My Daughter’s First Food

From LISA BARNES

Do you eat a lot of jarred, canned, or processed food? If the answer is no, then why should your baby? The foods you give your baby now, in the earliest months, will help shape your child’s taste for many years to come.

If you feed your baby only bland, processed jarred baby food and cereal, your baby will become accustomed to bland, processed food. On the other hand, if you feed your baby a variety of fresh fruits, vegetables, grains, and meats flavored with herbs and spices, you are priming his palate for a lifetime of healthful eating habits and culinary enjoyment. The benefits of making baby food at home are numerous.

• It’s unadulterated You know exactly what goes into the food you make; there aren’t any preservatives or fillers.

• It’s more versatile Homemade puree can be diluted with breast milk, formula, or vegetable-cooking water for extra nutrition. As your baby grows, you can make his food just as thick and chunky as he can handle, helping his eating skills progress naturally.

• It’s more varied Not every vegetable, fruit, grain, or meat is available in the form of store-bought baby food. But you can cook and puree any food you and baby like.

• It’s more nutritious Jarred baby food is heated to extremely high temperatures during processing, which destroys certain heat-sensitive vitamins more thoroughly than ordinary cooking does.

Of course. prepared baby food is a convenience and might play a role in any family pantry. But for parents who enjoy cooking and eating good meals, there is no reason not to include baby and start exposing him to the kinds of foods he will soon eat along with the rest of the family.

Making homemade baby food does require time and energy, both in short supply when you have a new infant. but by cooking in batches and freezing food, you can make homemade baby food nearly as convenient as jarred.
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Organic Living

To reduce your baby’s exposure to toxins, choose organic ingredients for baby food whenever possible. It is especially important to purchase organic thin-skinned fruits and vegetables, such as apples or potatoes, since these absorb pesticides more readily than other produce. It is also wise to buy organic versions of fatty foods such as meats, dairy, and oils. Pesticides and other environmental toxins tend to be stored in fat cells.
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From MELINDA HEMMELGARN, M,S., R.D
Food Sleuth

This morning I received an email from a friend. Lisa and her husband, John, are writing a cook book and they’ve been debating the term “health.” They wanted to know how I defined “healthy food,” and if their food and recipes fit with my definition.

“Granted,” Lisa wrote, “a lot of it boils down to marketing and word choice, but we don’t want to appear/be something we are not either.”

This is why I love Lisa and John. They have integrity. They think critically. And let me assure you, their home grown food IS “healthy.”

However, depending on the diet-of-the-decade, headline-of-the-week or nutrient-du-jour, Americans’ perceptions of “healthy” are largely driven by billion dollar ad campaigns. We learn early on that “healthy” foods are low in fat, sugar and calories. They carry labels bearing “lite,” “fat free,” “low carb,” and “diet.” Rarely are farming or processing methods part of the discussion.

Let’s take a closer look at fat. Avocadoes, nuts and olive oil are laced with critical nutrients. Should we give them up because they’re” high in fat?” Heavens NO!

Step into my kitchen and I’ll show you how to bake the best pie crusts — with a mixture of organic lard and butter and whole wheat organic pastry flour. I top them with organic whipped cream, never a “lite” fake whipped topping. Organic fat is “safe fat” I tell my guests as I offer cream with their fairly-traded, organic and shade-grown coffee. That’s because fat soluble pesticides tend to settle in an animal’s fat tissue. “Healthy” food is free of pesticide residues.

Plus, a little bit of fat makes food more palatable. “Moderation” is key here. And if you want an easy lesson on moderation, check the plate and bowl sizes of your grandmother’s china.

As for carbohydrates, organic whole grains fit my “healthy” definition. I prefer to buy them directly from my farmer, or scooped out of a cooperative grocery bin to cut down on package waste. Healthy food doesn’t burden the environment with excessive waste and it gives farmers a fair cut on their labor. more→

From GENE LOGSDON

I could just hug all the people who have sent in stories about moving farm animals. When webmaster Dave Smith urged me to write a blog, I had no idea that through it I would discover so many kindred souls. Writing has never been this much fun before.

I wonder how many of you are aware that although your adventures with hauling animals may be amusing or even pathetic at times, they are also a continuation of one of human culture’s central themes. Humans have been driving animals by every conceivable method available for as long as food has had to be moved from producer to consumer. That goes back at least to those shepherds on the hills above Bethlehem. Our whole “western” epic, based on our once popular icon, the cowboy, is an outgrowth of our essential need to drive animals from point A to point B. There used to be quite a successful magazine called “The Drover’s Journal.” The cowboy did not start in Texas and Kansas and the Great Plains as we are inclined to think, but in the East. It is an epic for all of America and before that all of Europe and Asia too. Dave Harpster, whose tombstone I pass every time I go to town, was an authentic eastern cowboy, riding a horse and driving cattle and sheep hundreds of miles from the nearby village named after him to Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburg and Cleveland. We might think today that moving a goat in a station wagon is preposterous, but there were far stranger strategies in those bygone days. Sometimes the drovers stitched their pigs’ eyes shut because it was easier to move them blind down the trail. (I go into all this is a big way playing cultural historian in “The Mother of All Arts” in case you want to take a look deeper into this part of our history.) The bottom line is that all of us trying to recreate a thriving pastoral garden society today are really carrying on an ancient tradition. That’s why the lonesome cowboy is central to American culture and the good shepherd is central to Christian religion. As hilarious as our escapades sometimes are, we are paying homage to an elemental activity of human survival.

One of my fondest early memories is not only “playing cowboy” with my siblings on our pasture hills and singing those “western” songs I still love, but actually driving animals overland as in the days of yore. Every summer for awhile, we would drive our sheep from our pastures to another of my Grandfather Rall’s farms. Mostly because I was steeped in the kind of cowboy lore put forth in movies, this was the most exciting event of the year. We drove the sheep down our country road to the highway, and on a couple of miles to another country road. The whole distance was about four miles but it seemed like all the way from Abilene to Fort Dodge to me. It was easy to drive the sheep along that route because the roads were all flanked by fences in those days. Neighbors were informed ahead of time and they would stand along the road in front of their homes to make sure the sheep did not swerve into their yards. But the sheep, headed by old ewes familiar with previous drives, knew where they were expected to go most of the time. Traffic on the highway was sparse in those days and those who traveled it were almost all sons and daughters of our rural lifestyle and obligingly stopped until the flock had passed—or even helped with the driving.

I was always Gene Autry or Roy Rogers in my mind. And I didn’t even know that these actors were more than fancy Dans in the brocaded shirts of the Hollywood cowboy. Roy Rogers actually grew up and worked on farms in southern Ohio. What was more ironic is that even as I walked or trotted behind our sheep on the annual drive, I had no idea that less than half a mile away from the roadside trail, a real cowboy, Dave Harpster, lay buried.

And now I’m thinking, as I drive my sheep from one rotational pasture to another, that if we can pay attention to the new direction the real economy is taking us, we just might unbury old Dave into a new kind of cowboy culture that won’t be so lonesome.
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From Cooking Up a Story

Sustainable, abundant, inexpensive, and healthy to eat

I recently read the New York Times article, In Maine, Last Sardine Cannery in the U.S. Is Clattering Out about the sardine processing plant that was to close it’s doors, and can it’s last sardine. It’s final day was to be this Sunday, April 18th. Fortunately an undisclosed entity recently made an offer on the facility, great news for the community and the longtime employees of the Stinson Plant in Prospect Harbor, though they have stated they will no longer will be processing sardines.

No reprieve for the canned sardine, but what about fresh sardines? Since sardines are especially healthy to eat, are in large natural abundance, and can be fished sustainably – I wanted to find out more why they weren’t readily available for purchase. I understand the Pacific sardine populations have returned, and in California it is one of the top landed fish for the commercial fishing industry (the other being squid, aka calamari). But I can’t find sardines at my local grocery store, nor at my local farmers market. A nearby seafood market carries them on occasion, but only when they are available from the California fishery.

I spoke with Mike Sutton, Vice President of the Monterey Bay Aquarium., and when I asked about the lack of sources to purchase sardines, he said, “The secret that nobody seems to recognize is that the fishery, which was depleted back in those days has fully recovered, sardines are back, and we’re still fishing the heck out of them, but we don’t eat them anymore. Instead, most of the sardines that we fish today go for livestock feed, or tuna. Increasingly the sardines goes for aquaculture feeds.

“But Americans have stopped eating sardines, and it’s one of the tragedies of seafood today, really, because sardines are among the best possible seafoods for human consumption. Not only are they good for the environment because they are low on the food chain, they’re abundant, but they’re also good for you, good for us! They’re high in Omega 3’s, they’re not contaminated unlike tuna, swordfish, et al. Pregnant women can eat sardines until the cows come home.”

Sutton continued, “we have a new Super Green list on our Seafood Watch program. We’ve always had the Green, Red, and Yellow list; but super Green means good for the environment and good for you. Healthy and environmentally friendly choice. And sardines are at the top of that list.”

He also mentioned the Sardinistas – an underground guerrilla movement to “return the Pacific sardine to the American palette.” A big task for such a small group: himself, a businessman, a fisherman, and a filmmaker. But they are determined. “Like any guerrilla movement it’s an uphill battle. And that’s because most people do not like sardines. [why is that?] I think it’s because they taste fishy. People now, when they think of sardines, they think of a tin of sardines in oil. They don’t smell good, they don’t taste good, people have just gotten used to not liking sardines. We need the mass market to be interested in sardines the way it’s interested in canned tuna. And that’s a long haul.”

In an earlier time, Sutton related, Americans consumed fresh sardines; they were one of the principle foods fed to our World War 1 soldiers. Maybe it’s time to re-enlist the sardine back into the American culinary diet.

More with video at Cooking Up A Story→
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Image Credit © Kentannenbaum | Dreamstime.com
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From GREG ATKINSON

The simplicity of baked custard demands that the ingredients be of the very highest quality. Take time to seek out the best cream, eggs, and sugar. Most supermarkets carry organic brands of these basic ingredients, but there are variations between brands. Allow yourself time to compare, and choose the ones you like best.

Makes 6 servings

1½ cups organic whole milk
¾ cup organic heavy cream
2 large organic free-range eggs
2 yolks from organic free-range eggs
½ cup organic turbinado sugar or pure maple sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
Freshly grated nutmeg to taste

1. Put 6 custard cups in a baking dish, and preheat the oven to 350ºF.

2. In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stir the milk and cream until the liquid is steaming hot but not boiling.

3. Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, sugar, and salt. You may wish to slip in the vanilla and nutmeg as well.

4. Whisk about 2 cups of the steaming hot milk into the egg mixture, then stir all of the egg mixture into the remaining milk in the saucepan. Stir gently until well combined, then transfer the custard to the custard cups.

5. Boil boiling water into the baking dish to reach halfway up the sides of the cups. Cover the cups with aluminum foil and bake just until the custard is set, 25 to 30 minutes. Chill the custard before serving.
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Image credit: © Jamie Watson | Dreamstime.com
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