Waste Not, Want Not: Part I

If you are going to write a blog about eating healthier and staying on a budget you really have to tackle the subject of waste. Waste is something that most people in my generation are keenly aware of. Those of us who grew up in the 80s will always remember the anti-litter campaigns and the grainy images of the overflowing dumps and landfills on the nightly news as our trash problem slowly emerged as something that needed to be discussed.

A weekly trip to the grocery store with my family includes taking a list so that we can stay on a budget, but invariably we end up at least 15% over that budget because of all the items that end up in our cart that were never on the list. It is not the kids that clamor for these food items. They are really too young for that kind of begging, and our problem now is getting the kids to eat at all, rather than overeating. It is myself and DH that are swayed into buying things like Kashi bars and $7 per pound dried blueberries. Well, okay, it is mostly me.

At least once a month I have to throw away foods that have not been consumed. It is mostly leftover side dishes that didn't get eaten, the ends of a loaf of bread, or juice that now tastes acidic and turned. There are always wilted veggies and brown fruit that we throw away. I sometimes lovingly refer to my refrigerator as 'The Food Museum', because everything is neatly packed into tupperware and on display. Look but don't touch.

Andrew Martin of the New York Times wrote in 2008 that

"...Americans waste an astonishing amount of food-an estimated 27% of the food available for consumption, according to a government study...It works out to be about a pound of food every day for every American."

Martin reports that it breaks it down into the following categories for a family of four each month:

18.5 pounds of grains

10.5 pounds of processed fruits and veggies

24 pounds of fresh fruits and veggies

22 pounds of liquid milk

10.4 pounds of meat and fish

15 pounds of sweetener

8.6 pounds of oils

12.8 pounds of other foods (including eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, dry beans, peas and lentils and dairy other than liquid milk)

Now his numbers include uneaten restaurant food and food that grocery stores throw away because of spoilage (also think foods that are unspoiled but past their expiration date) but it does not include ready to eat foods that grocery stores throw away like rotisserie chickens and sandwiches and soup. So although you could step back from these numbers and say "I am not directly responsible for this", we are consumers within this industrialized food chain, so technically we are culpable.

Martin's numbers were right in the middle of what I found when I searched "Americans waste food" at Google.com. Some sites quoted more along the lines of 12% of the total food available while some more politically motivated sites quoted closer to 50%.

My current mission of shopping for unprocessed foods, I am hoping, will have 2 outcomes. One, That I will cook more often and eat higher quality things. And two, food will become less convenient so I will eat less of it. But I think there is a third thing factored into these two objectives, because I will be expending more time cooking I will be less apt to waste foods into which I have put all that effort. In a sense, food will become more valuable to me and my family. And for the Frugal Franny I am deep inside, I will save money in the process.

Isn't this what we all want?

Stay tuned this week, I bought ramps at the farmer's market and I am not sure what to do with them. And tomorrow I go in search of pressed peanut oil at the conventional grocery. I wonder if I will find it.

Works Cited

Andrew Martin. One County's Table Scraps, Another Country's Meal. New York Times Week in Review. nytimes.com. 18 May 2008.

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

Okay before you just click away from the page because you read the title. Hear me out on this one. I had mentioned a couple of days ago that I had bought some whole wheat flour from a mill at the farmer's market in Inwood.

The Inwood Farmer's Market is located on Isham st between Broadway and Seaman. It is just a block up from 207th street. It is open every Saturday from 8am-3pm. The market is held every week year round and you can buy everything there, turkey meat (breast and ground among others), milk (whole, skim, 2% and cream), organic breads and pastries, of course seasonal produce and juices (some certified organic, some that just practice no spraying, etc), there is a fishmonger, pastured organic beef, sheep's milk cheeses, sustainable WINE (that's a new one), and my new best friends, the mill people. The folks representing the mill had various organic grain flours for sale, spelt, rye, whole wheat, etc. I have had only fair success with whole wheat flours in the past, so I opted for the 'Half-White' which has had half of the wheat germ removed. It was $4 for a 2 pound sack. They also had some dried beans, I bought black beans but they had garbanzo beans and navy beans and kidney beans as well.

I knew I wanted to make a pizza, but I did not have a good pizza crust recipe. And I like a certain kind of crust. I found on my Google search all manner of pizza crusts. some with olive oil, some without, some with honey, some that let the dough rise and some that were quick to put together and make. I finally, after reading a dozen, settled on one from the website http://www.easypizzacrusts.com/ I really hope that is someone's blog out there because I can't imagine paying a fee every month to support a website like that. They do have a lot of good recipes and some good tips about how to make the pizza better.

At first I was scared that if I chose a recipe designed for whole wheat flour that it would be tough and cardboardy like healthy food should be (c'mon, you know you feel that way too). But I decided that would be the one to try.

Okay--Attention! Parent Tip: The dough has to stand for 20-25 minutes. It is really easy and quick to add all the ingredients, so do that while the kids are doing something like watching TV where they won't move around too much since you'll be sticky and pulling them down by the ear as they are climbing up the bookshelves will be difficult. Let it stand while you do something that requires your full attention, like bathtime. And if it ends up standing longer than 25 minutes it doesn't really matter so much anyhow, it won't taste or act any different. I got my dough kneaded and rolled out and dressed just as I was going in to put Thing 1 to bed tonight. It went into a 400 degree oven and I went in to put him to bed. by the time I got out I had this gorgeous pizza waiting for me all hot and delicious. My toppings? Baby spinach, onions, olives, some leftover spaghetti sauce, and chucks of that peppercorn chevre I mentioned from last night. Then I dusted the whole thing with Parmesan cheese and black pepper. I don't do a lot of cheese on my pizzas partly out of habit since that heavily copyrighted diet where you track all your food units assigns a particularly high measurement to cheese. And now, I just don't eat a lot of it. But my life is no worse off, and I still do eat cheese when I really, really want it.

The pizza came out beautifully! But a couple things to note: I think I didn't knead it long enough (rushing through it because your kids are screaming will do that to you). The dough was very tender, but that's not such a bad thing. I just expected it to be much chewier. I'll knead it more next time. Also, I am fuller than I usually am after pizza even though I ate less. I have been making homemade pizza for years, but I always buy a store-bought crust. I can put away some serious slices, but I always feel like I have never eaten enough with the white flour crusts. This crust was tender, the wheat flour had a nice nuttiness that paired well with the chevre, and all that extra fiber filled me up. My first experiment was a success! I always thought pizza crusts were really hard. Yeast is a very intimidating ingredient. But it shouldn't be.

I have a feeling that Thing 1 will be eating some of this tomorrow (if he doesn't notice that I put spinach on it).

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour

1 pkg instant yeast (.25 oz)

1/2 tsp salt

8 oz water, warmed to 110 degrees (i used the hottest tap water I could get out of my tap and it was fine)

2 tbsp veg oil (I used olive oil)

(I also added a squirt of hone, about 1 tsp--sorry for bastardizing your recipe easypizzacrusts.com!!)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prepare pizza pan by spraying with non-stick cooking spray (i just lined the pan in foil) Combine all dry ingredients, except whole wheat flour, into a large mixing bowl. Next, add liquid ingredients and gradually add whole wheat flour, until dough mixture becomes stiff and hard to stir. You may not have to use all the whole wheat flour. However if the dough mixture is still too moist, feel free to add more all purpose flour to stiffen the dough. Cover the bowl with a clean towel and set aside for 20-25 minutes, allowing the dough to rise. Empty dough out onto a clean, floured surface. Knead by had 6-8 times, it may be necessary to add additional flour to the surface to keep the dough from sticking. Roll into desired shape and thickness. Place rolled dough onto prepared pizza pan, add favorite sauce and toppings. Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes, depending on crust thickness. (Whole Wheat Pizza Crust. easypizzacrusts.com, 7 May, 2010)

French Onion Soup and the Empty Belly

Getting dinner on the table is especially challenging for me mid week.

A good day progresses as follows:
5:30am Wake up, make coffee, take a shower, take vitamins, fix hair

6am Drink coffee and make lunch and breakfast to take to work
6:30am Nurse the baby

7am Thing 1 wakes up

7:30am Walk out the door, Daddy drives me to work (what a luxury in Manhattan!!! I love you!) 8am-5pm Work

6pm Get home, make dinner, nurse the baby

6:30pm Dinner with both kids (I like to sit down and eat with them)

7pm Bath

7:30 Thing 2 in bed

8pm Thing 1 in bed

8pm-10pm Some combination of time to myself, or time to do laundry, watch TV, make bottles, clean up the kitchen, catch up with friends and family, read, put things away.

And every day progresses this way, except the bad days where Thing 2 wakes up at 5am or when Thing 1 won't eat his dinner or hits his brother and goes to bed early.

The hardest part of my day is from 6-7pm. I walk in the door to hungry, grumpy kids and I have to turn out a meal in 15 minutes or less AND it has to be healthy. Now I'll eat a wide variety of things. But Thing 1 won't and Thing 2 has the choking hazard problem, so his list is relatively short too. I am not the kind of Mommy who gives into her kid's every whim, but I do like it when Thing 1 eats. And every now and then he does.

Well last night was a tough night. I had to catch up with the babysitter, there was no meat defrosted. And Thing 1 although he'll eat a short list of healthy foods, he really doesn't do well with leftovers. But I had no choice. I reheated a previous dinner, a slice of a delicious turkey breast I got from the CSA, farmer's market roasted potatoes and asparagus. He licked every food and pronounced that he'd tried it, so he should be able to have desert. This kid is not even three, what am I in for????

I, on the other hand had not eaten and I usually eat with the kids. I had to wait until after the kids went to bed. Thing 1 committed one transgression or another and went to bed early, so I got to start cooking around 8pm. Yesterday I started to feel guilty. My first blog posting about organic food and I write about how I am happy with the state of frozen pizza in my house!! Meanwhile I am trying to wean off processed food. So foolish. So last night I was more ambitious and I was motivated by a rumbling belly. I had the intention earlier in the week to make french onion soup. The recipe will follow. The ingredients have come from everywhere, 3 week old organic onions from the supermarket, leeks I bought on Monday at the union square green market and wine that was a gift from a friend. It came out pretty good. And I am pleased to say I ate by 9pm. This meal was worth the extra time and effort, and made more enjoyable by a ubiquitous Irish beer and toast with peppercorn chevre.

Life is good when children are sleeping.

French Onion Soup
One tbsp butter
One tbsp olive oil
2 medium onions, cut into bite sized pieces.
2 large leeks
1 sprig of thyme
1/2 cup of red wine
4 cups of water
Enough beef bouillon to make 4 cups of stock. (I will never be the superwoman that makes her own broth, but if you are, then more power to you!)

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the butter and oil together. Saute the onions and leeks for about 20 minutes or until browned and slightly caramelized. Add the salt and pepper and thyme. Add the wine and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Add the water and bouillon. Let simmer for twenty minutes. Float a slice of toasted bread and if you really want to go over the top, lay a slice of Gruyere on that and let it melt. Holy mackerel.

A Dinner Uneaten

The picture you see is the sad remainder of our attempt at dinner last night. I wish I had taken the picture 30 minutes earlier because then you would have also seen the leftover pizza on the cutting board. By the time I got to it it even LOOKED cold. But I ate it anyway.

I went to a yoga class last night after work and DH came home early to be with the kids. DH is the best Daddy in the world. Not only does he completely share the housework and the care of the children (okay let's be fair, he does like 80% of the housework), but he also totally supports my taking a night once every week or two to do something for myself. My biggest gripe with being a working mom is that in trying to balance work and family, I have absolutely no free time for myself.

I got home from yoga around 7:30pm, just in time to put the baby to sleep. I am still nursing him and except for nights that I have been away (which have been few) I have put him to bed every night of his short life.

Dinner was not a success last night. DH heated up the frozen pizza. This pizza, Amy's Organic Margherita Style Pizza (also probably a heavily copyrighted entity) used to be the only frozen pizza Thing 1 would eat. Now we can't even get him to eat that. If he isn't playing with it he declares it "Too Hot!! You have to foo it." (which is our family's way of saying blow on your food to make it cooler). Or he says "I don't like spices!". Thing 1 used to be an adventurous eater, when he was say 16 months old. He never ate a ton but he ate things like Indian food and spinach in his soup. Now anything that even resembles a leaf has to go. It can't even be on his plate or the waterworks start.

Thing 1 ate no pizza last night, DH ate a quarter of it and I inhaled the rest upon coming home. DH did make an attempt at a salami sandwich (I am very pro cured meats) and I think enough of that got consumed to move onto the bath. What an ordeal. The baby will eat anything you put on a spoon for him. On last night's menu? Breast milk guacamole! DH is so grossed out by this simple recipe, but Thing 2 loves it. Let's hope that continues.

I am concerned by the pre-packaged foods. I try to stick to organic varieties but many times they are really no better. They are pesticide free but they are still processed. This brand advertises on the box 'Organic Flour! Organic Tomatoes!'. So naturally, I assumed that these were the only organic ingredients. I was wrong! Among the ingredients listed were Organic olive oil, spices, garlic, basil and honey. The cheeses really were the only things that weren't organic. I am pleasantly surprised. And furthermore the ingredients are all things that I recognize and understand. Another pleasant surprise.

The following I knew, but I'll let the government tell you since they really say it best,

"Products labeled "organic" must consist of at least 95% organically produced ingedients (excluding water and salt). Any remaining product ingredients must consist of non agricultrual substances approved on the national list including specific non-organically produced agricultural products that are not commercially available in organic form." (http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELDEV3004446)

So my next questions is....What's on that list? But that is another topic for another day.

Today this pizza goes into the list of things I feel pretty comfortable with. I bought the organic half white flour, but haven't found a suitable pizza crust recipe yet. I will share it here when I work that one out. Maybe someday soon I can banish the box forever.

Happy Eating!

Ground Rules

Now that we have talked about why I am here, let me lay the ground rules.

My vision for this blog is as follows: For one year I will write about my family's experience with food. I want to expand what we buy that is organic and sustainable and local. I would love to be completely off processed foods at the end of this experiment. Right now I am not holding out a lot of hope that this will be possible. My life is hectic, and partially prepared foods fill a void on days like Wednesday and Thursday when the stuff I cooked on the weekend is either all consumed or gone bad. I also have to stick to my budget. I feel that it is worth it to pay the extra money for organic items. And if I HAD extra money that would be where it would go. But after mortgage payments and maintenance, child care and pre-school tuition, metrocards and car insurance, there is a finite amount leftover. And Now that Thing 2 is eating real food, we are buying more than ever.

I have no more resources than a computer and a group of friends with the same mindset. I am not a scientist. I have had no experience with real science since my high school physics class other than the fact that I like to watch Nova. I am not a nutritionist and do not have a background in nutrition. I have however been overweight at certain points in my life and have lost weight by eating healthy.
I LOVE food. I think that a few hours spent worshipping at the alter of food is a really worthy use of your time. But I do not have a particularly sophisticated palate. I have eaten at some very fine restaurants in my day, but I am more at home in my own kitchen or in a casual restaurant. And I really don't like fancy foods. Beef cheek and saffron foam should never be on the plate in front of me. Perhaps on your plate, but mine should be filled with more recognizable and less complicated fare.
But the simple things, vegetables that have been raised by people with addresses as opposed to major corporations, a chunk of red meat that has a crust of salt and pepper on it, olive oil in which you can taste an underlying fruitiness, butter that is straight up yellow not off-white, all these things bring a tear to my eye.

So for the next year I will write at least two times a week. I will try to keep those days to Sunday and Thursday evening so you can check the blog on Monday and Friday mornings. If I am so moved I will post more, but I am promising to keep to this schedule.
My hope is to relate our experiences tackling the task of becoming more healthful. Great books have been written about this kind of experiment. But I feel that they are always written by people who have loads of free time or older (and more well behaved) children. What about how to integrate this lifestyle choice into a modern American life? I am not going to come to a point anytime soon where I can stay home with my kids and cook all day long. But I don't feel that that is a strong enough reason to not tackle this challenge. And I am not sure that we can afford NOT to.
I will also try to impart some of the knowledge I discover on this journey. If I find out information about a particular food or health topic, I want to share it with you. I don't see this as just an opportunity to wax on about my life. This can be a platform for sharing information that has been consolidated into what is meaningful for our modern lives.

I want you to follow my blog! I want you to leave comments whether anonymous or not. I am curious about your thoughts! On that note, the most important thing about my viewpoint is that there is no judgement. There will be times in life when we will be presented with non-organic food, perhaps in a social setting. Or presented with the choice of local conventional produce versus the organic trucked-in variety. This blog should be a place where we can discuss the navigation of such choices.

Here we go on our adventure!

Day One

May 4th, 2010
Why Today? Why start this blog today?
I have been pondering a project like this for some time. I am a full time working Mommy of two boys, Thing 1 and Thing 2. I am the devoted wife of Daddy or Darling Husband (DH). We live in Northern Manhattan and have a right lovely life up here.
A little more than 2 years ago I really needed to lose 15 pounds after the birth of my first son. I had never been so heavy in my life and felt very overwhelmed by the thought of having to lose so much weight. And furthermore I wasn't doing anything to make that goal a reality. A colleague at work told me that several co-workers were creating a group and signing up for a popular diet plan where you track your food intake and share you feelings about your experiences as a way to reinforce your weight loss. I am pretty sure that they are copyrighted and it is not my wish to piss them off, so they shall remain nameless. Needless to say I joined. I had had friends who had participated in the past and had enjoyed the experience so I said 'What the hey". My company even reimbursed me the cost of the program! Seriously what did I have to lose?
I started the program in January of 2008 and I inhaled all the information they could throw at me. Whole food options were recommended and there were also all kinds of modified processed foods too that seemed like healthy choices. I love to cook so I mostly looked for ingredients from the whole foods list for the most part. I started out with the goal of losing 15 pounds. By April, I had lost almost 25 pounds and felt better than I had in years.
The program was eye opening. And I realized that although I was nursing my baby, and everyone tells you can eat whatever you want and the pounds will just melt off, I had been eating so much junk that my weight hadn't budged. I was eating all manner of pizza and tater tots and take out food. And if I was eating it, that is all I was feeding my baby. I had a real come-to-Jesus moment because I didn't want to be feeding my baby this food. And I didn't want to admit to him that I was eating it. And I certainly did not want him growing up thinking it was okay to eat garbage all day and night.
Around the time I lost all the weight, I was in an airport. I passed by a bookstore and saw a book on the shelf that I remembered reading about in a magazine. It was 'Animal, Vegetable Miracle!' by Barbara Kingsolver. I am never one to buy just one book, so I looked down the table and picked up a copy of Michael Pollan's amazing 'The Omnivore's Delimma'. And just like that, I was started down a path I could only imagine where it would lead.
A friend recommeneded that I join the neighborhood CSA, and it sounded like something fun. It was relatively cheap and seemed like a great experiment. As I waited for that first delivery in June I read Kingsolver's lucious words teaching me about seasons, the balance of nature and even turkeys. I could practically see the dew hanging on the leaves of the tomato plants. I could feel the heat of the warm water she used to make cheese. Reading her book was an awakening. And reading her husband's commentary peppered throughout her prose taught me all kinds of information about chemical fertilizer (did you know it was made from petroleum?) and government regulations regarding tap water versus bottled water(did you know that the regulations for the cleanliness of tap water are stricter than that of bottled? And that they aren't even regulated by the same government agency??). All the information flooded over me.
Then I started Pollan's tome. I devoured his book. I read it in a matter of days. I learned more about the politics of food than I ever thought possible. And what was once a simple topic of eat what tastes good and try not to eat too much, became this mission towards whole foods in their natural state, preferably local and organic.
My son was getting bigger and eating real food, so it was fun to include him too! The veggies from the CSA were pouring in. I made a big veggie soup for him every week with anything from carrots to corn to cerlaric and turnips. My cravings for junk just vanished. We stopped going to the grocery store except for once a month and started shopping at our local farmer's market. We got to know the growers and excentric personalities at the stands. We started keeping cream in the house. I stopped tracking what I ate. I never gained back a pound. Even when the weather turned colder we kept going to the farmer's market. My son would only drink the milk from Ghent, NY and devoured the apples from Kinderhook. We made Christmas dinner almost entirely from items procured from the farmer's makert.
Then, I got pregnant again. We were thrilled and over joyed at the prospect of a second Thing. But it all became too much. The stress of cooking, the exhaustion, it was all too much. Fall turned into winter. The stands at the farmer's market dwindled down to the turkey guy and the milk lady and the stand that sells apples. They are the die-hards, they will sell their foods in the driving snow. I also took on more projects at work, and that only compounded everything. I had no time for cooking. I couldn't wake up at 5am anymore to bake muffins or shuck corn. I could barely stay awake to eat the dinner that Daddy had prepared.
And that kind of brings me to where I am today.
I still ate healthy while I was pregnant, alot healthier than my first time around. But my hunger was tough to manage and of course Pringles filled the void on several occasions. Thing 2 weighed in at a whopping 9lbs 3 ozs at birth. A full pound and three quarters bigger than Thing 1. I believe that because I ate better I had a bigger baby. And he is still my good eater!!!
I went back on the heavily copyrighted diet about 3 months after Thing 2 was born. I am proud to say that he has only ever had breastmilk, no formula, so I purposely lost the weight slowly, a pound or so a week, not super fast like the first time. I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight when Thing 2 was about 6 months old. I was THRILLED! But it wasn't quite the same. I was fighting cravings left and right. I swear croissants would actually talk to me as I walked down the street. Every 16 oz lost was a triumph.
I am not sure what made me buy two more Michael Pollan books 'In Defense of Food' and 'Food Rules'. Maybe I just felt spring coming on again. Maybe I just got curious about nutrition. Maybe I remembered the inspiration he lent me two years ago. Whatever the reason I can't put him down again. And his words on nutritionism have me on the move again. We even went back to the farmer's market last week, all four of us.
So here I am on May 4th, 2010. And starting a blog about my life in food in the coming year seems so right. Now that Thing 2 is starting to eat real food, and Thing1 is firmly lodged in the land of hot dogs it seems like the time to get back to food that is right.

The Endocrine System - Glands and Hormones: Chemical Messengers Regulating Growth, Metabolism, and Reproduction

The Endocrine System - Glands and Hormones: Chemical Messengers Regulating Growth, Metabolism, and Reproduction