Category Archives: food

Lessons from our mothers

16 Thursday May 2013

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This post is a little late for Mother’s Day but since my mom is flying into town tomorrow in order to watch me graduate with a Masters in Public Health, I figured it was still appropriate.

I am currently baking red velvet cupcakes.  Why you ask?  Because I’m going to a graduation reception/party Saturday afternoon following the graduation ceremony.  And clearly, I have to bring something.  I blame my mother.

You see, we all grow up learning little pearls from our parents, but I contend that our mother’s influence on our social graces far exceeds that of our fathers.  For example, my mother always said you can’t show up empty handed to a party that you were invited to.  Hence I’m baking cupcakes.  Could I have made something easier?  Sure, but it just so happens that the Boston University colors are red and white.  (Don’t judge me.  I can feel you judging.)

I don’t think my mother was forced to read Emily Post when she was growing up, but there are many other habits I have because of my mom.  For example, I always return the shopping cart (it happens to be one of my biggest pet peeves when people don’t – and yes, my mother’s biggest pet peeve too).  I always rinse dishes before they go into the dishwasher.  Many of my food and product purchases are from my mom; choosy moms choose JIF and so does this ginger, and Downy is the only acceptable fabric softener.

For better or for worse, she is the voice within my head.  And I suspect I’m not alone.  What social graces and habits have you picked up from your mothers?

chocolate will make you a better person

25 Monday Mar 2013

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well… sort of.  I’m not sure how I missed the article in the New England Journal of Medicine from October 2012, but the authors show a linear correlation between a country’s chocolate consumption per person (per capita) and the number of Nobel Laureates per 10 million population.

Proof that chocolate will make you a better person (*that’s not a true statement as this is a correlational study.  My biostatistics and epidemiology professors would cut me if I didn’t mention that correlation does not imply causation).

So how does your country rank?

chocolate and nobel prize

Girasole (translation: sunflower)

29 Saturday Sep 2012

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Anyone who has grown up in an immigrant family that speaks a language other than English will probably find this funny.  My middle sister is getting married shortly, and in Italian families who live in Western Pennsylvania, there is a tradition to have a “cookie table” at the wedding.  Dont be fooled… “cookie table” often means several tables with multiple trays of cookies.  When my oldest sister got married, there were about 50 trays of cookies.  Many of these are enjoyed at the wedding as dessert with coffee along with the wedding cake; far more cookies are taken home and enjoyed by wedding guests for several days after.  For more on this tradition, see this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

My mother is about to enter “baking mode” shortly for all the cookies to be made for the wedding (and yes, friends and family also contribute to this tradition).  She was going through her recipe box today and found a recipe she didn’t remember.  I gave myself a pat on the back for figuring out what it was (and it’s actually a really good poppyseed bundt cake), but the recipe obviously came from my grandmother’s cache and the handwriting was clearly my dad’s.  I couldn’t help but laugh while reading it as my father had a funny way of writing the recipe down.  You’re on your own for translation from Italian but I think you’ll recognize some of the words…

Girasole

3 tazze di farina
1/2 cucchiaino di sale
1 1/2 cucchiaino di baking soda
2 tazze di zucchero
8 onze di Crisco
4 uova
1 barattolo Carnation Evaporated latte
1 jar di papaveri (poppyseed)
1 tazza di noci

Instruzioni: metti gli ingredienti asciutti insieme.  Metti uova, Crisco, e gira per due minuti con tutto insieme.  Grease la pan and then farina.  Bake at 350 per un’ora.

Bell Tower Foods

25 Tuesday Sep 2012

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Undoubtedly by now you’ve heard about the food truck movement in many cities across the United States.  Well, I wanted to give a shout out to the hard workers at Bell Tower Foods (BTF) who are combining the food truck movement with fresh produce!

The first seeds of the idea of BTF was started by a student group that I belong to at the Boston University School of Public Health – Students for Quality Health Care.  The group enrolled in a business case competition last year at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York City.  The challenge for the case competition – come up with a Food for Health Business Plan.  The team came in 2nd place at the competition – out of 17 graduate school teams and with only one MBA student on the team.

Several of the members have now turned BTF into an actual business with the idea of delivering fresh produce through their food truck.  They are currently planning to serve several neighborhoods throughout the Boston area – including Allston, Bay Village, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, Roxbury, and the South End.

Congrats to the executive board of BTF and much luck in a successful venture!

You can follow Bell Tower Foods on Facebook and Twitter (@BellTowerFoods)

You can also sign up for emails or text messages to know where and when a BTF grocery truck will be near you!

environmentally friendly and “organic” foods

01 Sunday Apr 2012

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Going to continue the food theme from two posts ago.  There has clearly been a movement in major cities across the US (and I would venture probably small towns too) and Europe to purchase “organic” foods and support local farms.  I will fully admit that when the organic food movement started, I was highly skeptical and thought this was just a way to convince consumers to spend more money on produce (which is already fairly expensive).  The funny thing, however, is that the term organic describes a method of agriculture used for centuries of human history prior to the advent of pesticides, yet only recently has “organic” farming (or you could claim that it’s historic agriculture) returned in popularity.  Organic foods must be produced without the use of synthetic pesticides, chemical fertilizers, or antibiotics and cannot be processed with irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical preservatives or food additives.  Organic foods in Europe (but not the US) also cannot be genetically modified.

I was reminded today of a picture a friend has posted on his fridge of the 12 foods that one should always buy organic (known as the “dirty dozen”) and foods that buying organic is really just wasting money.  The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has a great guide that you can print out and post on your fridge to remind you of the “dirty dozen” as well as the foods you dont need to bother purchasing organic.  One thing I like about EWG’s website is they note that eating fruits and vegetables is important, regardless if they are produced organically or not.  Buying organic is merely a method of reducing one’s pesticide exposure.  The foods on the “dirty dozen” list and those that are not on the list make sense – most of the foods that are low in pesticides have thick outer coatings that people tend to throw out (grapefruits for example) or they are typically grown without pesticides in the first place (like mushrooms).  Apples on the other hand, are often heavily sprayed with pesticides, have thin “skins” allowing pesticides to penetrate the apple, and people often eat the skin of the apple, where the concentration of pesticides is the highest.  You can find the guide here, click on the link for the PDF version if you want to print and cut it out.

Friends often ask me why I’m a pescatarian – and I tell them that though I gave up eating meat for Lent many years ago, the only reason that ever made sense to me for not consuming animal products was environmental reasons.  The idea that you can grow more food off of the land that it takes to raise a cow than you get from the cow itself somehow resonated with me.  My friends usually counter with the statement that fishing can be rather unfriendly to the environment; so how does one choose?  Well thankfully, the Environmental Defense Fund has a handy little chart to figure out which fish are environmentally friendly and which arent.

“gourmet” blogs

30 Friday Mar 2012

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So I know there are a lot of gourmet food blogs out there.  Here’s the thing – I love gourmet food just as much as the next stuck up food snob but quite honestly, there are times when I go to a high end restaurant for “gourmet” food and end up leaving disappointed.  I’m all for molecular gastronomy, but if my stomach isnt satisfied at the end of the meal… well then epic fail.  Perhaps I dont have the refined palate necessary to enjoy all gourmet food or maybe I’m right and a bunch of it sucks and there are really only a few good places.

Regardless, there is definitely a blog trend for gourmet food.  I feel the same way about gourmet food blogs that I feel about gourmet food restaurants.  Worse, gourmet food blogs often include incredibly difficult recipes, and you essentially have to be a restaurant chef to prepare the food.  Even the magazine Gourmet usually futures simple sounding recipes with 300 ingredients.

I much prefer good, old-fashion, home-style, down and dirty food.  You know, the kind you get at that no-name, hole in the wall restaurant that looks totally sketchy but has the most delicious thai/chinese/indian/italian food you’ve ever had in your entire life.  I want something authentic and feel-good.  Which brings me to two notable blogs.  The first is my good friend Bos Guy who occasionally posts various recipes that he creates for dinner.  Most of his recipes tend toward an Italian bent… which is perfectly fine with me.  His eggplant parm is quite delicious and is almost exactly the version I make.  More importantly though, his recipes arent tricky or difficult and dont require hours of preparation or ingredients you need to climb Mt Kilimanjaro to obtain.

The other food blog I want to feature comes from a good friend who also happens to be an ICU nurse at the hospital where I moonlight.  In her blog, Jenn lays out the recipes she makes in order to feed her lovely family of three.  Jenn’s food is not pretentious or complicated but home-made and heartfelt.  Even better though, her food blog contains personal anecdotes about her life, what scares her about cooking (like cooking salmon for the first time), how her food reflects on her, and the times she has failed while cooking (read the post titled “epic fail…inferno”).  Definitely check out Feeding The Fords if you are stumped on what to make for dinner tonight.

You can now find both BosGuy Blog and Feeding The Fords on the blogroll