Take two veggies and call me in the morning

A lot of patients ask me to make specific diet recommendations, either to prevent or treat cancer. After all, we eat three times a day, so patients assume doctors know all about the relationship of diet to health and disease.

I'm sorry to say, you could fill an encyclopedia with what we don't know about diet. There is a lot we have left to learn.

In this knowledge vacuum has sprung up a cottage industry of books, websites, and advisors telling you what to eat for better health (you know what they say about nature despising a vacuum!). Usually, these authors and "gurus" have some sort of supplement they are trying to sell you. I had a patient get a dietary consultation at UCLA Medical Center that concluded with a purchase of dietary supplements--I was shocked!

In medical school, they teach you a reductionistic approach to food: everything we eat is some combination of carbohydrate, fat, protein, vitamin, or mineral. Scientists have been trying for at least 100 years to isolate the components of food responsible for good health. This task dates back to the discovery of Vitamin C in the prevention of scurvy, and while there have been many important discoveries along the way, we have yet to distill the natural goodness of vegetables into a pill. I guess if you're going to space and need to save room for oxygen, it makes sense to create freeze-dried ice cream and Tang. For the rest of us, why do we need to do that to ourselves?

Michael Pollan points out in "The Omnivore's Dilemma" that it may very well be impossible to tease out the specific health benefits of particular foods. He suggests that food reductionism is perhaps the wrong approach--rather than trying to isolate the active agent in each food, we should just try for comprehensiveness with a broad variety of foods in our diet. I personally think we should choose variety in our diet, but also continue to isolate active compounds, since this has brought about spectacular successes in antibiotics and chemotherapy.

One thing's certain: when we process food, we remove a lot of these beneficial compounds. The idea that we can add these lost nutrients into food later perhaps is good for the food industry, but maybe not so good for human health. So a box of fruits and veggies gives all the vitamins in the health food stores, plus many others still unknown to science.

Don't even get me started on "antioxidants." I'm not sure what the health benefits of these chemicals are supposed to be. Yet there are many people in the community who slavishly adhere to these, whether in the form of Acai juice, or "Superfoods," or pill supplements.

Pill supplements, for that matter, are suspect in my mind. Vitamins are not regulated by the FDA the same way medicines are, so unless the label says "USP," you can't assume that what's in the bottle is what's on the label. From time to time, you hear stories about supplement pills that contain forbidden substances, as in the famous PC-SPES case, where a prostate cancer supplement contained medicinal blood thinners and hormones! Pill supplements can also be pretty expensive, and do not carry with them the social benefits of food. One could argue that food is the glue that holds civilization together; supplements, not so much.

So probably the best advice comes also from Pollan, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Getting a box full of fresh fruits and vegetables every so often seems like an easy way to follow these reasonable rules.

I have schlepped to the farmer's market, and while it's fun to interact with the people who are growing your food, I never seem to come home with much to eat for $20 or so. Also, there's the crowds, and the time commitment: of course Saturday is for Shabbat, not buying veggies!

While veggies in a pill might not be too far off in the future (a patient actually brought me a bottle of these types of pills!), fruit and vegetable boxes can give you thousands plant nutrients in their most potent form, without even having to get in the car!

Eat Leeks

History. Nutrition. Biology. Tips. Buying. Storing. Preparing.

Cock-a-Leekie Soup

Leeks with Three Mustard and Cheese Sauce

Stuffed Jacket Potatoes with Leeks, Cheddar and Boursin

http://www.eattheseasons.com/Archive/leeks.htm

What is this manna business? We want our leeks!

My house is a mess. We decided, with obvious disregard for sanity, to begin an increasingly involved home improvement project the week of Thanksgiving. Anticipated date of completion: the tenth of never.

Now, I can be a "big picture" kind of girl when the need arises. I can look past the exposed drywall and sundry opportunities to test out that recent tetanus shot, but when I am without access to my kitchen for too long I get a little twitchy. I scheduled my first produce delivery to coincide with the excavation of the business part of the kitchen and when the box arrived, I pushed aside piles of plastic sheeting and swept up the chunks of construction debris that only the dog finds edible (drywall, why???) to set about controlling my otherwise chaotic environment the only way I know how - cooking. (Well, cooking and the occasional carafe of wine.)

This week's box, as my fellow "Valley-Boxers" know, contained some citrus, broccoli, bok choi, and a glorious assortment of greens. Taking up the length of the box (and a fair amount of it's weight) was the most ridiculously huge pair of leeks I have ever seen. Not the anemic, pale leeks one sees at the market, but beautiful very green and very white leeks. (Lest you think I am waxing a little too poetic about leeks, please know that in my research to find leek recipes and lore I found a biblical reference to them. Apparently, the Israelites were so enamored of the leek that when they were complaining about their shriveled gullets out in the post-exodus wilderness, one of the highlights of Egyptian cuisine specifically mentioned was the leek.)

Leeks are, for me, one of those vegetables that I don't buy unless I need too. The rest of the veggies in the box were ones that I use regularly and can easily incorporate into any weeknight meal. I really didn't have any immediate plans to make vichyssoise. So what to do?

After a little research and a whole lot of therapeutic cooking I determined that a.) those two, freakishly large leeks were not nearly enough, b.) although it was probably poor form to complain about the manna, the Israelites were on to something with the leek thing, and c.) the simplest preparations are usually the best - and most comforting.

Here is a recipe for leeks that is quick, easy to incorporate into a meal, and open to additions and interpretations. *

Sauteed Leeks

8 cups leeks (cleaned and cut)

1 clove garlic, smashed or minced

2 Tbsp olive oil

1/4 cup dry white wine

1/4 chicken stock (I am one of those freaks who has home made in the freezer, but canned works just fine)

salt and pepper to taste

Clean the leeks and drain well. Heat a large pan and saute the garlic. Add the leeks and saute until they begin to collapse. (Not too wilted, they will lose the lovely, sweet leek flavor). Add remaining ingredients and cook, uncovered, until the leeks are just tender.

*Interpretations/additions

Use more garlic to taste. I made this with three cloves and it was great. If wine is an issue, lose the wine and make up the difference in stock. Make sure to add a liberal dash of vinegar or lemon juice to make up for the acid lost when not using the wine. If you want to make this part of a dairy meal, use vegetable broth instead of chicken. And finally, red pepper flakes or a squirt of Sriracha Hot Sauce make a nice addition, if you're the spicy sort.

Roast Turnips with Leeks and Pumpkin - from The Silver Spoon cookbook

7 oz*. pumpkin (or orange fleshed squash) sliced

1 tsp fresh thyme

3 Tbsp olive oil, plus extra for drizzling

7 oz. leeks, white parts only, sliced

11 oz. turnips, trimmed and sliced

2 tsp sesame seeds

salt

Preheat oven to 400. Place pumpkin slices on a sheet of foil, season with salt and thyme. Fold foil to enclose pumpkin completely, place on a cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes. Heat the oil in a large pan, add the leeks and turnips and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until tender. Add the pumpkin and cook for a few minutes more. Sprinkle with the sesame seeds and drizzle with olive oil and serve.

*"What is this?", you say. "Measurements in weight, not volume??" Get a scale. Some are less than $30 and really go a long way in the kitchen. Especially with European cookbooks and most definitely with baking. Do it. Now. I mean it.

Why do we Eat our Tradition?

After 3 days of Hannukkah celebrations, I find myself thinking about how much I ate the past three days, and how I am going to make it through the next 5 without pushing the scale over the limit.

Why is it that we have so many traditions with symbols that show up on the table? At Passover we have a menu full of symbolic foods to go through during the seder, enhanced by ethnic additions and variations. At Shavuot we eat dairy dishes. And now, at Hannukkah, we are celebrating the miracle of the oil lasting 8 days by eating foods cooked in buckets of it. In our day and age, this is so opposite of what most of us strive to do while cooking and feeding our families. I do not know the answer to this, but am hoping some of you out there can offer up some reasons and opinions. How is it that food can cross some magical barrier and children and adults alike learn more easily through the use of food in teaching about our traditions? Is there a connection between eating and learning?

Another thing to think about is how this has evolved. Obviously, throughout the ages Jews' access to foods has waxed and waned. In times of abundance, the symbolic eating of special foods must have been relatively easy, like it is today. Preparing rich dishes was a symbol of wealth and status. During times when the Jews were oppressed, the pursuit of even a small bit of a symbolic food must have been all consuming. Today in our community, we hunt around The Valley to find just the right sufganyot, the best brisket, special items directly from Israel for our feasts. We offer up recommendations to all who will listen. We try new recipes to impress our friends and satisfy our families. We make recipes passed down for generations. It makes us feel connected to our tradition. Is this the answer to my question in the preceding paragraph? If yes, how can we tweak things so that food is not so central to our celebrations? What are we learning from the cooking and eating that we can also learn another way?

I am looking for some new traditions related to food. This year I have made zucchini latkes, and also oven baked potato latkes. They were actually refreshing after having the deep fried kind. But this still does not take away from the fact that the food is often central to the celebration at our house. And I am still having a hard time staying out of the kitchen and not noshing!

Sometimes it is not good for your body, but good for the soul

Okay, so they are fried but they can evoke warm memories of your childhood and that is always good for the soul! I have posted a link for 18 different latke recipes. stick to what you know or try something new.

Happy Hanukkah!

http://www.latimes.com/theguide/holiday-guide/food/la-fo-latkes-pictures,0,1828614.photogallery?index=la-fo-veggielatkes_ktofhqnc-picture

Eco-kashrut supporters turn attention to kosher meat

Here is an interesting article printed by the Jewish Journal on December 20th of 2007 regarding kosher meat.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/articles/article/ecokashrut_supporters_turn_attention_to_kosher_meat_20071221/

When Life Gives You Lemons……and Limes…… and oranges....

So today’s shipment of produce arrived. It has many many...lemons and limes and oranges. I was prepared for this because I checked online to see what I would be getting. I looked up a recipe I once made, a DELICIOUS lemon curd tart. So that is what I am planning to do for Shabbat dessert. The beauty of lemon curd is that you can use it to fill a variety of things, like a premade pie crust, mini tarts, or put it in small ceramic dishes and eat it like pudding. You can also dip strawberries in it or spread it on bread. If you have not tried it, it is amazing!

Lemon curd also, however, contains a lot of butter and eggs. So I did a little research on how we can lesson the caloric impact. I found a fantastic and easy sounding vegan lemon curd recipe that I am going to try. Don’t let the term Vegan scare you! It used to scare me, and conjure up images of alfalfa sprout sandwiches and tofu encrusted, well, tofu, but I recently learned that it simply means free of animal products. To me, that means lo cal and healthy. Without further rambling, here is a recipe for Vegan Lemon Curd, followed by a the first recipe for Lime Curd that I have made, from THE Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, containing all the butter and eggs you could want. You may use lemon, lime, or orange juice and zest in both recipes.
I am going to see how the Vegan version stands up to Ina's tried and true recipe.

Vegan Lemon Curd

see Related Sites for link to recipe at Dairy Free Cooking About.com


1 ¼ C. Lemon Juice
1 ¼ C. Sugar
2 Tablespoons Zest
¼ teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons coconut milk
3 Tablespoons cornstarch dissolved in 3 Tablespoons cold water
2 Tablespoons Soy Margarine, like Earth Balance Brand, divided

Mix first 4 ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves

Add Cornstarch and Coconut Milk, stir for about 8 minutes
Add Margarine, stir until resembles thick pudding. Cool outside fridge to room temperature, then chill in fridge. Fill piecrusts or whatever you are planning to fill, then chill.

Can be made a day or 2 ahead of time

Barefoot Contessa Lime Curd

4 limes at room temperature
1 ½ Cups Sugar
¼ pound unsalted butter at room temp
4extra large eggs at room temp
1/8 tsp salt

Fills 1 10 inch tart shell or 5 4 ½ inch tart shells

Remove the zest of 4 limes with a vegetable peeler or zester. Squeeze the limes to make ½ cup of juice and set aside. Put zest in food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the sugar and process for 2-3 minutes, until the zest is very finely minced. Cream the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, and add in the sugar and zest. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and then add the juice and salt. Mizx until combined. Pour the mixture into a 2 quart saucepan and cook over low heat , stirring constantly, until thickened, about 10 minutes. The lime curd will thicken at about 175 degrees, or just below a simmer. Remove from heat and set aside. Fill the tart shells or whatever you are using and allow to set at room temperature. Store in refridgerator and bring to room temperature before serving.

Community Gardening Event Hosted at Brandeis Bardin in Simi Valley

When: Dec. 6, 10:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Where: Brandeis Bardin Campus in Simi Valley
WHO: Everyone interested in food!

This will be an hands on workshop with the focus on

micro irrigation -- small plastic tubing that snaps together and waters exactly what you want and no more)
composting -- this is probably the easiest gardening activity to do and the one that creates the most anxiety
building upraised beds -- you will actually make an upraised garden bed!
garden tools -- from hand shovel to rototiller, we'll show you what everything is and how to use it properly

If you have the time, please bring lunch and drink with you. We will stop working around noon and retire to a picnic area to eat, reflect on the morning's experiences and learn a "bissel" of Torah.

DRIVING DIRECTIONS

118 West to Tapo Canyon Road Exit
Turn left onto Tapo Canyon Rd. (south)and go straight until you arrive at the Brandeis Bardin Campus (about 2 miles)
-- once on Tapo Canyon Rd, you will drive through stoplight intersections at Cochran and then at Los Angles Blvd. / continue .3 mile to stop sign at Royal; continue .1 mile to stop sign at Tapo St. --- directly in front of you will be an American Jewish University sign / continue to gate where someone will let you through and direct you to the parking area for our garden program.

It's always good to bring sun hat, water bottle, sun glasses (and coat for early morning).