Wild Weekend and World's Healthiest Foods

Wow, what a busy weekend we had! Yesterday our friends Gordie and Amanda came for dinner (Amanda posts wonderful recipes at http://milkandblackberries.blogspot.com!). Since our apartment looked like a federal disaster area, we spent a lot of time fixing things up beforehand. Saturday afternoon was occupied by a special project that you'll see here on the blog at some point in the next week or two. And late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, our cat Ashley discovered an uninvited guest in our apartment and made such a ruckus that she woke us up. She had trapped something under my dresser. When I got up to see what all the fuss was about, I peered underneath and saw what I thought was a mouse. Only in the light of day, when the little creature escaped from the dresser and ran a few laps around the apartment while we made several attempts to catch it, did we realize that this was not any ordinary mouse. In fact, it's a dormouse (and it's still here, hiding behind the trash can). Since dormice are not native to this area, this little fella must be someone's pet. I've been emailing local small mammal breeders to see if anyone wants to rescue him. In the meantime, he stays hidden and Ashley occasionally makes a half-hearted attempt to catch him, then proceeds to go back to sleep for another four hours. Looks like our pampered puss has lost her hunting skills.

Tomorrow I'll write more about last night's dinner, but today, I want to share with you one of my favorite food-related websites. World's Healthiest Foods is a great resource for information about the foods we all should be eating. The site is packed with nutritional information and tasty recipes for over 120 nutrient-dense whole foods, including not only fruits, vegetables, meats, and grains but also such categories as sweeteners and spices/herbs. I often search the site when confronted with a new ingredient so I can learn more about it and get ideas for using it. If you're looking for healthier ways to prepare your favorite foods or new ways to include healthier foods (such as, for instance, flax seeds) in your diet, this site is a great place to start. Are there foods that you know you should eat more often, but are difficult to work in to your diet? Search for them on the World's Healthiest Foods site and let us know what helpful ideas you find!

Sorta-Stuffed Squash

Here's the stuffed squash post I mentioned last Friday. I call it Sorta-Stuffed Squash because every stuffed squash recipe I've ever seen involves stuffing the squash and then baking it. Sometimes the squash is partially baked first, but it always ends up in the oven after being stuffed with some sort of mixture, usually rice-based. This recipe cheats by cooking the filling separately from the squash and just throwing them together at the end.

You might think cooking the squash and the filling separately is more complicated, but both steps are actually very easy and totally hands-off once you've got them on the heat. After halving the squash and scooping out the seeds, put a pat of butter in the hollow of each half and roast them, cut side up, for about 35 minutes at 400 degrees. The exact time will vary from squash to squash, but they should be tender when you stick a fork in them.



Once the squash is in the oven, make Rebecca Blood's brown rice and lentil recipe, which I've mentioned before. It couldn't be simpler - just lentils, rice, and water - then add salt and/or a little red wine vinegar when it's done. The lentils take about 25-30 minutes to cook, so your squash and your lentils will be done around the same time. Meanwhile, rinse and spin your lettuce, make your dressing, and you've still got twenty minutes to check email, watch the news, or - my favorite - enjoy a glass of wine.

When both the squash and the lentils are ready, scoop the lentils into the squash hollow. Tada! You're done. The rice and lentils absorb some of the melted butter from the squash, and the sweetness of the roasted squash nicely complements the salted, earthy taste of the lentils. This meal is a hat trick: easy, healthy, and cheap.

I had planned to write about a simple stuffed squash recipe today, but last night, the sniffles that I thought were just from allergies developed into a full-fledged headbanger of a cold. I'm holed up on the recliner with my fleece blanket and my hubby's gone to get me cold-fighting provisions. So I wanted to ask, what are your favorite home remedies? Dan's getting me chicken soup, of course, which is probably helpful because it's warm and mild and slides easily down an irritated throat. I've also requested ginger tea, which we usually have on hand but just used up, and fresh lemons.

In high school, whenever I got sick, which was a lot, I'd get the fresh lemon slices from the dining hall salad bar and mash them with hot water and honey. Both honey and lemon are packed with immune-boosting antioxidants, and some studies suggest that honey may also function as a cough suppressant. This page recommends adding onion broth to your hot lemon and honey drink; maybe it works, but I won't find out, because just the thought of that makes me gag! I guess I'll stick to ginger tea with honey and lemon -- ginger has powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. And of course, my number-one sickness fighter: sleep. I'm going to settle in for a long nap right after I get my chicken noodle soup.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Why We Chose a CSA

It's good for our budget. We elected both summer and winter CSAs; the summer season goes from June through October, while winter spreads from November to May. When we signed up last spring, then, we essentially pre-purchased a year's worth of vegetables. The total for both seasons came to about $500 -- this breaks down to less than $10 a week. A look at any of our weekly portions shows that we are getting a good deal here; the equivalent amount of fresh produce from our local Price Chopper would unquestionably cost quite a bit more, even if we bought the less-expensive non-organic vegetables.

It's good for our health. We selected an organic farm for our CSA; many, though not all, farms that offer CSAs follow organic practices. Among other things, organic means they don't use any chemical pesticides, so we don't have to worry about ingesting them. Also, because they don't travel as far, we receive the veggies much sooner after they are harvested. Typical grocery-store produce travels an average of two to three weeks before it is even sold. Since the nutritional value starts to decline immediately upon harvest, the sooner the produce is eaten, the better it is for your body.

Our CSA also offers a third health benefit: because we receive such a bounty each week, our vegetable consumption has gone up. While I would always buy vegetables when I went to the grocery store before, I rarely bought enough. It's too easy to get distracted by things like cereal or boxed mac and cheese. Now, every Friday, there's a boxful of veggies in our kitchen, and we are forced to consume them - or deal with the guilt of letting good veggies go to waste. Most of the time, we successfully consume (or preserve) the whole load.

It's good for our taste buds. Because these vegetables have a shorter and quicker trip from farm to table, they are fresher and more flavorful when we consume them. Also, much of the produce available in grocery stores is of varieties that are bred for durability and uniformity rather than taste. Because the veggies don't have to travel so far, our farmer can grow heirloom varieties that offer richer and more complex flavors.

It's good for our community. CSAs help farmers because they get some guaranteed income early in the year during a period when most aren't able to sell much produce. By signing up during the off-season, we provide farmers with a much-needed cash-flow injection at the hardest time of the year. They can then use the money from CSA subscriptions to buy seeds for the new crops. It also helps them judge how much to plant, because they know how much they need to produce to satisfy the CSA subscriptions.

Keeping small, family-run farms going is important to me because I appreciate the rural qualities of the area I live in. I like driving by farmland, seeing productive fields, and knowing that there are lots of places very nearby where I can go to pick berries or apples. I also like that most of my food is coming from fellow community members rather than from an enormous, impersonal, factory-style organization thousands of miles away. CSAs help farmers, but as I made clear above, CSA subscribers also benefit enormously from the relationship. This is not charity; it's good old-fashioned commerce, working in such a way that it benefits all parties involved - just as it should.

It's good for the environment. Organic farms don't use synthetic pesticides, which run off in to our rivers and seep in to our groundwater. Most small farms also rely on old-fashioned practices to keep soil productive. Rather than planting the same crop over and over on the same space, which can leech the soil of its nutrients, small farmers, who have to make the most of their limited land to survive, often practice crop rotation that allows the soil to stay productive. This means they are getting the best use out of the land.

Also, because CSAs are local in nature, they help to conserve our energy resources. Much of the produce in grocery stores has been transported thousands of miles, either by boat or truck. That requires vast amounts of oil and gasoline. Buying locally ensures that these limited resources aren't wasted. When we went to North Carolina this summer, I was flabbergasted to see only California peaches for sale. Why would you ship something from three thousand miles away when the same product was growing all around? A few days later, we made it to a nearby farmers' market, where to my delight, we found fresh North Carolina peaches. They were twice the size of the grocery-store peaches, packed with twenty times the flavor, and hadn't wasted valuable resources in getting to us.

So there you have it: my many reasons for CSA participation. There are a few downsides, which I will address in another post, but they are far, far outweighed by the benefits.