too rubbery.

4. Once the squid is cooked, remove from the pan and transfer to some paper towel to drain.

5. In the center of a serving bowl or plate, ladle about 1/4 cup of tomatillo sauce.

6. Arrange a handful of squid on top of sauce.

7. Spoon some creme fraiche over the squid and top with chopped avocado.

TOMATILLO SAUCE

1/2 lb. tomatillos, husks and stems removed, thoroughly rinsed until no longer sticky

1 Anaheim chile pepper, stemmed, quartered, ribs and seeds removed

1 Green or purple (or red) pepper - stemmed, quartered, an seeds removed

5 cloves of garlic

1 onion quartered

3 Italian Roma tomatoes sliced in half

1 bunch of cilantro, leaves only

Juice from 1 lime

Sea salt to taste

1. Pre-heat oven to 450

2. Place tomatillos, peppers, tomatoes, onion, and garlic in roasting pan.

3. Roast vegetables until tops are charred (8-12 minutes).

4. Remove from oven and allow to cool

5. Spoon all the vegetables along with the juices that have collected in the pan into a blender

6. Add cilantro and blend slightly until you get a chunky sauce consistency. Add a little lime juice, salt, and pepper to taste. This sauce should be naturally sweet, slightly astringent, a little smoky, a little spicy, and slightly salty.

7. Refrigerate and use as a sauce for fish, meat, or eggs (huevos rancheros).

The Primal Challenge Begins Today!

Are you looking to lose weight, build muscle, increase energy, reduce stress or just generally get back on track?

If you are not yet familiar with Mark Sisson's "Primal Blueprint," this is the perfect opportunity for you to find out more and achieve your health and fitness goals.

All you need to know is here.















Good luck and have fun!!

Hot Dogs and Tolerance

Mahatma Ghandi once said, "Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit." I happen to agree with this sentiment. It feels lately like intolerance is all around us, seeping into every crack of public and private life and slowly rotting the layers of our democratic foundation. Big media stories like the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and Obama's proposed health care plan along with the angry swirling clamor that surrounds these issues begin to dominate our conversations, our emotions, and our behavior toward others. And against the backdrop of this economic crisis, these highly charged issues leave us scared, angry, and vulnerable to the powers of blame and scapegoating.

More and more we begin to believe that our happiness and quality of life is predicated by the demise and unhappiness of others. I see people who have real power, wealth, and privilege complain about the needs of the poor as if they might be taking something away from them, somehow stripping them of their high held position in society. Instead of looking at ourselves and appreciating what we have and what our true potential is, we have become more concerned with what we don't want others to have - like the right to marry, the right to have health care, the right to collect a welfare check, and the right to be treated as an equal regardless of one's color, religion, sexual preference, socioeconomic status, and one's nationality (citizen or not).

I grew up trusting no one. I was indoctrinated at a young age by my synagogue and the Jewish community at large to believe that we, as Jews, were never safe. I was taught that we will always be hated, targeted, and discriminated against because of who we are and what we believe - and was told - for that reason we have Israel as our refuge. Well, I never did suffer any discrimination or persecution for being Jewish. I grew up on Long Island where everyone I knew was either Jewish, Italian, or Irish. We all got along fine (this is not to say that I didn't grow up in a racist society - there was plenty of racism and racial segregation when it came to color).

My parents and grandparents, however, had the real experience. Like many Jews of my generation, I come from a family of survivors and refugees. I grew up with the harrowing tales of violent pogroms, raped and brutalized family members, forced ghettoization and displacement, concentration camps, murdered brothers and sisters, extermination, running, shooting, hiding, losing, grieving, journeying...

I inherited a fear of persecution along with a deep sense of compassion for those who are continually marginalized, discriminated against, and scapegoated. This is where my consciousness for social justice came from. And while it has shaped me and the kind of person I have become including the work I do, I sometimes believe it's a curse, because I see discrimination and injustices everywhere, and this makes me very unhappy.

So what does all of this have to do with hot dogs?















My grandfather used to tell me the story of how he, my grandmother, and my mother arrived on Ellis Island after traveling for almost a year, running from the Nazis in occupied France; rescuing their five-year-old daughter (my mother) who was in hiding for two months after getting lost in a forest where my family took refuge from German planes shooting overhead; and waiting for documents, money, and train tickets so they could get to Spain, to Morocco, and finally, to New York City. Luckily, the anti-semitic immigration restrictions had been lifted by that time. They had been on a boat for nearly a month. They were weary, dirty, and most of all, hungry.






















"The first thing I ate when I came to America was a 'frankfurter.' There was a man with a cart on the dock where we landed on Ellis Island. We had a little bit of change and so I bought one for us to share," my grandfather told me.

"Oy, it tasted so good."

He told me this story many times in his lifetime.

My grandparents had a good life here in New York. They became very successful business people eventually owning a string of delicatessens. It was difficult in the beginning. They didn't speak English and they were poor. They shared a two-bedroom apartment in Hells Kitchen with their brothers' and sisters' families who they were completely dependent on for money and language skills the first few years. My grandfather went into business with his brother, gaining the experience he needed, and then he and my grandmother finally moved out on their own. They opened their own business and bought a nice home in Queens. My mother went to good schools and married another Jew from a poor family (my Dad) who became a dentist. They moved into a big house in the suburbs and had me and my two sisters. We grew up affluent and privileged. Unlike what we were told, we never had to run to Israel to escape persecution. New York was our home. It had been good to me and my family.













For my grandfather, that hot dog was the taste of the American dream. But not the dream we usually equate with success in the US (à la Donald Trump). It wasn't the myth of social entrepreneurial Darwinism or brute Capitalistic abuses, or the mass consumption and waste we have come to believe is American democracy.

It was the dream of tolerance.

Disclaimer: I do not endorse hot dogs as a "health food" or part of the primal diet, although I do enjoy occasional sausages that are made from happy, locally raised pigs, and/or wild game. I don't eat the buns either.

Primal Pets

I've been called the "crazy cat lady" many times in my life, and I'm okay with that. My cats live like little kings in my home. I love my animals in the same way I love children. My love and respect for animals is part of the reason I was a vegetarian for so many years (that, and the belief that it was the healthiest diet) and now that I have returned to an omnivorous lifestyle, I am still a little conflicted about the idea of eating animals. So in addition to sourcing my meat locally from farms where I know these animals lived a happy and healthy life, what also helps me is understanding that eating other species is part of a natural cycle.

Nothing teaches me this more than observing my cats. We all know that felines in the wild are indisputably carnivorous. I have witnessed firsthand both the brutality and the symmetry in which lions prey, attack, and feed on other animals. In this case, it was a zebra - such a glorious animal. The image of its tragic defeat haunted me for many weeks after returning from southern Africa. Many years later, it continued to stay with me and I can honestly say that I have never fully understood the harsh reality of nature. But I accept it and respect it. My little felines are no different. They want meat. They crave it. As soon as they smell it in the house they instinctively begin to behave just like those lions - tails extended, ears twitching, abruptly sprinting from one room to the next, pausing in the shadows with their front bodies crouched down, hind legs high in the air, waiting to pounce on their imaginary kill...

One only has to try feeding their pets a vegetarian diet (which I do not recommend) and will immediately notice not only their disinterest, but the plethora of health problems that will quickly ensue. Cats especially need animal sources of vitamin A, arachidonic acid, and taurine for proper nutrition and survival. A deficiency of these nutrients often leads to some of the most common problems found in cats: blindness, cancers, and heart and kidney failure.

Cats that are able to go outdoors have the advantage of being able to hunt birds, rodents, and other small animals and eat what comes naturally to them: raw meat, bones, cartilage, and organs. But I live in a city and that is not possible. I, like many of my fellow urban pet owners, adopted my cats from a shelter just so they wouldn't end up on the street and like most alley cats - dead at a very young age. So what do we feed our urban pets? Kitty chow and canned fish dinner, right?

Well, yes, if you learned about pet health the way I did - through advertising.

When I first got my two little kittens (Nelson and Reggie), I got their shots, had their ears cleaned of mites, had them neutered, bought all their nice supplies with good quality clumping litter, and a fairly expensive brand of food called IAMS for kittens. I wanted only the best for my cats.

I started them out on the little cans, and then, as suggested by the Vet, switched them to a good quality dry food (IAMS, as well). They ate nothing but those little kibbles for about 4 years, until Nelson developed a urinary tract infection (UTI). Apparently, UTIs are quite common with cats (both male and female) because of poor diet. Ash, found in dry foods and in fish, causes cats to develop crystals in their urinary tracts which build up and become inflamed. Another cause is alkaline urine. Acidic urine will dissolve crystals, but most cats become alkaline for two reasons: Leaving food out all day and allowing cats to smell it stimulates the alkaline in their system. The other cause is cooked food. When protein is cooked, amino acids like taurine and methionine that are vital to acidification cannot be assimilated by cats, and get passed off as waste.

No one told me this. After administering antibiotics, the vet gave me a "prescription food" that basically had the same bad ingredients in it as regular food, with the addition of some amino acids, minerals, and anti-inflammatories. This only worked temporarily. It wasn't long before my cat had another infection. This time it was so bad that I had to take him to the emergency room at the animal medical center and have him catheterized. Then my other cat got a UTI several months later. They were suffering both physical pain and emotional trauma of having to be treated over and over at the hospital (catheters, anesthesia, shots, rehydrations, etc...).

After hundreds of dollars of treatments, medication, and prescription food, I finally decided to seek some alternative advice. I bought a book at my local pet store called, Dr. Pitcairne's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats. This book talks about the importance of proper diet for our pets and the dangers of commercially produced pet food. It contains recipes for homemade food so I decided to try making their food for a while. It was complicated, costly, and labor intensive, plus they never really liked it. It contained a lot of grains which I later found out is not natural to a feline diet. Cats cannot metabolize carbohydrates very well (I'm beginning to believe that humans can't either). The other problem was that they were addicted to the taste and the crunch of their kibbles. Sound familiar? It's sort of like if you fed your kids breakfast cereal or Doritos all day - forever. It would be addictive, fattening, nutritionally deficient, and a very hard habit to break.

So I decided a good compromise was to look for the best quality canned food I could find. I found one called "Wellness." It was expensive but they liked it. It had good ingredients like human grade chicken, brown rice, flax, fish oil, blueberries, carrots, etc... Sounds healthy, right? They ate this for about 4 more years. Then one day I noticed that Nelson had diarrhea. I waited a day to see if it would clear up on his own but it didn't. I brought him to the vet and, again, they put him on an antibiotic and prescription food. He threw up the medication and his diarrhea got worse. He was losing weight. He ended up having chronic diarrhea for two months. He had every blood test, ultrasound, x-ray known to kittykind. It was determined that he had irritable bowel syndrome but no one could tell me why. No treatments worked. No prescription food worked. He was dying and I was distraught.

One day while walking home from work, I came across this "holistic" pet shop called "Whiskers." There was a whole section of herbal remedies and supplements that I had never seen before. The man who was working in this section asked me if I needed help. I told him that my cat was dying of diarrhea and wondered if he had any remedy for it. He said "yes." He told me not to buy anything in the store (I immediately trusted him!) and to go to the supermarket, buy some chicken breast and sweet potato, cook them well, and blend them in equal parts into a mushy food. He told me to give this and nothing else to my cat for three days (my other cat could eat it too). He said that this would bind his stool and give him his appetite back. I had nothing to lose so I did it. At first, the cats sniffed this mysterious orange stuff and walked away. But they came back later, hungry and curious. They ate it. They ate it for three days. And lo and behold, my cat's diarrhea disappeared. I ran back to that store and hugged that man. "What should I do now?" I asked him.

He then instructed me to start changing them over to a raw diet and to simply stay away from canned food. That's right. Raw meat. No grains, no fillers, no salt, no by-products or parts, no broth, no gelatin, no fish, no flaxseed... just meat - as they were meant to eat (a few veggies too, but they aren't necessary). There were some commercial brands of raw food that were quite good or I could give them my own. I decided to try the frozen stuff first to see if they could tolerate it. (Tolerate it? They're felines! This is what their bodies have evolved to digest!).

Okay, okay... so there is a happy ending. My cats have been eating raw meat ever since. That was about 5 years ago. Since then my cats have both gained weight. Their coats are shiny and silky. They are more energetic today than they were 10 years ago. Neither of them has had a UTI or diarrhea or anything. They go to the vet once a year for check-ups and my Vet marvels at how Nelson has recovered and how beautiful they both look.

The best part is that they behave like hunters - little lions that they are.

PRIMAL PET TIPS:

1) Do not feed your cats dry food. Just don't. Think "breakfast cereal, forever."

2) Only feed your cats once or twice a day. After they eat, take their dishes away and wash them. Cats are hunters. Their digestive systems are designed to fast and then gorge. Do not leave food out all day. Constant "grazing" will lead to lethargy, obesity, diabetes, UTIs that can result in bladder infections, kidney failure, and heart failure.

3) Do not feed your cat fish. This is not natural to a feline diet. When was the last time you saw a cat jump into the water for its food?

4) Try to get your animals off of commercial canned food. Remember the recent pet food recall because of all the melamine? Hundreds of cats died of kidney failure. This is just one reason. The other reasons are discussed above.

You will have to transition your cats slowly. If they are still eating dry food, remember, they are probably addicted to the taste of their crunchies. Try just a half teaspoon of wet food a day mixed with some dry food. Then slowly add more wet food and just sprinkle some crumbled dry food on top until you slowly phase it out for good. Do the same mixing with canned food if you're transitioning from canned to raw.

5) Making your own homemade food for your pets is easy and doesn't have to be expensive. I get ground scraps and bones from the farmer from whom I get my own meat. His animals are raised on a pasture and eat grass. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for my cats. Here's a basic cat or dog food recipe:

- 2 lbs. of raw ground chuck or ground chicken or ground turkey and/or scraps (you must try to find a good source of quality meat - either a local butcher, farmer, or somewhere the meat turns over quickly. You do not want to poison your animal with salmonella. Most dogs and cats have better antibodies against bacteria than we do, but care should still be taken).
- Two or three of tablespoons of raw ground carrots, broccoli, sweet potato, or whatever fresh vegetables you have bought for yourself.

That's it. Mix it all up and put into 3 or 4 pint sized containers or glass jars. Use one right away and freeze the rest. Defrost as necessary.

I also give my cats bones, skin, and any other leftovers from my chickens, beef fat, pork skin, etc... Cats don't have a hard time with bones. Their teeth are designed to tear, shred, and crush them. Sometimes I'll even throw them a raw chicken leg and watch them go to town on it. Very primal!

6) You can also find primal recipes in the following books:
- The New Natural Cat by Anita Frazier
- Give Your Dog a Bone by Dr. Ian Billinghurst
- The Ultimate Diet: Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats by Kymythy R. Schultze, AHI

Or check out these websites:
- Dr. Pitcairn.com
- barfaustralia.com
- Whiskers Holistic Pet Products
- Dr. Lisa Pierson

7) If you can't make your own food, try one of the frozen raw foods like: Abady, Primal, Stella and Chewy's, and Raw Advantage. Many pet stores now have a frozen section and carry these. If they don't, ask them. I'm sure they will special order it for you.

Do you have primal pets?

If anyone feeds their dogs raw food, I would love to know what you feed them.

Eating on the Road

Because I travel a lot for work, it is always a continuous challenge to try to stay healthy while on the road. Since I normally do most of my own cooking at home with fresh ingredients I purchase directly from farmers, it always feels like a bit of an assault on my body when I am forced to eat in restaurants for a week at a time. I find it more and more difficult to find reasonably priced restaurants that serve anything remotely healthy. The choices are always the same in every American city - Chili's, Fridays, Applebees, Chipotle, Ruby Tuesday, Mimi's, etc... And those are the healthier ones. Even when I find the nearest Whole Foods, I find that most of the salad bar and prepared foods are brought in pre-cooked, are not seasonal, not organic, and contain all kinds of sweeteners and terrible oils that I normally would not eat. When did we become a nation of nothing but chains that serve industrial prefabricated foodstuff, and when did we become so accustomed to it that we treat these restaurants as if they are part of a normal diet?

Well, I still refuse to see them as "normal," even if they are ubiquitous and convenient. If I look hard enough and do a little research before traveling, I can still find local, family owned eateries that take pride in their cooking and serve up their food with love. Here are some other strategies I have devised which help me remain in balance and keep me from getting sick while traveling across this great country.

1) I always stay at Bed and Breakfasts instead of hotels.

B&Bs are affordable, cozy, comfortable, cleaner than most hotels, have tons of character, and you can almost be certain that you will be served a home-cooked, healthy, and generous breakfast that is included with the price of your room.

Now the social aspect of B&Bs is not for everyone. I myself prefer to dine with people, especially when I am traveling alone for business. It's a nice relaxed way to start my work day and a much better option for me than sitting in a lonely diner and gobbling down a greasy spoon breakfast, or stopping at a Starbucks for a grande cappuccino and a sugary muffin.

The last B&B I stayed at in Asheville, North Carolina, was the Blake House Inn. It was supremely comfortable and breakfast consisted of fresh berries, a mushroom quiche (I didn't eat the crust), and fresh brewed coffee with cream. I skipped the home fries and scones and doubled up on the crustless quiche. That filled me up until late afternoon.

2) If I have time, I always look for a farmer's market.

This is always the best bet for me. There I can buy local fruit, maybe some cheese, some yogurt, a little organic cream for my daily coffee, and perhaps some salad veggies. Most B&Bs will allow you to store food in their fridge so it usually works out pretty well.

3) The next best thing - Whole Foods or a local health food store.

I'm not one to believe that everything you find in a Whole Foods is "healthy," in fact the same rules that I employ in a regular supermarket apply to Whole Foods: "Stick to the perimeter!" One can find just as many sugary breakfast cereals and unhealthy fried snacks in a "health food" store as in a Walmart (Note to self: "Dehydrated organic cane juice" is still SUGAR!).

But what you can find in health food stores that is great to have while traveling is healthy food that is portable like apples, berries, raw nuts and seeds, and of course there is the salad bar that once must judiciously navigate. Watch out for those pre-prepared salads that contain tons of soybean oil. Try to stick to the raw ingredients and add your own olive oil and vinegar or lemon.

A cheaper route can be to buy one of those rotisserie chickens, a few tomatoes, and a nice head of romaine lettuce. This could be dinner for two to three nights if you stretch it. You can usually purchase a small container of olive oil and vinegar from the salad bar that can dress a few salads.

4) I either do a little research or ask a local and try to find some local specialties.

While I was in North Carolina, one of my colleagues, a Durham native, brought me to one of the best barbecue joints. It was definitely food that I cannot get back in New York and well worth the diversion. The nice thing about North Carolina barbecue is that it isn't as sugary as Texas barbecue. It has more of a savory, vinegar flavor that really compliments the tender meat very well. I had the brisket and it was deeelicious. It came with 2 sides so I ordered the collard greens and okra. I skipped the bread and sweet sauce and just used a little of "his sauce" which seemed to have little to no sugar at all. Fabulous.

5) If I can't find any food to eat, I would rather skip a meal.

I have no problem skipping meals and doing a little intermittent fasting if I can't find anything worth eating. I usually have fruit and nuts on hand so I may just snack on those until I find some decent food.

6) If I see a farm stand on the side of the road, I stop!

I never pass up the chance to sample fresh, seasonal, and locally grown food - whether it's organic or not. Of course, I prefer organic, but small farmers rarely use the same chemicals in their soil that commercial farmers use so I know it's still going to be relatively healthy and delicious.

7) If I'm being taken out to dinner to a restaurant that I don't really like, I try to make the smartest choices when I order.

I don't have to tell you that I stay away from the bread, pasta, potatoes, and all grain dishes. I try to always order an entree salad with a healthy protein like salmon, chicken, or lean meat.

Asian restaurants can be particularly difficult since almost everything comes in a sweet syrupy sauce. If I'm in a Japanese restaurant I may order sashimi, some steamed spinach (oshitashi) and skip the rice, which is always infused with sugar and vinegar. Many Japanese restaurants also have grilled meats like teriyaki (very often sweet though), sukiyaki, and shabu-shabu. Chinese restaurants will usually offer some kind of steamed fish without sauce and sometimes steamed vegetables like chinese broccoli and bok choy, also without sauce. Thai and Indonesian food will almost certainly have sugar in all of it, especially those peanut sauces. Indian food is pretty much a safe bet for me - minus the rice. Italian is fine too. Most good Italian menus have wonderful caprese salads, a good selection of antipasti vegetables, and some delicious fish, chicken and meat. I just skip the pasta course. French restaurants - my favorite.

8) When dining at someone's home - I try to be polite, but I don't have to eat everything on my plate.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to leave a little food over. If it's food I really don't want to eat (lasagna and bread, for example), I'll take very little to begin with, push it around on my plate a bit, and eat a small amount. I don't mind if people say, "she eats like a bird." No one is ever unhappy that they have more leftovers. Later on, however, I may go out for a burger (without bun, of course).

It's good to be back home.

Testicle Festival

For the last six or seven years in Woodruff, Utah, we have enjoyed an annual celebration of the mighty Rocky Mountain Oyster, the bovine testicle. I had my first experience with the "oyster" last year, and went back again this year to share the experience with my neighbors and folks from outside the area drawn by our new tradition.

This meal, with a few deviations from my ordinary diet of meats, healthy fats, nuts & berries, lower-carbohydrate vegetables and fruits, and no processed sugars/carbs, was all about "community." That is a good enough reason for it to show up today in our blog as a bit of a guilty pleasure.

An Eggselent Meal

I love eggs. I eat them most days. I've recently become aware that my love for them is the sort of love that sometimes steps over some of the marvelous qualities of familiar things.



Not too long ago I visited my neighbors' personal chicken ranch for this blog. At the time, the hens were still largely feeding on winter mash. Now, the spring grasses with their nutritious seeds have arisen and the bugs that chickens love to hunt are in full, late spring industry.

The chickens are ranging.

My neighbors have no roosters, so all of us on our short rural street are spared the noise and attitude that come with those obnoxious males. Since I live only two houses away, I am occasionally blessed with the light music of hens communicating with each other as they go about their daily foraging.

Stephanie is visiting and had hoped to try some of the eggs produced by my neighbors' chickens. She'd planned a meal surrounding those eggs which included chorizo sausages from the Tamarack Hollow Farm in Vermont and Utah-raised tomatoes purchased after her arrival. She also brought asparagus, fiddlehead ferns, Romaine lettuce, and wild morel mushrooms from the New York area, which she plans on using for a wild mushroom sauce that will smother some of my local sirloin steaks we will be having for dinner tomorrow. [Long pause] Where am I?

I called my neighbor, Tracy, to ask her if I might score four or so eggs.

"Only four?" she asked.

"Well, six would be perfect."

The next morning she dropped by with a full dozen, and told me that she had plenty if I needed more. The eggs represented the colors of the chicken rainbow, light chocolate, tan, light green/turquoise. In addition to their beauty, it has been well-documented that these genuine free-range eggs contain much more of vitamins D, E, A, beta-carotene, and Omega 3 fatty acids than commercially raised eggs. (What the USDA means by "free-range" and what ordinary people think are two different things.)



Steph prepared the tomato for roasting by quartering it and seasoning it with salt, fresh ground pepper, oregano, and freshly chopped parsley.



The eggs were beautiful with rich, orange yolks begging to be left soft. We complied.



The smell of the roasting spicy chorizo and sweet tomatoes quickly filled the kitchen and eventually drew Asher from The Computer Dungeon (basement), his nostrils twitching. The sausage would later confirm my growing suspicion that former vegetarians - such as the pig farmers at Tamarack - have a unique and sensitive way of producing meat.



It's quite a thing when you're able to leave foods with opposing natures together in a roasting pan and have them get along so nicely. We plated the meal and Stephanie, inspired, topped the eggs with some of the fats and juices from the chorizo-tomato together time.



I'm a simple guy who ordinarily throws a couple of eggs into my dedicated egg pan, turns them after 90 seconds or so, tops them with salt and pepper, and calls it finished. The egg solo is a standard during my solitary times. The genius in Stephanie's meal was in demonstrating the power of the mighty, work-a-day egg to serve as a mediator between the fiery, combative chorizo sausage and the sweet, tender tomato. All were honored in this excellent, nutritious, and tasty meal.



And thus the egg stood between, and with, both.