Kids have a "bloody" good time with beets

Did we really have to go all the way to South Africa to make beet salad?

My food appreciation classes continue on their virtual world food tour and this extremely simple beet salad turned up in the African cookbook we are using as a reference. There’s nothing especially African about it, but it is seasonal and when I thought about it, I realized in the four years I’ve been teaching these classes we have never used beets. It was high time we did.

I wasn’t sure how much the kids would like beet salad. This is one of those vegetables people lover or hate. But I knew the kids would love handling the beets because of the red juice that looks very much like blood. Sure enough, the kids squealed with delight as soon as they saw the “blood” on their hands. Pretty soon, some of them had it all over themselves–their hands, their arms, their faces. Cutting the beets turned out to be some of the best fun we’ve had in ages.

I do have a little bone to pick with the way beets are sold these days, however. At most of the grocery stores I visit, they charge $3.99 for a bunch of three little beets with the greens attached. Normally, I love beet greens. But only when they are fresh out of the garden, not when they are days old. So I am not impressed by three little beets with tired greens attached–especially at $3.99. Where were all the big, bulk beets we used to see in the store?

It wasn’t until I walked to my fourth store–a local organics shop–that I finally found what I was looking for: big, heavy, bulk beets with no greens. Never was I so glad to see a bin full of gnarly root vegetables.

To make this salad, cook 1 pound beets in a big pot of water. Beets take a rather long time to cook. Once the water has come to a boil, lower the heat so the water is just bubbling. Test the beets occasionally for doneness. I use a metal turkey trussing skewer. When the beets are done, the skewer will pass easily into the middle. Remove the beets from the water an allow to cool, preferably overnight.

My favorite part of using beets is peeling them after they’ve cooked. I just like the way the skins slip off. Then slice the beets into pieces and cut these into medium dice, or chop roughly, as you like, and place them in a mixing bowl. Add 1/2 red onion, cut into small dice, and stir in 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon sugar, freshly ground pepper to taste.

The original recipe did not call for olive oil, but I thought the salad looked drab. In my world, as I explained to the kids, olive oil makes everything smile. And you can see immediately how the salad livens up–or “smiles”–when you stir in a little olive oil.

And that’s all there is to making our beet salad. We served it in cups with spoons. I also like this salad with pieces of fresh tomato added and an herb such as mint, or perhaps anise hyssop.

For more great stories about how we are taking back our food system, read Fight Back Friday.

We are always making compost

Farmers and gardeners alike must deal with the same fact of nature: crops draw nitrogen and other essential nutrients out of the soil. Those nutritients must be replaced in order to continue growing crops into the future.

In bygone days, before the advent of factory-made fertilizers, farmers addressed the question of maintaining soil fertility by spreading manure. Or, you looked for a new parcel of land when your soil was used up.

But how about us urban farmers? What are we supposed to do if we want to grow food organically? Me, I make compost like crazy from everything I can get my hands on: leaves in the fall, straw from the farm supply, grass clippings foraged from neighors, kitchen scraps, horse manure from a local riding stable. Still, it never seems to be enough. Or is it? How much compost do I need to apply each season–or with each crop–to ensure that I am maintaining a fertile soil into the future?

What’s your answer? That’s today’s readers poll. What do you add to your soil to keep it fertile, and how much? You can leave your answer as a comment, or send me an e-mail.

Can you count the carbs in this meal?

Originally posted at the Better D.C. School Food blog.

Cheap carbohydrates are the favorite foods of school districts across the country. What’s wrong with carbs? Unlike protein and fat, carbohydrates turn into sugar (glucose) when you eat them, which signals the body to produce insulin. A powerful hormone, insulin is responsible for storing fat in the body and has been implicated in an all-too-familiar complex of modern diseases: obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis.

Teachers complain that kids are out of control after school meals. The high doses of sugar and other carbs could be an explanation. Kids gen an initial jolt of energy from this type of meal, but typically the body overcompensates with insulin: After eating so many carbs, you will soon be feeling lethargic and hungry again.

Consider this meal served last week at my daughter’s school. The entree is a highly-processed version of chicken nuggets, but you can’t see the chicken under all the breading (carbs). Next to the chicken nuggets is a big blob of sugary barbecue sauce for dipping (pure carbs). The baked beans are all starch (carbs) swimming in a sugary sauce (more carbs). The macaroni and cheese is mostly refined pasta (carbs).

So far, this meal is perfectly acceptable under the rules that govern the federally subsidized meal program. You’ve got protein in the chicken and a little bit of fat in the cheese, plenty of grain (no kidding) and legumes in the baked beans. Instead of a vegetable, we have fruit: a cup of diced peaches. Healthy, right? Well, maybe, if you don’t count all the sugar in those peaches (another jolt of carbs).

And as a beverage with this meal the kids were served orange juice rather than milk. I checked the ingredients on the carton. A 4-ounce serving contained 12 grams of sugar, about three teaspoons, or a little less, ounce-for-ounce, than Coca-Cola.

Truly, this meal is enough to send anyone’s blood sugar through the roof.

A trench for leeks. Notice the mounds of dirt on either side

Eating home-grown vegetables is fine. But my favorite part of gardening isn’t at the end of the growing process, it’s at the beginning.

After the snow has melted and the soil can be worked, I get busy in our sunniest garden bed, heaving the soil a little with my forked spade. Then I get down on my knees and start picking out the weeds and the debris from last year. I break up the clods with my hands, run the soil through my fingers.

I cover the surface with a thin layer of the compost I’ve stored over the winter, work it into the soil with my stirrup hoe. Then I’m down on my knees again, leveling the surface with my hands and breaking up any new clods I find. No farmer can give this kind of attention to his soil. But I like to feel it, see the earthworms squirming to the surface, see how fine and dark my soil has become after years of adding our home-made compost. Just think: I’ve run my entire garden through these fingers. More than once.

Do I add enough compost? That’s the question I ask with each new crop. How much do I need to do to maintain the fertility of my soil? The soil can’t tell me. I can only judge from how my plantings perform. And up to now, the plants seem to be quite happy. But I think about it a lot.

This year I am determined to grow leeks. It makes sense to grow things that cost a lot to purchase from others. After working the soil, I dug a trench the length of the bed. Leeks need to be covered with a certain amount of soil to produce the tender white part for which they are so famous. Digging a trench makes the covering part easier. But when the trench was dug–about six inches deep–I had two impossible mounds of dirt on either side. The mounds took up so much room, I decided they had to go. I nearly filled a big trash can with the soil, but I’ll save it until the leeks need to be covered.

Mounds removed. More room for planting other things

This is also a good time of year to plant fava beans. I looked back through my garden journal and realized that I’ve been starting my garden almost every year on the same date: March 8. Pure coincidence. It just seems to work out that way. So I planted my fava beans, as well as a long row of snap peas, and lettuce, and radishes, and Hakurei turnips, escarole, collards.

Radishes germinate quickly. Before the end of the week, we should have little sprouts poking through the soil. That will be a fine thing to see.

Soon to be pork confit

Pork belly–uncured bacon–was all the rage for a while. Has it become a cliche already? I hope not, because my wife and I really like the fatty unctuousness of pork belly and we’ve had it served perfectly cooked at a couple of restaurants here in the District of Columbia.

Recently I tracked down some pork belly from EcoFriendly foods at the Dupont Circle farmers market. We exchanged e-mails with EcoFriendly to make sure they would have some available and they urged us to get there early, because their pork belly from Ossabaw pigs sells out fast. A package weighing 1.26 pounds set me back $12.

The next step was finding a recipe to go with this precious belly and I turned to a lovely book in our cookbook library called Pork & Sons. This is a French homage to the pig, full of arresting photographs of pigs in various stages of being killed or cooked along with lovingly told stories about French butchers and chefs who so attentively care for their pork traditions.

Heck, the book jacket is padded. And it’s pink.

I found the recipe I was looking for on page 246: Spiced pork belly confit. Confit usually refers to a preserved food and we weren’t planning on preserving this pork belly. We intended to eat it right away. Be that as it may, the pork over the course of two hours in the oven is infused with flavors of curry and saffron. My wife thought I might have seared the pork belly a little too aggressvely before putting it in the oven. In fact, she wasn’t happy at all with the results. She thought the meat should have been covered and braised. I think the 350 oven temperature recommended may be a little too high.

The original recipe calls for 3 pounds of pork, so we had to adjust.

Preheat oven to 350. In a heavy skillet, sear 3 pounds of pork belly, cut into six 1/2-pound pieces, until golden on all sides. Deglaze the skillet with white wine (you will need 4 cups altogether), scraping up any brown bits, then transfer the meat and the liquid to an oven-proof casserole. Meanwhile, bring four cups water to a boil in a saucepan, then stir in 1 tablespoon demi-glace; 1 teaspoon paprika; 1 teaspoon curry powder; 1 teaspoon saffron threads; 1 teaspoon ground ginger; 1 teaspoon ground cumin; 2 tablespoons brown sugar; 3 garlic cloves, chopped.

Add the spice liquid and the wine to the casserole and place it in the oven to cook for 2 hours, turning and basting the pork frequently. If the liquid runs low, add more water. The pork will take on a deeply flavorful glaze. Be sure to remove it before it gets too crispy. As I said, I might lower the oven temperature a little and allow the pork to cook more slowly. Still it was quite delicious served next to a green salad spiked with fresh mizuna from the garden.

This was the scene yesterday entering the Smithsonian Sculpture Garden ice rink on the mall here in the District of Columbia. Notice the grass.

And here’s the same view January 24, following our historic snowstorm. What a difference a few weeks makes.

Daughter and friends got up early for skating and needed a hearty breakfast. So we headed down the hill to Ben’s Chili Bowl for pancakes. Here they are frolicking on the Panda sculpture outside Ben’s.

It was an outrageously fine day to be on the ice.

Food politics, through 11-year-old eyes

As a preamble to the upcoming D.C. Environmental Film festival, the Warner Theater on Tuesday, March 9, will be screening What’s on Your Plate?, a documentary that follows two 11-year-olds in New York City over the course of a year as they talk to farmers, storekeepers, food activists and friends to discover where their food comes from.

Sadie and Safiya examine the struggles of modern farmers, sustainable agriculture practices and how many miles food travels before it ends up on their plates. A discussion with the two stars of the film, as well as a representative of Food and Water Watch, follows the screening. Check here for ticket information.

Then on March 22, the short documentary Lunch will make its D.C. debut. This film focuses on the national school lunch program as served in the Baltimore City schools. It will be shown jointly with the documentary Potato Heads, about the cultivation of potatoes in the place of the tuber’s origin–the Andes mountains–as well as the U.S. , to be followed by a discussion with the maker of both films, Larry Engel.

How much are kids worth?

President Barack Obama has proposed splitting $1 billion annually between school meals and other federally-funded food programs, an amount school food advocates calculate as something less than 20 cents per meal, or not even enough to add an apple to kids’ cafeteria trays.

Last week in hearings on re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act, the head of the School Nutrition Association, representing thousands of food service directors nationwide, asked Congress for a 35 cent hike in the federal subsidy, which currently stands at $2.68 for a fully-subsidized meal.

Now comes Ann Cooper, the “renegade lunch lady” and director of school nutrition services in Boulder, Colorado, saying what schools really need is nothing less than an extra $1 per day for all 31 million children participating in the school meal program. In an op-ed published yesterday in The Washington Post, Cooper says that $1 raise would translate into about $5.4 billion per year, but is necessary to avert a children’s health crisis already in progress.

“As a nation we spend more than $260 billion annually on just two health issues: diabetes and obesity,” Cooper writes. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has indicated that of the children born in 2000, one out of every three Caucasians and two out of every three African Americans and Hispanics will develop diabetes. Research shows that this may be the first generation in our nation’s history to die at a younger age than their parents. Diabetes and obesity are the health-care crises of our era and, in most cases, can be prevented with healthy diet and exercise.”

Cooper says the additional funds are needed to impliment new nutritional guidelines proposed by the Institute of Medicine that call for more fruits and vegetables, and more whole grains and less starchy foods, in school menus. Meanwhile, at her blog, Cooper has started a letter writing campaignto lobby Congress for the extra $1 per day. You can go there for a samply letter. She suggests you include something about your personal experiences with school meals. Boy, I’d love to see those letters.

A serious approach to cucumbers

The kids in my food appreciation classes continue to explore the cuisine of South Africa, which has been heavily influenced by Indian immigrants. This week we made a favorite condiment, cucumber raita, that has a wonderful cooling effect served with spicy curries. It couldn’t be simpler, and even the kids noticed how healthy it is, consisting mostly of fresh cucumber and yogurt.

This dish also gives the kids an opportunity to tackle the problem of turning a raw cucumber into food. What we want to eliminate is the skin and the seeds. Our approach is as follows: first, peel two large cucumbers and trim the ends. Then cut the cucumber in half cross-wise. Next, stand each half on the cutting board and slice it in half lengthwise to expose the seeds. The seeds are easily scooped out with a teaspoon.

We then sliced the cucumbers pieces into thin crescent shapes and the kids cut these into small dice. Place all of the cucumber pieces (you should have about 3 cups) in a bowl and stir in 2 cups plain yogurt. In a small skillet, toast 1 teaspoon cumin seeds over moderate heat, then grind the seeds to a powder with a mortar and pestle. (Or use your spice mill.) Add the cumin to the cucumber mix, plus 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon red chili powder. Finally, stir in a small fistful of mint leaves, finely chopped.

Set the raita aside for an hour or two so the flavors can meld. Or refrigerate overnight. Serve it next to your favorite curry.  Or enjoy it as a healthy snack.

For more great stories about how we are taking back our food system, read Fight Back Friday.

The media are taking a welcome second look at fat

Even the Washington Post is climbing onto the recent media trend toward a reconsideration of fat. A column in today’s paper says the Atkins diet is making a resurgence, and cites a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that found no significant link between saturated fat and heart disease. A second article in the same issue found that the real culprit behind modern diseases is too much carbohydrate consumption. (Sound familiar? It’s what we’ve been saying all along.)

Renewed interest in fat has prompted a newly revised edition of the famous Atkins diet book. Even the American Dietic Assocation has acknowledged that urging people to restrict their fat intake merely encourages them to eat more carbs.

At The Slow Cook, we are confirmed carnivores and especially love the grassfed meats we get delivered from our local dairy. We also eat lots of pastured eggs, cheese and yogurt we make at home from grassfed, creamtop milk and cream. But if you aren’t ready to dive into animal fats, make sure you include in your diet lots of healthful, mono-unsaturated fats from olive oil, avocados, nuts and even canola oil. Avoid super-processed, industrial oils from corn, soybeans and cotton. And look for sources of heart-healthy Omega-3 oils, such as oily fish and flax seed.

Seeing the media re-connect with the value of fat, and finally recognize the link between too many carbs and serious health problems, is a great development. We hope it spreads.