Aside from bacon, lettuce and tomato, what makes the perfect BLT? Balance.
Because there are so few ingredients, each must be carefully weighed against the other: building the sandwich is not entirely dissimilar to building, well, a building. Or, if you're unlucky, a house of cards. Joy the Baker is well-aware of the perils concealed within the bready confines of a BLT, and has, if this picture is any indication, overcome the challenges to construct a real winner. Crispy bacon, thin slices of tomato, some crunchy lettuce and a smear of roasted red pepper mayonnaise on lightly toasted bread: this baby has enough balance to qualify for the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team -- or, failing that, a very tasty lunch.
I feel like I'm revealing some deep, dark secret, but here goes: I microwave my salads.
Now, this isn't because I like my lettuce and carrots and salad dressing really hot, it's because of bacteria. I started doing this a couple of years ago, when we had all those recalls and scares involving pre-made bagged salads and spinach. I make my salad on a plate then zap it for about 20 seconds. Just enough to kill something but not make the salad get hot and shrivel.
Now, I have to stress that I have no idea if 20 seconds in the microwave will even do anything to destroy bacteria, but it makes me feel good anyway.
One of my favorite cookbooks is The Comfort Diner Cookbook, by Ira Freehoff and Pia Catton. It has a ton of comfort food recipes from the famed New York City eating establishment, everything from classic American sandwiches and breakfasts to pies and other desserts and great side dishes. This one sounds especially intriguing. It's the Cobb Salad Sandwich. Hey, why have a salad as a salad if you can have it as a sandwich?
There's something about this photo of a salad that calls out to me. The bright yellow of the broken egg yolk, contrasted against the neatly cut bits of bacon and the tangle of greens. Topped with a dusting of black pepper, nothing would make me happier than if someone would put this down in front of me and hand me a fork. There's even a blog post about it here.
If you've made a gorgeous salad lately, you should head on over to the Slashfood Flickr group and share your creation. Maybe it will even end up featured in this space!
We've heard those stories of spiders being found in imported grapes, but this one is new to me.
A woman in Brooklyn, NY was startled when a frog jumped out of her organic lettuce. That's right, not only was there a frog in a head of lettuce the woman bought at the Park Slope Food Coop, it was actually alive, surviving the trip from Florida to New York.
As you can see from the pic, it wasn't a big frog like you'd find in a swamp or lake, but still, must have been freaky.
As a company, once you find a marketing strategy that works, you usually stick with it. Nike had the swoosh, milk has the mustaches, and PETA? Well, they have naked women.
Over the years, PETA has used women celebs like Alicia Silverstone, Eva Mendes, and Cindy Crawford to encourage the masses not to wear fur or eat meat. And while they've gotten a lot of flak, they continue to pay women to drop trou for the good of the animals.
Today in Philadelphia, PETA's "lettuce ladies" (women wearing little more than lettuce-shaped undergarments) will be handing out soy turkey sandwiches to promote the company's "Turn over a new leaf: go vegetarian" campaign.
A few points that should be noted, here: PETA rarely uses men to advertise its messages. It did use MTV Jackass' Steve-O, who was nude, but the ad a) only showed his backside and b) was quite obviously in jest, poking fun at the typical oversexed PETA model and keeping in vein with the show's brand of humor. Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix have also done commercial spots for the organization - fully clothed. Somehow, I wonder if the effectiveness of the message is lost when we're too busy ogling Pam Anderson's generous chest to worry about what she's promoting.
Now, I'm all for soy products, either as meat replacements or as an addition to a healthy diet. Isn't it fascinating how, in campaigning to stop exploiting one living thing, another is exploited in its place? Maybe PETA should stop pointing its fingers at others for a second and turn the magnifying glass on itself.
I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a book extolling the virtues of eating locally (and the horrors of eating veggies trucked in from California, Chile, and other places far afield). Beyond simply pushing organic food or a vegetarian lifestyle, Kingsolver suggests that eating foods grown locally, in season, by farmers using sustainable practices can, basically, save the world -- not to mention, be delicious. I've swallowed her pitch hook, line, and heirloom potato, and have begun deeply rethinking our family's grocery lists. Starting this process in the dead of winter is a challenge, and "the sustainable food project" is my way of sharing the struggle with you.
The sandwich, a staple of my family's diet, is a particularly interesting problem. Were I to open a pictorial culinary dictionary under "S," I'd imagine a photo of bread, meat, tomato, lettuce, mayo. But fresh red tomatoes and leafy green lettuce are anything but in season in Oregon, where I live -- and the vast majority of the U.S. and Europe for the next several months. Because it's easy to find a sustainably-farmed source, we've been eating lots of beef, ham, and crusty local bread, but what else?
I've been able to find lots of delicious, flavorful options utilizing local, organic produce.
Though you could easily serve this for dinner, any "sandwich" that includes bacon, lettuce, and tomato automatically makes me think lunch. Either way, this twist on an old standard is enough to make me want to thaw out a steak and fire up the grill at noon hour.
Made without bread of any kind, this BLT Steak sandwich prepared by myamii at For the Love of Food is definitely friendly to those of you who are avoiding carbs but still want a flavorful, hearty meal.
In light of the E. coli and botulismproblems over the past few months that have been linked to California growers, there has been a proposal that new standards should be implemented to ensure that consumers will feel safe and comfortable buying California produce. Most growers have already increased the amount of oversight that their produce recieives, but the new plan involves the creaton of a "seal of approval" for all leafy vegetables. The standards for the seal have not yet been determined, but growers and lawmakers plan to iron out the details later this spring. Issues being considered are how to more effectively test irrigation water and how to keep livestock, primarily cattle, away from cropland.
In spite of the fact that there is no actual plan in place yet, the idea of a "seal of approval" is already being met with opposition, with critics saying that "the industry's proposal relies too heavily on policing itself." This could be a strong argument in other industries, but when it comes to food safety, no one wants to make sure consumers are protected more than the growers whose livelihoods depend on consumer satisfaction with, and confidence in, their products.
Not all appetite suppressants come in pill form. After all, food itself is an appetite suppressant. The trick is not to used hamburgers and macaroni and cheese, but to opt for more filling and less fattening alternatives. Fortunately, it is actually easy to incorporate some of these filling foods into your regular diet without totally changing the way you eat and without giving in to temptation too often.
Registered dietitians recommend high fiber, low fat foods as the best ways to fill up without filling out. Some top choices are:
Pine nuts -- fatty acids in pine nuts trigger the release cholecystokinin (CKK), a hormone that could help suppress appetite.
Spicy foods -- can boost your metabolism and "dull your taste buds so you're apt to eat less." On the positive side, the spices will taste great even if whatever you're tempted to eat after doesn't.
Apples -- high fiber, low calorie. They have more fiber per bite than other fruits and one before a meal can help speed satiety.
Milk -- the research is still up in the air, but some scientists think that the calcium in dairy can help break down fat.
Light greens -- cabbage, celery and lettuce (as well as cucumbers) are very low in calories and can be added to most meals or salads to bulk them up.
In addition to the recalls on California-grown spinach and lettuce on recent weeks, there have also been three cases of botulism liked to carrot juice produced in California, two in Canada and one in the US. It may seem as though the golden state is a hotbed of disreputable produce, but in fact so much is grown in the state that these incidents should hardly be enough to provoke widespread panic.
As much as 80% of Canadian produce, and a huge amount of US produce, comes from California and, though these few cases are certainly discouraging, the vast majority of it is fine. Companies are working to eliminate the possibility of E.coli contamination in their processing centers. Botulism is from a naturally occurring organism found in soil and, with most produce, processing should eliminate any and all traces of it from food. Raw vegetables, particularly "sugary, root vegetables " like carrots, still carry a risk factor, which is how it got in to the carrot juice in the first place.
Trying for locally grown products can provide some piece of mind, but local farmers can have the same problems, for example, by potentially exposing their crops to E.coli by using manure as fertilizer. To reduce any risks as much as possible, especially when there has been a recall of any kind, wash everything as well as you can and, if seriously in doubt, you can always cook you vegetables instead of eating them raw, which will increase the chances of killing off anything undesirable that might be in them.
We looked at a couple of spinach alternatives last week, but with the new warnings against lettuce, we're starting to reevaluate some of our salad options. After all, it is always good to have a backup plan, even though no one has become sick as a result of contaminated lettuce at this time. NPR has several suggestions for alternatives to typical salad greens. Their picks include arugula, baby bok choi, swiss chard, collard greens, watercress, cabbage and brussel sprout petals. Chef Patrick O'Connell came up with recipes for all of these alternatives, too.
The only potential drawback of this list is that most of the salads/sides are actually hot dishes, and not what you would necessarily expect to stand in for a pre-dinner salad. Fortunately, with fall and winter on the way, a warm salad can be very satisfying and this is a good opportunity to try a few new greens in a new way, such as Braised Baby Bok Choy or Brussel Sprout Petals with Coriander Vinaigrette.
Bagged greens usually state that they are pre-washed and ready to eat on their labels, but that doesn't mean that they are edible. In their most recent issue, Consumer Reports tested several types of bagged salad mixes for the "yuck factor," the phrase that they used to describe the percentage of the "ready to eat" greens that were wilted or otherwise inedible. It turned out that there was a lot of yucky stuff. Out of the 62 bags that they meticulously tested, inedible greens ranged from .5% to 83% of the salads and "the vast majority had 'off' odors, smelling like rotten vegetables, sauerkraut or chlorine... [or] imitation crab meat." Needless to say, they recommended buying greens and making your own salad mixes, or at least washing the bagged greens before eating them. Besides, as they rightly point out, it is less expensive to chop up your own lettuce - especially if you're going to have to throw away a portion of the bagged stuff that isn't as fresh as it should be.
Spinach salads are out for the moment, unless you feel like taking chances that even restaurants aren't willing to. Supermarkets are reporting a big drop in salad sales, but there is no reason to cut all greens out of your diet along with spinach. Now is the perfect time to experiment with some non-spinach salad greens. Some alternatives include:
Mâche - delicate, sweet and slightly nutty. It resembles a cross between young spinach and a tender lettuce.
Arugula - peppery and sharp. This green makes a great background for salads with sweet fruits or mild nuts in them
Chard - tender and sweet when cooked. Chard is a great alternative for spinach in cooked dishes (unless you opt for frozen spinach, which the USDA says is still safe to eat at the moment).
Dandelion Greens - sharper and more bitter than arugula. These are best when mixed with other greens, but choose smaller, more delicate leaves for salads
Romaine and iceberg lettuces can always stand in for other greens in salads, too, and can be a nice base for a salad when experimenting with other greens, particularly bitter greens.
One of my favorite cookbooks is 
We've heard those stories of spiders being found in imported grapes, but this one is new to me.
I've been reading 
Writer and editor Jade Walker posts a favorite recipe on her web site every once in a while, and 
In light of the 
Not all appetite suppressants come in pill form. After all, food itself is an appetite suppressant. The trick is not to used hamburgers and macaroni and cheese, but to opt for more filling and less fattening alternatives. Fortunately, it is actually easy to incorporate some of 
In addition to the recalls on California-grown 
We looked at a couple of 
Bagged greens usually state that they are pre-washed and ready to eat on their labels, but that doesn't mean that they are edible. In their most recent issue, 
Spinach salads are 
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