Eating the Sun: The Power of Eating Warm Foods

(howstuffworks.com)

Ceres, goddess of agriculture, corn, the carrier of the cornucopia, mourns the loss of her daughter Proserpina six months out of the year, ever since Pluto made her a captive and companion for him in the underworld. However, every six months, Proserpina returns and Ceres opens her arms to welcome her back from the darkness. While Proserpina enjoys her stay with her mother, the sun comes out and everything begins to grow—this is the time to plant those seeds, pick grapes off the vine of Bacchus, drink wine, fornicate, marry and be merry. But we all know the growing season ends. As Pluto takes Ceres’s daughter back to his underworld kingdom once again, Ceres once again mourns the loss of her daughter, the sun departs and the world becomes cold, the ground becomes hard with frost. Nothing grows, the trees shed their leaves to survive the harsh winter to come. All the animals hibernate in caves and holes and subdivisions until Proserpina returns once again. And so it goes.

(reversespins.com)

Oh Proserpina, where are you? Here on the rock of Newfoundland, it’s been a cold summer. Ceres doesn’t seem ready to open her arms to welcome Proserpina back from her prolonged stay in Pluto's underworld. Pluto may no longer be a planet, but we still associate Pluto with being cold. (Funny then that Hell is supposed to be hot.) In other words, the sun hasn’t come out. Or if it has, it seems to be teasing us, playing hide and seek. Perhaps Ceres has lost hope this year. Perhaps Proserpina was too drunk and hungover from partying with Pluto’s minions and was knocked unconscious while playing pin the tail on Cerberus. Perhaps Ceres and Proserpina are not on speaking terms with each other—having a row, as they say. Whatever the reason may be, the sun isn’t out, thus we are not warm. And when we are not warm our bodies contract too much and we retreat back into ourselves and away from the world. So we have a few options. We can do the corn dance (which I and my past lives seemed to have forgotten) or we can bundle up. We can harness the power of warmth. We can think warm thoughts. We can eat warm foods.

Heat and warmth is a strange thing to be talking about in the summer. (We’re heading toward August now.) Usually in the summer, we talk about how to cool down, not warm up. I was at Second Cup the other day and saw their ad for their new summer drinks, you know, to cool down. But there was a dire warning attached to the sign: FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY. Tim Horton’s has their iced lemonade chillers or whatever they’re called. Though it looks on the outset like just another marketing ploy to spur demand in a short amount of time and boost sales, it’s actually a reminder to us that Proserpina is only here for a limited time. And the marketing boys over at Tim Horton’s and Second Cup may have miscalculated the demand for their new gimmick. Newfoundlanders probably aren’t buying too many of those cold drinks. And if they are, they shouldn’t be.

So what’s going on? We have the heat on, our thick comforters are back on the beds, the thermostat is on, we’re inside cuddled under a blanket trying to get WARM. It is not just that the sun is gone. It is actually cold. It can still be hot without any sun. But this summer, if that’s what you want to call it, the weather seems to be contracting us, when it should be expanding us. Our instinct in the summer, usually, is to drink iced tea and eat salads, pasta salads, potato salads, deli sandwiches, but in order to expand, we must do the opposite. Now we have to think soup, casseroles, chili, hot cereal, cobblers and crisps, pies. Comfort food. That’s why it’s called comfort food. And if you’re eating non-comfort food in this cold weather, then you may be extremely uncomfortable and wondering why. You’re just following your instincts, so who can blame you? Our instincts are telling us one thing, but our bodies are telling us another: “Hey you! I’m cold! Warm me up!”

Being from Southern California, where it’s pretty even-steven all year round at a nice, comfortable 70 degrees Fahrenheit/20 Celsius, I never understood the concept of eating seasonally; my wife partner, being from Toronto mostly, did. And she cooks accordingly. See, we didn’t have falling leaves where I grew up, or snow-capped driveways. Christmas was just another sunny day, no difference from the Fourth of July. You could eat fruit all year long. So my wife partner raised her eyebrows at me when I would request “summer foods” in the winter. She thought I was strange, and I thought she was strange for planning her recipes according to the seasons. Now I see the error of my ways. Boy do I ever!

Rudolf Steiner was big on warmth, he always emphasized it. Warmth is the beginning of everything, the source of all life. The first thing we do to a newborn baby is swaddle them up. If your children aren’t growing in a healthy way, it might be because they are too cold. Think about it. Without warmth and heat, without the sun, nothing would grow. We often underestimate the power of the sun’s energy, we take it for granted. This summer, if it isn’t going to come out, then we must summon it within ourselves. Food, real food, is stored energy. We eat the food so we can get the energy. This is why we eat more grains in the winter and more fruits and vegetables in the summer. If you eat lifeless food, however, then it stands to reason you will have a lifeless energy about you. Processed food, processed meats, processed veggie burgers, processed anything—it has very little energy, despite what the marketing boys over at headquarters will tell you. The new McDonald’s Happy Meals may serve apples, but you can bet those apples are heavily processed. Ever see an apple left out too long? It oxidizes and turns brown. I don’t even know if the McDonald's apples can even be called apples. God knows what they’re doing to them. I know their oatmeal isn't oatmeal.

Terry Walters, not just a cooking genius, but also a nutritionist, has one of the best cookbooks out there called Clean Food. Rather than eating Mr. Clean in our foods, she stresses that the foods we eat should be clean, non-processed, foods.

What makes the book so special is that the recipes are organized by season. So for any of you locavores out there, this is a special plus. If you eat locally, then you can be sure you are eating seasonally, across the entire food spectrum. This is one of those if-you-are-stranded-on-a-desert-island-and-could-only-take-one-cookbook-with-you kinds of books. It’s simply incredible.

 

Clean Start is amazing, too. All the recipes are gluten-free. Gluten seems to be the new enemy, people increasingly getting diagnosed (incorrectly?) with Celiac disease. Just another example of how unhappy our beloved Ceres has become as our relationship to Mother Earth has become increasingly twisted and strained. How can we cheer her up? 

Eat, drink, and be warm. Even if it is summer.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

I would like to thank my good friend Lesley for inspiring this post.

  

Why You Should Buy Italian-Made Pasta

Do you cook lots of pasta? If you have kids, you do. But here's a tip: only buy Italian-made pasta. Why? Because it's just better. They've been making pasta for hundreds of years, they know how to do it. So check the label and make sure somewhere on the package it says it's made in Italy. Usually there's lots of Italian on the package, a dead giveaway. This brand Fratelli Gallo is my favorite. 

What you see is called Pasta Della California from the amazing Veganomicon, perhaps the mother of all vegan cookbooks. It has an important-sounding name, anyway.

This pasta dish is one of the best we've ever had, I think. It's loaded with garlic and lime zest sauteed in white wine with peppery arugula and--get this--avocado! You wouldn't be alone if you thought avocado wouldn't go well with pasta, but in this dish it works amazingly. We got baby arugula from our CSA share at Seed to Spoon. This dish was just incredible, but what made it even better was using the Fratelli Gallo fettuccine.

Dessert. We still have those strawberries from Lester's Farm Market, so what other dish can we make? Ah yes, strawberry shortcake with macadamia nut cream. 

All vegan. The cream, which was uber delish, is from Vegan with a Vengeance, written by one of the authors of Veganomicon, Isa Chandra Moskowitz:

As you can see, our little "Mikey" liked it.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Use Sprouted Bread For That Sandwich

This here sandwich was the bomb: walnut chickpea spread is from Vegan a Go-Go!

We have a 3 yr-old sandwich lover and she loves this one. She sees me enjoying it so much, so she asks for one, too. Granted, hers is a bit smaller. We use the most amazing bread from the Silver Hills Bakery which we get at Dominion in the healthy section. We've tried a few of the "flavors" and this one is the best from their line so far:

Flour is getting a bad wrap these days, too refined, too enriched with bleach. You want the most unrefined you can get, with as many grains as you can get, preferably sprouted. This bread's a bit more, but worth it, trust me. 

Why sprouts? Sprouts contain all of the potential energy to make an entire plant and the inactive nutrients that are stored in seeds become converted to a rich food source as enzymes are released. Think of the story in bug's life where Flick gives the analogy of how a seed can become a tree. It looks like a little dinky thing, yet is so much more, has the potential to be so much more. 

Sprouts are so much more. Eat them! Do one better: grow them! Buy a sprout-growing kit, with jar and seeds, at Food For Thought, the only alternative health food store in St. John's, right next to The Sprout Restaurant, the only vegetarian restaurant in St. John's. See, we're such a progressive city. While you're at the store, think about converting your plain iodized salt for Himalayan Salt, which contains a much broader spectrum of minerals. Iodized salt is refined sodium chloride, and has been blamed as one of the primary causes of high blood pressure and hypertension. In other words, it's not too good for us and is found in 99.9% of processed food and processed "enhanced" meats. Switch your salt! Here's the whole story, or Just Google It.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Brownie Waffles

Here's a vegan delight, which we just ate for breakfast. Recipe can be found in Veganomicon, another incredible vegan cookbook.


Our eldest has been focusing way too much attention on her little sister lately, trying to control her and whatnot, so we bribed her with these waffles. We said if she could let her sister be for the week, we would make these waffles on the weekend. And her behavior changed instantly, all week, like a switch went off! She stopped worrying about every little thing her sister did. Bribery may not be the best parenting strategy, but it can't hurt all that much when the reward is these delicious waffles for the entire family!

Eat B(right),
Veggie Daddy

Double Chocolate Strawberry Pie

Dinner: BBQ-tofu w/ apricot sauce and peppers, and avocado potato salad.

Here was dessert:

Trust me, it's as good as it looks, and it's all vegan. These strawberries are from Lester's Farm Market where we picked them ourselves. We use President's Choice semi-sweet chocolate chips. And if you're not vegan, that shouldn't stop you from trying vegan recipes. This particular recipe is from Vegan Diner



We love this one, the food's amazing. You'll be saying, "I can't believe it's vegan!"

Strawberry U-Pick At Lester's Farm Market

It's that time of year again, where you get to pick your own strawberries at Lester's Farm Market.

They give you a ride in a tractor, you take a bucket and off you go!

You take as long as you want, getting back to your gatherer/hunter roots, imagining what it was like back in the day to hunker down in the bushes and grab as much fruitilicious loot as you could before a big animal tries to eat you. Here's my strawberry girl with a full bucket of strawberries as we wait for the tractor to come back.

They are the juiciest little red gems of nature's candy, ever. Go and get some before they're gone!

Vegan Pizza: Lemon Basil Pesto, Faux Feta, Asparagus and Broccoli

Pizza night! 

This one has a lemon basil pesto with garlic scapes, which we got from our Seed To Spoon CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) share. We topped it with a faux feta cheese (tofu marinated in herbs overnight) and asparagus and broccoli. 

We got the faux feta recipe from this amazing book, The Complete Guide to Vegan Food Substitutions.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

Why Going Vegan Forces You to Eat Good Quality Non-Processed Foods

Ever seen a cheeseless pizza? Here's one with an arugula pesto base, roasted red peppers, kalamata olives, and red onions. Yep, there's NO cheese. Do I miss cheese? Yes, to be honest, of course I miss it. The casein in cheese is addictive, and it's like asking a recovering alcoholic if they miss drinking beer or ex-smokers missing cigarettes. Why do you think so many of us love cheese? Cheese on pizza is one of the best tasting things you can eat, so yes, I miss it. But I do not want to support the dairy industry, so there you go. I don't have much of a problem buying cheese from small, local farms who use raw milk, but there ain't anything like that here, so we tend not to have it in the fridge. When it was in the fridge, I would eat loads of it, couldn't stop, I say! 

Actually, once you decide to stop supporting the massive meat and dairy industry, you have to learn what foods you can eat instead. I mean, once you cut out meat, there goes most of your options that you are used to eating: hamburgers, tacos, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken or beef enchiladas, pepperoni pizza, philly-cheese steaks--it's all very tasty, of course. I'm not going to sit here and lie and say meat doesn't taste good. Up until recently, I have been eating it my entire life (though I'd only eat ground round when I was a kid. That and corn dogs.) And then you cut out dairy and holy shit, now you're really screwed: no more ice-cream, butter, sour cream, milkshakes, cheese burgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, yogurt, milk with your cereal. And you've also cut out eggs, so there goes the scrambled eggs, not to mention everything you make with eggs: cookies, cakes, pies, crepes, souffles. What the hell are you supposed to eat? 

This is the salad we had with the pizza: beans, tomato, and corn dressed in a red wine vinegar dressing. It was amazing and I had two big servings. 

For dessert, we made mango sorbet. The mangoes we had were pretty far gone, even too soft to eat, so we made this sorbet right here on top of our dryer (we're redoing our kitchen, so that's why we're in the basement.) 

Vegans have to be super-creative with what they eat. You can of course eat veggie dogs, veggie burgers, soy ice cream and soy cheese, but these products are usually heavily processed--too much soy anyway, and depending on the product, it's GM soy. Many of these products have also been bought by the big boys: Kellog's owns MorningStar, for example. Kellog's also owns Kashi, which I am not happy about at all. I use to be a big Kashi supporter. Not any more. Hot dogs are pretty gross, so why would I want to eat a vegetarian version of them? Yves veggie dogs are about as processed as we go, but those are for the kids. I don't like them, they taste like rubber! Yves is owned by Hain Celestial Group, and so far, this company seems pretty cool as far as big food companies go. Their MaraNatha nut-butters are amazing.  And soy cheese is just disgusting. I'm not crazy about Daiya either. 

Vegans shouldn't worry themselves over eating so many meat-analogues. We don't need to plan menus that are trying to imitate a very Western, utterly boring, conventional diet, such as the good ol' meat and potatoes. That's why it's called comfort food. Comfortable is boring and safe, which is why kids love it so much. Kids have very sensitive taste buds, which is exactly why they don't like foods with strong, intense flavors. As we get older, our taste buds get extremely dull and so we seek out flavor with a vengeance, eating anything we can get our mouths on. Vegetarians can eat loads of cheese and milk and butter and ice cream, so you can be a very unhealthy vegetarian and eat very plain foods. Vegans can go with this, too, or they can stretch their horizons, and will have to, fast, if they don't want to eat so much processed soy in their diets and get bored eating the same "crackers." (That's an Eddie Murphy reference.) Vegans are forced to find creative ways to eat good quality, non-processed food. Let the adventures of Veggie Daddy continue...

The Food Police, A Brief History

Kerry Trueman, co-founder of EatingLiberally.org, in her latest editorial regarding a historical food exhibit, What's Cooking Uncle Sam? The Government's Effect on the American Diet, (perhaps inadvertently) reminds us all of the basic function of government: redistribution. I am not going to go into a lesson on politics or economics here, but we can probably all agree that the government decides who should get our money: Group A or Group B. Clearly, if you're part of a group of very wealthy "citizens", your group is going to "lobby" or importune congress to give the money to your group or make sure that the other group gets as little of it as possible. If you're part of a group of "poor" citizens, you're obviously going to have less sway and less say in whether the government gives you anything. If you're lucky, they might throw you a bone to gnaw on. So, as far as the government is concerned, the more moulah you make, the more moulah you can (probably--depending on how persuasive your lobbyists are) take. This doesn't just apply to dollars. It also applies to laws and regulations. It doesn't take a brainiac to conclude from this that the corporate food industry is doing very well for themselves, and they have the government to thank, the seeds of which grew from more than 100 years ago.

For example, Trueman points out in her article how in 1929 the commercial seed industry "successfully lobbied" congress in ensuring that farmers were not to be given free seeds anymore, and so they scrapped the seed give-away program, which I didn't know existed. In this case, Group A is the American Seed Trade Association, Group B are the farmers. Guess who lost? Bingo, Group B.

Fast forward to the 21st Century where even today food stampees can use their "stamps" to get seeds and vegetable plants to grow their own food. Again, I didn't know this existed either, though sadly, these recipients don't even seem to know this program exists--lack of advertising, perhaps? Apparently, food "stamps" are also now in the form of credit cards, so if you're lucky enough to have one of these babies, you can still use your petty cash to buy cigarettes, beer, candy and soda, so it's a win-win. Group A, the manufacturers of said cigarettes, beer, candy and soda wins, and Group B, the poor citizens who cannot afford to drive 45 minutes to a real grocery store because all they have are convenience stores (called bodegas in Manhattan) also wins! Again, we have the government to thank for such ingenious distribution methods.

In The End of Food, Paul Roberts points out that the most heavily advertised food, candy, snacks, prepared meals, cereals and soft drinks "make up barely a fifth of all consumer food purchases, yet account for nearly half of all advertising expenditures," (pg. 39.) These are also the same foods that are sold at convenience stores, the same foods that food stamp recipients mostly purchase as there are no real grocery stores anywhere in the vicinity of poor neighborhoods. And let's not forget that CAFOs, or concentrated animal feeding operations are also generally housed next to poor neighborhoods where the poor are stuck living next to toxic-gas-infested cesspools, all of which are intensely lobbied by the food industry to stay in business and stay in pollution.

Houston, we have a problem. Maybe Richard Branson of Virgin Records--excuse me, Virgin Galactic--will lobby the government to solve it. Or maybe not. Perhaps this is why USDA's 1945 food policy was to eat the seven basic food groups plus "any other foods you want." Those guys at the USDA are real brainiacs. I guess it is this kind of thinking that leads to stories like this one where a Michigan woman faces jail time for growing a vegetable garden. Yes, these brainiacs have come so far. We should all be so lucky.

But enough with the polemics. Let's answer the question: Do we eat better than we did 100 years ago? Okay, let's not answer the question. It doesn't matter. What matters is that we are eating well NOW. It doesn't matter how we ate way back when. What matters is that we don't have drugs in our food. What matters is that we don't have police putting us in jail for growing gardens. What matters is that the food subsidies stop so we can decide where our dollars go, preferably to sustainable food methods and local agriculture, not big agribusiness. Are we going backwards, are we going forwards? It doesn't matter. What matters is that we are paying attention. Let's open our eyes to what is going on all around us. Our food is being attacked and food has no voice. But we do. Let's start using it.

FEASt is Looking for Board Members -- Get Involved Now

Ladies and Gentlemen, Food Education Action -- St. John's is looking for board members to join their ranks. FEASt is a working collective of individuals and organizations taking action on local, healthy, sustainable food issues. Formed in Fall 2007, FEASt is a volunteer-run initiative with over 600 listserv members to date.

The FEASt board needs you!

Yes, we need a hand with some tasty tasks and delicious duties. If you’ve been wondering how to get more involved in FEASt, we might have just the opportunity for you.

• We need someone to take notes at our meetings, type them up, and send them out.
• We need someone to chair meetings. This mainly involves compiling meeting agendas (from items the board members send you), attending the meetings, and keeping the conversation ticking along on time.
• We’re also looking for members at large to take on projects as they come up, and to lend their voices to our dynamic discussions.

FEASt meetings are upbeat and exciting, and they happen twice a month (one full board meeting, and one activities meeting), in the evening. We cover all the food-security topics we care so much about – community gardens, workshop development, events like Open Garden day and FEASt Fest, local partnerships, etc. It feels great to spend time helping local sustainanility initiatives get off the ground, we promise. And then there are the potlucks… the legendary potlucks…

If you’re interested and have a few hours to spare every other week, drop us a line at promotions@feastnl.ca. Let us know which position interests you, and we’ll take it from there.

Thanks!

Becoming Food Conscious, It's Our Responsibility

When you start to become food conscious, more so than you used to be at any rate, you start to buy less processed food. It starts to slowly dawn on you that the packaged crap at the grocery stores they sell is not food at all, just "pretend" food, like the playdough food molds you made as a kid. Look, mom, I made a hamburger! you proudly show to your mother, holding a bright little purple and blue patty. In fact, if it weren't for the fancy, colorful packaging and the bright logos and pictures with the fantastically-recognized brand names and their associated mascots, we wouldn't have the faintest clue how to tell the food apart from each other. We would have no clue what it is.

Take this quiz to match the ingredients to the processed food and see how you do. What'd you get?

If you take the quiz, you should quickly notice that what we are told is food by the major food brands is clearly not food. Not even close. Not even the vegetarian Frankenfoods. We need the companies to come up with big fancy names to tell us what the food is or we would clearly have no idea. What's even funnier? Even when we are told the ingredients, we still have no idea what they are or where they come from. It has come down to the point where we need to hire a personal biochemist to tell us what's in the package, what we are putting into our bodies. It ain't food.




Nobody seems to know (or care.) Well, some of us care. The Italians have led the slow food movement since the 70's.  Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan and Food Inc. among many others have helped put our food concerns more on the map. NPR and Alternet.org have tons of articles on food. Veganism and macrobiotics have become the next cool thing, with Ellen Degeneres and Alicia Silverstone giving these movements some seriously-needed celebrity-endorsed "brand recognition" as well. With all the diseases, environmental catastrophes, alarming food-related deaths, healthcare crises, rising food prices--how can we not be paying attention? We'd have to have our heads deep in the sand to not be aware of the real danger that E. coli and antibiotic-resistant pathogens in our food pose to us. Many of us do, many of us don't.

Where do you stand? Are you buried down deep or are you coming up to the surface for some badly-needed air? Are you in denial or do you know what's up, you just "don't want to know." I get that one all the time: "Look, I don't want to know." Wherever we are, at some point the piper is going to get paid. For Americans, it's getting paid already:

#1 cause of death: Heart disease
#2 cause of death: Cancer
#3 cause of death: healthcare



Someone in the comment section of the Slate quiz above said they didn't care that there's synthetic chemicals in their food as long as they're not harmful to them. This is a perfect example of utter denial. The healthcare system is also supposed to be good for us in that they give us drugs to help us and heal us, and yet healthcare is the third highest cause of death in America. Still think the FDA and USDA-approved food industry isn't harmful to us? Think again. If the doctors and hospitals are killing us, what do you think our "safe" food industry is doing to us, which is largely ruled by giant non-regulated corporate behemoths? It ain't pretty, I can tell you that much.

Canada and the European Union are way more food conscious than America, in terms of regulations and bans on certain practices, but there is still a long way to go, and you should pretty much assume that Maple Leaf and Country Ribbon, just because they are Canadian, aren't all that safe, either. The Canadian Food Industry doesn't appear to be that regulated or "safe," and so until I hear otherwise, I'm going to lump Canadian food brands in with American ones and consider the entire food industry a North American epidemic that has actually become a global pandemic. President's Choice has tons of genetically-modified ingredients in their brand and they are not labelled. Remember the swine-flu scare? These pigs, though located in Mexico, belonged to the American company, Smithfield Foods, and Canadians everywhere got vaccinated for H1N1. It was a very real danger, so borders don't matter.

We must do our part, and no matter where we are in the sand, we must stop supporting the food industry giants as much as possible. It is our responsibility not just to protect ourselves but to help our neighbors, even if they do live across the world. For us Newfoundlanders, it's not an easy feat seeing as how 99.9% our food is imported. (At least we can eat somewhat locally during the summer months.) But if you live off The Rock, I'd love to hear your excuse.

Eat B(right),
Veggie Daddy