Snowy February

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Serious Eats and the USDA's Food Environment Atlas

If you are looking for a website full of interesting recipes and information about food, seriouseats.com should be saved as a favorite. The posts are provided by a community of fun-loving authors, and of course the photographs are beautiful too. Recently the website has featured recipes reviews, restaurant reviews, and helpful tips for cooks of all ability levels.
One post shows the Daily Yonder's interpretation of the recent USDA's Food Environment Atlas. You will find a variety of food consumption visualizations and maps.

Do you want to know how far you live from the nearest McDonald's or Subway? The links to such information is available from the Food Atlas. In fact, the Food Atlas can be a very handy tool for people interested in the availability of food in your area, food security, distances to supermarket (do you live in a food desert?), low-income data, local foods, health, food taxes, availability of restaurants, food prices, food eaten at home, and so much more. Check out the Food Atlas website and you will find yourself amazed at the information and getting lost in the eye-opening differences our nation has to offer.

Snowed in and lovin' it!

Haven't we had a tremendous amount of snow this winter? The good thing about it that the snow is so beautiful as it is falling. I am fortunate to be able to work from home when the roads are brutally messy.

Being snowed-in allows for lots for creativity in the kitchen. It is a perfect time to make a homemade soup chock full of fresh vegetables and other nutritious foods. Cooking on a snowy day is one of my favorite things to do! When I roast a turkey or chicken I am thrilled to make a stock from the leftover meat and bones. With a few packages (usually frozen in quart size zip lock freezer bags) of my turkey stock in the freezer I am armed and ready for a snowed-in soup day.

Yesterday I started with a 12 (dried) bean mixture from my favorite local Amish market, soaked them in the morning and later started the creative development of what I call nutritious 'found-soup', meaning whatever I can find in my freezer, refrigerator, and pantry can/may/will be used for the soup of the day. It is a culinary challenge and lots of fun! The results are usually delicious.

The soup ended up with leftover sausage (from the Super Bowl party), lots of tomato sauce, and chicken stock (both from the freezer), fresh garlic, carrots, celery, basil, parsley, splash of Worcestershire sauce (from the fridge), and chili powder, Butt Rub (my favorite slightly spicy seasoning combination purchased in the Outer Banks, NC). The end product was a very thick and hearty high-fiber soul satisfying dinner served with arugula salad with grape tomatoes, cucumber and very nutritious red pepper. The meal was finished off with a section of toasted sandwich roll (leftover from the Super Bowl). Pairing the meal with our homemade wine was spectacular! What could be better?

Health Benefits of Tea

Over the past month I have done several presentations on the Health Benefits of Tea. The presentation was created by my colleague, Sherri Cirignano. Here are a few facts that might be of interest about tea:

• Black tea, green tea, white tea and oolong tea all come from the same bush called camellia sinesis. The difference between the types of tea is the processing method. Tea leaves harvested when the leaf is you will be white tea, green tea requires a more mature leaf, oolong requires an even more mature leaf, and black tea is the most mature leaf.
  
• Beverages commonly known as herbal teas, but actually called tisane, contain an infusion of leaves or flowers, and do not contain tea leaves.
• Tea consumption began 2,000 years ago, and by the 1500's, 50% of the worlds population was drinking tea. Today, worldwide tea consumption is equal to all other beverages combined.
  
• 80% of the tea consumed in the US is served cold or as iced tea.
• 98% of all tea sold is black tea.
• Research on tea show that the following activities are studied: antioxidant, nutrition, protection, and immune enhancement. Proposed health benefits include: cancer prevention, obesity, age-associated, neurodegenerative disease, and diabetes. Additional studies are still needed.
  
• The health benefits of black, green, white and oolong tea are comparable.
• Tea provides these nutrients: energy, and small amount of magnesium/phosphorpus/sodium/potassium/folate.