Step out of tradition this Thanksgiving with duck instead of turkey.

I will as I always do, cook duck for Thanksgiving. The reason is the fat. A duck may look slimmer but when cooked it rarely dries out, while a turkey that’s leaner often does. To choose a leaner meat may be a good idea in general, but I definitely prefer something tastier.

If you think the duck renders too much fat while baking, I suggest you spoon off the overflow for use in other treats. Potatoes fried in duck fat are heavenly and a duck fat omelet is marvelous. When done right, duck fat even stores really well.

I also recommend using all the parts that come with it. The liver can be chopped up and sautéd with shallots, coriander and cumin or seasoned with lime and cilantro for a perfect appetizer. The neck (head and feet) and rest of the giblets make a great base for a stock (see below). This week’s recipe is my own creation, but I learned the baking method from both my mother and Elizabeth David (French Provincial Cooking, 1960). Happy Thanksgiving.

Duck in Port
Serves 4 people

One duck (about 5lb/ 2.5 kg) free range/wild/ organic
One lemon
2-3 teaspoons salt
Pepper

Fig and prune stuffing
10 prunes
10 dried figs
One cup (240 ml) Port
Thyme

Under the duck
About 2 lb (almost a kilo) small potatoes, cut in wedges
4 parsnips, cut in wedges
Some sprigs of thyme
Salt & pepper

For the stock (will be used to baste the duck)
Duck neck and giblets (head and feet if available)
One small onion, sliced
One small carrot, sliced
Small piece of celery (or any other vegetable that you may have)
One cup (240 ml) white wine
5- 6 leaves of sage (or any other herb you have on hand)
6 black pepper corns
2 teaspoons salt
Water

The day before: Cut the figs and prunes into small pieces and soak them with port overnight for at least 6 hours.

About an hour before you roast the duck you need to prepare the stock. Take out the giblets and the neck from the duck. Sauté the different parts in a saucepan. When brown add the sliced onion, carrots and pour in the white wine. Let it bubble and reduce for a couple minutes. Add thyme, sage, pepper corns and salt. Cover with water and let simmer for about an hour. Taste and season with more salt if necessary.

Rinse the bird under running cold water. Rub the duck inside and out with lemon. Rub on some salt and pepper. Fill the duck with the fig and prune stuffing (reserve the remaining juice for the sauce below or add it to the stock).

Put the duck on its side on a rack in a roasting pan. After 30 minutes in the oven @345°F (175°C), turn the bird on the other side and pour ½ – one cup of warm stock over the bird (keep some for later if making a sauce). Let it cook for another 30 minutes. Prepare the potatoes and parsnips. Place them in a bowl and sprinkle on some thyme, salt & pepper. Toss well together with your hands. Take the duck out and turn the bird facing up. Place the potatoes and parsnips at the bottom of the pan. Stir around a little so the potatoes and parsnips get well coated with the duck fat and stock. If there is too much liquid or fat jut take it aside for later use. Put the bird back into the oven and cook for about 45-60 minutes. The breast should be gorgeously brown and the legs loose. Take out the bird and let it rest for about 15-20 minutes before carving. The potatoes and parsnips should be ready about the same time but depending on the duck they may need less or longer to get ready. They should be soft inside and slightly crisp on top.

While the duck is resting you can make a simple sauce (optional) to go with the bird. Heat up some butter or some of the duck fat that you have set aside. Let a couple of the stuffed figs and prunes cook with it. Add some of the remaining stock and port juice. Let simmer for a bit before adding a little cream. Season with salt & pepper.

Other nice sides are: lingonberry or cranberry sauce, gherkins, string beans, Brussel sprouts and baked cabbage (check out my own recipe at the bottom of this post).

This recipe works also with goose or even turkey. You will have to adjust the recipe a little as these birds often come larger. I have also used this recipe with chicken on other occasions with great success.

Illustrations by Johanna Kindvall

New York City mushroom hunting and recipe tips.

This summer many of my friends in Sweden bragged about the number of baskets of yellow chanterelles they carried home from the woods. I came home with none. But I smiled along and remembered last year, when I couldn’t carry home all the King Boleteus I stumbled over in the woods. I still have plenty left, dried in big glass jars in my pantry.

But, I got to pick other treasures such as Black Trumpets and Funnel Chanterelles (or Yellow Foot) which are both equally delicious. These two tiny mushrooms can be tough to find as their dark hats makes them almost invisible among the leaves on the forest floor. I like them especially as they are excellent mushrooms to dry and easy for me to bring home to New York. The taste gets stronger when dried so just a few can spice up a sauce or soup for a number of Autumn and Winter treats. They are also excellent with pasta, mushroom pies or as below, a creamy topping on bread. According to my sister, Funnel Chanterelles are the best mushroom for risotto.

Unfortunately I’m not a great mushroom hunter in and around New York City ad I have no excuse as I’ve heard there are plenty of them in many parks within the city. Black Trumpets were recently spotted in the Bronx! However most of the mushrooms around the city are new species to me and regardless of the fact I’ve picked mushrooms for a long time, I never pick and eat any mushroom I don’t know.

It can take hours to clean mushrooms depending on how lucky your hunt has been. Both Black Trumpets and Funnel Chanterelles are quite easy to clean using a soft brush. Tear the mushroom apart and make sure there is no dirt in the hollow funnel (worms and other creatures can be hiding there). Spread out the mushrooms you are not planing to eat immediately on a baking sheet. Let them dry for several days. A quicker way is to dry them on low heat (max 50°C, 120°F) in a convection oven (keep the oven door open ½” so the moisture can escape). With either method you will have an insane smell of mushrooms at home. The mushrooms will have to be totally dry before storing in glass jars.

My favorite treat after a successful mushroom hunt is to make myself a buttery mushroom toast. I start by cooking most fresh mushrooms in a completely dry pan as I want all the water that’s in the mushrooms to dissolve before adding plenty of butter then I cook a little bit more and season with salt, black pepper and thyme. Simple as that.

Toast of Trumpets
(an appetizer for two)

about ½ -1 cup dried Black Trumpets (or Funnel Chanterelles)*
½ cup or more white wine (for example, a dry Riesling)
salt and pepper
about 5-7 sprigs of fresh thyme
butter
one shallot
about ½ cup cream
a small handful of walnuts, toasted and chopped
freshly grated parmesan

sliced baguette, toasted

Soak the dried mushrooms in just enough white wine to cover all the mushrooms for at least 30 minutes until soft.
In the meantime, chop the shallot into tiny pieces. Sauté on very low heat with plenty of butter until soft and golden.
Drain the mushrooms and reserve the wine for later. Heat up a dry pan, set the heat to medium and add the mushrooms. If the soaked mushrooms get stuck on the pan, add some of the soaking water, in this case the soaking wine. When the water is gone add a big lump of butter to the pan. Add thyme and sauté the mushrooms until they start to get some color (can be hard to see with black mushrooms). Raise the heat and add the shallots and the rest of the soaking wine. Let simmer and reduce to about half. Add cream and season with salt and pepper.
When the cream has thickened divide it equally over the toast. Top with toasted walnuts and freshly grated parmesan. Serve this Trumpet Toast with a simple tomato salad. Enjoy!

If using fresh mushrooms you should skip the soaking part and only add the wine at the end.

* if you are not able to pick Black Trumpets or Funnel Chanterelles yourself, you can find them dried in well-stocked food shops. There are also plenty of online shops that sell them. Other dried mushrooms such as King Bolete work mighty fine as well.

Illustration by Johanna Kindvall

Clean energy, public transit and local food make these 10 big cities the greenest of them all.

Honking cars emit foul black clouds, skyscrapers blot out the sun, litter lines the gutters and healthy green space can be hard to come by. But in many of America’s biggest cities, these negative traits are being eclipsed by clean, efficient public transit, bike-friendly infrastructure, multiplying trees, reliance on renewable energy and a fierce pride in locally-produced products. Slashing greenhouse gas emissions and coming close to zero waste is no easy feat for a metropolis with a population of at least 250,000, but these 10 cities – from Boston to San Francisco – prove that sustainability is possible on the largest of scales, in good economic times and bad.

10. Boston, Massachusetts

Representing the entire East Coast in impressive renewable energy stats, Boston boosted its solar power with the Solar Boston program and counts wind among its top three sources of electricity, with a turbine on city hall and more slated for several public schools. Other big plans include turning fall leaves and other yard clippings into power and fertilizer with a new biogas facility, and using recycled trash to power homes. For those residents who don’t rely exclusively on the nation’s most utilized public transportation systems, taxis will soon be another green option as they’re all required to go hybrid by 2015. New bike lanes and 250 bike racks have increased Boston’s pedal power, and the city saves a whopping $400,000 a year thanks to LED traffic lights.

9. Denver, Colorado

The Mile-High City is an outdoor wonderland with 14,000 acres of parkland in the mountains, 200 parks within the city limits, 850 miles of dedicated bike trails and 29 recreation centers. Denver preserves and protects its active, natural heritage with conservation measures like a no-pesticide policy in its parks and the Mile-High Million program, which plans to plant one million trees in the metropolitan area by 2025. For a city in a semi-arid region, Denver is adept at managing its water consumption, offering residents incentives to keep their usage down. Any concrete going into new city projects must be green, and Denver has also made some significant renewable energy goals, hoping to run on 20 percent wind power by 2020.

8. San Jose, California

Maybe it’s not California’s best-known or most-beloved city, but San Jose deserves some serious accolades for its clean-tech goals and innovations. Angling for the title of clean tech capital of America, San Jose has already created over 25,000 jobs in green industries and actively works to lure green businesses to the city. In fact, after Tesla Motors relocated its headquarters there in 2009, San Jose began rapidly developing infrastructure for electric vehicles including plug-in charging stations. It’s home to many of the nation’s top solar manufacturers as well as the world’s largest testing facility for solar products.

In a bid to become a zero-waste city, San Jose has managed to divert 62 percent of its waste to recycling and plans to reuse 100 percent of its waste water for landscaping within the next 15 years. The city’s Green Vision plan also includes a goal to reduce per capita energy use by 50 percent and get 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources within the same time period.

7. Oakland, California

Hop on a zero-emissions bus for a tour of one of America’s model green cities, checking out dozens of urban farms, renewable energy projects and a wide variety of eco-friendly businesses. Oakland is working to rise above high levels of unemployment and poverty to position itself as a leader in sustainability, particularly in the areas of local food, green jobs and renewable energy. Taking cues from its bigger Bay Area sister San Francisco (and sometimes even eclipsing it), Oakland gets 17% of its energy from renewable sources like hydroelectric, biomass and wind, and in 2007, it won the City Solar Award from NorCal Solar for having more solar power wattage than any other big city in Northern California.

The city aims to lower its greenhouse gas emissions to 36 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2020, the most ambitious target in the nation. It’s also home to Van Jones’ Ella Baker Center, one of several local organizations that focuses on training low-income adults for jobs in green industries.

6. Austin, Texas

Austin may be best known for its vibrant music scene, but this city shines just as bright in the sustainability arena. Not only is Texas’ capital city bicycle and pedestrian friendly, with plenty of mass transit and even hybrid plug-in stations, but its building codes encourage green practices and home energy audits are mandatory when selling a house. Austin is also the largest local government to run on 100% renewable energy, and by 2020 the city aims to have 30% of its residential, commercial and industrial energy consumption shifted to clean sources.

Birthplace of Whole Foods, Austin is brimming with organic restaurants and natural food stores, including America’s first zero-waste, packaging-free grocery store, In.gredients. If you’ve never been there and imagine the entire state of Texas as a dusty wasteland full of tumbleweeds, banish that notion from your mind, at least as it pertains to Austin – this city is surprisingly lush, offering stunning outdoor settings for biking, kayaking, swimming or just relaxing.

5. New York, New York

The fact that the Big Apple can compete with much smaller cities like Austin and Oakland is reason enough to land it in the top five greenest cities. It’s undoubtedly no easy task to keep a teeming metropolis of over 8 million residents from turning into an environmental nightmare, and while New York City can’t boast quite the same statistics on clean air or water conservation, it excels in public transportation and does surprisingly well on greenhouse gases and public park space. It’s the city’s very density that makes it so efficient, with just 20 percent of the population driving their own vehicles on a regular basis. Tall, jam-packed skyscrapers are more energy efficient than single-family homes, and of course, they use up a lot less land. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is further kicking up the city’s eco credentials with tree-planting programs, hybrid taxis and a program that phases out heavy heating oils.

4. Chicago, Illinois

Boardwalks, parks, nature centers, organic restaurants, green hotels and lots of eco-friendly shops: Chicago definitely has a lot to boast about.  The United Nations chose it as one of just two U.S. cities for UN-Habitat’s 100 Cities Initiative for its work over the past two decades addressing climate change and healthier, greener living in general. Since 1989 the city has seen 500,000 trees planted, 10,000 bike racks installed, 114 miles of bike lanes established and 900 acres of abandoned, polluted land returned to productive use.

Chicago’s City Hall boasts a stunning rooftop garden, adding to more than 2.5 million square feet of green roofs within the city limits – more than all other U.S. cities combined. A downtown airport was demolished to make way for a 100-acre park, adding to the city’s reputation as a testing ground for reducing the urban heat island effect. The city is also making headway on a 2008 climate goal that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent come 2050.

3. Seattle, Washington

All of those waterways surrounding Seattle don’t just give it its postcard-perfect beauty and contribute to its wet, mild climate – they also provide over 90 percent of the city’s power in the form of hydroelectricity, and more low-impact hydropower plants are planned to reduce impact on wildlife like salmon. The city’s two global warming initiatives, Seattle Climate Action Now and Seattle Climate Partnership, have distributed thousands of home energy efficiency kits to residents and urged over 100 local businesses to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. And when something like blackberry brambles threaten to overtake Seattle City Light’s substations, the utility employs a chemical-free solution: goats.

2. Portland, Oregon

Seattle’s carbon-neutral electricity makes it the star of the Pacific Northwest when it comes to climate change, but Portland has it beat in all-around sustainability and green living. A quarter of Portland’s workforce commutes by bike, carpool or public transportation with about 9,000 city residents biking downtown every day. The first city to adopt a climate change action plan, Portland offers free plug-in parking spots for electric vehicles and has more LEED-certified residential towers than any other city in the U.S. Portland is beating back sprawl with zoning regulations that encourage dense urban growth while leaving farmland for agricultural use. And on top of all of this, Portland has rightfully earned a reputation as a laid-back, eco-friendly place to live thanks in part to a lively local food and beer scene.

1. San Francisco, California

While Portland and Seattle are snapping at its heels, San Francisco manages to hang on to its title as the greenest city in America for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that city residents seem to have concern for the environment encoded into their DNA. Voters routinely approve aggressive green programs like banning plastic grocery bags and financing renewable energy for public facilities. San Francisco diverts a jaw-dropping 70 percent of its waste thanks to mandatory recycling and composting, and urban farms produce 20 times more food than the city’s residents can consume in a year. Nearly half of all San Francisco residents bike, walk or take public transit every day. Despite being more populated, San Francisco has a lower annual output of greenhouse gases than its Pacific Northwest competition, and is on track to reach its goal of 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Images: Tony the Misfit, Manu_H, dherrera_96, Wikimedia Commons, Ella Baker Center, Andreanna Moya, njt4148, compujeramey, wordridden, periwinklekog, kevincole

What came first, the depressing women’s book clubs or the morbid books?

Remember the trances and travels afforded by pleasure reading? You couldn’t wait to lose yourself in the next chapter of that murder mystery, royal court espionage or love tryst – you were a voracious reader who deeply mourned the loss of your new character friends once the final page was devoured and downloaded into your fiber.

But somehow, that pleasure has become elusive to the women’s book group, the reading less an armchair cruise than an academic grind. The inevitable prerequisite is the agreed-upon selections must be meaty enough to spark evocative feedback for eloquent sharing round the coffee table. As a result, our picks are highly wrought works of historic, political or cultural significance perpetually mired in sadness. Or, as a fellow member recently commiserated, “Can’t we move on from the holocaust and women in pain?”

“People going through misery, the good women and bad men dynamic – that was an Oprah thing,” observes Bill Dito, an employee of the popular Books Inc. shop in San Francisco, where staff specialists write their own book reviews for customers. He has a bird’s eye view of the victim trend in fiction the last decade, one that has forced us to endure an excruciating trip through a time machine or suffer female bondage of one brand or another – which only further marginalizes us as women.

Then there is the entire cottage industry one might call “victim books” from rape to exploitation to the toast of the Oprah Book Club, author Wally Lamb with big guns like Couldn’t Keep it to Myself: Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution. In the collection described as both utterly depressing and a real page turner, inmates describe in their own words, tales of abuse, rejection, self-destructive impulses long before they entered the criminal justice system. This followed other works like She’s Come Undone and Drowning Ruth – bereft titles that speak for themselves.

When The Color Purple and Joy Luck Club came out, they were rare rather than part of a steady diet of underdog angst and could be easily digested. Now, the question remains: Are there any other stories being told?

“As someone who has written about ‘women in pain,’ women dealing with the death of a child, for example, I think that the premise of your question is problematic,” novelist Ayelet Waldman tells me. “All interesting stories are about someone in crisis – in ‘pain’ if you will. Who wants to read about happy people doing happy things? Story is conflict, conflict is story. The Corrections was about people in crisis. Does that fall into your category of ‘victim-literature?’ If it doesn’t, then I think you should take a good look at the question you’re asking, and consider whether it isn’t inherently sexist.”

When she puts it that way, I do feel I’m turning my back on the movement. Men deal in pain, too, as she aptly points out.  The Kite Runner was all about the pain.

The fact is I cherish my women’s book group and our time reviewing, catching up, sipping wine and grazing on grapes and cheese. But it is time to lighten up, or at least look around. Even read about happy things. So sue me. Can’t drama tinged with humor a la Capote, Sedaris and McInerney be book group material? We have even drifted from titillating historic fiction such as Phillipa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl series.

I’d like to shirk my duty to remember and never forget (Sarah’s Key, The Invisible Bridge, The Book Thief, Jacob’s Courage, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society). I’ve hit my saturation point for the empathy we must extend to our unfortunate, ill-fated sisters still under tutelage of warlords, meddling Indian parents or Southern patriarchs (Little Bee,  Sister of My Heart, Shanghai Girls, Secret Life of Bees, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Eat, Pray Love, Life of Venus, Cutting for Stone). 

How might it be different if men were members? I have no idea, since I have only belonged to all women book groups.

In my group, which focuses on contemporary fiction, it would appear the lists are stocked with Sophie’s choices – just as films have waves like the one witnessed in 2008 with an abundance of Third Reich themes: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Reader, Valkyrie, Adam Resurrected. The onslaught had New York Times contributor A.O. Scott questioning the trend, as I have questioned my book group’s thematic selections:

“The near-simultaneous appearance of all these movies is to some degree a coincidence, but it throws into relief the curious fact that early 21st-century culture, in Europe and America, on screen and in books, is intensely, perhaps morbidly preoccupied with the great political trauma of the mid-20th century,” he wrote. “The number of Holocaust-related memoirs, novels, documentaries and feature films in the past decade or so seems to defy qualification, and their proliferation raises some uncomfortable questions: Why are there so many? Why now?”

I can’t say I don’t glean knowledge, picking up more details than what I acquired or remember as a history major in college or as an impressionable kid at Communist Jewish summer camp exposed to the soul-flogging images in films like, Let My People Go, the 1965 story of Israel containing graphic footage of the remains of my ancestors being scooped up from piles at the camps after liberation. It was important to watch. Nonetheless, I wanted to run back to the arts and crafts table and make another God’s Eye. 

Sarah’s Key informed me of the French betrayal and the Vichy collaboration and the wrenching view from the eyes of a child; The Invisible Bridge eloquently told the Hungarian artisan’s story of survival. And the highly literary, exquisite novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, allowed me to visit the British Isles during occupation where defiant members of a book group take great risks to meet and eat and break German curfews.

I benefited from all of these reads, but aren’t we ready for an expanded library, a richer experience?

“My in laws came from Poland and Hungary and they ask me about the books we read, but they can never read them and have no interest in going near them,” says another member of my group. I get it. While I didn’t live it, my grandmother was the only one of seven children in her family to escape and survive the Polish slaughter.

While I identified strongly with Jonathan Saffran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated – which recounted one man’s yearnings for his ancestors’ experience of being hidden from the Nazis in a uniquely entertaining voice – I struggle with each depiction of the hiding like animals in the woods, the mashing like cattle into jam-packed train cars, the starvation, the fear, the digging of their own graves before dropping into them. No wonder we found relief in the uber-violent Inglorious Bastards.

The same frustration is suffered in the downtrodden female tales, which produced two centuries after Jane Austen, rarely offer a happy mid-18th century way out via a beneficial marriage around the maypole or sudden death of a piggish heir. Instead, we find ourselves steeped in the relentless bellicosity of the neanderthals entrapping them, classic male withholders of the basic needs we women require to thrive: love, money, property, liberty, suffrage and great sex after 50.

Why now are we spending our free time moaning vicariously in wartime hellishness or flinching through a deranged arranged marriage when we could cuddle up in bed on a Sunday with a steamy romance epic, bone-chilling murder mystery or a young professional’s playful romp working at a style magazine or publishing house or paying dues in some hick town? Now that is chick-lit I can wrap my overloaded, burned-out brain around – reads that I won’t equate with the daily drudgery of paying bills and managing schedules.

If we must endure yet fresh pain, perhaps it might be framed not in 20th century Europe but, say, 21st century New Orleans, as in Dave Eggers’s Zeitoun. At least, as in The Help and Eat Pray Love, it is fresh stuff chronicling our own times. The Depression-era Water for Elephants, too, provided a historic perspective while still offering something totally new in the journey of a would-be vet who joins the circus. It certainly wasn’t free of struggling female characters, but the suffering didn’t dominate the theme and the redemption was a gift.

The same dearth of freshness clearly exists in in play writing, as well. How else can you explain the barrage of revivals in the last decade? If I see an ad for Annie Get Your Gun one more time, I’ll shoot myself and take Wild Bill with me. It’s the old Disney strategy of when in doubt, produce a remake or sequel. And novelists suffer from the same syndrome by focusing on what sells.

Perhaps one remedy would be to not rely solely on the New York Times lists and peruse book stores for the employee recommendations. Oftentimes, you will find sparkling little stories that didn’t cut the mustard with the corporate giant, but are worthwhile nonetheless.

“We pick and choose ones we want to read and then write it up if we like it and also accept customer reviews,” explains Dito. “You would be amazed how many people come in here to look at our reviews. That’s why there is a need for book stores. You can’t talk to someone from Amazon.”

Among the Books Inc. favorites: Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard (author of  The River of Doubt ) which examines the the madness, medicine and murder of James A. Garfield; The Elegance of the Hedgehog a quirky French story by Muriel Barbery; The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell, focusing on a war-ravaged Dutch East Indies company; and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami,  a romantic Japanese woman’s coming of age.

Another staff reviewer, Chris Lutes, adds that there are certainly a plethora of Third Reich era reads such as Laura Hiderbrand’s World War II survivor dramas including the recently acclaimed Unbroken.  But there are plenty of alternatives worth book club consideration.

“It was a pretty trying time in history so it’s easy to revisit because even though we are removed from that drama there is such humanity to those stories and it’s easy for people to get into that mindset. Still it’s staggering how many books are published each month – so there’s a lot of other stuff out there,” he says.

Images: imdb; Skinny Chronicles, shutterhacks; Squidoo

Why the first show canceled for the fall TV season deserved to die.

Last week, much like salmon leap forward in a river, the first shows of the fall TV season struggled for life upstream. Meanwhile, studio executives wearing the skins of endangered grizzly bears swiped at them from rocks in the water, gnawing at the flesh of bad jokes and ill-timed dramatic pauses. The first TV show of the season to get its tail chewed off? That would be NBC’s “The Playboy Club.”

NBC swiftly canned its knock-off to AMC’s critically-acclaimed wunderkind “Mad Men” after it proved to be a big ratings disappointment. It was also condemned by the Parents Television Council for its “racy” content. “The Playboy Club” tried to bring back the early 1960s, when Playboy bunnies were pre-silicone and hair pieces, and men could still be men. (Whatever that means. Because “The Playboy Club” never managed to explain it.) The end result? We’re happy to show it the door.

Hugh Hefner himself introduced us to the era, telling us his club was “a place where anything could happen to anybody. Or any bunny.” But the Playboy bunny costume was about as interesting as any of the characters got. Its heroes and heroines were merely one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs of era stereotypes. Club man Nick Dalton (Eddie Cibrian) stalked about the club doing his best Don Draper impersonation, mostly as a prop to a cadre of unrealistic female characters. The ingénue, the threatened older women, and the cynic all splashed together onscreen poorly. You half-expected Hugh Hefner himself to walk on screen with a soapy sponge to clean up the tropes spiraling out all over the club floor.

Hugh Hefner defended this debacle, telling Entertainment Weekly that his show was better suited for cable. “I’m sorry NBC’s The Playboy Club didn’t find its audience,” he wrote to Entertainment Weekly. “It should have been on cable, aimed at a more adult audience.” Fair enough.  Trying to write edgy material for a network show is like trying to ask your doctor if you can drink alcohol with your prescriptions. You’re supposed to be serving up sugary, family-friendly fare that viewers 18-49 are going to drag themselves off of Hulu to watch.

But “The Playboy Club” wasn’t too edgy for primetime; it was too silly. It dumbed down sexism like it was an iconic institution we were supposed to miss. There’s no need for artfully-woven characters and subtle story-telling when there are push-up bras and satin corsets. Its writing and plotting was on-the-nose obvious from opening scene to end. AMC’s “Mad Men” succeeds brilliantly with women in similarly subservient roles because you understand where everyone is coming from, even if it’s in a place we’re glad no longer overtly exists. “The Playboy Club” just expected us to reminisce as if we were nostalgic for limited choices.

And this is why we’re glad to see it go. We understand retro-sexism when it dives deeper below the surface. When it looks at the underlying forces at work in the early 1960s that later birthed the feminist movement. Instead, NBC’s venture made us feel like we were literally thumbing through a Playboy magazine. It’s nice to see all the pretty costumes or lack thereof, but what’s the point when it’s all just a surface fantasy? The Playboy Empire has never been about portraying a realistic representation of femininity, but rather an image of gleeful subservience tucked into a costume. In the end, we just felt like we had witnessed something we’d rather forget – or at the least, move past.

 It’s fall and while apples are everywhere, consider making them into a warm tart.

In autumn, apples are a big deal in New York, especially if you visit any of the food markets around town. Even though I grew up in a very apple-rich area called the Apple Kingdom of Sweden, I’m deeply impressed at the variety that’s on display at the markets. I don’t know all the names and flavors so I’m happy that many vendors have apple tastings. It helps when you need to find the perfect apple for your apple pie, compote, juice or the one you just want to bite into.

For example, the McIntosh apple, with its soft and sweet/sour flavor, is excellent soaked with rum under a sweet butter rich crumble, as it melts when baked in the oven. I also like the McIntosh apple in the morning cooked for five minutes with cardamom and cinnamon, topped with kefir or yogurt. For an apple tart, where the apples lay on top of the crust, I prefer a firmer apple such as Granny Smith (sour) or Gala (sweeter). My new favorite apple to eat is the Honey Crisp which is both crispy and juicy. The apple has just enough sweetness without being sour. As its name spells out, it has an elegant honey flavor.

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve been making apple pies in different ways. My caramelized Apple Tart is my latest creation. Enjoy!

Caramelized Apple Tart
for 4-6 people

1 ¼ cup (about 300 ml) regular flour
3.5 ounces (about 100 grams) butter
3 tablespoons sucanat*
1½ teaspoons finely crushed cardamom
a splash of water

4 apples (preferably apples that are sour + firm inside, ex. Granny Smith)
4-5 tablespoons sucanat* (depending on how sour the apples are)
juice from one lemon
2½ ounces (70 grams) butter
½ cup (100 ml ) almonds, toasted and chopped

heavy cream, whipped with a little sugar

Start by mixing together butter, flour, cardamom and sucanat. When the butter is well divided add a splash of water. Work the dough together and let it rest in the fridge for at least one hour. Line a greased 9 inch (about 23 cm) spring form. Pre-bake at 400°F (200°C) the pie shell for about 10-15 minutes until it has got some color. Let cool.

Wash and peel the apples. Cut in half, take out the seeds and slice the rest of the apple in thin slices. Sprinkle the slices with sucanat and lemon juice. Cook over medium heat in a frying pan until they start to get juicy. Add ½ of the butter. Keep cooking the apples until they starts to caramelize. If you think the apples need more sugar you may add some now and let cook for a little bit more. The color should be golden and have some brown spots. Remove from heat and add the rest of the butter and toasted almonds. Let cool a little before arranging the apples inside the baked pie shell. Bake at 450°F (230C) for about 15 minutes until the apples have gotten some nice color. Serve with whipped cream.

*Sucanat is a brown sugar extracted from sugar cane. It’s perfect to bake with and gives cakes and cookies a richer taste. In the U.S. you can often find Sucanat in organic shops. If you can’t find sucanat you may use muscovado sugar or even regular brown sugar instead. When I’m in Sweden I use Farin sugar which works really well too.

Illustration: Johanna Kindvall

ColumnThe health of a body politic can only be as strong as the individual relationships that comprise it.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, with pop-up solidarity encampments, sit-ins, and demonstrations sprouting in cities as far flung as New York and Nashville or Atlanta and Los Angeles, is a mounting cultural zeitgeist soon to enter its second month. The noisy convergence of a few-dozen Tea Partiers waving signs and causing a public ruckus always ends up dominating the nightly news, but not even NPR provided so much as a single story during Occupy Wall Street’s first nine days. People interested in following the occupation’s development had to look outside of their country’s borders, where international coverage by Al Jazeera and The Guardian UK had to suffice instead.

Now that it’s getting more coverage, many critics dismiss the protesters’ demands and frustrations as scattered and disorganized, but Occupy Wall Street’s disunity is actually its strength. Without a singular definition, there is more conceptual and theoretical space for a plurality of voices, whether that be a recent college graduate whose ambitions to find a respectable job have been dashed or a working class single mother who can’t afford monthly health insurance payments.

In a country where 24-million citizens, no matter how hard they try, can’t find decent full time employment and where 57-million citizens can’t afford full health care coverage, something has run amok. Systemic inequity and exploitation results in rampant societal sickness, and the current Occupation reflects an unhealthy body-politic. Citizens are clamoring not only for relief from economic malaise, but also calling into question the legitimacy of corporate globalization and the governmental structures that support it.

As a freelance American writer living and working in Berlin, my own participation in this movement is that of the pen. (Although I’m excited this weekend to attend an affinity demonstration here in Germany’s capital, especially because these protests always come with ‘party buses,’ huge platforms on wheels that groan under the weight of mega sound systems blasting electronic music and followed by dancing crowds – fun!)

I’m not a policy wonk, nor am I interested in prescribing antidotes to redress widespread social and financial injustice. Instead, I’m much more interested in what I can do on a micro-scale to directly impact my immediate environment. It is my conviction that the quality of our relationships – how we engage with and support one another – can have profound societal implications. How can people love their neighbors if they’re always pitted in battle against their spouse? How can people exercise sound reason at the voting polls if they can’t even create sane problem solving models with their partner? Our intimate relationships are the building blocks of our culture, and the way that we treat our lovers determines our capacity to develop a world that acknowledges human decency and dignity.

This week’s Sex by Numbers is inspired by the disenfranchised people in my home country who are taking to the streets. I am proud of their emboldened voices. I am proud of the DIY kitchens, free medical care, and solar-generated power systems that make up the encampments. I am proud that people of many stripes are banding together, collectivizing resources, and participating directly in the backbone of a vibrant democracy – dissent. In this vein, I will examine five ways in which we can also foster and nourish love relationships of which we can be equally proud, how we can create romantic partnerships that stimulate our highest selves and model the way we behave in society. A country can only be as strong as its lovers.

Ego Trip

Meaningful communication so often gets lost in the muck of shoddy translation. Our egos are useful survival tools, and peace-and-love calls to stamp them out are not only naive, but also foolish. At the same time, excess ego creates uptight stinginess and increased readiness to be on the defensive. If you operate under the expectation that people are out to hurt you, then there’s a high likelihood that whatever they say – no matter how ultimately trivial – can trigger your too easily hurt feelings.

Imperfectly United

Err on the side of forgiveness for your partner’s petty slights of tongue or sometimes errant behavior. Consider first whether or not their words and actions are, in the grand scheme of things, worth causing a fuss about. Chances are, if you can exercise ongoing compassion for your lover’s own insecurities and imperfections as a communicator than you can save yourselves needless bickering and strife. At the end of the day, you are both flawed beings ever striving to become better versions of you. Sometimes people mess up; get over it.

Do It Yourself

Perception and pro-action mean taking matters into your own hands. If you identify something that needs to be done, do it yourself to show your partner that you’re invested in your shared lives with one another. Sure, it’s always fun to attend to quotidian tasks as a team, but sometimes it’s simply more practical to be efficient and be done with it. Notice his bike tire has gone flat? Take five minutes and fill it with air so that you two are primed for two-wheeling adventure when the mood strikes. Notice that his dirty underwear is piling up in the hamper? Help a brother out and throw it in the wash. Attend to these things with good cheer and without calling attention to them; it serves as a model for the type of thoughtful treatment you hope he also extends to you and weaves into your everyday lives a culture of sharing and equal consideration of interest.

Peaceful Conflict Resolution

I grew up in a family where daily warfare was the norm – what could and should have been minor upsets were instead a source of explosive epithets, irrational and embittered judgement, and exaggeratedly wounded feelings. As an adult, I now have the choice not to inhabit a psychological battlefield in a domestic war without end, and it surprises me how simple it really is to defuse emotional landmines. I’ve had lots and lots of help along the way to achieve this place of relative peace and ease, but at its core is a staunch refusal to invite men into my life who don’t know how to take care of themselves and others. With this requisite check-mark in place, developing a useful, effective template with which to weather a few storms is fundamental.

First Fix You

Be honest about how you feel, but you don’t have to share every damn thought that flits through your head. Instead, focus on the development of your own internal compass so that you can manage your emotions instead of asking your partner to shoulder an undue load. It frees up mental space for both of you to be independent and self-sufficient, so that when you join forces to solve a conflict you can meet one another as free, actualized adults.

Sex By Numbers is an ongoing look into the emotional and sexual lives of the modern day woman. Follow Abigail Wick weekly here for insight and inspiration as she explores the “sex” of women and the terrain they must travel.

Article Images: david_shankbone, WarmSleepy Author Image: Alina Rudya

As fall days darken, light up your face with a natural skin brightener.

October quashes any last hopes for an Indian summer glow. Fall and winter clothing will have us covered up in sweaters, coats and pants – gleaming summer skin in hiding. For those of you experiencing a state of new-season denial, smear a little drop of Josie Maran Argan Illuminizer on your cheeks and brow bones to mask dull skin and naturally light up your face.

$28.00

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

ColumnWhat exactly is the French Paradox? Turns out it’s just a different attitude towards food.

Mes amis, let us take a moment and go francophile. But first let me preface this by acknowledging that there was in fact a time when my love affair with France hit a dark spot.

A longtime francophile – “Anna, do you really have to always pronounce croissant with a French accent?” – I did what any person in love would do: I moved. But somewhere along the line, France stopped being the romantic place it once had been. My newfound relationship with the place, once seductive and alluring, turned commonplace, and in the midst of dealing with French bureaucracy, I was no longer intrigued by the je ne sais quoi.

But like any good relationship, distance did it some good, and now France and I are back to where we once were, with me constantly craving a taste of French culture. Which brings me back to food.

As a culture, we have long been intrigued by the idea that French women don’t get fat. But that concept stretches across an entire nation, giving us the French paradox. How does one consume cream, butter and ample amounts of cheese and still manage to be perfectly in shape? Our Anglo minds have a hard time grappling with this question, but really it all comes down to how we think about food, and in France it’s all about having a respect for what’s on the plate in front of you. A way of life instead of a lifestyle choice.

Ultimately the French Paradox isn’t a paradox at all, it’s just about a few simple values that we could easily start incorporating into our own lives, no matter where we live.

Food Is Culture

Although local love for the national cuisine may be failing, an appreciation for good food in France has never diminished, and the commitment to keeping the tie between eating and feeling good is alive and strong. Take Le Fooding for example. Deemed “A taste of the times,” it’s a restaurant guide/food festival/food news site, and one that’s committed more to putting the “feeling” back into food.

“We are about having food with fun, and with a smile,” Le Fooding’s founder Alexandre Cammas told the Los Angeles Times. And herein lies the French paradox: food is directly tied to emotional well being. French people don’t eat because they have to, they eat because it’s a valued part of their day and their culture.

Food Is Food

As Maurice Edmond Sailland (pen-name Curnonsky) once said, “Fine cooking is when the things you have cooked taste as they are.” A roasted chicken with a rich sauce may sound decadent to our American-trained stomachs, but as it turns out, real food is not only healthier, it’s also cheaper than the fast food, high caloric alternatives.

Real food isn’t processed, and it certainly doesn’t come vacuum packed and wrapped in styrofoam, and hitting up the market every day for a basket of vegetables instead of potato chips quickly leads to a healthier society.

Food Is Quality

When kids aren’t allowed to eat ketchup in the cafeteria anymore – unless it’s for the once a week burger – you know a country is doing something right. Meanwhile we’re sitting back and only barely touching the surface of the issue, with all kinds of ridiculous backlash, including the likes of Sarah Palin touting the benefits of sweets.

But the French know that when it comes to children, they have to set an example. “France must be an example to the world in the quality of its food, starting with its children,” said Bruno Le Maire, French Minister for Agriculture and Food.

Food is Tradition

Although you’ll certainly find a few cupcakes in France, food fads don’t hit like they do on our side of the Atlantic. Deep down, the French know what they are supposed to eat: whole grains, fruits and vegetables, dairy and protein. Sure, the supermarket has over 100 kinds of yogurt, but 100 kinds of yogurt is much better than 100 kinds of sugary breakfast cereal.

Because food is tradition, there are certain classic staples that remain part of the culture. You’d be hard pressed to find a French person who doesn’t know a thing or two about cheese, and wherever you are in the country, if you just take time to ask, it won’t take long to learn what the regional specialty is and who in town makes it.

Food Isn’t Treated as Unlimited

Most of us, even broke 20-somethings, have the ability to buy way more food than we need. Compare this to places where almost entire household incomes go to sustaining a family, and you begin to see the disparity. Unfortunately because it’s hard to resist a good thing, even though we don’t need everything that we’re able to purchase, we still have a tendency to consume it and that means larger portions and more of them. French people eat until they are full, and then stop. Those French women consuming all that heavy cream and butter? They do it in moderation, knowing their personal limits.

Food is Joie de Vivre

Everyone has to eat, so why not enjoy the moment, preferably with friends? Eating with others has not only emotional benefits but also means you’re not sitting in front of the television alone, mindlessly moving your hand from chip bag to mouth. Food is meant to be enjoyed; given the time it took to get from the earth to your plate, it deserves to be enjoyed.

Want to be more French? Don’t just whip up a coq au vin or grab a croissant with your coffee for breakfast tomorrow. Eating French isn’t about the specific dishes, it’s about the entire process. Think about what you eat, where it comes from and enjoy the process of consuming it and who you’re eating it with. In fact, c’est simple.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: carolus124, pdbreen, Mike Towber

Fried food, two-stepping, honky tonk music, cowboy boots, and environmentalists? It might sound like an odd combo, but that’s South by Southwest Eco for you.

Last week, the EcoSalon team descended upon Austin, Texas to join in as a media partner in the first ever SXSW Eco, a three-day conference bringing together an “international audience of executive level decision makers from the public and private sectors, and thought leaders from academia.”

Just as SXSW has become a launching pad for new creative content and ideas fueled by a dynamic and diverse audience, the goal for SXSW Eco is to apply the same innovative approach to discussing the most pressing issues of our time. From food issues to the global population explosion to exploring what neuroscience can teach us about human behavior, the panelists and keynote speakers of the conference tackled these topics from a variety of perspectives, providing plenty of intellectual space to grow the conversation.

It’s one thing to gather a bunch of green-minded people into one space and get them to talk about pressing issues, and quite another to engage people outside of our circles on the same issues. “I am here to reach the people outside of the room, and I hope you do the same,” said Simran Sethi, journalist and Associate Professor University of Kansas. One of the main themes that stood out to us during the conference was how exactly we go about doing that. We all, at this point, acknowledge and understand that the green conversation has failed to become the green conversion. Going green has been a bust. But why? And where do we go from here? One popular sentiment floated into the Twitterverse from a panel on how green vocabulary has failed us was “We need a Rosetta Stone of green.”

So, is it changing how we talk about climate and the environment in our marketing efforts? Or are we so wired to consume more and deplete our natural resources, we must begin with psychology and science? Is dissonance and debate between greens – “skirmishes,” as the Nature Conservancy president Mark Tercek much prefers (bristling a bit under repeated criticism in the Q&A) – a healthy way to create space for forward progress, or a dangerously short-sighted distraction from the goals we share? Can we find ever find common ground that doesn’t politicize the issue of the environment and brings people from all points of the spectrum together to save ourselves?

The short answer is: yes. But it’s going to take work. And it’s going to take thinking creatively about how we talk about things like “green” and how we get people rallied around the issues. And it’s going to take words that don’t start with “g,” “s,” or “e.” (Green, sustainable, environmental.)

There’s hope, because when it comes to the environmental movement, we are talking about issues that affect everyone, which means that there’s plenty of room to improve and expand. We just have to rally around the right things, and become as sophisticated in our approach as Coca-Cola is at selling sugar water. As Roger-Mark De Souza, Vice President of Research Population Action International, said on a panel about pressing questions that won’t be on the Rio agenda in 2012, we have to make sure that we don’t have “missed opportunities.”

If we don’t want missed opportunities, we must start with communication. Facts and figures don’t work; relationships are everything. “We need to know our audience,” emphasized Brooke Buchanan, Director of Communications for Sustainability, Walmart. On the same panel, Jeff Nesbit, Executive Director of Climate Nexus, added “We have to learn other ways to communicate about these things so people actually care.” That means thinking creatively about how we frame environmental issues and how we communicate them to the larger public.

But it also means finding new ways to connect with people; focusing on the elements that transcend ideologies and political parties. One of those is food. In her presentation, Sethi presented a Wendell Berry quote:

Eaters, that is, must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.

As Sethi put it, “we cherish our connections to food… we do not cherish our connections to turning off our lightbulbs.”

Change, as it turns out, is about inspiring and moving people to do, not only better, but to connect, and the more we separate ourselves from others – be it through messages or actions or lexicons – the more we risk failure.

But there is hope. And in a post-Austin recharge, we’re donning our new cowboy boots and feeling inspired to do good, and we hope you do, too. Just how do we go about this? And what were points of consensus and criticism at the first ever SXSW Eco? Look for that and more in parts 2 and 3 this week from EIC Sara Ost and News Editor Andrea Newell.

We’ll have more on SXSW Eco throughout the week, so check back!

Images: Anna Brones

Main image: Chris Tackett, social media editor of Treehugger, Alex Steffen, environmental thought leader and keynote speaker, Sara Ost, EIC of EcoSalon, Andrea Newell, News Editor of EcoSalon, and others gather at the joint Treehugger/EcoSalon/Triple Pundit happy hour in Austin, Texas.