Family & Home

It's been a rough "spring" here in Minnesota. There have been a few peeks of sunshine, followed by gray rainy days, and even snow. While we're fortunate not to have tornadoes, everyone looks a little glum, save on those few, lovely days that have been far too infrequent of late.

Minnesota's Living Green Expo, taking place this weekend, May 7 and 8, celebrates ways to live and eat while supporting the sustainability and health of our planet. According to the email I received from the Living Green Expo:

The Living Green Expo is quickly becoming the place for Minnesotans to learn more about healthy and local foods. By eating locally grown products, we often get fresher, better tasting food, and we help stimulate economic development in our state. A sampling of Living Green Expo Local Food offerings include (more information follows):

Cookus Interruptus is a website out of the Pacific Northwest that aims to educate viewers on how to cook fresh, local, organic, whole foods despite life's interruptions. Every week the show features a new recipe and short (five minutes or less) video on how to prepare it. Their mission is:

Jenny Breen is a Minnesota "good food" legend. She's a caterer, chef, Bush fellow, student in public health and nutrition, teacher, visionary, wife, and mom. She's very good at being all of these things, and chances are excellent that she knows more about good, local, healthy food than you do.

If I am going to get a new cookbook, the best possible situation is to have my dad next to me when I do. I can’t think of a better companion for looking through recipes. Who else but my father reads through lists of ingredients with as much relish as I do, as if they were suspenseful novellas? Who else immediately starts thinking about how to change -- and improve -- recipes that we haven’t even tried yet? Nobody, that’s who.

I have a few things to confess up front. I don't like quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah) much; it tastes bitter to me. I prefer brown rice, though I know quinoa packs a protein punch. Also, I'm not a big fan of kale. I eat it a lot during winter, since I know it's good for me and it has a long growing season in Minnesota. But to me, plain kale smells like a cow. I know these are heresies that could get me kicked out of the local foodie club, but I wanted to be up front about my prejudices since the following recipe managed to kick them to the curb.

"The Single Most Important Piece of Cookware You’ll Ever Own." That's what it says on the cover of the little instruction book that came with my pressure cooker. My purchase was inspired by the amazingly healthy, hearty Italian farming family I lived with in Sicily for three weeks. The family followed a macrobiotic diet, and their pressure cooker was used at least three times a day. I decided that if I couldn’t bring their sunshine, olives, and almonds home with me, I could at least try to re-create their cooking methods.

A few months after returning to snowy Minnesota, my memories of perfectly cooked greens and grains fading quickly, I pulled a shiny but average-looking stainless steel pot out of the box, flipped through the uninspiring recipes included in the booklet, and rolled my eyes at the cookware company’s brash claim. Two years later, however, while I haven’t quite worked up to three times a day, I use my pressure cooker several times a week. I am a total convert.

Here in the last stretch of North Dakota winter (I hope!), the landscape continues to present itself in shades of white, grey, black, and brown. I started knitting a spring scarf last weekend, in the hopes of luring warmer weather. When I pull into the garage each afternoon, the old Weber grill looks more and more forlorn. My daughter, Cora, feels a deep sense of betrayal that the groundhog promised spring would come early -- liar!

Recently, my husband’s parents came to visit from southern California, and while they did not bring any warm weather with them, they did bring a bag full of fresh Meyer lemons from their backyard tree -- not certified organic, of course, but organic nonetheless. A whole bag of yellow orbs bright as the summer sun and, I know from experience, bursting with juice and flavor.

McDonald's recently added oatmeal to their breakfast menu. Behold, the ingredients of a "simple" bowl of McDonald's oatmeal:

Oatmeal: whole grain rolled oats, brown sugar, food starch-modified, salt, natural flavor (plant source), barley malt extract, caramel color.

Diced Apples: apples, calcium ascorbate (a blend of calcium and vitamin C to maintain freshness and color).

Cranberry Raisin Blend: dried sweetened cranberries (sugar, cranberries), California raisins, golden raisins, sunflower oil, sulfur dioxide (preservative).

Light Cream: milk, cream, sodium phosphate, datem, sodium stearoyl lactylate, sodium citrate, carrageenan.

My husband and I first joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program about 14 years ago. We shared a membership with friends and split the box of vegetables each week. It was the early days of CSAs in the Twin Cities, and the variety in the box was, well, not very various -- a three week stretch of nothing but bok choy pretty much ended our interest. But then, four years ago, circumstances conspired to bring us back into the CSA fold. Just when my husband and I were ready to reconsider, we visited some relatives in Madison and happened to be there when they received their CSA share from Harmony Valley Farm, located in Viroqua, WI.