If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 lb. Napa cabbage, cut crosswise into 1/3 inch wide strips

½ lb. snow peas or sugar snap peas

3 cups coarsely shredded cooked chicken

½ cup scallions chopped

½ cup fresh cilantro

½ cup dry roasted unsalted peanuts or toasted sliced almonds

For the Dressing:

¼ cup soy sauce

¼ cup fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons maple syrup

1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

¼ cup olive oil

1. Combine snow peas with chopped Napa cabbage, chopped cilantro, shredded chicken, scallions and nuts
2. Whisk together soy sauce, lemon juice, maple syrup, vinegar in a small bowl, then add sesame oil and olive oil in a slow stream, whisking until dressing is combined well.
3. Toss salad with the dressing.

* You might want to add dressing to individual salads. This way the leftover salad will keep better.

All three of my daughters use far more health and beauty products and wear much more makeup than I do.  The only time I wear make up is when someone else paints it all on for a TV appearance, one of the reasons I love radio! I use some coconut oil from my kitchen as a moisturizer, I brush my teeth with all natural toothpowders made from baking soda. I guess you could say I’m a cheap date at Rite Aid.

Like the food industry, the beauty industry markets heavily to kids. Magazines, billboards and TV ads create the unrealistic images that many girls strive to emulate. Turning off the TV is one way to cut down on this propaganda, but it remains an uphill battle when everyone in your daughter’s peer group uses large quantities of unnecessary products.

Dove, part of the large conglomerate Unilever, started a worldwide marketing strategy in 2004, the Campaign for Real Beauty. Some of the ads and you tube videos they’ve created cause you to stop and think about these unrealistic images of women. The ads urge us to talk with our daughters.

While this video shows the issue of how our culture pressures young females to conform to an unrealistic standard of beauty, I’m not convinced that teens will change their behavior with this information. If these videos were used in school as part of a media literacy, critical thinking unit, that would be a start.

Greenpeace was inspired by Dove’s campaign to create a video of their own. Watching the two back to back should help our daughters wake up to the realities of the beauty industry.

This campaign helped to pressure Unilever, the biggest single buyer of palm oil, to agree to start sourcing sustainable palm oil for their products.  Rainforest Action Network, another environmental group focusing on palm oil, feels the Unilever is simply greenwashing at this time.

When you watch the Dove Onslaughter video, don’t forget to think about Girl Scout Cookies. Their cookies  are loaded with palm oil, negatively impacting personal and planetary health.

Please show both of these video clips to your daughters. Have a conversation about all the products that they use, are they really necessary? Read the ingredients on the labels, can you pronounce them or figure out where they come from? We all must consider the world wide impact of what we do to look good.

Cheech flipping the bird.

Two of the three Rubin “chicks” are leaving the nest this week for college. I’m not as tearful as I was when daughter #1 headed 5 hours north to VT two years ago. I learned that, thanks to technology, they are never really that far away. Way back in the dark ages when I was in college, I spoke with my parents for 5 minutes every Thursday night. After all, long distance phone calls were expensive! These days with cell phones, texting and Facebook  there is instant access- which may or may not be a good thing.

Daughter #2 is heading to my alma mater, the Univeristy of Delaware, a quick 3 hour zip down through New Jersey, my home state, and just 30 minutes south of my in-laws who live in Wilmington, DE. The school has doubled in size and quadrupled in price since I went there in the roaring 80′s.

It will be much quieter and calmer at home this year with only one child left in the nest.  Daughter #3 is quite a character and is heading into 8th grade this year. 8th graders are hot shots in middle school, just waiting for high school to start.

Hopefully, this fall will be a smooth transition for everyone.

My Empire of Dirt by Manny Howard was a rollicking adventure story about a backyard garden that went a little too far. Based on the NY Magazine article from 2007, this book will have you wincing and chuckling about homegrown food.

This book, along with Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle and Novella Carpenter’s Farm City is another example of how the food movement is morphing from farmer’s markets and backyard veggie gardens into something more substantial.

I would love to get some bees and chicken going in my backyard. Fresh eggs and local honey would be great.  With the latest egg recall of a half a billion eggs, I have to believe more people are going to re-think their supermarket egg habit. 95% of eggs in the US come from industrial egg operations of 75,000 or more hens. Talk about too big to fail, or just plain too big! Smaller and closer to home is definitely better when it comes to food. A couple of hens would easily keep my family in enough eggs for most of the year.

Next read on the beach was a book about school gardens. I thought it might be dry reading but I was pleasantly surprised.How to Grow A School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers was the kind of book that really got me jazzed. If you are one of those parents who are trying to make a positive impact in your child’s school, this is the book you want to read. Its also the book you want to buy for your child’s teacher. This book demonstrates all the good reasons why every school should have a garden and walks you through the steps to get one going.

As Josh Viertel, President of Slow Food USA says,

I want to live in a world where there are more school gardens than McDonalds has franchises.

This book will help you to shift that ratio of fast food to slow food in your school district.

I know first hand about anger and how people can or cannot relate to this emotion. After all, I gained national notoriety a few years back as an Angry Mom in a movie featuring my adventures in school food advocacy.  Back then, most people were not comfortable with the word “angry”.  These days, the anger has gotten closer to the surface as our world seems to spin further and further out of control.

There can be an upside to anger. Anger can be a protective instinct. Speaking from personal experience, my frustration with the junk being served in my kid’s school was the spark that led me on a pathway of nationwide school food advocacy. Who knows what this angry outburst will lead to for Steven Slater. He’ll no doubt get 15 minutes of fame. Perhaps he’ll launch a national conversation on how we could be more compassionate with one another while flying across the country.  I wish Mr. Slater all the best in his future endeavors.

photo credit: Lizbeth*Kin As promised, here are the recipes from yesterday’s BarBQ

Honey Mustard Barbecue Sauce

This recipe comes from Steven Raichlen’s Barbecue Bible. My hubby has been making it for years as a sauce on the side to accompany his grilled chicken.

1/2 cup prepared mustard of choice

1/2 cup honey

1/4 cup light brown sugar

1/4 cup distilled white vinegar

Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

1. Combine the mustard, honey, sugar and vinegar in a nonreacitve saucepan and whisk to mix. Bring to a simmer over low heat and cook gently, uncovered, until richly flavored, about 5 minutes., whisking from time to time. Remove from head and season with salt and pepper.

2. Transfer to a serving bowl and serve warm or at room tempoerature. The sauce will keep, tighly covered in the refrigerator, for several weeks.

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

This one is pretty easy. First start with really good hummus. I make mine from scratch using a recipe from Melanie’s friend Anna. When finished, I toss a roasted red pepper into the food processor to bump it up to roasted red pepper hummus. As they always say, hummus is yummus.

Anna’s hummus

1 ½ cup chick peas cooked, rinsed, drained

3 cloves roasted garlic

1 chipotle pepper, canned in adobo

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 teaspoon honey

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 tablespoons tahini

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

Combine chickpeas and garlic in food processor. Add everything else and then trickle in oil slowly to desired consistency.

Corn Black Bean & Red Pepper Salad

This is another one of my favorite super easy recipes.

cups cooked black beans, drained and rinsed

2 cups fresh or frozen corn kernels

1 small red pepper, seeded and chopped

2 shallots, minced

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

¼ teaspoon ground cumin

1/8 teaspoon cayenne

¼ cup olive oil

2 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro

In a large serving bowl, combine the beans, corn, and bell pepper. Set aside.

In a small bowl, combine the shallots, lime juice, cumin, salt and cayenne. Whisk in the olive oil until blended.

Pour the dressing over the salad and toss lightly to coat. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve at room temperature.

I don’t want to brag, but I must say she’s grown into a strong and healthy young lady who appreciates real food. Part of that stems from back when she was 9 and  she became violently ill after eating McDonalds. Part of it is a result of both her mom and dad spending extra time and money to buy, prepare and eat real food as a family.

Being a summer baby, Mel had numerous backyard birthday parties. Many included water slides, sprinklers and water balloons. This year, for her birthday, she’ll be having some friends over to eat and celebrate on the backyard trampoline. Instead of water fun, she’s set up loads of candles and Tiki torches to light up the backyard.

As for food, she whipped up a menu just the other day that will keep both her parents cooking.

Melanie’s Birthday BarBQ Menu

Grilled Chicken Thighs with Honey Mustard Sauce

Corn on the Cob

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

Black Bean, Corn & Red Pepper Salad

Chocolate Wafer Refrigerator Cake

I’ll post recipes later. Right now, I’ve got work to do!

Mayonaise homemade from real eggs

When putting together my purslane potato salad last night, I ran out of mayo. Hubby offered to zip out to the store and pick up a bottle, but to use store bought mayonnaise would have canceled out the nutritional benefit of the omega 3 containing purslane!

Let me explain.  Mayonnaise is a stable emulsion of oil, egg yolk and either vinegar or lemon juice. Most brands of store bought mayonnaise use soybean oil and who knows where the heck their eggs are coming from.  These two ingredients are ones you don’t want to skimp on.  Most soybean oil in the US is genetically modified, not to mention soybean oil is high in pro-inflammatory Omega 6. My gut tells me that the company that makes Hellman’s mayonnaise is not going to go out of their way to get really high quality eggs for their mayo.

More expensive brands of mayonnaise found at the health food store, such as Spectrum are a little bit better, but most of them also contain organic soybean oil, which is an improvement but still not ideal. I’m also not a huge fan of canola oil . Despite the hype that canola oil is high in Omega 3 fats, the highly processed nature of this oil is questionable. The procedure involves a combination of high-temperature mechanical pressing and solvent extract, usually using hexane. Even after considerable refining, traces of the solvent remain. Like most vegetable oils, Canola oil also goes through the process of bleaching, degumming, deodorizing, and caustic refining, at very high temperatures. This process can alter the omega-3 content in the oil, and in certain conditions bring the trans fat level as high as 40 percent. Some brands such as Spectrum offer an expeller pressed canola oil, but once again, you’re going to want to take it a step further and look for Organic 100% expeller pressed canola oil to be sure you’re not ingesting genetically modified canola.

Sounds like a wild goose chase, huh? So this is how I came to the conclusion that I’d be better off making my own darn mayonnaise!  With a Kitchen aid mixer, the process is not all that complicated. This way I know exactly what ingredients are going in my mayo. Eggs I trust from a local farmer, organic olive oil from a good source and fresh squeezed lemon juice, what could be easier?

Lately, I’ve been buying eggs at my local farmer’s market from Feather Ridge Farm. Its worth the extra pennies to invest in eggs that come from happy chickens who are not fed antibiotics and hormones. These eggs are high in Omega 3 because the chickens were fed flaxseed and alfalfa.  You can tell the difference when you crack the egg: supermarket eggs have thinner shells and paler yolks.

Here’s my mayo recipe, try it out! Its easier than you think!

Ingredients:

• 2 egg yolks
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon powdered mustard
• 1/8 teaspoon sugar
• Pinch cayenne pepper
• 4 to 5 teaspoons lemon juice or white vinegar
• 1-1/2 cups olive oil
• 4 teaspoons hot water

Procedure:

1. Beat yolks,salt, mustard, sugar, pepper  and 1 teaspoon lemon juice  until very thick and pale yellow. (Note: I used the wire whisk attachment on my KItchen Aid electric mixer at medium speed.)

2. Add about 1/4 cup oil drop by drop, beating vigorously all the while. Beat in 1 teaspoon each lemon juice and hot water. Add another 1/4 cup oil a few drops at a time, beating vigorously all the while. Beat in another teaspoon each lemon juice and water. Add 1/2 cup oil in a very fine steady stream, beating constantly, then mix in remaining lemon juice and water; slowly beat in remaining oil.  Cover and refrigerate until needed. Do not keep longer than 1 week.

Note: Making mayonnaise results in leftover egg whites. This can only mean one thing: time to make meringue cookies! Stay tuned for the recipe.

Purslane Potato Salad

Purslane is one of those highly invasive, yet highly nutritious weeds that no one in their right mind would deliberately cultivate, it gets out of control super fast. Many cultures use this succulent plant in salads and stir fries. Within this little weed are omega-3s in the form of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), and other great nutrients, such as vitamin E, vitamin C, beta-carotene and glutathione.

Purslane is in the news lately not just because of it’s high Omega 3 content. Research is showing that this weed is capable of bioremediation. Put simply, purslane is capable of removing BPA from landfills and wastewater. Scientists confirmed that the plant was not simply absorbing the BPA and accumulating it in its own tissue and speculated that the plant was metabolizing BPA into a compound that does not have endocrine-disrupting activity. This is one weed I want to get to know better!

This week, I spotted some plump, fresh bunches of purslane for sale at J&A Bialas’s stand in Pleasantville. Adina smiled when I asked her if they were growing purslane on their land. Let’s just say they foraged it!

I brought home my bunch of purslane and perused recipes on the Internet to find a way to serve this nutrient rich green leafy in a way that my family would eat it without asking questions. Potato salad seemed like a good solution. It came out great!

Here’s the recipe I put together:

PURSLANE POTATO SALAD

Serves 4-6

In a medium pot, boil 5 cups chopped potatoes until tender. Drain and set aside to cool. In a bowl, mix 1 cup purslane leaves and buds (flowers and stalks are edible as well, if you choose), and 1 cup chopped scallions with greens. Add potatoes and mix well.

For the dressing: 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, 1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar, 3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill, 1/2 cup mayonaise, a pinch of cayenne, some salt and pepper.

I could go on and on about how both the trans fat ban and calorie counts didn’t end up being all that effective in improving the food environments of NYC, but I’m not gonna go there. Dr. Frieden deserves kudos for putting these bold food policies in place and going up against the NRA (National Restaurant Association) and other food industry lobbyists such as the Center for Consumer Freedom.

So far, our approach to the exploding obesity epidemic has done next to nothing to improve eating habits of Americans. Its time to think outside of the box.What would be the right words to say to the head of the CDC that would inspire him to take this approach?

My goal is to share my vision of school food reform with the good doc. School food reform is not about building a better chicken nugget or pumping up the pizza with whole wheat crust and low fat cheese.  Like calorie counts, these strategies do nothing to change the poor eating behaviors of America’s kids.

What we must do is raise the Food IQ and transform the culture of food in each and every school district in the USA. How could the CDC go about doing that?  They would be smart to hire me as a consultant. My four point plan includes proven strategies that will increase veggie consumption and lead to more informed eaters.

• Vegetable gardens in every school complete with composting projects

When kids grow food, picky eating behavior decreases and respect for real food increases. Composting of vegetable scraps is a great science project that reduces waste disposal costs, improves the environment and provides a nutrient rich soil amendment for those gardens.

• Food based film series open to the entire community

There are many excellent movies that can help to build Food IQ in an entertaining and informative way. These films will get people talking about the many food based issues that we are facing.

• Cooking classes

Research from Harvard shows that those who cook food tend to be more healthier than those who don’t. This trend crosses all socioeconomic lines. We’ve got to get our kids off the couch and into the kitchen! Require them to be able to prepare 10 meals from scratch as a requirement for graduation.

• Integration of food based education into core curriculum

Food can be seamlessly integrated into history/social studies, science, math and english. Learning about misleading food labeling claims which could easily become part of a unit on critical thinking skills- something all kids and grown ups could use more of.

One way to get this good stuff going into schools across the country would be the Food Corps, think Peace Corps but with food. FoodCorps members will build Farm to School supply chains, expand food system and nutrition education programs, and build and tend school food gardens.

The CDC can also look to the 200+ Slow Food chapters  across the country who are involved with Slow Food in Schools projects. This nationwide network of community based food education projects range from school gardens to cooking classes, to farm to school initiatives.  With CDC support, both the Food Corps and Slow Food in Schools can be the paradigm shift that turns this health crisis around better than any new, improved chicken nugget ever could!