Join us for a 1/2 day workshop!

 

Help us share this flyer! Download and print here.

Sugar Blues Workshop rerun!

 

Hope to see you there – if you can help us to promote this event at your place of work or play, please print out and post our flyer.

Is FAT a four-letter word?

Join me and Jeri Shumate of Joyous Health and learn how and why to get beneficial fats into and harmful fats out of your diet!

Saturday, January 12, 2013 at 5:30pm
Salon M, 283 S. Zeeb Rd. in Ann Arbor
(in Scio Village Center, intersection of Zeeb & Jackson)

If you’ve been to one of our workshops before, bring a friend who hasn’t, and get a thank-you gift from us!

If you would like to print out our flyer and post it or pass it on, you can download it from the Simply: Home Cooking site. Thank you!

Sugar Blues Workshop Re-run!

If you missed it the first time around…don’t miss it this time! Jeri & I are re-running the Sugar Blues Workshop on Saturday, September 22.

To help us plan, please be sure to let us know you’re coming: RSVP via email to simplyhomecooking(at)gmail(dot)com.

If you know of someone else who might benefit from this fun, informative workshop, you can send them a link to the flyer or download and print it: Sugar Blues Workshop 092212

Please join me in my new (ad)venture!

Round up the usual suspects….

Added fats and sugars are in the news again, and as usual, the message can be summed up very simply: cook and eat whole foods in moderation; avoid highly processed foods with lots of fats and sugars.

A few pieces worth checking out:

Civil Eats: Where Do Americans Get Their Calories? - a super-cool interactive graphic looks at our collective plate from the 70s to today.

The Civil Eats chart is dissected a bit on Grist: The American diet in one chart, with lots of fats and sugars.

And more on the role of sugar in our diets (looooong but very worth the read!): NYT Magazine’s Is Sugar Toxic?

Will the real free-range egg (yolk) please stand up?

I’m a firm believer in buying farm fresh local eggs (and other ingredients): true pastured eggs – from chickens who eat what what they can find while out scratching around in a pasture – come from happy hens, are likely to be better for us, for the environment, and for the local food economy, and they just plain taste better. For more details, see my post on eggs at Simply: Home Cooking.

For a quick, fun visual summary of some of the arguments for pastured eggs, visit Big Wheel Provision’s video, Egg Cage Match!

Food in the News and on the ‘Net

Here’s an inspiring article for kids (and parents!) who are bemoaning the lack of summer jobs – but you’ll have to plan ahead for next summer: A Michigan Teen Farms Her Backyard. Good to see 4-H and FFA getting a boost! Those organizations get more accolades in the comments on the SlowFood USA Blog post “Celebrity Chef and Army General Urge Congress to Fix School Lunch.”

Public Radio Kitchen follows up on a Slow Food on a budget experiment with a straightforward list of “10 Rules for Eating Slow ‘n’ Cheap.”

In local Southeast Michigan food news:

Governor Granholm signed the “Cottage Food Bill” into law – this will allow sales to the public of food produced in non-commercial kitchens (of course restrictions apply).

And here’s coverage of a program on which I’ve been working in my “real life”: “Double Up Food Bucks and food policy with the Fair Food Network.”

Food in the News & on the ‘Net

A bit more in-depth with Chef Dan Barber: “Can Organic Farming Feed the World?”

And since he mentions shopping at the farmers’ market, some great tips on shopping there on Greenopolis: “10 Tips to Shop Smart at Farmers Markets.” I particularly like the first one – make sure to ask whether the vendor is a local grower/producer (and not a reseller).

Spring reading – follow up on an earlier article about Hardwick, VT: The Town the Food Saved.

And the school lunch debate continues, thanks in part to Jamie Oliver: “Bill on School Lunch Is Scaled Back. Criticism of School Lunch Isn’t.”

Brown rice, anyone?

Over the past few years I have converted almost completely to whole grains in my own diet – convincing the rest of the family to do so has been only somewhat successful – they love their white rice, pasta, and bread! On some issues I’ve simply laid down the law – you will eat your sandwiches on whole wheat bread and your rice pilaf brown! – and stopped buying white. On others we eat separately: I will cook whole wheat pasta for myself when I cook white for them (I’m most sympathetic on this one, since it took me a long time to like whole wheat pasta). Our most recent compromise has been to alternate the kind of rice we cook to serve with Chinese food: one time we do a mix that includes brown rice, the next time we mix just white and sticky rice. It’s a gradual process of conversion which may never be complete!

It is indeed rare, although not unheard of, for Chinese restaurants to offer brown rice – I’m happy to see that it seems to be a growing phenomenon. And there’s more and more evidence that whole grains are better for you: apparently there are as many, if not more, phytochemicals in whole grains as in fruits and veggies – they just happen to appear in a bound form. A brief article on this appears on SparkPeople. More on the scientist researching this: Ruihai Liu Research Laboratory.

Wherever you are on your journey to eat more healthfully, this is food for thought.