Announcing TC Fitness Pals!

Hey y'all, hope everyone's been having a pleasant summer.

My news today will be of interest primarily to those in Traverse City, but I'm hoping a few friends in other places will pop in from cyberspace occasionally.

I'm starting a small support group for friends interested in losing weight and eating well. The blog for the group is TC Fitness Pals and I've created a discussion group at MyFitnessPal. For local friends, I'm hoping we will meet weekly for delicious food and check-ins. I'll be cooking! Check the new blog for more info.

And for this blog, I'll be back shortly with some cookbook reviews. Stay tuned!

Waste not

For the past few weeks, I've been taking a course on food system sustainability from Coursera. Even though I fancy myself a knowledgeable eco-foodie person, I've learned I have more to learn about the environmental impact of feeding 6 billion humans.

This past week's topic was food waste. I've been mindful of this problem to some extent ever since my childhood when my mother harangued me about cleaning my plate out of respect for all the starving children in India. Now as a mother worrying about the college tuition bills, I'd rather not be scraping leftovers into the compost bin, so I've been trying to avoid cooking anything new until the previous thing is gone.

The lessons on food waste gave me a deeper understanding of the problem and the negative impacts beyond hunger and household economy. We read a Swedish study and this recent working paper published by the World Resources Institute. Some highlights:

* By weight, an estimated one-third of all food intended for human consumption never makes it into human stomachs. When converted into calories, this is about 24 percent of all food produced.

* In poor countries, food loss is the major problem. This is food that spoils, spills or undergoes an unintended reduction in quality before it reaches the consumer. Loss occurs closer to the farm due to limitations in infrastructure, storage, packaging or distribution.

* In richer countries, food waste is the bigger concern. Waste refers to food that is of good quality but does not get consumed because it is discarded, either before or after it has spoiled. This includes groceries purchased and thrown away, partially-eaten restaurant meals and expired foods removed from store shelves.

* Food waste at the consumption stage costs an annual average of $1,600 for a family of four in the United States.

* The food waste tally does not include overconsumption of calories, which would no doubt make the statistics even worse.

From a climate and environmental perspective, food lost or wasted represents a needless use of land, water, fertilizers, transportation and other impacts of food production. And food rotting in landfills produces methane, a greenhouse gas.

The working paper has many recommendations for reducing loss and waste at every point in the chain, and it highlights some schemes that have been successful. One innovative solution to tackle cafeteria waste came from Grand Valley State University in Michigan. From the report:

By eliminating trays, GVSU officials hoped to reduce the amount of food waste at its cafeterias, as well as reduce energy and water use associated with washing trays. Under this system, students could return to the cafeteria to take more food as desired, but were limited on each trip to the amount of food they could carry on a plate in their hands. ... After a successful pilot, GVSU permanently adopted the trayless system in the fall of 2007. The university found that after going trayless, the university was throwing away almost 13 metric tons of food less than in previous years―about 25 kg per person annually―and was conserving 117,000 liters of water per year. The system was also economically beneficial, saving the university about US$79,000 per year compared to a system using trays.

I encourage those who are interested in learning about food loss and waste to read or scan the working paper for more information. Among the resources recommended by the authors of the study, the one likely most helpful to the consumer is the initiative at Think.Eat.Save. From there I found a link to an extremely informative Australian website with many tips of reducing waste.

Restaurants can be challenging because so many serve large portions. How do we square our efforts to not overeat (Weight Watchers urges its members to quit the clean plate club) with a goal of not wasting food? Some things I've tried:

* If I know I won't eat something, I can ask the server to leave it off the plate. I don't always remember this. The other day I ordered a wrap, which came with tortilla chips, and I didn't want the chips. I offered them to my daughter, who didn't want them either, so in the end, I wrapped them in a paper napkin and brought them home, where my husband ate them later because he's like a vacuum for those things.

* When I plan to go out for dinner, I bring a lidded container from home for leftovers. This helps me avoid the restaurant's disposable take-out container. Often I'll pack away half of the meal before I even touch it. This will be lunch the next day, or when my son is home from college, a late-night snack for him.

* Unplanned meals away still often result in a disposable container. I'm thinking of investing in a collapsible container that I can keep in my bag.

As for my kitchen, I have a personal initiative this summer to minimize the edible materials that go into our compost pile. We're in the season of abundance with overflowing produce boxes from Meadowlark Farm, and I don't want to waste any of this goodness. I've always been pretty good about using the prime part of every item, but I've never managed to make use of every edible part. For example, when the beets come attached to their greens, sometimes I've let the greens wilt in the fridge. And usually, the carrot tops go directly into the compost pile.

But this summer I'm reaching new levels of culinary efficiency! I can best illustrate this with last week's fennel.

This is the fennel as it came out of the box:

In previous summers, I trimmed away the stalks and fronds and used only the bulb. Sometimes I might toss the fronds on the grill as a flavoring agent, but usually all but the white bulb went into the compost.

Last week, with the help of Deborah Madison's most excellent cooking guide Vegetable Literacy (if you don't have this yet, I urge you to get it), I managed to extract the nutrients from all parts of the plant before any trimmings went to compost. I made a fennel tea from some of the fronds (steep a handful of fronds in a cup or two of boiling water), a grilled fennel frond pesto from the rest, and a stock from the stalks (chop stalks and an onion and simmer in water). I used the stock in a soup I've been making every time I get fennel, the exceptionally delicious Chickpea, Tomato and Bread Soup from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty (another cookbook I highly recommend).

Fennel separated into parts

Fennel stock simmering (the purple things are kohlrabi stalks)

Strained fennel stock

Chickpea, tomato and bread soup

The adapted recipe:

1 large onion, sliced
1 medium fennel bulb, sliced
about 1/4 cup olive oil
1 large carrot, peeled, cut lengthways in half and sliced
3 celery stalks, sliced
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 cup white wine
one 14-oz can diced tomatoes (I use Muir Glen roasted)
1 tbsp chopped oregano
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
2 bay leaves
2 tsp sugar
4.5 cups fennel stock
salt and pepper to taste
2 large slices stale sourdough bread
2.5 cups cooked chickpeas
4 tbsp pesto (basil, fennel fronds, or carrot top)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Sauté the onion and fennel in a little oil on medium heat for about 4 minutes. Add the carrot and celery and continue cooking for another 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for 1 minute. Add the wine and let it bubble away for another minute.

Ready to serve

Add the canned tomatoes with their juices, the herbs, sugar, fennel stock and some salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer gently for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, break the bread into rough chunks, toss with 2 tablespoons of oil and some salt and scatter in a sheet pan. Bake for about 10 minutes, until thoroughly dry.

About 10 minutes before serving, place the chickpeas in a bowl and crush them a little with a potato masher. Add them to the soup and simmer for another 5 minutes. Add the toasted bread, stir well and cook for another 5 minutes. Taste for salt and pepper.

Ladle the soup into bowls. Spoon some pesto in the center, drizzle with olive oil and finish with freshly shredded basil if you have some.

Sadness and senselessness

Nearly a week ago, a couple of hours after the crowds dispersed following the jubilent fireworks celebration that marks the 4th of July in our neighborhood, horrific sounds awoke me and my husband: the squeal of tires, a thud and then plaintive screams. We jumped out of bed and raced to the window overlooking the street. My husband got there in time to see a dark truck turning the corner. He said the screams seemed to be coming from the truck.

Because revelers often make noises throughout the night after the city's fireworks show, and we didn't see any sign of an accident on the street, we questioned what we had heard. But no, we said to each other, those screams were not the sounds of joy or drunken exuberance. John went outside to look around. He saw neighbors across the street who had also heard the sounds. They decided to call 911 to report a possible abduction. Soon, a couple of neighbors who were walking home on foot noticed a bike in the street. The police arrived and on their way discovered the victim of what we now know was a brutal hit and run, lying about a block away where she had been dragged after becoming entangled with the vehicle.

We learned the next morning the cyclist, Kelly, who lived with her husband on the next block, had been killed by this craven act. She had been riding her bike home from work. The evidence suggests, and it is consistent with the sounds we heard, that the driver may have deliberately hit her.

Being the bleediest of bleedinghearts, I can never help feeling a sadness for all involved in a tragedy. Kelly and her loved ones, obviously, deserve and get the bulk of this grief. But as much as I want to see the perpetrator of this crime brought to justice, I can't help feeling a smidgen of grief for him (or her) as well. What kind of scarred life causes this level of inhumanity towards one's fellow creatures? I can only imagine it is a life that has never known love, and that makes me sad.

And I have sadness for all of us. How can we continue to tolerate such brokenness in our world? When will humans evolve to care for each other, each and every one? How can we move to a culture that celebrates love and life and has no tolerance for hatred and violence?

I don't have any answers. The only response I know to make today is to get on my bike and ride in solidarity with my community to honor Kelly.

Sriracha slaw and kimchi

With the increasing popularity of Community Supported Agriculture, some of the dozen or so readers of this blog may have a farm share box and currently be wondering what to do with all of those greens.

Here at the 45th parallel, local produce in June is pretty much limited to spinach, kale, lettuces, bok choy, various other mixed greens and a handful of tender roots, such as radishes and kohlrabi, accompanied by their greens. Last week's veggie box was so full of greens I couldn't get them all in the crisper drawers of the refrigerator.

So what to do?

Fortunately, greens tend to cook down to a fraction of their raw volume. That large bag of spinach looks like enough for at least 6 entrée-sized salads, but sauté it with a little garlic and onion and it becomes a side dish of 2-4 servings. Wash and tear the kale into chunks and dry it out in the oven for kale chips.

After a week of large salads and triage on most of the greens that easily rendered themselves to cooking, I was left the night before new box pick-up day with a gigantic head of bok choy. We wanted to try the new barbecue food truck in the neighborhood, so I thought a sriracha slaw might be a nice accompaniment.

I thinly sliced the bok choy and inspected the crisper drawers for other vegetables that could lend themselves to the enterprise. I shredded three carrots, a purple kohlrabi bulb and half of a red onion left over from something else.

I consulted the internet for some sriracha dressing ideas and made a blend based on what I had on hand.

Sriracha Slaw Dressing

1 Tbsp of ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
1/3 cup natural peanut butter
juice of about 3 limes
2 Tbsps sugar
2 Tbsps Belgian framboise beer
2 Tbsps fish sauce
sriracha to taste

Mix all ingredients in a blender or food processor, or grate the ginger, press the garlic and whisk everything in a bowl. Toss with the shredded veggies and add salt and pepper to taste. Finally, if you happen to have it, a splash of lemongrass-mint vinegar is nice.

I want to emphasize that the list of ingredients is highly adaptable. I added the beer because it was in the fridge and I thought a little berry flavor would be nice. You could make this dressing with mayonnaise, sriracha and a touch of any complementary acid, such as rice or umeboshi vinegar, or just about any citrus juice.

the finished slaw

Don't toss the slaw with the dressing until you're ready to serve. A topping of chopped roasted peanuts would be very good with this, but I didn't have any.

I still had a huge amount of leftover would-be slaw. I've been trying to eat more fermented foods, so I decided to toss it all together and make kimchi using a modified version of this easy vegetarian recipe. I made a salt and water brine for the leftover veggies and let them soak while watching another silly episode of the Bachelorette (we all have our vices!) Two hours later, I drained the veggies, made a quick porridge of water and rice flour to add to the leftover sriracha dressing, and then tossed everything together. The colorful mixture is now enjoying a vacation under some weights in my sauerkraut crock. Hopefully it will all be good!

Teasanity, part 2

Today I invite you to explore tea in some of its lesser known forms, namely matcha, kombucha and laphet.


Matcha

Tea is a substance that invites rituals.

The simplest and perhaps most common tea ritual for most Americans resembles that practiced by my in-laws every morning: heat a kettle, pour the hot water over the bag of Lipton in a mug, wait a couple of minutes, remove the bag, add a spoonful of sugar, and enjoy with toast and jam.

The Japanese, however, have taken the tea ritual to an art form. My knowledge of the elaborate tea ceremony is limited to reading about it, and I probably have a better chance of trying to stage a ceremony myself than I do of visiting Japan in the near future.

I could build this in the backyard:

Even if I never held a tea ceremony, it would be a terrific reading and writing nook.

The tea part of the ritual is easily accessible even in northern Michigan. Matcha, the powdered green tea used in the ceremony, is sold in specialty stores and online shops. Numerous retailers offer matcha starter sets with a bowl, a bamboo whisk and a tin of the powdered tea.

I add cooking grade matcha to smoothies. Numerous websites offer recipes featuring matcha, and you'll increasingly see it is an ingredient on restaurant menus.


Kombucha

A fermented beverage made from sweetened tea and a "scoby" of bacteria and yeast, kombucha is a drink of Chinese origin that apparently spread to Russia, and from there the rest of Europe, in the early 20th century. Adherents claim benefits ranging from weight loss to cancer cure; the mainstream medical community is skeptical.

Twenty years ago, kombucha was only available as a home-brew and generally required some old-fashioned networking (the kind that existed before the internet) to track down a scoby, or mother culture. Today kombucha can be purchased in the beverage section of your local health food store, where it has reached the level of a craze. But many people still choose to brew their own.

Finding recipes for kombucha is as easy as typing the name in a search engine. Getting the scoby is almost that easy. If you happen to be the kind of person whom other people suspect of brewing strange things at home, you'll likely be offered one from a friend or acquaintance. These things reproduce, so most kombucha brewers always have a "baby" to give away. I got mine from a neighbor who got it from her daughter's boyfriend.

Kombucha fermenting in a jar. Yeah, it looks nasty.

If your social circle doesn't include likely connections, mail-order cultures are available on the internet, even on Amazon. Kombucha experts say it may be possible occasionally to obtain a culture from a commercial beverage, such as the widely-available Synergy brand.

The fun of brewing kombucha is in the second fermentation for which you can add other flavorings and get creative. My neighbor blends cherry juice with her finished kombucha; I've been adding a little hibiscus tea to get a fizzy tart beverage that's more pleasing than the first ferment.


Laphet

Finally, I'll mention a tea product that was unknown to me until about a week ago and now is at the top of the list of things I'm desperate to try.

I read about laphet in Sandor Katz' book, The Art of Fermentation, and was intrigued by the "explosion of flavor" he said he experienced when he first tasted these pickled tea leaves that are the basis of laphet thoke, a salad that is one of the signature dishes of Burma but nearly unknown in the United States.

Burma, or Myanmar, is slowly opening to tourism after decades as a closed society, so it is currently all the rage among adventurous travelers and foodies. Naomi Duguid's cookbook, Burma: Rivers of Flavor, was nominated for a 2013 James Beard award. And Anthony Bourdain traveled to Myanmar for the first episode of his new CNN show.

With all of this attention, one would expect laphet thoke to be popping up on all the trendy menus and home cooks finding laphet for sale across the interwebs. Not so. My initial research indicated I basically had three options if I wanted to sample this delicacy: travel to Burma, journey to San Francisco and wait in line for hours at the no-reservations Burma Superstar cafe, or mail-order laphet from London and make the salad myself.

My only planned travel is an August vacation to Montreal, so it occurred to me that Canada may have more lenient laphet importation policies and my whim to try this dish could be satisfied there. And yes, I discovered a new Burmese restaurant has opened in my favorite Montreal neighborhood!

But what happens if I become addicted to laphet thoke, as it seems has happened to so many customers of Burma Superstar? Sander Katz offered a possible method of obtaining a steady supply, as he mentioned in his book a friend is growing camellia sinensis on her Alabama farm to make her own laphet. I have relatives with southern gardens, and I've already started trying to persuade my siblings to plant tea shrubs. In the meantime, if anyone out there has a better idea, please leave a comment!

Teasanity, part 1

I had no idea when I took Dr. Andrew Weil's advice to drink more tea that I would enter a world of connoisseurs and obsession.

Prior to consciously incorporating tea into my daily regimen a few months ago, I drank it irregularly, mostly when I wanted a hot, non-caloric beverage without the caffeine hit of coffee. My brews were split between herbal tisanes and green tea, generally from a bag. Occasionally I would steep a loose leaf tea, such as gunpowder, in one of my small Xiying pots.

Xiying pot

With the nagging suspicion, soon to be confirmed, that my tea-making skills could be improved, I embarked upon a research project. My education continues, but I'll share the highlights so far.

After water, tea is the most consumed beverage in the world. In the United States, it is mostly brewed from bags and served iced. But for tea connoisseurs, the variety of brews available from the camellia sinensis plant almost could be compared to the variety of wines produced from cultivars of vitis vinifera.

To begin, I knew that tea came in various hues -- black, green and white -- and that the colors had more to do with the production process than with appearance. I also knew that herbal teas were misnamed and should be called tisanes or infusions. However, I wanted to get past my superficial knowledge of tea, so I went to class.

Dozens of online tea sellers provide educational pages about tea, and books are available as well. But I only found one source that made me take a quiz at the end of each topic. TeaClass is a fun way to satisfy your inner geek while learning about the history and culture of tea, the varieties of processing, and of course, how to steep the perfect cuppa.

Brewing tea with a bag could not be simpler, which is why most tea in the United States is sold in bags. Grab a mug, fill it with hot water, drop in the bag and wait a couple of minutes.

Those interested in exploring the full diversity of tea will eventually seek out the loose leaf. For that, you'll need one more piece of equipment -- a strainer. Any fine mesh strainer will work, so you don't need to rush out and buy a tea strainer. You can brew a teaspoon of loose leaf tea in one cup and pour it through an all-purpose strainer into another cup.

If you discover you enjoy brewing loose leaf tea, you likely will want to buy a dedicated strainer. Nearly every store with even basic kitchen supplies will stock various tea balls and infusers, most priced less than $10. I have a couple of those, but I prefer to use a teapot with a made-to-fit infuser; it brews enough for two cups of tea, which is ideal because I'm usually sharing with my daughter. For one cup, I'll use one of my smaller Xiying pots.

Tea shops and online purveyors offer a dizzying array of brewing vessels, from traditional Japanese cast iron to contemporary glass beauties. And those on the go can find travel mugs with built-in infusers. Fans enthuse endlessly about their favorite teapots on dozens of online forums. Any non-toxic vessel that holds water will work; tea may even be steeped cold in the refrigerator. For an eco-friendly brew, fill a clean jar with water and the appropriate amount of tea and leave it out in the sun for a few hours.

What to brew? The options can be even more overwhelming. Any well-stocked supermarket will offer dozens of varieties of bagged teas in black and green, perhaps even white, some with added flavorings, as well as herbals to address a range of moods and conditions. Some groceries will stock a few tins of loose leaf tea, but specialty stores generally offer a larger selection of those. Online tea stores may stock hundreds -- yes, you read that right: hundreds -- of tea varieties.

I've purchased tea from both a local company and a downstate retailer that specialize in carefully selected organic teas. And recently, I enjoyed a visit to a shop that surely must have one of the largest inventories of tea anywhere: TeaSource, which has three storefront locations in the Twin Cities area as well as an online shop. Seriously, if you're ever in Minnesota, skip the Mall of America and go to TeaSource; the Gap is the same everywhere, but there are few places that can offer you a choice from more than 200 teas. I'm grateful for the online ordering because I can see my small sample of chocolate cream tea will not last until I return in September.

Coming next: taking tea out of the cup.

Local clothes

In recent months, I've noticed a few friends posting in social media about their projects to grow or raise fibers for making cloth. I've also had a vague awareness of efforts to create a local "fiber shed," a tweet yesterday from a friend who runs an eco-oriented non-profit caught my attention. Apparently, local fiber shed projects have advanced to the point of rustling up an inventory of who's making what.

This trend, if it continues, could do for clothing what localism has done for food. The local food movement is still young but has already succeeded in getting people to rethink their food choices to such an extent that giant corporations have been getting on the bandwagon, and debates on both the virtue and impact of local food have reached the mainstream. (I wrote about this a couple of years ago for the Oryana newsletter, but the only online version I could find is garbled).

Motivations for localizing our clothing and textile consumption abound. Ever since the industrial revolution transferred cloth production from homes to factories, the garment industry has been a focus of concern about wages and labor conditions. Factory tragedies continue, and consumer boycotts of companies associated with sweatshops seem to have little impact on curbing heinous practices.

Gandhi understood that political subjugation came from more than armies and sought to free his country from the British textile mills along with the Crown. He insisted on wearing only homespun cloth, which he promoted as a powerful act of political and economic independence. (My defunct knitting blog has more on this in the Feb. 3, 2005 entry, and a search of "Gandhi and spinning" will yield all you want to know).

As a knitter who has dabbled in spinning, weaving and dyeing, I'm a little skeptical that a local fiber movement will ever get the traction of local food, even though I would love to see it happen. The textiles industry has economies of scale that dwarf artisan fiber crafters. The cost differentials between industrial agricultural products and those of the small, mostly organic farms championed by the local foods movement is a pittance in comparison to the gap between, well, The Gap and your craft fair knitter.

A popular joke among knitters, bemoaning the high cost of quality yarn, is a tale of two friends perusing the sweaters in an exclusive clothing store, with one holding up the price tag: "Will you look at that? I could've knit this sweater for three times that price!" And this sentiment is in reference to commercial yarn; the hand-spun, hand-dyed yarn sometimes acquired from artisan spinners at fiber festivals is even more expensive. Conscientious consumers who can afford it may be willing to pay a 10 to 30 percent markup for organic food, but I doubt there are many who could afford to buy a hand-knit sweater from me if I wanted to value my time beyond 10 cents an hour.

The afghan in the photo on the right was crocheted with yarn produced entirely in the fiber shed in which I lived at the time I started the project. I purchased the skeins at Tierra Wools, an artisan cooperative in northern New Mexico. The fibers are from sheep -- including the endangered Navajo-Churro breed -- raised in the high mountain meadows surrounding Los Ojos and are spun and died in the cooperative's workshops. The yarn is magnificent. My family members fight over who gets to wrap up in this afghan, so warm and soft and lovely. It's not the only blanket in the house, but it's the most treasured. I can't estimate the cost or value; I know it contains between $200-$300 worth of yarn and probably hundreds of hours of my time.

Of course, a local fiber shed needn't have as its objective the hand-production of every item. We could make use of the best tools and processes of the industry with local inputs. An excellent example of small-scale use of machinery is the fiber processing service of Zeilinger Wool Company in Frankenmuth, Michigan. If you shear a sheep (or buy the fleece of one from a rancher or at a fiber fair), Zeilinger's will wash it, card it, and bundle it into ready-to-spin roving. After once attempting to wash and card a fleece by hand, I can testify that this service is so, so worth it. The non-spinner can also have Zeilinger's further process it into yarn and dye it. Perhaps if the local fiber shed movement catches fire, every community will have companies such as Zeilinger's; we already have a small one in the northwest lower Michigan area with Stonehenge Fiber Mill in East Jordan.

A local fiber movement could establish new regional identities expressed through localized fashion. Traditional costumes such as the kimono of Japan and the dirndl of the Alps may never regain common use, but I can envision a region being known for its blue clothes if it grows indigo, for example.

For a region to be self-sustaining in textiles, even with the judicious use of machinery and other industrial processes, I strongly suspect we will need to sharply reduce our consumption. We have externalized the costs of our cheap goods and lost our sense of relative values. A clothing locavore may need to be content with a minimal wardrobe, and by all means, learn to darn those socks! But while we're waiting for the marketplace of local fibers to fully emerge, I suggest hitting up the area thrift stores to at least avoid sending any more money to the Abercrombies of the world.