Rice, Rice, Baby! Oh, that isn’t how the song goes? As a person with prediabetes, rice rarely makes it onto my menu. Chinese and Spanish dishes are some of my favorite meals, so I really miss them. Rice is a dietary staple for over half the world’s population, so changing the way we cook it could help tackle obesity and other diet-related health problems.
Unfortunately, our usual choice of white rice has a high glycemic index, which means it raises the blood sugar readings two hours after eating and also can cause a swift dip soon after. This is because the way we usually cook rice and eat it prevents us from getting the benefit of resistant starch.
Resistant starch (RS) behaves more like dietary fibre than carbohydrate, as it is not broken down into simple sugars in the small intestine. There are several health benefits associated with resistant starch.
Resistant Starch is the starch which reaches the large intestine and then is fermented by bacteria. Therefore, RS is a type of fermentable fiber and could be considered one type of prebiotic, since it provides “food” for bacteria living in the large intestine. Fermentation of RS results in production of Short Chain Fatty Acids and a reduction in pH in the proximal large intestine.
Researchers using the traditional Sri Lankan cooking process as a starting point (40 minutes of simmering followed by oven drying for 2.5 hours), tested the effects of three other processing steps: adding coconut oil to the boiling water, refrigerating the rice for 12 hours before oven drying, and heating it up in a microwave after oven drying.
The results were interesting:
Adding oil to the water created ‘type 5’ Resistant Starch. The oil complexes with the amylose to form amylose-lipid complexes…this prevents the starch granules being attacked by enzymes,’ says Sudhair James, from the College of Chemical Sciences in Sri Lanka.
Chilling the rice after boiling increases ‘retrograded starch’ or ‘Type 3’ Resistant Starch when hydrogen bonds re-form within the starch, making some components less soluble.
The team found that both these processes led to an increase in Resistant Starch, which reheating the rice after oven drying did not appear to reverse.
In fact, the greatest effect, a 15-fold increase in Resistant Starch, was seen when all three treatments were used together. This translates to a calorie reduction of 10-12% in this particular variety, which James says could be ‘perhaps as high as 50 or 60%’ if the treatments were applied other varieties.
What we need to remember from this study is the metabolic response to food isn’t always predictable to what you get from an in vitro analysis. “We as humans are remarkable at protecting our food intake and will compensate,” says Diane Robertson from the University of Surrey, UK, who has carried out similar studies investigating the resistant starch content of pasta.
She also points out global cooking practices are variable. While some cultures may boil rice for a long time and then dry it, as in this study, many only cook it for 10-15 minutes, which might lead to a more modest result in increasing Resistant Starch and reducing calories.
Some claim only Coconut Oil added to white rice is the “secret magical ingredient” needed to reduce your blood sugar by increasing the resistant starch in cooked, cooled, and reheated rice. Any healthy oil or butter will do the same thing, but keeping the amount to a tablespoon or less is important. More than that will just add too many calories.
Digestive System: from the mouth to the small intestine.
Resistant Starch acts like fiber because it’s digested in the lower colon, not in the small intestine. Consumption of resistant starch is associated with reduced abdominal fat and improved insulin sensitivity. Increased serum glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) likely plays a role in promoting these health benefits. In a recent study, participants typically received 10–60 grams of resistant starch per day. Health benefits were observed with a daily intake of at least 20 grams, but an intake as high as 45 grams per day was also considered safe.
We Americans typically get only about 5 grams of resistant starch each day, while some Europeans may get 3–6 grams, and the daily intake for Australians ranges from 3–9 grams. On the other hand, the average daily intake for Chinese people is almost 15 grams. Some rural South Africans may get 38 grams of resistant starch per day, according to a small study.
Nutrition Label: Prunes, note dietary fiber amounts as an equivalent for resistant starches.
Resistant Starch is defined as the amount of starch that reaches the large intestine. Since the FDA does not allow the term “resistant starch” on food labels, another a purified RS product (Ingredion), Hi-maize 260, is assayed instead for fiber content. This amount can be placed on the food label as the fiber content. Therefore, keeping track of your daily fiber intake is a good equivalent for Resistant Starch. For adults up to age 50, women should get 25 grams of fiber daily and men should aim for 38 grams. Women and men older than 50 should have 21 and 30 daily grams of daily fiber respectively, since they usually have reduced caloric needs due to reduced activity. You can find this nutritional information on the food package or on the internet.
Fibrous vegetables, whole grain breads and pastas, old fashioned oats, nuts, beans, legumes, and potatoes that have been cooked, cooled, and reheated are all good sources of resistant starches. We only need to remember to keep our “dressings light” and not to “eat twice as much, since we’re being so healthy.”
Various types of rice add color and visual interest to your plate and palette.
I enjoy black, red, wild, and brown rice. Long grain or Jasmine rice is better than short grain or parboiled rice. I cook my white rice with a tablespoon of butter added to one cup rice and two cups rice with just a pinch of salt added. I use a small pot with a tight-fitting lid and turn the heat on high. When the pot begins to boil, I turn the heat to lowest possible. I give the rice a stir, replace the lid, and set a timer for 30 minutes. Somewhere near the 30 minutes, I can smell the fragrance of the rice. I check the doneness of the rice by lifting up the rice grains, not stirring. Depending on the humidity, the rice may take longer than 30 minutes to fully cook. Likewise, if it’s dry outside, it could cook faster.
Whole grain, wild, and colored rices also take longer time and need a tad more water to fully cook. All rices increase in resistant starch if they are cooled for at least 12 hours and reheated in the microwave. Let’s get more resistant starch in our diets by consuming foods high in the nutrient or by cooking other starchy foods and letting them cool before eating them. We can do this, for it will bring a good food back onto our menu.
A few important tips as you increase your fiber:
Do so gradually to give your gastrointestinal tract time to adapt.
Increase your water intake as you increase fiber.
If you have any digestive problems, such as constipation, check with your physician before dramatically increasing your fiber consumption.
Also, remember, going whole hog into a new lifestyle isn’t advisable for anyone. Couch to 5K programs begin with short walks and gradually add distance and speed. Changing eating habits should follow suit. Add a new fiber source in place of a low fiber food for a week. Next week, take out another low fiber food and add a higher fiber food.
And share your Chocolate Cupcakes…
In my youth, I would wash down a dozen Twinkie’s with a Diet Coke in the dark, while standing on one leg, for I was certain this magic trick eliminated all calories from those billowy sugar pills. Like most heavily processed food snacks, a single Twinkie contains about 140 calories and 23 grams of carbohydrates, contributing to 8% of our daily calorie allowance. This includes 16 grams of sugars and less than 1 gram of dietary fiber.
Now I’m not good at higher mathematics, but 12 of these sweet treats are an overdose if consumed at one sitting. If we were to eat these cake treats, we’d make sure to close both eyes because if we can’t see it, it obviously never happened!! (Magical thinking is an eight year old child trait.)
When I gave up caffeine for Lent one year, I suffered bad headaches from caffeine withdrawal. This was when I was younger and was given to the “all or nothing” approach to life. Now I’ve learned the hard way the body doesn’t appreciate such insults. Only the mad or reckless treat their bodies with disrespect or dishonor. We should honor our bodies, for we are temples of the Holy Spirit and images of the living God.
My occasional offerings are with very dark chocolate
May you enjoy your food and know what you put into your body for better health and life.
Joy and peace,
Cornie
Simple cooking changes make healthier rice | Research | Chemistry World
The Glycemic Potential of White and Red Rice Affected by Oil Type and Time of Addition, by Bhupinder Kaur, Viren Ranawana, Ai-Ling Teh, and C Jeya.K Henry
Back when I was in art school, the fancy pants Pepperidge Farm bread loaves cost a whopping 39 cents. I lived with some fellow students in a third floor walk up apartment without air conditioning in the Deep South. We all agreed this was far too much money to pay for a loaf of bread. Back then a dozen eggs were 62 cents and a loaf of white bread was 23 cents. Of course, the minimum wage was $1.60, and we were starving artists.
The Old Days: Bread at a Bakery
I shop for food, just like everyone else who doesn’t subscribe to a weekly box delivery. I’m a sale shopper, which means I buy what’s in season and what the grocer is promoting. This doesn’t always mean I get what I want, but I don’t shop at Burger King, I shop at my local supermarket.
Grocery Store Inflation is Down
The good news is omelettes are back on the menu at Cornie’s Kitchen! When eggs were at close to $4 per dozen, I rationed them as if they were gold. Now a dozen large eggs are $1.49! Here’s some good news:
Inflation has fallen for 11 months in a row, and grocery prices have come down over the past few months with a sharp and welcome drop in egg prices – that’s some breathing room for middle class families.
Annual Inflation Rate as of June 13, 2023
Back about 1974, I was working in a local grocery store when President Gerald Ford tackled inflation with his WIN campaign—Whip Inflation Now. Inflation was running at 12% annually and Ford proposed it could be brought under control if all Americans refused to buy products from merchants that raised their prices. Alan Greenspan, a top economist, realized this was like “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” It would only harm the economy and merchants, plus people wouldn’t have what they needed. People began to wear the buttons upside down: No Immediate Miracles.
An idea that went over like a lead balloon
At Cornie’s Kitchen, our inflation fighting tools remain the same. We still recommend checking the app, flyer, or website of the store you frequent. Then clip the coupons, make a list for your weekly menu, buy only those items, and ignore impulse purchases. If you’re not going to eat a whole quart of something, you don’t save money by buying the larger size. Buy the pint instead.
If this seems time consuming to my kitchen peeps, I’d like to quote Tom Hanks in Castaway: “Time is money!”
Custom Made FedEx Box
If we’re going to fuss about how much things cost, let’s take action about it. Otherwise we’re just blowing into the wind and making ourselves sick for nothing.
This has been a word from your great grandmother, who has a cookie always ready to sweeten whatever hard talk she dispenses to her younger kinfolk. Let’s all bake in the early morning or late at night, to save on energy costs. OR—buying bakery cookies in the summer is a good solution also, since they can heat up their facility and you can keep your home cool instead.
Of course now we ask, “What’s in a pumpkin spice latte?” If you frequent this Kitchen, you already know the answer: Sugar. Of course it has sugar, both the naturally occurring type, but also the added type. Those of us who watch our carbohydrate intake for health reasons have to be aware of the hidden sugars in foods.
First thought on first fallen leaf: pumpkin palooza
It’s not autumn without a Starbucks pumpkin spice latte, the various pumpkin patches, and the harvest items, which remind me of slow moving tractor pulled hay rides under full moons during the autumn equinox. Once these tokens of fall arrived closer to October, but now they sometimes show up unexpectedly in late August, much like house guests who made good time on their travels.
“Oh! Hello, I haven’t finished cleaning my house yet,” we say as we open our door to this early bird.
“Silly potato, I came to see you, not your house. Give me a hug.” These words of grace are a blessing from the angels who enter our homes.
Made according to standard recipe
Whenever I visit my favorite Starbucks, I now look up the ingredients of my favorite takeout items. Their mobile app makes this possible. I no longer order the drinks with huge amounts of sugar in them, for even if those pumpkin spice lattes are delicious, the drink is pretty much just a dessert disguised as coffee. With my prediabetes and need to take off some weight, my doctor and I have agreed I’d limit my calories to 1500 and my carbs to 150 grams. This won’t fit into my food plan. I need to stick to nutrient dense foods, not empty calorie drinks.
Recipe for Pumpkin Pie Spice
According to Starbucks, a grande (16-ounce) pumpkin spice latte made with 2 percent milk has 390 calories and a staggering 50 grams (about 12 teaspoons) of sugar. The Starbucks label doesn’t break out how much of that is added sugar. About 22 grams of sugar probably comes from the natural sugars in milk, giving the pumpkin spice latte about 28 grams of added sugar. The American Heart Association recommends no more than six teaspoons (25 grams) of added sugar a day for women and nine teaspoons (36 grams) for men.
Pumpkin pie
Much of the sweetness in a pumpkin spice latte appears to come from the pumpkin spice sauce. The first ingredient is sugar, after all, followed by condensed skim milk, pumpkin purée and some additives. The whipped cream topping also contains sugar, in the form of a vanilla syrup.
If you’re trying to cut sugar, there are still ways to enjoy a pumpkin spice latte. A regular grande pumpkin spice latte has four pumps of pumpkin spice sauce as well as whipped cream. If you want to cut back on the sugar, skip the whipped cream and try it with just two pumps of sauce next time you order. You’ll get pretty much the same flavor and cut out more than half of the added sugar. This still gives the grande drink 38 grams of carbohydrates, which puts it into the drinkable sugar category.
As an alternative, another way to cut the calories is to order a “speciality” drink at the coffee shop. If you’re special, and I have no doubt that you are, this are the recipes for you:
Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte: Grande iced coffee (order a Venti cup if you want extra ice) 1 pump spiced pumpkin sauce 3 pumps Sugar free vanilla Extra pumpkin spice sprinkled on top Light cream = half and half
Hot Pumpkin Spiced Latte: Tall blonde American coffee in grande cup 1 pump spiced pumpkin 3 pump sugar free vanilla Almond milk steamed Extra pumpkin spice topping (omit whipped cream)
Pumpkin Pie Spice
You can also make your own fancy pants pumpkin spice latte drink at home. The Food Network’s recipe (link below) for homemade pumpkin spice lattes includes espresso or strong coffee, milk, canned pumpkin purée, vanilla, pumpkin pie spices and one tablespoon of sugar (as well as sweetened whipped cream). But you can play with the recipe to cut even more sugar or use a sugar substitute if you prefer.
Bears eat everything in sight before hibernating
While we’re at it, let’s think about why certain weathers and seasons cue our minds to seek out certain foods. Are we primordially primed to “pack on weight” for the long winter, just as bears and other hibernating animals do? Or do we just find the decreasing daylight depressive, so we eat to soothe our feelings? If you find yourself “carb loading” but not getting ready to run a big race, it might be time to look inward at what else you’re “stuffing down.”
Remember what the sainted Mother Theresa said:
The world today is hungry not only for bread, but hungry for love; hungry to be wanted, hungry to be loved.
As an artist, when I hear the word FIBER, I first think of weaving, rugs, quilting, or clothing, which are often thought of as the homemaking arts. While these are often done by women, men also find some claim to fame also. The late artist Christo and Jean-Claude’s “The Gates,” in New York’s Central Park, is an example his visionary use of fabric to wrap buildings and to define natural spaces.
The Gates, New York, Central Park.
Likewise when we talk about diets, some keep close to the utilitarian needs of the body and food, while others stretch an idea to its most fanciful extreme. This leads us to ask: “What’s a Real Live Paleo People’s Diet?”
The food plan we know today as Paleo focuses on “foods our hunter-gather ancestors would have eaten, with an emphasis on meat.” It eschews grains, sugars, and modern vegetable oils in favor of high-quality meat, fish, eggs, and vegetables. Some folks want you to believe it’s an “All The Bacon You Can Eat Diet,” but they missed the message on high quality. Perhaps they they heard “high quantity “ instead.
Bacon Diet: Very Low Fiber
We modern people don’t have access to the same foods as those who live in nature all the time and get all their food by foraging or hunting. Our modern chickens are raised in concentrated animal feeding operations, in crowded buildings, and fed a scientific diet meant to fatten them up in the shortest possible time. This is why modern chickens are almost all white meat, since the birds rarely use their muscles any more. Our grains are designed for maximum yield and insect resistance. Many of our crops are also resistant to weed killers. Of course, we can buy organic products, but their costs are higher due to the greater labor used to bring in a crop equal to those using chemicals.
We also live in communities, rather than in small groups, so we have access to supermarkets, restaurants, and fast food joints. The more processed our food, the fewer and less diverse our gut biome will be. For instance, if all we eat is biscuits and gravy or burgers and fries at our local window of death, our lives are going to be shorter and less healthy. We know this by studying stool samples. Yep, there are scientists who look at poop. They’ve discovered evidence that our intestinal microbes are profoundly influenced by the foods we eat — or don’t: The gut ecosystems of members of a small group of hunter-gatherers inhabiting Tanzania’s Rift Valley show a strong cyclicality consistent with the population’s seasonally changing diet. The average diet of a western person produces a much less diverse gut biome, primarily due to our low intake of fiber.
Hunter-gatherers of Tanzania experience seasonal variation in gut-microbe diversity
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine were the first to look at seasonal variations in the gut-microbial composition, or microbiota, of the Hadza, one of the world’s few remaining traditional hunter-gatherer populations. The research confirms that the Hadza microbiota is more diverse than, and substantially different from, that of industrialized countries’ urban-dwelling denizens.
The study was also the first to show that the microbiota of the Hadza population varied seasonally, and that this variation corresponded to their seasonally fluctuating dietary intake.
For more than 15 million years, human beings have co-evolved with thousands of microbial species that take up residence in the lowermost part of the intestine. They earn their keep by helping us:
1. digest food components we’re unable to break down by ourselves, chiefly dietary fiber;
2. manufacturing vitamins and other health-enhancing molecules;
3. training our immune system and fostering the maturation of cells in our gut; and
4. guarding our intestinal turf against the intrusion of all-too-eager competing microbial species, including pathogens.
The advent of agriculture about 10,000 to 15,000 years ago has radically altered our diet. In the past century alone, the typical person’s lifestyle has undergone further vast alterations: labor-saving devices’ encourages a sedentary existence, the introduction of antibiotics and cesarean section births, and the gradual supplanting of fiber-filled whole grains, fruits and vegetables by increasingly processed and fiber-free foods.
These environmental changes have brought corresponding shifts in our microbial exposures, and in our intestines’ ability to serve as hospitable hosts for these symbionts, which are organisms living cooperatively within one another. But it’s been hard to apportion the relative contributions of technological and societal innovations to the loss of microbial diversity in modern populations. The Hadza study adds evidence that our diet is a major factor in our gut biome population and constitution.
The Hadza number just over 1,000 people, but only fewer than 200 of whom adhere to the traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which includes a diet composed mainly of five items: meat, berries, baobab (a fruit), tubers and honey. While Western diets are pretty much the same throughout the year, the Hadza lifestyle doesn’t include refrigerators and supermarkets. So the population’s diet fluctuates according to the season, of which there are two in the Rift Valley: dry—when meat, baobab and tuber consumption play a relatively larger role; and wet—during which berries, tubers, honey and baobabs prevail. (Tubers and baobab are available year-around.)
“The 100 to 200 Hadza sticking to this routine will possibly lose it in a decade or two, maybe sooner. Some are using cell phones now,” says Justin Sonnenburg, a microbiologist at Stanford University. “We wanted to take advantage of this rapidly closing window to explore our vanishing microbiota.”
The investigators collected 350 stool samples from 188 separate Hadza individuals over a roughly one-year period encompassing a bit more than one full seasonal cycle. A thorough analysis of the samples’ microbial contents revealed that the gut microbiota varied seasonally, in harmony with the Hadza dietary intake. In particular, a subset of microbial species’ populations diminished in the wet season, when honey accounted for a significant portion of caloric intake, and rebounded in the dry season, when consumption of fiber-rich tubers peaked.
What Americans Eat
The further away people’s diets are from a Western diet, the greater the variety of microbes they tend to have in their guts. And that includes bacteria that are missing from American guts.
“So whether it’s people in Africa, Papua New Guinea or South America, communities that live a traditional lifestyle have common gut microbes — ones that we all lack in the industrialized world,” Sonnenburg said.
In a way, the Western diet — low in fiber and high in refined sugars — is basically wiping out species of bacteria from our intestines. That’s the conclusion Sonnenburg and his team reached after analyzing the Hadza microbiome at one stage of the yearlong study.
But when they checked several months later, they uncovered a surprising twist: The composition of the microbiome fluctuated over time, depending on the season and what people were eating. And at one point, the composition started to look surprisingly similar to that of Westerners’ microbiome.
During the dry season, Hadza eat a lot more meat, as most Westerners do. When their diet changed, their microbiome shifted as well. Some of the bacterial species that had been prevalent disappeared to undetectable levels, similar to what’s been observed in Westerners’ guts.
But then in wet season — when Hadza eat more berries and honey — these missing microbes returned, although the researchers aren’t really sure what’s in these foods that bring the microbes back.
“We’re beginning to realize that people who eat more dietary fiber are actually feeding their gut microbiome,” Sonnenburg says.
Hadza consume a huge amount of fiber because throughout the year, they eat fiber-rich tubers and fruit from baobab trees. These staples give them about 100 to 150 grams of fiber each day. That’s equivalent to the fiber in 50 bowls of Cheerios — and 10 times more than many Americans eat. “Over the past few years, we’ve come to realize how important this gut community is for our health, and yet we’re eating a low-fiber diet that totally neglects them,” he says. “So we’re essentially starving our microbial selves.”
“I think this finding is really exciting,” says Lawrence David, who studies the microbiome at Duke University. “It suggests the shifts in the microbiome seen in industrialized nations might not be permanent — that they might be reversible by changes in people’s diets.
In closing, while we can’t all move to Tanzania and give up our day jobs, we all could incorporate more whole grains and less processed food. If we make a plan to try one new food each week, we can train our palettes to accept novel tastes and textures. We don’t need to buy 10 pounds of a new food! One pound would do, and we can learn a new recipe. This way we stretch our minds and learn a new trick. I remember learning to appreciate liver on one of these “try something new days.” I held out till I was hungry and then my dinner tasted ever so good! Search the outer aisles and look for foods in their simple state, rather than boxed in a mix.
The average adult person in the USA only gets about 15 grams of fiber daily, despite national health goals to increase intake. The message isn’t getting out. You can use the nutrition information on your package to check for the amount of fiber. For fruits and vegetables, a quick Google search will bring up the answer. I look for at least 3 grams of fiber in any item I purchase. This rules out “white” rice, bread, and most pasta products, but brown rice, whole wheat, and whole whole grain pasta and some bean product pastas can freely substitute for the other. The good news is these fill you up more because of the fiber, so hunger between meals isn’t as much of a problem. They also keep your blood sugar from spiking and crashing, which is another problem many with prediabetes and diabetes have.
High Fiber Veggies
Aim for 25 to 30 grams of fiber daily from your food sources. My morning old fashioned oatmeal contains 4 grams of fiber, the nuts add 2 grams, and the tablespoon of cocoa an additional 2 grams for a total of 8 grams of fiber. I’m already a third of the way there, and I’ve even had a chocolate fix! I usually add a 1/3 cup of instant nonfat milk and a pat of butter to my oatmeal with some vanilla and Splenda. If I can’t enjoy life, especially food, I won’t keep to my food plan.
My “hunting and gathering” is mostly done at my local grocery store, but I have four servings of lentil soup I made yesterday in the old crockpot from the rotisserie chicken and a frozen soup veggie package, to which I added garlic and Italian spices, plus an onion. Today it’s pouring down rain and I feel like doing nothing at all, except maybe a little laundry. Or maybe more coffee! I can always get excited for coffee!
Joy and Peace,
Cornie
Hadza Hunter Gathers Seasonal Gut Microbe Diversity Study
King DE, Mainous AG 3rd, Lambourne CA. Trends in dietary fiber intake in the United States, 1999-2008. J Acad Nutr Diet. 2012 May;112(5):642-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jand.2012.01.019. Epub 2012 Apr 25. PMID: 22709768.
We rabbits in this brutal year of 2020 have seen our share of suffering and death from not only the novel coronavirus, but also the impact of job losses, business failures, and isolation from friends and family. We rabbits and humans both are eager to put all this behind us, even if our minds tell us we’re still in the thick woods of the Pandemic. We want to gather inside our cozy hutches, eat a traditional meal, and love our kith and kin, for we might not see them next year. Not since the great flu pandemic of 1918-19 has planning a family gathering been so fraught.
During World War I, an outbreak of flu began that lasted for about two years and affected the whole world, infecting an estimated 500 million people, nearly one-third of the world’s population, and eventually claiming more than 50 million lives. The 1918 flu killed 675,000 Americans. “That’s equivalent to 225 to 450 million people today,” said John Barry, a scholar at Tulane University and author of “The Great Influenza.” “The numbers are staggering.”
Convalescent Influenza patients, Eberts Field, Lonoke, Arkansas, 1919, in isolation due to overflow at hospital
The same frustrations with masks and shutdown rules hit society hard, with the same groups choosing the same sides as we have today. The virus didn’t care in 1918 and it doesn’t care today, so it takes down any rabbit who gets too close to the infection for too long. The same cytokine storm is thought to have been responsible for the deaths of the young due to the over reaction of their immune system back in 1918 as today.
Wear a Mask or Go to Jail
Today we’re like the first American settlers who ate a thanksgiving meal in 1621, and celebrated their joy of surviving the brutal first year in their new home. Four hundred years later, we rabbits are still celebrating Thanksgiving. Although we like consistency, for we find comfort in unchanging rituals, Thanksgiving itself has changed over the years. This is because America has changed from an agrarian, self sufficient society to an urban, interdependent community.
Rabbits Give Thanks For Many Blessings
The first Thanksgiving celebrated the colonists surviving a very rough first year in the New World. Seventy-eight percent of the eighteen women who had traveled on the Mayflower had perished over the first winter, leaving only around 50 colonists to attend the first Thanksgiving. According to eyewitness accounts, among the pilgrims, there were 22 men, just four women and over 25 children and teenagers.
Edward Winslow noted in his diary how William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth Colonies, sent hunters out to bring in provisions for the feast.
“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week.”
Other items appearing on the first festival table were locavore vegetables, such as onions, beans, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, carrots and perhaps peas. The Native Americans taught these early settlers to grow corn, which early records show was plentiful at the first harvest. It most likely wasn’t served on the cob or as kernels. Instead it was turned into cornmeal, boiled, and pounded into a thick corn mush or porridge. They ate it sweetened with any dried or fresh fruits indigenous to the region, which included plums, blueberries, grapes, gooseberries, raspberries and, of course cranberries, which the Native Americans ate and used as a natural dye. Sugar, an imported luxury, most likely wasn’t on the table Orin the recipes. Also the pilgrims put all the food out at once, so if you wanted to express your thankfulness by eating dessert first, no one would stop you.
Cranberry Advertising
Cranberry gelatin, a ubiquitous and wobbly dish on our contemporary tables, wasn’t invented until 1912, when Ocean Spray began canning ready-to-serve cranberry jelly. Mechanically harvesting cranberries from flooded fields, a modern invention, came with with a caveat: the berries are often too imperfect to sell as a fresh product. Before wet harvesting, cranberries were dry harvested by hand, a time consuming and labor intensive activity.
Lewis Hine: Jennie Camillo, 8 Years, Cranberry Picker, Pemberton, New Jersey, 1910
Because cranberries are high in vitamin C, they became the American substitute for limes on sea voyages to help prevent scurvy when it was common among sailors and pirates.
Americans today consume 400 million pounds of cranberries each year, with 20 percent eaten during Thanksgiving week alone. Massachusetts-based Ocean Spray, the largest producer of cranberry products in the U.S., produces about 79 million cans of jellied cranberry sauce each year, 85 percent of which are sold during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Consumers prefer the jellied cranberry sauce from a can (the log), which totals 75% of overall cranberry sauce sales. It takes about 200 cranberries to make one can of cranberry sauce. Cranberry sauce in a can became a Thanksgiving staple across the country by 1941.
Of course, I grew up on the gelled in the can cranberry sauce. I was fascinated by the ridges and my mother’s secret gnostic wisdom, known only to the initiated few, for releasing the whole product intact onto the jelly plate. Then she carefully presliced each serving along the ridges produced by the interior of the can. My depression era mother made sure everyone had a serving and no one would be left out. Once I had my own table to set and my own menu to prepare, I began to make my own fresh cranberry and orange sauce with nuts. I took the time to make the cranberry sauce early, since it benefited from a day’s rest. I was of the fresh food generation, but then that was our little rebellion.
Neither potatoes or sweet potatoes were on the first Thanksgiving menu, nor was pie, since the colonists had no flour for the pastry. My menu in my early married days had the canned mushroom soup and canned green bean casserole topped with canned onion rings. These were renegade 1950’s era recipes that were my family traditions. They were due to the early burst of modern processed foods, which my parents adopted to show their connections with the era.
The Green Giant Mixing Gigantic Casserole
The world’s largest serving of green bean casserole weighed 1,009 pounds, a record certified by Guinness in 2019. The casserole, a larger-than-life version of the classic Thanksgiving side dish, clocked in at 637 pounds and was cooked up by Green Giant and Stella 34 Trattoria chefs at Macy’s Herald Square. After it was weighed and measured, the record-setting casserole was immediately donated to New York City’s City Meals on Wheels program and will help feed nearly 2,000 elderly residents who are unable to leave their homes. The Green Giant himself mixed up 780 cans of Green Giant Cut Green Beans, 53 cans of cream of mushroom soup, 32 quarts of milk and 65 pounds of French fried onions. That’s one gigantic casserole.
Campbell’s Green bean casserole was first created by a recipe supervisor at the soup company in Camden, New Jersey, in 1955. According to Today, the beloved dish can be found on dinner tables in 30 million households across the country during the holiday season. As my food tastes and health needs have changed, I moved away from the “dump a can of this and add a can of that” recipes I inherited as the family traditions. Not everyone likes fresh green beans al dente with pan fried crispy bacon bits seasoned with rosemary and garlic, but I like the variety of flavors and textures.
Woman Purchasing Live Turkey
My parents grew up during the time when live poultry were sold at the corner market to carry home for slaughter, singeing, and butchering. When daddy would tell us kids tales about those bygone days, we’d all howl and scream as if we were the poor turkeys being sacrificed on the altar of thanksgiving. The tradition of gifting turkeys to U.S. presidents has existed since the late 1800s, but when George H.W. Bush took office, in 1989 he began the now-annual ceremony in which the turkeys are pardoned and sent to a farm to live out their lives. President John F. Kennedy pardoned a small turkey in 1963, compared to the 39-pound bird named Peas that President Donald Trump pardoned 55 years later in 2018. At 39 pounds, roasting in the oven takes about eight hours at 325F unstuffed. Cooking breast side down for the first several hours helps keep the white meat from drying out.
G. H. W. Bush Pardons a Turkey, the first since the 1800’s to secure its freedom
Every year I was away from home, I’d call my mother to ask how she roasted the Thanksgiving Turkey in an oiled paper bag. Every year she’d remind me, “NEVER do this, honey! Paper bags have toxic chemicals that would leech into your turkey. If you must use a bag, get a food-safe plastic bag intended for oven use, like the ones from Reynolds.” Then she would tell me once again how to baste and roast the prize bird. I just needed the sound of my mama on Thanksgiving if I couldn’t be with her. If your parent doesn’t know how to cook a turkey, the Butterball Help Line is available by phone or chat. They even have recipes for the leftovers beyond sandwiches and pasta dishes. I always freeze some, since I don’t do turkey hash on toast. I draw the line in the sand there.
Other odd ways to roast the star of the feast suggest wrapping the turkey breasts in multiple food safe cooking bags, and using the family dishwasher for one full dishwasher cycle for every 2 pounds of turkey in order to get up to the recommended internal temperature of 145°F to 165°F. And hold the soap. A dishwasher runs its main cycle at about 65-70C/150-160F, which is hot enough to ensure that the detergent dissolves and is activated, and also that left on food and grease is dislodged and washed away. During the rinse phase the water is heated to slightly higher temperatures of around 80C/180F that make sure the dishes are properly sanitised. For a 16 pound bird unfrozen, this is about 2 hours per cycle, and you should run at least three cycles. Then put the breasts under the stove broiler for a crisp finish. This is a restaurant technique using a low, slow cooking style known as sous-vide.
Other Tim Allen hacks are smoking your turkey in a brand new garbage can. I know you’d never use an old dirty one! However, galvanized steel cans or other materials not intended for cooking can contaminate your food with chemical residues. This is just the testosterone version of my grocery bag solution for the bird. NEVER! EVER! This calls for a trip to the hardware store, guys. Buy a real smoker, and do the meat thing any week of the year.
Today young people want their gluten-free Thanksgiving meals, so no rolls, no Mac and cheese, and no dressing, unless it’s quinoa or lentils. I don’t eat all those carbohydrates either, unless they are pie. I must save room for pie. Of course, I cut the sugar in half and put more fruit into the pie, but fruit is a better sweetness than straight sugar.
Boy with Pie
Speaking of more pie, this dessert seems to call out the heroic efforts of bakers everywhere. A group of giant pumpkin growers in New Bremen, Ohio, banded together at their local pumpkinfest to bake a Thanksgiving dessert of mass proportions. They got a Guinness World Record award for the largest pumpkin pie, which weighed in at 3,699 pounds. It was made up of 440 sheets of pie dough, plus huge quantities of canned pumpkin, evaporated milk, eggs, sugar, and seasonings.
World Record Pumpkin Pie
Other pies often make an appearance on the Thanksgiving table, such as sweet potato pie, apple pie, and icebox pies. The enormous world record pecan pie prepared at Cohen Stadium in El Paso, Texas, on May 22, 1999, contained 1,500 pounds of pecans, 13,350 pounds of sugar, 850 pounds of margarine, 200 pounds of salt, 6,700 pounds of eggs, and 9,700 pounds of corn syrup. This is the heavy champion of the world, weighing in at 41,586 pounds. Muhammad Ali might float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, but once you have a slice of this pie, you’re going down for the count.
World Record Pecan Pie
Consumer research from both Butterball and Hormel Foods, which together sell most of the more than 40 million whole turkeys we Americans eat for Thanksgiving, suggests in 2020 big gatherings will be broken into several smaller ones, most of which will still center on turkey. A third of the respondents to the Butterball survey said they were considering serving dinner outdoors, while the number of people who plan to host only their immediate family has jumped to 30 percent, from 18 percent last year. In fact, nearly 70% of Americans plan to celebrate the holiday differently because of the Pandemic.
Children’s Table
My memories of Thanksgiving are centered among the parents’ families, both of whom lived in my home town. We ate Thanksgiving lunch with mother’s family and supper with daddy’s family. The next year we switched the time. We tried to eat as light as possible at each place, or we’d be overstuffed and too sleepy. One year I fell asleep at the big table with the turkey leg in my hand. I had just been promoted from the children’s table, but I was on my second dinner and hadn’t yet learned to pace my eating. The grownups looked at my face plant, decided I was in no danger of suffocating because I’d already cleaned my plate, and they let me sleep.
I slept through dessert that year, but I’d had more than enough to eat that Thanksgiving and most likely more than enough excitement for one small child. I might have been old enough to sit at the big table with the grownups, but I didn’t have the experience or wisdom to practice deferred gratification. We may want something intensely, but if we settle for a short term good, we’ll ruin our chances for a long term good. One of the saddest seasons to remember the anniversary of a death is the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas because people place such importance on togetherness. Yet, if this year we gather together, we risk the health or life of our loved ones. I personally haven’t been with my family since this Pandemic began, since I have health concerns and my family is in the health care business. Zoom and FaceTime will be better choices than in person gatherings.
Everyone Gets a Mask in This Family
The seasonal holidays of the later part of this year, such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Halloween, Día de los Muertos, Navratri, Diwali, Thanksgiving, Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, and New Year’s, typically include large gatherings of families and friends, crowded parties, and travel. These may put people at increased risk for COVID-19. Some suggestions for a safer holiday season:
Host outdoor activities rather than indoor activities as much as possible. If hosting an outdoor event is not possible, and you choose to host an indoor event, avoid crowded, poorly ventilated, or fully enclosed indoor spaces.
Increase ventilation by opening windows and doors to the extent that is safe and feasible based on the weather.
Host activities with only people from your local area as much as possible.
Limit numbers of attendees as much as possible.
Provide updated information to your guests about any COVID-19 safety guidelines and steps in place to prevent the spread of the virus.
Provide or encourage attendees to bring supplies to help you and others stay healthy. For example, extra masks (do not share or swap with others), hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol, and tissues.
If you are planning in-person holiday gatherings with people outside of your household, consider asking all guests to strictly avoid contact with people outside of their households for 14 days before the gathering (quarantine).
In 1943, Norman Rockwell’s painting “Freedom From Want,” created as part of a successful war bond campaign, became a symbol of Thanksgiving. The piece illustrated FDR’s ideal of peace and economic stability: one of the four freedoms outlined in his State of the Union address years before. The others included Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, and Freedom from Fear. This isn’t the first difficult Thanksgiving we Americans have been through. Certainly the great Flu Pandemic and the World Wars were together more difficult than circumstances today. At least today we have antibiotics to fight the secondary infections of the milder cases of Covid. Plus we have flu shots. This is your friendly reminder “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Norman Rockwell: Freedom From Want
The Pandemic shows no signs of abating or rounding a corner. The latest estimates are more than a half million people in the United States alone could die from COVID-19 by the end of February 2021, but around 130,000 of those lives could be saved if everybody were to wear masks, according to estimates from a modeling study. The estimates, from a study by researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, show that with few effective COVID-19 treatment options and no vaccines yet available, the U.S. faces “a continued COVID-19 public health challenge through the winter.”
“We are heading into a very substantial fall/winter surge,” said IHME director Chris Murray, who co-led the research. He said the projections, as well as the real-life current evidence of rising infection rates and deaths, showed there is no basis to “the idea that the pandemic is going away,” adding: “We do not believe that is true.”
While this is difficult news, we’re a people who’ve been through a September 11 and come back United. We’ve seen our great leaders assassinated, and come together for the common good. If we think back to 1963, only six days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson delivered a message to the nation on Thanksgiving night: “A great leader is dead; a great nation must move on. Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose.” I remember where I was in the waning days before school vacation began. I was in study hall when a friend brought the news in person because the principal didn’t want to announce it over the intercom. “Kennedy has just been shot in Dallas.” Americans have never shrunk from the hard truth, and they’ve never quit in the face of struggle.
We are a people who have faced adversity, whether we came here in small ships or were born here and were pushed off our native lands. We all live under the same sunshine and breathe the same air. If we can share the funds we would have spent on traveling, decorating, and cooking for a big family feast with our local food pantry this year, the people who used to work in the jobs that haven’t come back won’t go hungry. The economy isn’t going to come back for the service jobs until the Pandemic is over, since many people don’t feel safe going out with unmasked persons.
President Obama at a Food Pantry on Thanksgiving
While “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28), we don’t know how soon God will bring this about. Yet we have faith even in the worst of times. As Paul says, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39)
The Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is one of my favorite Thanksgiving movies, with sweet lines like, “What if, today, we were grateful for everything?” I always think of my first married year, when we paid for our silver wedding rings and had $17 left in our bank account. I lost my job when we left on short notice to beat an early snow storm that would close Raton Pass between Colorado and New Mexico. Our wedding was the day after Thanksgiving because my friends would all come home. We had an old VW bug and a 552 square foot house on a lot and a half to call our own. Plus two dogs we treated like children. I had grown organic vegetables over the summer and froze the excess. We had deer meat from the fall. It was a simple life, but we didn’t worry. We lived small and enjoyed the blessings of what we had, rather than yearning for that which was out of reach.
I hope all of you wake up every morning with a song of joy on your heart, and thank God for another day to love and serve your neighbors in God’s world.
When my daughter was young, I preached at a small church on the southwest side of town. One day as we drove home, she looked out the car window at a rich, black field with round, green balls stretched out in equally spaced lines, as far as the eye can see.
“Mom! What’s that?” I cast a sideways glance as I drove my speeding car down the highway. “That’s lettuce, baby.”
“It’s on the dirt!” “That’s where all our vegetables grow.”
“That’s the most disgusting thing I ever heard of. I’m never eating salad again. “ “Um humm,” I replied.
I was used to her dramatic pronouncements. If I let them go, they’d be gone like the dinosaurs. If I tried to reason with her, I’d be writing the sequel to Jurassic Park.
Long rows of lettuce
These fields were the “truck farms” outside of our city. They brought the fresh heads of lettuce to the farmers markets and to some of the local grocers. My daughter was too young to realize the plastic wrapped heads of lettuce in the store had their origin in nature. I realized I needed to get her outdoors more, so I bought a tent for camping, but that’s a fiasco for another fable at another time.
I’m always curious about word origins, so I was sure since our food today comes “off a truck,” this is why these nearby farms are so named. Yet this farming practice has been around since the post Civil War era in America. In England it’s called a market garden. The word originally meant to bargain and comes from the Middle Ages (1175–1225) by way of Middle English trukien, to exchange, and from the Old French troquer, to exchange. If you ever lived down South, you might have heard a grandparent born in the late 1800’s say, “Don’t you have truck with those folks. They aren’t to be trusted.” They meant, “Don’t do any kind of business or dealings with them, for their word isn’t good or they’re not honest brokers.”
When we talk about where our food comes from, the answer today is “off a truck.” This is because our local store gets its food from suppliers. I certainly never thought I’d be saying the phrase “supply chain” in my lifetime. My last class in economics was in high school, back when the dinosaurs ruled the land. Dinosaurs aren’t part of the modern food supply chain, of course. Plus we humans never ate dinosaur meat, since they died out 65 million years before people inhabited the earth. Still, I was raised on Fred and Wilma Flintstone, since our whole family watched our one black and white television, so I can be forgiven if I say I “lived with the dinosaurs.” I certainly thought the old ones of my era did.
Fred and Wilma at the grocery store
If we’re speaking of a head of lettuce, this supply chain includes the farmer, the field workers, those who transport the food to and from the packing house, the people who dress and prepare the lettuce at the packing plant, and the various intermediary handlers before this head of lettuce ever gets put onto the shelf at your local grocery store. Though unseen, every person is important. If we get technical, the banks who loan “seed money” and the crop insurance agents are also part of this chain, not to mention the equipment dealers and manufacturers of those agricultural machines. Now multiply system this for all the various foods we produce here in the USA, and add in the international shipping for all the foods we import from afar.
A supply chain is the network of all the individuals, organizations, resources, activities and technology involved in the creation and sale of a product, from the delivery of source materials from the supplier to the manufacturer, through to its eventual delivery to the end user.
As complicated as this system is, amazingly it usually operates without a hitch. Except when a glitch in the system interferes. This is sometimes an extreme weather event that snarls transportation or a harms a crop. I can remember when coffee prices went through the roof in the 1970’s due to a frost on successive nights in Brazil. I was young and poor, so I switched to Morning Thunder Tea. I’ve kept an affectation for Celestial Seasonings Teas ever since.
Black tea with 40 mg caffeine per 8 oz cup
The price consumers paid for groceries jumped 2.6% in April compared to the previous month, the largest monthly increase since 1974, according to statistics released on 5/12/20 by the U.S. Department of Labor. This rise was caused primarily by the increase of food bought for the home and the corresponding decrease of food bought for restaurants and large food purveyors, such as schools and restaurants. This caused a “supply chain disruption.”
Supply chain disruptions cause scarce goods at the market, but this doesn’t mean the goods themselves are always scarce. It may mean the supply isn’t coming as fast as the sudden need arose. Think of our current pandemic as a constant snowstorm. Everyone is wiping the shelves bare all the time.
John Snow on a food procurement mission during the snowstorm
Paucities from the pandemic might result for multiple reasons:
Panic purchases made from fear the item might not be available
Hoarding, for fear there might not be enough to go around for everyone
Supply chain problems, which include more people needing household goods than industrial size goods (think toilet paper)
Buying extra amounts of sanitizer, beyond historic levels (maybe we’re cleaning more than usual due to the presence of the novel coronavirus)
Supply chain problems related to agricultural products and their processing (meat, poultry, vegetables, grain)
Supply chain problems related to international shipping (imported agricultural goods, such as coffee, cocoa, spices, tropical fruits, and seafood)
The impact of covid-19 on the workers in the food supply chain (are they safe at work? Do they have essential protection and will they lose benefits if they get sick?)
Price rises have hit some of our favorite foods. Look for alternatives, if possible, and buy less processed or packaged foods to get the most value for your money. This is a list of some of some the changes, which may or may not be permanent. Although the meat supply is going to shrink for a while, until the processors get a handle on new procedures for safe handling that respect the workers’ health. If your food costs a little more, think of the life you’re saving.
Breakfast Thinking about making an omelette before you start your work day from your couch? That’s going to cost you. Egg prices shot up 16.1% last month.
Keeping it simple and switching to cereal won’t help. Breakfast cereal prices rose 1.5%. So did milk, bread and juice, with 1.5%, 3.7% and 3.8% increases, respectively.
Rather than a processed cereal, I prefer whole grain old fashioned oatmeal made with milk, baking cocoa, and 1/2 oz of walnuts with some cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice on top.
Treating yourself got more expensive, too. Doughnut prices shot up 5% last month, and muffins are 4.7% more expensive.
Coffee for your morning commute walk to the den? Roasted coffee prices rose 1.2% and instant coffee was up 2.5%.
Buy decent coffee. Please. Forget the donuts and spend the money on good coffee. You’ll thank yourself for it. This is a pandemic, we don’t have to treat it as a purgatory.
Lunch Maybe you want some soup for lunch? Soup will cost you 2.6% more.
Leftover Soup
You can make a better soup than any packaged soup. Leftovers, onion, spices, olive oil, and a cube of chicken bouillon will be great. Add some meat or fresh pasta or beans. Yum.
Chicken And Noodle Soup with Frozen Mixed Veggies Plus 1 ounce Mozzarella Cheese
A soda for a mid-day treat? Carbonated beverage prices are up 4.5%. Maybe a cookie to get some sugar in you? Cookies cost 5.1% more in April than in March. Cut these down if your budget is tight.
OK, let’s keep it healthy. How about some fruit? Fruit prices were up 1.5%, led by apples (4.9%) and oranges (5.6%). The entire citrus category shot up 4.3%.
Buy fruit in season and the sale fruit. Frozen fruit is just as good as fresh. The fresh citrus we have currently is imported. Wait for Florida, Texas and California citrus to ripen and be in season. You can get vitamin C from many other foods.
Alternative Sources of Vitamin C
Dinner Meat prices spiked 3.3%. So maybe you want to try something else? Pork costs 3% more. Chicken shot up 5.8%. Fresh fish soared 4.2%. And if you want to grill, hot dogs got 5.7% more expensive.
A meat portion is 4 ounces for an adult. Most of us eat more meat and not enough fiber. Canned tuna in water is a good value, and so is frozen fish. Eat more veggies!
These are not the FROZEN VEGETABLES you are looking for..
Check the price on frozen vegetables, but check for the least processed packaging. We don’t need all those sauces and salts. Frozen veggies are just as nutritious as fresh. Microwave till just tender.
Feeding your baby got more expensive too. Baby food prices rose 2.7%. I was old school with my child back in the day, since I introduced her to veggies I cooked at home and I mashed or ground them in the blender. I only used processed baby foods if I was traveling, since they had salt and sugar added. Her dad was adopted, so we didn’t know his family medical history, and we were extra careful on account of unknown food allergies. We are training the future taste buds of our kids, after all
Some good news There’s just not a ton of relief out there. But if you are looking for food prices that are getting cheaper, you’ve got a few options.
Ham prices fell by 1.7% and breakfast sausage was down 0.3%. Butter was down 1.3% and prepared salads fell by 3.6%. Fresh cupcakes fell 2.3% and tomatoes fell by 1.4%.
I’ve always shopped the food in season and the food on sale, and then made my menus from these items. If you go with a list and don’t go hungry (I too often do this), you can keep your list and your budget in check. Check the price per amount and look for the WIC/Women’s Infants and Children Program symbol. It marks the least price item of grocery commodities available for sale.
September is the start of astronomical autumn. The Japanese just celebrated the Full Moon Viewing or the Mid-Autumn Festival, complete with Moon Cakes and Rice Dumplings, or tsukimi-dango, which represent offerings and prayers for a good harvest. Here in my home on Lake Hamiliton, Arkansas, the geese have made a stopover on their journey south to warmer weather. They know cooler temperatures are coming. I’ve seen some reds and yellows poking through the greens of the trees lining our roadways. My friends say, “That’s the result of drought.” I know the days are getting imperceptibly shorter and the week we had with evening temperatures in the 60’s fooled some of these living plants into an early change.
Butternut Squash Soup with Chicken
Still, September here is on pace for the warmest ever, since we’ve been keeping records. I couldn’t help but bring out my recipe for Butternut Squash Soup. I bought it during that brief cool spell, but didn’t get around to cooking it till a week later when it really warmed up. Mr. Crockpot offered to help, so I wouldn’t have to sweat, and I’m eternally grateful for his help. Also to Mr. Microwave who had a hand in this recipe. All I had to do was chop and wash a few veggies and measure out everything. This is a recipe I can get behind for later fall weekends when I have football, leaf raking, or hiking outside, or any other activity other than cooking all day inside on my list to do.
You can prep this recipe in less time than Pink Floyd’s album, Dark Side of the Moon, unless you are very particular about the size of your dicing. In soups, which you’ll blend up, this size needs only to be approximate, not perfect. Get it done, and go do something else. Mr. Crockpot can handle the rest.
Combine onions and garlic in oil in heavy pan and heat until clear.
1 Tbs olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
Chop veggies and add to crock pot along with onions and garlic.
Microwave the washed and pierced squash for 5 minutes on high. Let cool.
Microwave and Peeled Squash
1 large butternut squash, peeled and cut into large cubes (about 8 cups)
4 sprigs thyme
1 sprig sage
1 chicken bouillon cube
3 c. Water
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp harissa or chili powder
Pinch of cayenne
Cook at low heat on crockpot for 8 hours or high for 3-4 hours. Smush the softened squash with a metal measuring cup, or add a cupful at a time to a blender if you want it fully pureed.
Can add mozzarella or ricotta cheese to each serving and freshly chopped parsley, for garnish.
If you have leftovers, reheat and add braised mushrooms, fresh spinach, and/or beef (ground or chunks). I’ve also added asparagus that weren’t quite fresh enough to serve individually, but were fine in a soup.
Add Kosher salt at the table to taste if needed. Taste it first–the cheese may add enough saltiness, especially for those who are eating a salt restricted diet.
NUTRITION:Makes 6 one cup servings. These numbers for original recipe, not for cheese, extra veggies, or added meats.
The hit Netflix show “Stranger Things” begins its Season 3 on July 4, but Baskin-Robbins is launching several Stranger Things-inspired ice cream flavors and sweet treats in June to get us in the mood.
The star of Stranger Things, David Harbour says season three of the will be “lighter,” while also promising “all the dark stuff that we’re kind of known for.”
The two new flavors the Canton, Massachusetts-based chain plans to unveil are Eleven’s Heaven, a waffle cone-flavored ice cream with chocolate-coated sugar cone pieces and a chocolate-icing-flavored ribbon, and Upside Down Pralines, a chocolate ice cream with praline pecans and a chocolate-caramel flavored ribbon.
For those unfamiliar with the show, Eleven is the name of one of the key characters on Stranger Things, and the Upside Down is an alternate dimension on the series.
Baskin-Robbins and Netflix are also partnering to create a Scoops Ahoy ice-cream truck, a reference to the ice cream parlor that’s on the show. It will serve fans on the West Coast in June.
I’ve included the nutrition link for these specials. They’re entire meal portions in their own right. As snacks, they’d best be shared by two persons, so like don’t be strangers.
Upside Down Sundae —a sundae made with Upside Down Pralines, but built upside down with the toppings on the bottom
Demogorgon Sundae —a waffle bowl sundae that looks like a Demogorgon monster
Eleven’s Heaven Cone
Byers’ House Lights Polar Pizza Ice Cream Treat — a chocolate chip Polar Pizza crust with Snickers ice cream, topped with strings of fudge and M&Ms, Christmas lights, a reference to the lights hung up in the Byers’ home on the show
USS Butterscotch Quarts —butterscotch flavored ice cream with butterscotch toffee and a toffee ribbon
Stranger Things Pizza and Pints
Elevenade Freeze — a drink made with vanilla ice cream and Minute Maid lemonade
“When Netflix originally approached us about a partnership, we immediately recognized a number of fantastic synergies between Baskin-Robbins and ‘Stranger Things,’ including the fact that Steve Harrington was going to have a summer job at an ice cream shop,” said Dave Nagel, senior director of consumer engagement at Baskin-Robbins, referring to one of the show protagonists.
The ice-cream chain also will sell exclusive “Stranger Things” merchandise, such as a Steve Funko figure, 1980s-inspired magnets and sticker sets, and Stranger Things T-shirts. Fresh-packed ice cream also will be sold in four limited-edition take-home containers with show-related designs.
For Mother’s Day I had leftover cauliflower egg casserole. Leftovers are a mother thing, I suppose. When I was young, my brothers and I would cook our Mother a breakfast of sorts on Sunday morning. Daddy would have brought her coffee in bed, while we three messed up the kitchen making pancakes or scrambled eggs. Of course, she accepted our tribute with a gracious smile and ate it all, no matter what it actually tasted like.
Cauliflower Egg and Cheese Casserole
I’m not sure our measurements were as exact as hers. If my own young daughter’s use of salt for baking powder in a recipe is an example of thinking “they’re both white so they should act the same,” we might have mixed up our chemistry in the old kitchen back in the day also. At least we didn’t set the stove on fire, but our parents trusted us to cook unattended at an open flame even when I was ten, and my brothers were 8 and 5 years old. We’d been supervised much earlier, and “watched like a hawk” in that apprenticeship time, so if Dad strolled into the kitchen for refills, he could tell at a glance if we were on task or about to burn the house down.
I remember my Mother always ate the heel of the bread and took the last serving of any dish at the table. She let us have the choice of the best parts and took what was leftover. I once asked her about her willingness to be last, when the rest of us were falling all over each other to be first. She said, “This is my calling. This is what I do.” I think she sometimes felt unappreciated for this gift of humbleness, for when she was frayed down to her last strand, she’d swear “I’ll get more than one star in my crown when I get to heaven! I’ll shine so bright, I’ll be a whole constellation!”
We’d laugh and hug her, and Daddy would tell her she was still the best little mama ever, and she’d calm down again. Sometimes we don’t appreciate those who do the most for us, until they can’t do any more. We load up on a few good workers at the job site, but don’t train the rest to grow into those positions of responsibility. When these retire or move on, we are left bereft. Some bosses take on all their workers’ duties and then wonder why their help doesn’t do much. If we want to raise up responsible adults, we have to raise responsible young people. We get responsible young people by letting children learn to take small challenges according to their age and capabilities.
I know THEY say never make an untested dish for a party. That just takes the adventure and excitement out of the equation. This recipe was a little more complicated than my usual because I made it for a potluck at my condo this weekend. I used my imagination and prior experience to visualize the outcome. If you can’t taste and smell the recipe before you cook it, you need to keep looking for a recipe that excites and activates your senses.
Cauliflower Cake—cheese, egg, veggies casserole
Serves 4 to 6 Ingredients
• 1 small cauliflower, outer leaves removed, broken into 1 1/4-inch florets (about 4 cups)
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
• 1 medium red onion
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves
• Melted unsalted butter, for brushing
• 1 tablespoon white sesame seeds
• 1 teaspoon nigella (also known as black caraway), cumin, or black sesame seeds
• 7 large eggs
• 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, coarsely chopped (1/4 C dried basil)
• 1 1/2 cups coarsely grated Parmesan or aged cheese
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
• Freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
1. Arrange a rack in the middle of the oven and heat to 400°F. Meanwhile, prepare the cake.
2. PAN BOILED CAULIFLOWER—Place the cauliflower florets and 1 teaspoon of the salt in a medium saucepan. Cover with water and simmer over medium-high heat until the florets are quite soft, about 15 minutes. They should break when pressed with a spoon. Drain and set aside in a colander to dry.
3. ALTERNATIVE COOKING PROCESS—cut cauliflower into 1 inch pieces. Put into baking dish sprayed with Pam. Microwave on high for 3 minutes or until tender.
4. Cut 4 round slices, each 1/4-inch, off one end of the onion and set aside. Dice the rest of the onion and place in a small frying pan with the oil and rosemary. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.
5. Meanwhile, line the base and sides of a 9 1/2-inch springform pan with parchment paper. Brush the sides with melted butter, then mix together the sesame and other seeds and toss them around the inside of the pan so that they stick to the sides. (If you don’t have this pan, use regular pan lined with parchment paper, pan well sprayed with Pam, or make in muffin pan.)
6. Transfer the onion mixture to a large bowl. Add the eggs and basil and whisk well to combine. Add the cheese, flour, baking powder, turmeric, remaining 1 teaspoon salt, and plenty of pepper. Whisk until smooth. Add the cauliflower and stir gently, trying not to break up the florets.
7. Pour the cauliflower mixture into the pan, spreading it evenly, and arrange the reserved onion rings on top. Bake until golden brown and set, about 45 minutes. A knife inserted into the center of the cake should come out clean. Let cool at least 20 minutes before slicing and serving. It needs to be served just warm, rather than hot, or at room temperature.
Recipe Notes
Turmeric: substitute curry if you don’t have turmeric.
Baking pan options: If you don’t have a springform pan, you can just use a regular 9-inch cake pan or even an 8-inch square pan, but still line with parchment paper first. Or, just spray well with Pam. There’s enough oil in the recipe and cheese to keep the whole from sticking.
Storage: Leftovers can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.
Quitting junk food produces similar withdrawal-type symptoms as drug addiction. We common folk have known this for forty years, but now science has confirmed it. I visited my WayBack Machine to find the lyrics for this 1976 Golden Oldie: “Junk Food Junkie” by Larry Groce. The chorus goes like this:
Yeah, in the daytime I’m Mr. Natural
Just as healthy as I can be
But at night I’m a junk food junkie
Good Lord have pity on me!
Trigger Image for Junk Food Junkies
In the Kitchen, we know food eaten any time of the day or night affects our bodies for good or ill. When I was an art student, I had a roommate who thought fasting during the day and eating in the dark would help her maintain her weight. Half a century ago, we called this theory “unseen calories have zero calories.” She never figured out why she gained weight.
A University of Michigan study confirms what has long been suspected: highly processed foods like chocolate, pizza and French fries are among the most addictive. Moreover, highly processed foods are linked to addictive eating.
This is one of studies to examine specifically which foods may be implicated in “food addiction,” which has become of growing interest to scientists and consumers in light of the obesity epidemic. On my recent visit to Israel, we were eating wonderful Mediterranean foods at every meal. Some of my tour companions were “lusting for the flesh pots of Egypt,” or wishing they had a sausage and egg biscuit from McDonald’s on the first morning out. I chose not to eat with them again. No one needs to travel over 5,000 miles to eat the same food as home. Then again, these folks may have been experiencing withdrawal symptoms if they were accustomed to their daily fix.
Processed Foods
Previous studies in animals conclude that highly processed foods, or foods with added fat or refined carbohydrates (like white flour and sugar), may be capable of triggering addictive-like eating behavior. Clinical studies in humans have observed that some individuals meet the criteria for substance dependence when the substance is food.
Despite highly processed foods generally known to be highly tasty and preferred, it is unknown whether these types of foods can elicit addiction-like responses in humans, nor is it known which specific foods produce these responses, said Ashley Gearhardt, U-M assistant professor of psychology.
Unprocessed foods, with no added fat or refined carbohydrates like brown rice and salmon, were not associated with addictive-like eating behavior.
Cornie’s Kitchen Chicken Soup
Individuals with symptoms of food addiction or with higher body mass indexes reported greater problems with highly processed foods, suggesting some may be particularly sensitive to the possible “rewarding” properties of these foods, said Erica Schulte, a U-M psychology doctoral student and the study’s lead author.
“If properties of some foods are associated with addictive eating for some people, this may impact nutrition guidelines, as well as public policy initiatives such as marketing these foods to children,” Schulte said.
When my daughter was young, I limited our visits to fast food outlets to Friday nights after my work week was over. Mr. Microwave and. Mr. Crockpot provided meals during the week, and we grilled on the weekends. I grew up in a household with food and family at the table as a central part of our life. Food doesn’t have to be fancy, and leftovers were offered at least once a week as “druthers” night. Companionship was more important than the meal itself.
Nicole Avena, assistant professor of pharmacology and systems therapeutics at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and a co-author on the study, explained the significance of the findings. “This is a first step towards identifying specific foods, and properties of foods, which can trigger this addictive response,” she said. “This could help change the way we approach obesity treatment. It may not be a simple matter of ‘cutting back’ on certain foods, but rather, adopting methods used to curtail smoking, drinking and drug use.”
Future research should examine whether addictive foods are capable of triggering changes in brain circuitry and behavior like drugs of abuse, the researchers said.
If you plan to try and quit junk food, expect to suffer similar withdrawal-type symptoms—at least during the initial week—like addicts experience when they attempt to quit using drugs.
A study by University of Michigan is believed to be the first of its kind to evaluate withdrawal symptoms people incur when they stop devouring highly processed foods, such as pastries, French fries and pizza. Previous studies have focused on sugar withdrawal among animals and the literature regarding humans offered only anecdotal evidence, said Erica Schulte, the study’s lead author and U-M psychology doctoral candidate.
Processed food scientists design foods to hit a satiety point or “yum factor.” This involves adjusting foods to salt, fat, and sugar levels that meet consumer preferences, as well as enabling enhanced shelf life. Employing scientists to dissect elements of the palate and tweak ratios of salt, sugar and fat to optimize taste, the processed food industry, Michael Moss says, has hooked consumers on their products the same way the cigarette industry hooked smokers on nicotine.
What all researchers can agree upon is that the addictive qualities of tobacco, drugs or alcohol affect the brain similarly and cutting back can lead to negative side effects that can make it difficult to reduce intake. Anxiety, headaches, irritability and depression are some of those outcomes.
Understanding whether withdrawal may also occur with highly processed foods was an essential next step in evaluating whether these foods might be capable of triggering similar addictive processes.
Schulte and colleagues created the first self-report tool to measure the physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms among people, then asked 231 adults to report what happened when they reduced the amount of highly processed foods they ate in the past year.
The participants reported that sadness, irritability, tiredness and cravings peaked during the initial two to five days after they quit eating junk food, then the negative side effects tapered off, which parallels the time course of drug withdrawal symptoms, the study found.
The U-M researchers did not focus on the method used to change their eating behavior, such as participants quitting “cold turkey” or gradually phasing out junk food. Schulte said future studies will analyze the behavior in real time rather than a retrospective approach as in the current findings.
The study implications suggest that withdrawal symptoms may make dietary changes challenging, which may contribute to people reverting back to bad eating habits, said Ashley Gearhardt, associate professor of psychology and co-author, along with U-M graduates Julia Smeal and Jessi Lewis.
Bottom line is the processed food industry designs their products to keep you eating them. When you hear their siren call, it’s best to put plugs in your ears and row on by. Choose frozen bananas and cocoa powder, with almonds, and add some protein powder if you need a little extra oomph. Enjoy each spoonful slowly. Drink flavored tea. I like hibiscus green tea, mostly decaf over ice. We can do this!
More information: Erica M. Schulte et al. Development of the Highly Processed Food Withdrawal Scale, Appetite (2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2018.09.013
Provided by University of Michigan
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