Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Who Needs Cadbury? **RECIPE ALERT**

Although I am not a Christian, I look forward to the Easter season because that is when you can find some of the best candy EVER.  Peeps, Cadbury creme eggs, chocolate bunnies... oh, it all makes my mouth water.

I do have a special weakness for Peeps and Creme Eggs, though, I must say.  I tend to gorge myself on those marshmallowy, sugary shapes of bunnies and birds until I get sick (I prefer the birds over the bunnies because you can bite the head off) and one creme egg generally has enough sugar and richness to make my eyes roll back in in my head... and hold me over for an entire year.

But alas, on the Au Naturale diet, such treats are a no-no.  Goodness knows what goes into the filling of a creme egg.  And I've become more worried in the past few years about the sanitation of those things: do you notice how the foil wrapper never quite makes it all the way around, leaving a small piece of the chocolate egg exposed?  I don't want to think about what it has touched on it's way to my mouth.

But I digress.  Does one roll over and submit when faced with the possibility of being denied a rare treat?  NO!  One finds a way to adapt the treat to them.  And so I bring you a recipe for homemade Cadbury Creme Eggs.

Be forewarned, though: just because these are homemade does not in any sense mean that they are healthy.  At all.  I have 16 of them and plan on eating at max 1, maybe 2, and then giving the rest away. The sugary-ness will once again tide me over for another year.

I have listed the recipe below with some modifications and personal tips that are italicized. These are incredibly, incredibly easy to make: it does take a long time but 90% of the recipe requires nothing more than for the eggs to sit in the freezer and firm up.  However, some of the 10% of the active time must be done quickly.  The gooey filling turns, well, gooey quite quickly once you take it out of the freezer, so if you don't work fast enough you will have quite a mess on your hands.  In addition, I have taken out the steps to create the "yolk". While eliminating it doesn't alter the flavor (but does eliminate some time), creating the fake yolks of the eggs requires the use of food coloring which is about as un-Au Naturale as you can get.  So egg "whites" it is.  If you want the steps for the yolks, though, just message me and I'll send them to you.

And one more quick note, and I promise I'm done (am I a tease, or what?).  A very nice and generous woman who works on my floor takes the time to hide plastic easter eggs filled with candy around the office every year.  It really is a happy treat to sit down at your desk and see an egg poking out of your pen cup, or hours later turning around and finding another one hiding amongst the files.  Today, 3 days after the eggs showed up, I found a third balancing precariously on the top of a framed map hanging on my wall.  I was somewhat surprised at my own glee at discovering it.

In any case, I've been trying to resist the candy inside (it's like the Evil Bar of Doom took up residence at my desk) but today I was just starving in the afternoon and ate a super-mini Kit Kat and a super-mini Krackle, like the kind you hand out at Halloween.  It was probably about an ounce of candy total, but the whole bus ride home I just felt HEAVY.  It was then that I realized how much my body has adapted to not eating crap and filler.  I couldn't remember the last time I felt so remorseful about eating anything.  To be clear, I haven't eliminated chocolate from my diet, I've just been careful to make sure that it was pure, as in absent of preservatives and additives.  So as gross as I felt, my heading leaning against the bus window, I also felt a sense of pride that my new diet has once again proven itself to have a positive effect on my body and my health.

Enough!  You have earned this recipe.  Enjoy!

Homemade Cadbury Creme Eggs
Ingredients:
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup butter (softened, not melted)
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups powedered sugar, sifted
1 (12 oz) bag milk chocolate chips
2 teaspoons vegetable shortening

Directions:
1.  Combine the corn syrup, butter, vanilla and salt in a large bowl

2. Beat well with an electric mixer until smooth

3. Add powdered sugar, a little bit at a time and mix by hand after each addition

4.  Mix until creamy:



5.  Cover the mixture and chill for at least 2 hours (fridge is okay) or until firm

6.  Form into the shape of eggs and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet or wax paper.  You can use egg molds, but I did it by hand.  And because I had neither the skill nor the speed (remember, work fast!) to create free-form egg shapes, I settled for "bullets":




7.  Repeat until done and chill for at least 4 hours in the freezer.  You want them "set"

8.  Combine the chocolate chips and shortening in a double boiler or ceramic bowl

9.  Melt down and mix well

10.  Take each egg filling, dip into the melted chocolate mixture and return to baking sheet. I started by stabbing the bottom of them with wooden skewers, like I was making popsicles, and dipping them that way.  however, they easily fell off the skewers as the warmed up.  I then took to just dumping them in bowl and using 2 spoons to roll them around until they were coated:


the ones on the right side of the pan got extra dipping, so you can see they turned out thicker
11.  Repeat and chill again for 2 hours in the freezer

12.  Repeat the dipping process, chill again and you're good to go!

The shape ain't pretty... sorry.  If I used a mold, it probably would have been.  But the messiness gives it character, no?

Monday, April 25, 2011

Green Grocer Chicago

My last trip to the winter Farmer's Market was about a month ago, right after the Family Farmed Expo.  I noticed that the market was much busier than usual, and I wondered if fellow Expo attendees had learned of it's existence there and decided to start patronizing it.  I made a mental note to myself to arrive earlier the next week so I would be able to get some eggs before they ran out.

Little did I know that the busy-ness was probably because that day's market was actually the last of the season. D'oh! No wonder it was so busy.  I fretted and lamented: the summer farmer's market wasn't to open for another few months.  Where could I get the truly local and Au Naturale foodstuffs that only a farmer's market could provide?  I preferred to get my eggs, milk and meat there because I could talk to the farmers directly about how they raised their animals, as well as know that I was supporting local farmers directly.   And those wheat berry tortillas... I only had one left!  Sigh.

Around the same time I had a chance to chat with a former co-worker who now lives downstate in Champaign.  She is doing a masters thesis that is focused on sustainable farming/organics/reducing meat consumption (and I know that I'm not getting her thesis exactly right, but you get the idea).  I mentioned during our convesation how nice it must be for her to be downstate, amongst all the farmers, and able to practice what she preaches so much easier than it is for me up in the big city.  To my surprise, she assumed that it must be easier for me- they don't have much in the way of winter markets down there, really nothing in the way of Whole Foods, and there are some co-ops but she really thought I had more options by being in a metropolis.

How interesting it is to look at something from the outside, right?  The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that I can indeed shop and eat Au Naturally despite being hundreds of miles away from the farms.  After all, just down the street from my office is Chicago's Downtown Farmstand, which I first mentioned in a very early post.  All of their items come from within 250 miles of Chicago.  This weekend, I took a quick loop around Green Grocer Chicago, a small organic farmstand very close to my house that I just keep forgetting about. They carry organic, local, and sustainable foodstuffs in a small storefront that's only a short drive further than my local grocery store.  Could you cross off your entire shopping list there?  Not often.  But I could find a variety of chicken, duck, and sausages from farms I recognize, such as Mint Creek Farm, and I walked out with a fresh carton of eggs.  Further north in the Logan Square neighborhood you can find Dill Pickle Food Co-op.  And don't forget about the Friday Amish storefront with the magic donut holes and other goods.

So I challenge you, oh loyal 3 or 4 readers, to reach out and find your own neighborhood propriators of local and organic products.  And share them here!  There is no reason that we have to wait for summer markets and CSAs to eat locally and Au Naturale.  After all, I've proven to myself that you don't have to look very hard to find a wealth of options under your nose.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Gator!

I've decided that I'm not going to continue to bore you with the trials and tribulations of my travel eating habits.  Been there, done that, you've all gotten the idea of my successes and challenges.  However, this post was prompted by yours truly doing some research into where my recently devoured alligator nuggets were raised, so I feel like I owe you just a bit of background.

Wait... did you say alligator?  As in... alligator?  Where, pray tell Jordana, did you have a chance to eat gator?

In New Orleans, loyal readers.  So yes, I will preface this post by saying I was recently in New Orleans for yet another conference, so file this under the business-travel-where-I-can-eat-a-real-meal type of trip.  And among the many different and fantastic offerings of cajun cuisine on which I dined (and there are many), I treated myself one evening to fried chunks of gator.  It was deeeelicious, if I do say so myself.

But of course the meal, along with the shrimp I ate, prompted the Au Naturale section of my brain to begin whirring.  Where did the gator come from? Was it wild or raised in farms?  Are the farms mimicking the gator's habitat in the wild or are there gator CAFOs that should make me cry?  In addition, I was still a bit nervous about the local shrimp.  Undeniably fresh, yes, but they are farmed from the Gulf and for me the jury is still out on whether the shrimp is safe to eat a year after oil began gushing uncontrollably from the underwater abyss of that region.

But first things first: Gator!  Thanks to my handy friend the internet, I learned quickly that alligators are indeed farmed in Louisiana, Florida and Georgia and the practice, though designed for uses like skins and my nuggets, has helped an endangered species become viable again.

Unfortunately, though, while I learned much about the habitat, how to build one of my own, and the tell-tale differences between gators and crocs, I couldn't find much in the way of telling me whether these reptiles were as healthy and the farms as ecologically sound as they would be in the wild.  Gators are meat eaters and are supposedly fed as such, but that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot: Steers are vegetarians but we all know what happens when you feed them grain.

Shrimp is another matter.  I am torn between wanting to support the struggling Gulf fishermen and worrying about my own health.  This recent article says that you would have to eat 63 pounds of gulf shrimp each and every day for 5 years in order to be negatively affected by accumulated oil amounts.  Well, if I ate that much I'd be worrying about mercury and other elements, too.  However, this article shows briefly a different side and more specifically the side I'm worried about: how much below the designated "safe" level is actually safe?  Many additives that are now intentionally put in our food are considered "safe" but in the long term take a damaging toll on our bodies.

So I am truly, truly sorry to the Gulf fishermen: I know it's not your fault. I did eat a whole bunch of your products last week, from shrimp to oysters.  And I will say they were delicious!  But given the choice, I may be sourcing my seafood elsewhere for a while.

And for those of you who were wondering: Alligator tastes like chicken.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Articles That Scare... and Re-Affirm

I've run across the following articles recently and wanted to share them.  They not only re-affirm that this Au Naturale path I've chosen is the right one for me, but also confirm the suspicions I've had on how the way our food is manufactured affects our health as well as the subsequent research I've done to prove those suspicions.  Depressing, perhaps?  Yes, but at least I know that my efforts will have tangible health results and are not in vain. To me, that's not so much depressing as it is encouraging: (click on the title to get to the article)

Study: 25% of Beef has Drug-Resistant Bacteria
-If we raised our meat in ways that didn't have them crowded together in unsanitary conditions, while feeding them food that they are not biologically designed to digest, we wouldn't need to shoot them up with antibiotics to which they then develop resistant strains, right?

Arsenic in Chicken Feed: A Possible Cancer Cluster Source?
-You could argue that the cause of the cancer is still not proven... but I think it is completely safe to say that if chickens are eating arsenic, we too are eating arsenic when eating the chickens. And that's just bad, testicular cancer or no.

FDA recalls
-Not that I scan this link for fun... I saw a particular recall a few weeks ago and was trying to find it and got linked to this FDA recall list.  Less processing and more locally-sourced foods would probably eliminate the need for a running list... and a permanent link on major sites like MSN for something that is more often the rule rather than the exception.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Milwaukee Road Trip

Did I ever tell you about my Milwaukee road trip?  I didn't?  Well, gather 'round, loyal 3 or 4 readers, because I have a somewhat successful, somewhat convoluted tale of travel eating to share.

Really, it's not terribly exciting, but i think it's worth a mention.  Two weeks ago I had to take a quick business trip up to Milwaukee to visit some schools.  Because of Milwaukee's close proximity to Chicago, this trip was a quick up-and-back in the span of a day.

And this time, I vowed to be prepared!  Not needing to rush out the door to catch a flight, I made myself a decent meal of Tempel Farms Organic eggs on homemade toast, a cappuccino made with local milk, and a banana.  I loaded up a mini-cooler with a few reusable ice packs and threw in some organic yogurt, and then packed one more separate bag with an apple and a little tupperware container of locally-made granola.

It's a good thing I was prepared, because like all of my other business trips I was rushing from meeting to meeting without a break for lunch and in this case, dinner.  See, in addition to my regular meetings I had volunteered to sit on an evening panel for students who were presenting new community service ideas for the opportunity to receive a grant for start-up funds to launch their venture.  By the time the panel was over at after 8pm, I had consumed only all of my previously mentioned pre-planned snacks as well as a Cliff Bar that one of the other panelists had graciously passed out to the dinner-eschewing group.  I should be thankful that it was a Cliff Bar and not a twinkie, though, I guess.  So I'm left feeling conflicted:  on one side, I'm proud that I adhered to the Au Naturale diet on the road for the first time, well, ever.  However, how nutritious was my total food intake?  I'm sure a nutritionist would probably shrug and say "Meh".  At least it wasn't the McDonald's drive-through.

I think that it is worth mentioning that one of the students presenting to the panel was a young lady who had a brilliant idea of an organic fast food restaurant.  She spoke of her own healthy eating habits and upbringing, and wanted to create an outlet where people didn't have to commit to a sit-down meal in order to eat organic and local with foods that catered to their specific dietary requirements, whether they be vegan (as she was), celiac-concious, or more.  When it came time for the panelists' questions, I raised my hand, briefly mentioned my Au Naturale diet, and (somewhat) jokingly asked that as I was one of those people who could really use an organic fast food restaurant while I was on the road, when would her first outlet be open?  Truthfully, the idea has a lot of passion but needs much more refining before it will come to fruition.  I was still excited to see, though, that this movement proves to be evident in more and more places, such as an urban college campus in Milwaukee.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Meat: The Next Frontier

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned that I was unsure of how to judge the chicken breasts I was getting from Whole Foods in terms of their Au Naturale-ness.  They are unbelievably delicious, yes, probably because they are raised better than your garden-variety Purdue chickens, but I wasn't so sure I was trusting all of the claims on the packaging.  As we all know, just because something says "free range" doesn't mean that it is necessarily running around a pasture somewhere.

Recently, though, I noticed that my chicken now come with a rating system on the package.  Hmm, perhaps the poultry version of "Hot or Not"?  Of course, I had to know more, so off to the internets I went.  And boy, was I pleased with what I found: A 5-step Animal Welfare Rating system.  Quite simply, it takes a lot of the guesswork out of guessing how your dinner was raised.  I praise both Whole Foods and the Global Animal Partnership for creating more transparency on these issues, and it really goes to show that consumers are caring more about what they are putting in their bodies.

Sadly, my tasty chicken breasts are only rated a 2.  While I'm glad they're getting an enriched environment, and apparently you need to have strict standards to even make the list, the fact that you need to rate a 3 to even get a mention that you have access to an outdoor environment still doesn't quite meet the Au Naturale standard I have set for myself.  And so I seek the next level in my poultry consumption.

In the research, however, I found this nifty website for Eat Wild.  It's a source for learning about where to find all-natural, humane, and sustainably raised meat, as well as links to find farms that are local to you.  You may not know that farmers and ranchers who are raising animals in a truly sustainable fashion are not only doing well by the animals and our taste buds, but often are doing well by the terrain itself as their farming practices actively promote the health of the land.  With grilling season quickly coming upon us, I look forward to making much use of both this information and many of these tasty animals.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Addendum to "tee hee hee" Post

Just a short while ago a gaggle of girls in the office were making an excited ruckus about something.  As the ruckus eventually made its way over to my office at the end of the hall, one of the girls jumped into my doorway clutching the box of donut holes, now half-empty.

"Did you try one of these yet?" she asked excitedly.

"Yes, actually," I responded.  "I brought them in."

"It was YOU?!?!" she shrieked. "Hey," she called down the hallway, "It was Jordana who brought them!" I heard a few more, shall I say, accusatory shrieks (ie "it was Jordana!") and then another girl came bolting over.

Alarmed, I asked if anything was wrong.

"Oh, my God," said the second girl. "These are the most amazing things I've ever eaten!  Where in the world did you get them? I keep checking the ingredient list to see if some sort of illicit drug is in there."

I told them about the Amish stand I found during lunch, and after many more superlatives they huddled around the box and held it close to their breast as they slinked back to their desks, ready to fend off anyone who would dare take their new-found Super Donuts.

Hmm, something Au Naturale tasting better?  I've never seen such a reaction over a box of Dunkin' Donuts.  Just sayin'.

True story.

Contributing to the Evil Bar of Doom.. tee hee hee

This wasn't really meant to be an April Fool's joke, but I guess you can interpret it as you will.

I met a friend for lunch today over in the Illinois Building downtown and passed by one of the empty storefronts that often hosts one-day-only vendors.  Today, this one was hosting an Amish market from Indiana.  Well, loyal 3 or 4 readers,  you've heard my opinions on Amish markets.  After finishing up lunch at Hannah's Bretzel, we made our way back. Having not contributed anything to the Evil Bar of Doom in a while (for obvious reasons), I decided to treat myself and my office to a box of all-natural, freshly made cinnamon-glazed donut holes. 

These things are just obscenely gooey and decadent. I'm going to try to avoid devouring the whole box, but if I do sneak back over for a second one, I won't feel guilty. They are Au Naturale, after all.