ColumnForget the trendy foods, we need all the boring real foods back in our lives.

Pro tip: if you want to eat well you do not need to buy all of the trendy health foods at the store. Sparkly probiotic drinks, omega 3-antioxidant infused vegan ice creams, supercharged gluten-free miracle cookies? You need none of it. You need real food. The boring stuff. The stuff that doesn’t have a marketing campaign behind it, or its own blog or Twitter feed.

We’ve come to a day and age where food trends win out over real foods, even in the health food department, and in turn we put some foods on a pedestal and forget a whole lot of other ones. That’s a shame, because there’s a lot of good food out there. A lot of good real food that’s easy to prepare and good for the budget.

I keep thinking of my friend Amy and her tried and true cookbook “Ecological Cooking” that has been on her shelf for years. With recipes like Carrot Rice Loaf, you could say that the book is the definition of simple, budget-friendly foods that are sort of boring and unfashionable.

But that’s exactly what we need.

We do not need the new cupcake. We need a resurrection of the foods that are good for us, and easy to cook. And not all of them are sexy, or cool or trendy. That’s ok. Eat them anyway.

1. Beans

Black beans, pinto beans, navy beans; who cares as long as you are eating legumes. Ok, so black beans are sort of popular because of tacos, but for the most part beans are definitely in the boring real food category. But white beans make for an easy dip, and you can in fact make brownies out of black beans.

2. Buckwheat

No, it’s not a grain, buckwheat is actually a seed, which means that it’s gluten-free. You can use it to make hot cereals and you can grind buckwheat down into a flour, that’s got an earthy, nutty flavor to it, perfect for dense breads.

3. Cabbage

Kale is hot, cabbage is not. Which is weird considering they are in the same damn family. Ferment it, grate it, cook it, steam it, use it to wrap things. Become the cabbage lover you always wanted to be.

4. Flaxseeds

Embrace the flaxseeds. Love the flaxseeds. Grind them up and add a little warm water and you get a vegan egg replacement. Grind up even more and you can use flaxseed meal as a replacement for flour. Who knew seeds could be so versatile?

5. Millet

Most people equate millet with birdseed, but it’s actually a very nutritious grain that’s drought tolerant and can compete with the best of the trendy grains, like quinoa. You can even pop it like popcorn. Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks even uses raw millet thrown into a muffin recipe to add a little extra crunch. I can get behind that.

6. Oats

Oatmeal is not the sexiest of breakfasts. Unless of course you make a savory one with pesto and put a poached egg on top. But while oats are on the bottom of the list of exciting grains, they deserve some respect. You can grind oats into flour, and even make milk out of them. And who doesn’t love a good berry oat crumble or a classic oatmeal cookie?

7. Sprouts

I grew up with sandwiches that had sprouts hanging out the edges. I was of course slightly embarrassed, but ate them anyway. And thank god my mother fed me sprouts, they’re healthy and easy to make at home. Lentils, chickpeas, alfalfa, mung beans – they can all be turned into sprouts, and to do so it’s as easy as growing them in a jar. How much simpler does it get?

8. Turnips

Of all the root vegetables, I think turnips don’t get a whole lot of love. Maybe simply because we don’t know what to do with them. But it has been used for human consumption since prehistoric times, so it has to have something going for it. You can roast them, and you can even sauté up the greens, which makes for whole vegetable cooking. Or you can turn it into a soup or a creative mash.

9. Yogurt

No, not the cute packaged version that’s full of “fruit.” (Hint: it’s not fruit, it’s sugar.) I mean good old plain yogurt. It’s a fermented food, so it’s full of probiotics. You can cook with it. You can make sauces out of it. You can eat it with homemade granola.

10. Water

Yes, water. Not coconut water. Not an overly priced raw juice. Just water. From the tap. Into your reusable bottle. It’s free and nutritious!

Now, with our boring pantries stocked, let’s start the real food revolution.

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This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Nick Saltmarsh

The post 10 Boring Real Foods That Should Be Trendy: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

 Interested in growing sprouts in your own kitchen? It’s easy.

“Your mom put sprouts on your sandwich didn’t she?”

I was commiserating with a friend over our hippy-ish upbringings. It’s true. There’s no way any elementary school goer would ever have traded their sandwich for mine, but although I may have been traumatized by the minor social implications at the time, I’m sure glad my mother wasn’t stuffing my lunch bags full of bologna and potato chips. Thanks, mom.

Yes, there were sprouts in my sandwiches, and I grew to love them.

Although alfalfa sprouts are an easier addition to sandwiches, my preferred germinated seeds are lentil sprouts. Crunchy and light, they’re the perfect addition to summer salads and cultivating them doesn’t take more than a good jar and some water. Especially if you’re a city dweller and are feeling pangs of withdrawal from not having a garden, growing sprouts is an easy way to get some good cultivation action in your kitchen.

You can grow sprouts from a variety of beans and seeds, but the easiest are lentil and alfalfa. You can even make them from chickpeas. Keep in mind that just like with many other raw foods, there have been cases of food-borne illnesses resulting from eating contaminated sprouts. Be sure to take the regular precautions: use clean seeds and a clean container and wash your hands every time before you handle the sprouts.

How to grow your own lentil sprouts:

1. Rinse the lentils.

2. Take one cup of lentils, place in a large bowl and let them soak overnight (8-12 hours).

3. Strain the excess water, rinse off the lentils and transfer to a glass jar (something along the lines of a mason jar). You want to fill the jar about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way full. The lentils will expand as they sprout and this gives them enough room.

4. Cover the jar with cheesecloth and cinch it down with a rubber band.

5. For the next few days you will want to rinse the lentils once a day and then drain. You can prop the jar upside down in your dish drying rack to facilitate this process. The important thing is to make sure that the water gets out so that you don’t have any at the bottom of the jar – a little pool of water will lead to a lot of slime, and neither you or your lentils want that.

6. Do the rinse/drain process once a day for about 2 to 5 days, or until the sprout tails grow to the length you want them. You’ll see that even after 24 hours the lentils will split open.

7. Rinse again, drain – make sure to get all residual water out – and place them in an airtight container lined with a paper towel. Seal and refrigerate. You can store them this way for up to about a week.

Eat on their own, throw in a salad, or garnish a soup.

Image: Veganbaking.net

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ColumnNews worth eating.

Once a month, The Green Plate harvests the most interesting, biggest, weirdest, and puzzling recent news stories on food politics, the food industry, eating trends, and edible discoveries from around the web, and shares them with you.

Read on and learn about McDonald’s latest foray into “sustainable seafood,” revel in Ruth Bourdain’s continued good-natured dogging of Ruth Reichl, puzzle over how organic sprouts could be the source of E-coli when it’s animal excrement that causes that causes the deadly disease, understand how fracking may affect our food supply, and find out what the rest of the world spends on food.

MSC: (McDonalds Standard Crap?)

Last week, McDonald’s used World Oceans Day to announce that, starting in October, it would be sourcing the flaky white flesh used in the Filet-o-Fish sandwiches served in the company’s European restaurants from New Zealand’s Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSC) certified Hoki fishery. The problem is that the sustainability of that fishery has been in question for awhile. Catches have diminished to the point that quotas have been cut over the past few years. In addition, many scientists have always had an issue with this certification because New Zealand Hoki is caught by bottom trawling, which damages the ocean floor and results in a heck of a lot of bycatch.

I asked Jackie Church, seafood sustainability guru and founder of Teach a Man to Fish, a series of events aimed at teaching chefs and cooks about sustainable seafood, what she thinks of the MSC label in general and McDonald’s use of it.

“People sometimes vilify the commercialization of the label. I think that’s too simplistic. However, it’s also true that MSC has not done itself any favors by certifying some fisheries that are widely believed in the conservation and scientific communities to be rife with problems. Patagonian toothfish: a pocket of sustainability in waters with some of the most widely acknowledged pirating and little or no monitoring of traceability? This just causes confusion for the consumer who just learned Chilean Sea Bass is to be avoided. New Zealand Hoki is another example due to dips in biomass, and by-catch issues that have remained largely unaddressed.

Simplicity loves a villain, though, and it does no good to say MSC is bad or McDonald’s is bad. What we need is reliable, science-based market labels that help the consumer make better choices AND put pressure on those certifying bodies to monitor that which they’ve certified AND pressure on fisheries managers to share data transparently AND pressure on retailers and restaurateurs to prove traceability AND sustainability. These decisions and labels must be backed by good science. We cannot wish away McDonald’s and if we acknowledge they will continue to exist, better that they are making some steps in the right direction.”

To Gilt or Guilt? That is the question:

The much ballyhooed Gilt Taste launched with stellar content and tasty trappings under the editorial eye of Ruth Reichl. Never one to ignore an opportunity to dog Reichl, the mysterious Ruth Bourdain launched the deliciously spoofy Guilt Taste less than a half a day later. For those not in the know, Ruth Bourdain became an insta-celebrity for creating a brilliant mash up personality of Anthony Bourdain and Ruth Reichl on Twitter.

But wait, I thought E-coli was caused by cow poo?:

Giving both organic farms and vegetarians a bad case of media poisoning, officials in Europe finally succeeded in tracing the deadly European E-coli outbreak to sprouts from an organic farm in Germany. You might be wondering why it’s difficult to find information in the news about how a microbe that lives in the digestive systems of cows can end up on sprouts. This article provides a good explanation. Basically, E. coli outbreaks can start when feces or feces-contaminated water gets on the crops through fertilization or irrigation. The managing director of the now shutdown German farm said that the sprouts on the farm are grown only from seeds and water, and they aren’t fertilized at all, and that there aren’t any animal fertilizers used in other areas on the farm. But, as the article states, E. coli can stick to the seeds and lie dormant for months. To me, this signals that, even though this farm was shut down, those seeds could be anywhere breeding E-coli. And this farm gets an undeservedly bad rap.

What the frack is happening to our food?

Proving that its editorial policy is not just about fancy vittles, the aforementioned Gilt Taste reported on why fracking, which is a process used to drill for natural gas, could be a danger to our food supply. Fracking leaves behind heavily contaminated waste water. Putting aside for a moment the issue of the water itself, when animals consume it, it enters our food chain. This article in High Country News tells how a few Western states are enacting legislation to require companies to disclose the chemicals used in fracking. I suppose that’s a start.

How much of your income do you spend on food?

Crazy weather across the world, high oil prices, and greater demand mean food prices are on the rise again. Dramatically. Consider this: while we may be able to soften the blow on our wallets by reducing waste and shopping smarter, the world’s poor don’t have much leeway. According to Oxfam, in some areas of the world, poor people spend up to 80% of their incomes on food, while we spend less than 10%. This map, developed by UC Berkeley Journalism Grad Students, shows worldwide food spending as a percentage of income. Chilling statistics.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: TurntableOOOOO

The post The Green Plate: News From the Food World appeared first on EcoSalon.

Sarah filled us in on some of brussels’ sprouts great qualities. Now here’s a recipe to get you started making tasty dishes with this powerhouse winter vegetable. Za’atar is a Middle Eastern spice blend consisting of thyme, sumac, and toasted sesame seeds. Sometimes it includes other herbs, like marjoram or oregano, but that’s the basic mixture. It’s eaten on dips like hummus or mixed with olive oil to dip bread in. It’s great mixed into yogurt or with feta cheese. You can make your own using a recipe such as this one, buy it online from a good spice merchant, or get it in fine grocery stores in the spice section.

Caramelized Brussels Sprouts with Lemon & Za’atar-Spiced Almonds

Serves 4

You will need:

For the Almonds:
1 teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon water
1 tablespoon brown sugar (not packed)
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon Za’atar spice
1/2 cup whole raw almonds

2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 of a medium onion, sliced thinly
1 1/2 pounds Brussels sprouts (sliced thinly)
Juice of one lemon
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

To make:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a large skillet over medium heat, warm the butter, water, and brown sugar. Stir to melt the brown sugar. Add the salt, spices, and almonds and stir until the almonds are fragrant and the spices begin to cling to them. Transfer to a baking sheet, place in the preheated oven, and bake for 10 minutes. When the almonds are cool enough to handle, chop them coarsely.

In the same skillet you cooked the almonds in (no need to wash), heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the onion, and cook until beginning to brown and caramelize (about 10 minutes). Add the Brussels sprouts in two additions, along with a little salt, letting the first batch cook down a bit before adding the next. Cook, stirring often, until the sprouts are wilted and evenly browned and caramelized (about 10 minutes). Off heat, stir in the lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste.

Sprinkle each serving with chopped Za’atar coated almonds.

Recipe Copyright 2009 Vanessa Barrington

Image: Rogerimp

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