fresh food – in thriver words

Basics Are Best

While trying to decide what to plant in my winter garden, I keep remembering basics are best! There’s no reason to try to reinvent the wheel during a season that’s tough on plants.

Would I love some root vegetables? Absolutely, but I know that my rocky soil means waiting a very long time for dwarfed carrots. Would I love some sugar snap peas? Of course, but a single elongated frozen stretch will render the stalks too fragile to produce. As a result, I’m going with multiple greens.

And why not? Mache, bok choy, romaine, and Swiss chard will grow well and I love all of them. They may be simple greens, but they rate highly as healthy foods. Basics as the best food isn’t an idea that’s only true for the garden. It’s a great guide for a healthy diet in general.

No need for fancy fads or packaged health products when your diet is a variety of protein, vegetables, fruits, and some grains. And unless there’s a specific medical need, good nutrition will negate the need for supplements.

Why is it so hard to stick to the basics?

Availability. There are people in my neighborhood who can walk to the dollar store as quickly as they can walk to a grocery. Both are filled with packaged products that will stay fresh for a long time.

Produce is available from the grocery, a community garden in the spring, and a farmers market spring through early fall. But the walk to fresh produce is longer and the food won’t last long.

Fresh meat and poultry are only available from one store in walking distance. Without a way to comparatively shop, fresh meat may be deemed too expensive. Given the obstacles for procuring fresh food, it’s no surprise the neighborhood is considered a food desert.

For those of us who have reliable transportation, plenty of funds, and time to shop, it can be easy to overlook the ever-present gaps in availability.

Time. When you keep preparation simple, cooking doesn’t have to take much time. But it’s hard to do that prep when you’re in your car chauffeuring kids to activities or parents to doctor’s appointments.

Sugar, salt, fat. Processed food is chock full of sugar, salt, and fat. All of those may make you want more of all of those.

Chemicals. If you’ve ever switched from processed to fresh food, you may remember a gradual change that eventually allowed you to be able to taste the full flavor of vegetables. Ultra processed food has many additives that make you crave more of the same. Until your system resets, it’s as if natural flavors have been muted.

Procrastination. Preparing and cooking fresh food requires a bit of preplanning unless you’re just peeling a banana or crunching an apple. Put off doing the dishes and you may not be prepared to cook. Hesitate and you may end up too hungry.

Advertising. Let’s face it, advertising can be effective. I saw a new restaurant I want to try in an ad last week. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Misinformation. Every fad will bring with it some sort of endorsement or study (perhaps not all that scientific) that shows it has the potential to deliver some miracle. It probably won’t. If you can approach the same problem by getting back to basics, try that first.

Peer pressure. What we see people do regularly seems normal so we often do the same without giving it a second thought.

Habit. I grew up eating mostly fresh food. My sister grew up eating mostly processed food. We developed different habits and expectations for what constituted delicious food. Habits are hard to make and hard to break.

The phrase back to basics sounds like simplifying down and making things easy. But we all know when it comes to a healthy diet, it can even be complicated to simplify. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Basics are best!

Slow Cooking

My version of slow cooking isn’t using a slow cooker, it’s not rushing the process. If you’re a fan of cooking shows, or any reality TV, you’ve probably seen many shows that feature challenges that race the clock. The time challenge is a device used to build tension and keep us tuned to a particular program through yet another pharmaceutical ad.

I realized years ago that I found clock racing especially distasteful in cooking shows. It gives the impression that you can’t be a great cook or make delicious food unless you’re also a fast. But that’s simply not true. In fact, you’ll get a lot more out of the sensory experience of cooking when you take your time to savor the tastes and aromas. Presenting food preparation as a constant race feels less than inviting to me.

When we began developing recipes at Cooking2Thrive, we considered inclusion of overall preparation time with each recipe. After comparing the prep time listed on other people’s recipes to the time it took us to prepare them, we recognized how widely this varied depending on the chef. And we found the time listed on most recipes was not a realistic representation of what you can expect in a home kitchen.

Makes you wonder whether the developers believe no one will prepare the recipe if they know how long it really takes or whether they are just retroactively recording how long they thought it took instead of making meticulous notes.

Time can be deceptive. We often have to add a fourth recipe test because the timing turns out to be very different than what we thought it was. And while we don’t list overall prep time on our recipes, we do include some specific cooking times that we want to make sure are as accurate as possible.

I made a salad from someone else’s recipe today that listed the prep time as five minutes. It took me thirty. Am I just slow or was that unrealistic to begin with?

I had to locate the bowls, utensils, measuring devices, and vegetables. I had to pick some herbs. That took 3-4 minutes, and I still needed to clean, peel, chop, and measure six ingredients. Keeping prep time to five minutes would leave me 20 seconds to complete each item. And I’d still have no dressing.

It could be that I’m just a slow cook, but five minutes doesn’t seem realistic to me unless most of the prep has already been done and you begin timing when everything has already been gathered, cleaned, and peeled. Listing prep time that leaves out half the prep isn’t particularly helpful.

I don’t mind being efficient with my efforts, but I’d rather fully enjoy being in the kitchen than rush through the tasks as quickly as possible. I mean, if you don’t take time to lick whipped cream off the beater, you can’t be fully enjoying the process. And if you’re cooking with someone you enjoy, there’s even more reason to linger.

I tasted and adjusted the dressing several times. Fresh lemons, limes, and ginger may taste slightly different on different days even when the measurements are the same. Then I tasted the salad ingredients as a combo bite with the dressing and adjusted again. In between, I got a drink and ate a palette cleanser. Did all of that add time? Of course. But it was pleasant. And it will elevate the flavor of the salad.

I won’t say that savoring time in the kitchen means I jump up and down to get started on each and every meal of each and every day. But it does give me positive motivation to cook fresh food that takes more prep. Whenever I dread getting started on a meal, I come back to all the wonderful sensory memories I’ve made taking my time with slow cooking.

It doesn’t get any better than that!

Different Times, Different Timetables

We seem to be in an era of throwing things out quickly – different times, different timetables, I guess. While I have to be conscious of histamine levels in food, I don’t have as much a compulsion as the interwebs say I should about shoving things in the refrigerator immediately.

I also think leftovers can be good for longer than 3 days. I’m not trying to promote unsafe food, but some households’ safety precautions seem to be based on the guesses of someone else rather than any solid science.

There are a few things we never worried about when I was a kid. Salted butter stayed on the countertop, not in the refrigerator. Bacon fat sat in a container, sometimes embossed with the word GREASE, on the stove waiting to be used again and again. Pumpkin pie sat out all afternoon without anyone thinking they’d die from eating a piece.

The other night, I accidentally left a small container of cooked rice on the stove all night. The next morning, I considered eating it for breakfast. I ultimately opted not to, but I’m still not sure why other than a lot of bot-delivered information is floating in my head. Sell by, best by, and use by dates have been so confusing and erring to the side of caution so common that we throw away lots of food that is most likely edible.

My grandmother was a stickler about foods containing mayonnaise, but fried chicken could sit out for a long time without her growing concerned. I say that, but even in her day we carried potato salad to the river for a picnic in an uncooled basket. That was a 30-minute drive in an unairconditioned car plus time to unpack and get settled. The amount of time the salad spent out in the elements given the conditions would send some of my current associates into panic.

Added preservatives give food a longer shelf life, but I suppose at this point they also serve to reassure the hypersensitive consumer. We no longer need root cellars or spring houses, but we have an increase in food intolerance.

We place food that’s been trucked around in all sorts of conditions in refrigerator containers designed to preserve edibility when something grown on the back porch would last longer without anything special. And I think that’s the crux of the difference between then and now.

In many communities, the fresh food available to us isn’t as fresh as it once was so we have to be more concerned about its condition once it’s in our hands. I’ve bought celery before its sell-by date, opened it immediately and been met with a foul smell. Grocery delivery often brings me meat that says to cook it by the next day.

These days, you have to be on your toes to avoid food spoilage. There are green boxes, produce life extender bags, and bluapple® freshness saver balls to help fruits and vegetables last longer. You can always throw meat in the freezer. Just be sure to note on the package how many days you have to cook it once it thaws.

Given the changes that have taken place in agricultural operations, food transportation, and food storage, we have less time to relax on the front end before using food and more time to be worried about food spoilage on the back end. It’s no wonder we waste food. Different times, different timetables.

Safety First & Forever – in thriver words (cooking2thrive.com)

Debbie Meyer Innovations | Official Site

Keep Produce Fresh, Reduce Food Waste, Save Money – Bluapple (thebluapple.com)

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Baby Knows Best

I know it sounds counter intuitive, but sometimes baby knows best. If you’re having trouble getting your baby to eat, try following his lead. Obviously, babies don’t know anything about nutrition, or electric outlets, or the dangers of drinking antifreeze. That means they don’t need to run the show, but it doesn’t mean their preferences should be ignored entirely.

Babies come equipped to express their needs. If you’re a parent, you’re well aware of your baby’s ability to communicate hunger, discomfort, frustration, anger, and a preference for mommy and daddy. Each baby, like each adult, is slightly different. A one-size-fits-all approach to introducing solid food can result in frustrated babies and irritated parents. Eventually, all babies will learn to eat solid food, but why not make the process as painless as possible?

This is a frequent topic of discussion with my son who believes that hands and the floor should stay clean and whatever’s offered should be eaten…no matter what. Sometimes I wonder if he’s forgotten how he was raised. He was allowed to make a mess, get his hands dirty, and choose not to eat something as long as he was eating something else that was offered.

Mind you, I understand it’s not fun to clean up the mess my grandson DJ makes. The first day I decided to see if he was ready to scoop food out of a bowl by himself, I ended up with food all the way to the top of my refrigerator door. From this I determined he’s not ready to handle a bowl, but he knows how to have fun!

I prefer to keep meal time a lighthearted learning experience rather than a battle of wills. All this requires is a sense of humor, attentive observation, and a little preventative maintenance. I now cover the floor under the high chair with a sheet so that cleanup is quick and easy. If DJ wants to mash the banana on his tray rather than eat it, we make a game of it. After all, he’s learning what foods are called, how taste & textures vary, how to pick up small pieces of food, and depth perception. At 8 months, he’s not ready to learn table manners yet. That will come. Of course I set some limits. When DJ decides to spit peas, he gets one free pass. After that, the peas go away until another meal.

It can be easy to assume a baby wants to spit peas because she’s misbehaving or hates green vegetables, but it’s obvious that DJ is just having fun making noise, making a mess, and watching my response. He loves it when I think he’s funny. After we have a laugh, he usually goes right back to eating. He actually likes peas.

Food preferences can develop before a baby is born. A child who spits out spinach may gobble up asparagus or broccoli. When you offer a large variety of fresh vegetables and fruits, you’ll soon learn where your child’s preferences lie so that you can incorporate some of those foods into the family menu on a regular basis.

DJ’s parents feed him regular food that they prepare at home. That way he can eat the same foods they’re eating and they can know exactly what he’s consuming. While they have chosen not to use prepared baby food, they are creating traditional purées for him to eat from a spoon.

After a month or so of success introducing foods, DJ began to gag or shudder whenever the spoon approached his mouth. He no longer seemed to like foods that he loved the day before. He also seemed reluctant to touch his tray, and he clearly wasn’t enjoying himself at meal time.

I might not know how to solve that specific problem immediately, but I know how to make the experience more engaging. Once a baby is engaged, a little observation can lead to some possible solutions. Babies love to put things in their mouth. They enjoy touching new textures. DJ needed to get his hands dirty.

I bought him a silicone spoon that works as both a teether and a spoon. It’s easy to hold with no pointed end to endanger a baby’s eyes. Of course DJ wanted to grab it and chew on it. Then I added food — the same food that he gagged at when I tried to feed him. He grabbed the spoon, ate a big bite, looked at me and said, “Mmmmm!” He had fun for the rest of the meal. Weeks later, DJ is still having fun at meal time and he’s eating well. Sometimes he’s happy for me to feed him. Sometimes, he wants control of the spoon. I simply follow his lead.

The result of a little observation and willingness to experiment is a baby who has shown us that he prefers vegetables to fruits and eats a wide variety — spinach, green peas, broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potato, butternut squash, black eyed peas, potatoes, and carrots. He also likes chicken, avocado, cantaloupe, dates, and mango. He doesn’t like to eat bananas, but he loves to smash them into his tray.

As his world expands, DJ’s preferences will continue to evolve. We plan to take note and include his new preferences in our meal plans. We will offer simple choices between A and B rather than open ended questions regarding what he wants to eat. This will give DJ control over his diet within the boundaries of the adults who know he will thrive with fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, and eventually eggs, dairy, and whole grains. Our goal is to provide healthy food while keeping meal time peaceful and fun. My son and I can agree on this.

If you run into a problem getting your child to eat, keep offering a variety of fresh food, follow his lead whenever it makes sense, and remember to have fun! That may be all it takes to solve the problem.