Inadvertent Kitchari Cake

While it happened by accident, from now I'll be making kitchari cakes like this one on purpose.

The kitchari was intentional, but the lovely little cake was just dumb luck. It happened when I reheated some leftover kitchari in a small skillet in the oven. When I opened the door, I expected to find a fragrant mush of grains and spices not unlike the one I had put in, the only difference being the temperature. Instead I found this gorgeous little thing, the sides crisp and brown, the interior still moist and fragrant.

For those who don't know, kitchari, aka khitchari or kedgeree, is a combination of spiced grains cooked together. Probably one of the oldest recipes on the planet, it's typically made with mung dahl and rice, though I used green lentils, and the possibilities for other substitutions are endless.

Kitchari has seen a recent spike in popularity with the renewed interest in Ayurveda, though for every one person who is serious about "the science of life," there are a thousand poseurs. You'll know them by the yoga mats sticking out of their backpacks, advertising their higher consciousness and serving as blue, foam lightening rods for good vibes.

If you're going to make kitchari, I suggest experimenting with your own spice blend rather than reaching for that dubious shaker of "curry." I associate curry powder, which is in fact a blend of spices (and sometimes food moths), with a seemingly well stocked but unused spice rack. You'll find it next to the impotent cinnamon and the two containers of cream of tartar with their foil seal intact.

Use fresh spices when they're in season, and when they're not, buy small amounts of whole spices from the bulk section of your local natural foods shop. That way you'll never have so much of something that it will lose its umph, and you can experiment with things you'd never buy an entire canister of. Like fenugreek.

For my kitchari, I just used whatever I had on hand, though I admit that I was well prepared to do so. The blend included whole star anise and dried chiles, cardamom pods, fennel and cumin seed, bay leaves, a small cinnamon stick, and a nub of fresh, minced turmeric.

Since I've only made the cake by accident, I can't give the specifics, but if you mess around I'm sure you could figure it out. Essentially you make kitchari, then bake it.

There are several lessons to take from this experience. They are:

-kitchari is good
-buy small amounts of whole, bulk spices
-good things happen when you don't use a microwave

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Recipe: Kitchari

Serves 2.

1/2 cup brown rice
1/2 cup green lentils (or whatever)
1 can coconut milk
2 tbsp neutral (or coconut) oil
your own spice blend
salt to taste

1. "Bloom" the spices in the hot oil.

2. Add the rice, stir until toasty.

3. Add the lentils, and cover with the coconut milk.

4. Simmer until tender, about a half hour, adding water if necessary. Remove any spices such as cinammon sticks, whole chiles, or bay leaves, or leave them in as surprises.

Yogurt Pancakes

Like silly putty, this recipe was stumbled upon completely by accident. Like America, I'm sure someone else had stumbled upon it first.

I wanted pancakes, but didn't have milk (be it cow, nut, grain, or bean) or eggs, and I was in a fluffy mood. I cast about the refrigerator and paused when I saw the yogurt. Yogurt: kind of like eggs and milk mixed together, right?

Wrong. It's better. These pancakes were so light and fluffy that I had to tether them down. I'd previously thought that MB's beaten egg white pancakes were the fluffiest, but these have those beat. Yes, these beat Bitten's beaten ones.

Sure they were poofy, but were they also moist? As moist as the day is long, and I'm not talking about the day of the winter solstice. I'm talking about about that sprawling summer solstice day. In other words, they were extremely moist. The yogurt also imparted a pleasant, savory tang.

On Sunday I skated across Walden Pond and found myself on top of a body of water I had only previously been in or under. The yogurt must have had the reverse experience when mixed into the pancakes. Used to sliding around on top, it suddenly found itself deep within them.

The only downside is that the cooking process probably nullifies the probiotic content of the yogurt. But you know the old saying: you've got to break a few billion bacteria to make pancakes.

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Recipe: Yogurt Pancakes

1 cup mixed whole grain flours (I used barley, spelt and corn)
1 cup plain yogurt (or whatever it takes to look like pancake batter)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
dash of cinnamon

Gently mix all of the above, leaving it lumpy. Marvel at its fluffy nature.

Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a greased skillet (I used a non-stick pan, no oil at all, and they really didn't stick.) Once bubbling, flip, cook briefly on the B-side, and cook again until golden.

Mourn bacteria.

Miso in the Morning

Continuing on the theme of savory breakfasts, this dish fits into my miso+1 theory. The variable in this instance was millet.

I very nearly OD'd on millet a few years back while suffering through a highly constrictive diet for health reasons. The way I ate in those days is why the thought of slightly steamed kale still makes me shudder, and the only way I can choke it down is cooked to death in soups with lots of sausage. But I just couldn't stay angry at millet. After all, there's nothing to be angry about.

Millet is a plain, inoffensive grain. There aren't many reasons to eat it, but there are even fewer not to. If nothing else, it will help you escape from the rice-is-the-only-grain-on-earth paradigm.

The first time I had millet was probably when I was kid, sampling birdseed. But now I like to pair it with miso for a breakfast that somehow feels both light and substantial. Simply boil millet as you would any grain, add a little miso slurry (this time I used red), and slurp. Millet can be nice and fluffy, but for some reason I'm liking it best when soupy.

Why? Why not?

Food for Breakfast

Mark Bittman's post on savory breakfasts seems to have struck a chord with many of us. For some, it might be novel: having food for breakfast instead of breakfast food.

A longtime proponent of starting the day with salt, this morning I made a variation on the ever present theme of savory oats, with eggs, garlic, collard greens and plenty of whisk-crushed black pepper.

If you prefer things like pop-tarts, saying "I could eat you for breakfast" simply becomes an empty threat. But if you eat breakfast like I eat breakfast, the phrase is nothing short of menacing. All the more true if you're talking to a vampire (garlic).

In all seriousness, eating real food first thing in the morning makes me feel invincible. Like I can slug my way through the day's tasks undaunted, my stomach full of power. I've been around a lot of sick folks lately, and I can't help but feel that my healthful savory breakfasts have helped me escape the wrath of their pathogens.

This has been a cold, snowy, flu-inducing winter, and in response I've upped my intake of the hot stuff (black and chili pepper, ginger, and garlic). Their bracing, medicinal qualities have gone a long way, and they rival coffee as an eye-opener.

I feel as healthy as a horse. And what do horses eat for breakfast? Savory oats.

Happy (Tree) New Year!

I just wrote an article about Tu B'Shevat, a holiday which is known as the Jewish Arbor Day and the new year for trees. The date coincides with the blossoming of the first fruit trees in Israel, a fact which is hard to register given how numb my hands are as I type due to the eleven degree windchill that I just walked the dog in.

My Tu B'Shevat menu synthesized Middle Eastern fare, Israeli tree crops, and local, seasonal New England foods. Every dish contained at least one ingredient from a tree, even if it was just cinnamon. For instance, sweet potatoes glazed with palm sugar, naan with carmelized onions, goat cheese and dates, and banana cream pie.

For those of you who object because the banana is not a true tree, don't worry, the pie also had lemon curd. We washed it all down with hard cider and pine tea, both tree products and both locally made/foraged, even now in the dead of winter.

While it might seem strange to celebrate spring in winter, there is a convenient connection for those who wish to find a relevant, tree themed event currently happening in the U.S. Here, Tu B'Shevat also marks the start of maple syrup season.

Coincidence? Yes. See here for the article.

You're Welcome, Mark Bittman

After months of posting about the wonders of savory breakfasts, especially oatmeal, my contributions to the culinary world have finally been recognized by none other that Mark Bittman. In his latest Minimalist column, Bittman publicly thanks me in no uncertain terms. I quote:

"Here are a few more fast ideas for savory, mostly whole-grain breakfasts some of which come from readers of my blog, Bitten — for these I say a general “thanks”.

You're welcome, Mark.

True to form, today began with savory oats. Salt, barely cracked pepper -- more like quartered peppercorns -- and a seriously fried egg on top. In fact I don't think I've ever fried an egg as hard as I (accidentally) did this morning, yet the yolk remained soft to the point of spilling out over the oats. It was quite possibly the best oat and egg combo I've tried yet, and on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from whipping them together as I usually do.

Why don't I make oats and eggs like that every time? Because I'm stupid. Nothing else could explain it.

Let me know if you need any more pointers, Bitty.

Finally, Something That Does Grow on Trees

As I pulled into the driveway last night, I caught two interesting objects in my headlights. One was my dog Oli, chewing a stick twice his size while on a walk with Elise. The other was a plastic gallon jug that clung to the trunk of our neighbor's maple. If you're from New England, you probably know what that means: syrup season.

Turns out that our neighbor, a retired engineer, started tapping all the sugar maples on the block about two years ago. When I inquired about the presence of the many floating milk jugs, he gave me a tour of the trees and explained the process, which he kept describing as "really easy" and "so simple!"

Though legally blind, he can still make out the sugar maples by their bark. He drills two to three inches into them, inserts a short metal tube, and sticks a milk jug on it. The sap flows when you've got freezing nights and warm days, and on a good day he might get a gallon of sap from a single tree. Of course this has be cooked down to about one fortieth its volume, but the (clean) plastic trash can in which he stores the sap already has about 30 gallons in it, and the season has just begun.

When I came home last night, I was hot, tired and cranky after an eight hour cooking shift. I parked the car, saw the jug on the tree, and didn't think twice. I walked over to the maple, lifted the jug off the tap, and took a swig. The tree filtered sap tasted like the cleanest water I'd ever had, with an unmistakable maple flavor. It was ice cold, it was delicious, and it was straight out of the tree.

Of course that's one-fortieth of a mouthful of syrup we won't get, but it was worth it.

I Made Corn Stock. Now What?

All summer and fall, Elise and I added our corn cobs to a bag in the freezer with the hopes of making a stock come winter. (Okay, we both added the cobs, but only I had the hopes.) But now that I've done so, I don't know what to do with it. Suggestions?

For months the cobs lay dormant beside goat kidneys, the tougher bits of chicken of the woods mushrooms, and other such ingredients I had not yet figured out what to do with. Yesterday, while working from home, I finally freed the cobs from their icy slumber and filled up the stock pot I had originally found on the curb in Somerville.

I let it simmer with nothing else but a fat pinch of salt for a few hours until the amount of liquid had reduced by half, the other half now clinging to the insides of the windows as condensation (corndensation?).

The stock was thick, rich and golden in color, and it tasted as sweet and grassy as you'd hope it would. But such a summer flavor now seems out of place, and I can't quite think of what to pair it with.

Ideally I would use it with actual corn to accentuate the flavor, but I didn't save the corn, just the cobs. I like wringing flavor and nutrition from something I've already finished, and would just as soon make stock out of something I could eat as I would support growing edible crops for biodiesel. In other words, I wouldn't.

Egg drop soup? Grain-on-grain risotto? Take a corn stock bath? Your thoughts are most appreciated.

Accidental, Occidental Fried Rice

For most of us, fried rice means Chinese style fried rice. I used to love the stuff as a kid (and before my 14 years of not eating un-kosher animals), and would pick out the red bits of pork and eat them first, just as I did the chips in mint-chip ice cream. But now the only time I have fried rice is when I ask for brown rice and mistakenly get it instead (though technically it is both brown and rice).

If you've ever had risotto cakes, you know that, unlike a restaurant that only serves penises, the concept of taking rice and frying it is not exclusively owned by the Chinese. (If you didn't click that link, know that it won't disappoint you.)

I recently did so with leftover, cooked Carolina Gold rice that I bought in the Lowcountry. I fried it up into little rice cakes that turned out about a million times better than the airy health food snack that bears the same name. But when I took my first bite, I realized that I had accidentally added seafood stock instead of chicken. As a result it tasted like a shortcut to using a full blown seafood risotto. In other words, the happy kind of accident.

Depending on the texture of your rice, you might be able to fry it as is. I added a dash of spelt flour and the aforementioned stock, plus plenty of black pepper. The cakes were crispy on the outside and as moist and lush as a Lowcountry summer on the inside. But best of all, they weren't a penis.

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Recipe: Fried Leftover Rice

Note: Depending on the consistency of your rice, you might need to add more or less liquid or flour, or nothing at all.

1 cup cooked rice (any kind)
1/4 cup stock (or water)
2 tbsp flour
black pepper
canola oil

Mix the rice, stock, flour and pepper.

Coat a skillet with sufficient oil for frying and set the burner to high.

When the oil is hot, drop in small handfuls of the rice batter. Once the crust begins to creep up the edges of the cakes, press gently to flatten, then flip and repeat on the B-side.

Serve hot and eat plain or with warm red sauce, which provides a welcome acidity.

No Cheese Pizza

A good relationship has countless advantages. Among them is pizza.

By now some of you know that Elise often delights me by whipping up several pizzas, of course from scratch. Last night's batch included a butternut and an anchovy-tapenade pie, both featured above. (Her halves also had cheese, a dab of which you can see on the slice above right, but more on that in a moment.)

She'll be working diligently from our home office and then suddenly peer over the screen of her laptop to declare "I'm going to make pizza tonight," as though possessed by some other power.

I'm an ardent feminist, but that doesn't stop me from observing that there's something about women and baking. Sure it might be the result of thousands of years of patriarchal oppression, with men demanding that women stick close to the oven for fear of them voting. On the other hand, maybe they just like it.

Among several modern, feminist-leaning, liberal couples that I know, the old gender divides often play out in the kitchen, if nowhere else. The men man the stove top (and of course the grill, fiery phallus that it is), the women the oven. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but there does seem to be a trend.

Perhaps on some subconscious, symbolic level, women relate to the womb-like quality of the oven, a warm chamber from which life sustaining offspring are born. Then, like a male lion, the man eats those offspring.

Regardless, Elise likes to make pizza. And lately she's been indulging my shockingly effective sabbatical from dairy (so long, allergy induced asthma!) and making no cheese pizzas, aka tomato pies. While that might sound as unfulfilling as abstinence, I've actually come to prefer them over the standard, cow secretion covered alternative.

Sure I've had great pizza with cheese, but there's something clean and elemental in the simplicity of just crust and sauce. Without the rubbery, fatty cloak of cheese, it's just you, a little sauce, and the crust. There's nowhere to hide: the sauce has to be good, the crust has to be great.

Now if only a man could figure out how to do it.

Lemon and Eggs

If you haven't tried lemon on eggs before, do so. Just a squeeze can transform a plate of eggs from the normal salt and pepper profile into something much more stimulating. Yes, stimulating.

Eggs with lemon wakes up the mouth. While chickens aren't known for their ability to fly, lemon allows the flavor of the egg to soar. Eggs are so often served with heavy, earthy foods likes potatoes and bacon that you could almost forget how light they can be. Lemon will help you remember.

Pictured above is a dish of twice cooked noodles with scrambled eggs, a must try if you've got leftover noodles lying around, which you do. Neither noodles nor eggs nor egg noodles have the same effect on their own, but put them together and something magical happens.

I heat a small pan with oil, sprinkle a few flakes of crushed chiles, add the pasta, then scramble in the egg until it sets. Salt or soy sauce help to develop the flavor, but it's that bit of lemon that will brighten your day.

This isn't necessarily a winter dish, at least not in New England, and that's exactly why I like it. In fact, I like it so much that sometimes I even use once-cooked noodles.

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Recipe: Twice Cooked Noodles With Lemon and Eggs

serves: as many as you want
prep time: inconsequential

1 & 1/2 cup leftover noodles (per person)
1 egg (ditto)
2 tbsp olive oil
a dash of chile flakes
a dash of salt (or soy sauce)
the juice of 1/2 lemon

Heat a pan, add the oil and chile flakes.

When the oil is hot but not sizzling, add cooked pasta and salt (or soy) and stir to coat.

Add egg, stir with a fork until flashes of cooked white are visible.

Remove from heat and sprinkle with lemon.

More On Palm Oil

I received a rather lengthy and well informed comment on my recent Smart Balance post, so I thought I'd give it a little more exposure. This thread really encapsulates what many of us are trying to figure out in a post-modern food world: what the f*ck should we eat?

There are several points here that I really enjoy. One is the lesser of evils approach when it comes to the environmental impact of food production. Perfection is great, but elusive. I also like the idea of replacing an animal fat with real food, like macadamia oil, instead a food product (like Smart Balance). Our ancestors didn't need text-heavy plastic tubs to tell them what to eat, so why should we?

Thanks to Adam for sending this in:

1) Oil palms yield more oil per acre than any other oil plant. Greater productivity = greater environmental efficiency = more land left untouched by modern agriculture.

2) Oil palms aren't an annual crop, like soy, canola (rapeseed), etc., so less violence is done to the land with the constant tearing-up of the soil to plant and yearly re-plant. Less aggressive (chemical) fertilization is used and less pesticide since it's a tree crop growing in its natural habitat.

3) Yes, oil palm plantations take habitat away from orangutans and the like (although a lot more wildlife can survive in a tree plantation than a monocultured field full of annuals). But let's not throw that stone in our glass house. Until we tear up our wheat fields to let the bison back in, let's not get on our high horse about a poor, poor country trying to make some money off their own agriculture. Almost all large-scale agriculture is inherently, ecologically violent. Oil palm plantations much less so that the alternatives.

4) On a nutritional basis, a distinction ought to be made between palm kernel and palm fruit oil. The kernel oil ain't great for you -- but it's not nearly bad as you've been told. The palm fruit oil -- brilliant red -- is actually one of our healthiest, most heat-stable fats. Like other fruit oils (olive, avocado), it's very rich in antioxidants, and can stand up to long storage and high-heat cooking without a whole lot of lipid peroxidation.

5) CSPI are a bunch of scare-mongers. That "Dying for a Cookie" ad they ran full-page in the NYT was kind of bullshit. I wrote them to tell them as much. They wrote me back to (mostly) agree with me -- or at least, to agree with my individual points, not the final assessment...

6) Finally, if you want vegan "vegan" butter for pancake frying, may I suggest straight-up red palm fruit oil, avocado oil, or macadamia oil.

Pacman or Flatbread?

Answer: flatbread.

A few months ago, Bittman wrote of the wonders of socca, a chickpea flatbread that is both versatile and facile. I believed he called it "instant starch." He and Conan (the food writer) then revisited the dish, and since then I've been hooked. Incidentally, the titles of both pieces are extremely pleasant to say: "The Saga of Skillet Flatbread" and "A Street Treat from Nice."

Thanks to their plug, socca has become an absolute staple in my kitchen. And why wouldn't it? It meets all of my criteria for perfect food: quick, easy, cheap, nourishing, and kind of weird.

I throw one together anytime I've got a meal that feels like it's missing something. I've baked, baked and then broiled, and simply broiled, and all are perfectly acceptable. If you're really going for speed, I suggest broiling and flipping. In my mind, the perfect socca is crispy on the outside and still moist and somewhat hummusy on the inside.

Luckily, the flavor of chickpea flour is generally more sweet and pea-like than with a canned garbanzo, so you've got that going for you too. I eat most of my socca straight up, but of course you can add anything you like to the batter or on top during or after baking. I imagine grated cheese would look nice and help ensure a good crunch.



By far the best socca I've made was one topped with the tomato sauce we put up at the end of the season. Each jar is a time capsule of summer, an explosion of flavor from a forgotten temperature.

So don't be a suckah; make a socca. And if you want to go all out, eat it in a sukkah.

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Recipe: Socca (aka Farinata aka Chickpea Flatbread)
-adapted from Mark Bittman

1 cup chickpea flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
4 to 6 tablespoons olive oil

Put a skillet under the broiler and set oven to "broil."

Mix chickpea flour with equal parts water, then add the salt and pepper. Whisk until smooth. Stir in 2 tablespoons olive oil. Cover, and let sit while oven heats, or as long as 12 hours. Batter should be about the consistency of heavy cream.

Pour 2 tablespoons oil into heated pan, and swirl to cover pan evenly. Pour in batter, and broil about 5 minutes on each side. If it looks dry, brush the top with more oil.

Cut it into wedges and serve hot.

Homemade Granola

I can't remember the first time I had granola, but shortly afterwards I wrote it off. As a kid, it was too healthy. As an adult, it wasn't healthy enough. What began as a wholesome, grain based snack had at some point morphed into candy for rich hippies. Until I made it myself.

Ah, the power of "homemade." After years of eating a food dictated by popular consensus, in your own kitchen you finally gain the satisfaction of unchecked creative control. Want a salty granola? It's your call. Granola dotted with marrow croutons? Yes, we can.



Making your own version of a commercially available food is deeply satisfying for any home cook on a budget, especially if you have control issues. When I made my first batch of granola, and I've made more since, it finally tasted how I've always wanted it to and it cost what I've always wanted to pay: next to nothing.

While it might seem like a specialty snack, I didn't even have to buy anything to make it. If you feel the need to load it with acai and gogi you'll have to make a trip to the obnoxious store, but otherwise you can make do.

I adapted Bittman's recipe to what I had on hand, combined with observations from having watched others make it in the past. My version is not candy, but I do eat it as though it were. And it makes the house smell like winter should.

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Recipe: Tons of Great, Cheap Granola

6 cups (real) oats
2 cup sunflower seeds (or whatever)
1 cup dried currants (or whatever)
1 cup dried coconut
1 cup honey
2 tbsp canola oil
pinch of salt
dash of cinnamon

Pre-heat the oven to 325. Combine everything but the currants and oil and mix well.

Spread the oil on two baking sheets, divide the granola between them, and toss lightly.

Bake until brown but not burnt, stirring as often as necessary (about 4 times, about half an hour.)

Let cool. Feel cool.

Hi-Rise Bakery Potato Bread

Humans are such repulsive creatures, especially foodies. We never want the same thing twice no matter how good it was, always searching for the next thrill, be it the latest obscure grain (farro) or the cheapest tongue mulita (Tacos Lupita).

For instance, how often did I go to the fantastic Hi-Rise bakery during the years in which I lived a few blocks away? Twice.
Now, through the eyes of others, I've seen the error of my ways. This first happened in the Ferry Market in San Fran, pretty much the last place you'd expect to feel good about your own town's food. But when I mentioned that I had come from Cambridge, the cheesemongers at Cowgirl Creamery started gushing about the H.R., and I couldn't help but blush. I felt like a supermodel had told me that I was beautiful.

Then yesterday I took an out of town guest there to secure provisions for his flight back to Ithaca, which of course is the San Francisco of Tompkins County, New York. As soon as we set foot in the door, I saw the expression on my friend's face, the drool seeping from the corners of his gaping mouth, and I realized how numb and ungrateful I had become. I crossed out the existing words in my thought bubble ("Ah, the place with expensive sandwiches") and instead wrote in my highest compliment to any Boston area eatery: "Wow, this is the kind of place you can find in New York!"

I'm eating a slice of their potato bread right now, and its sheer splendor has shaken me out of hunting mode. Why look elsewhere when you've got something this good right in front of you?

Thin, crunchy crust, moist and fluffy interior, deep potato flavor. Those Cowgirls were right: I am beautiful.

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Hi-Rise Bakery

56 Brattle St
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02143
(617) 492 3003

208 Concord Ave
Cambridge, MA 02138

(617) 876-8766

Help The Human Rabbit

My friend is undertaking an intense, almost all-veggie diet, and he came to me for ways to make it palatable. Here is his regiment, as I understand it.

There are milk days and veggie days. On milk days, it's just whole milk and yogurt. On veggie days he can have two fruits and 1.5 pounds of veggies, so it's obviously more about what you can't eat than what you can. No oil, grains, nuts, alcohol, vinegar, and in his words, he's desperate for anything that tastes good, or "tastes at all." (And I'm assuming there's no beans if there's no grains.) Obviously he could use some help, so please comment if you've got any bright ideas.

I have three bits of advice. The first is to favor starchy, filling veggies. If all you can eat is vegetables, baby arugula will only go so far. I'm thinking baked acorn squash (or any winter squash), roasted sweet potatoes, whole baked eggplant, mashed potatoes or mashed anything like a potato. If avocados fit the criteria, I would eat as many as possible, with just a squeeze of lemon and lots of salt and pepper. If coconut milk is cool, I would mix in a few spices and use it to turn plain old steamed veggies into curry.

Still, if you find something you like, you'll soon hate if you don't vary the preparation, especially the texture. That way you can trick yourself into thinking that you're eating a greater variety than you actually are. This is how a lot of raw foods people do it: "lasagna" that's just thinly sliced layers of different vegetables and so on.

In keeping with the first idea, I think spaghetti squash could go a long way here. It's filling, it's flavorful on its own, and it's fun. I would also suggest purées, since you can cook and blend almost any veggie with a little water and salt and suddenly have a satisfying soup. Since you can do spices, might I suggest carrot ginger. I haven't done it, but I bet baked latkes made with any grated veggie wouldn't be bad.

My third suggestion is to hit the blogs. There are a ton of people out there with specialized diets, and they're often the same folks who are compulsive enough to tell you about every little thing that they consume. 101 Cookbooks is queen of the veggieblogosphere, and I bet you could find some inspiration in raw foods; just the fact that you can use heat might make your options look decadent in comparison.

I will say that it's surprising how much we can alter our diets just by changing the ratios of the kinds of things we eat. I grew up with meat taking center stage in every dinner, and I still eat it, but I've also learned that if I up the amounts of other stuff, like grains and veggies, I can not only adapt but also do better.

That said, it sounds really tough, so good luck. Anyone else?

Smart Balance or Stupid Balance?

I recently, and mistakenly, bought a tub of Smart Balance to use in pancakes for some vegan friends. While its cousin Earth Balance is indeed suitable for vegans, it seems Smart Balance is not, as it contains whey. Clearly the distributor thinks that people who don't eat dairy are more earthy than they are smart.

Though both Balances have been widely embraced as healthy stuff, they violate several of Pollan's rules for good eating laid out in the climax of In Defense of Food. For instance:

-Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

-Avoid products that make health claims.

-Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A) unfamiliar, B) unpronounceable, C) more than five in number.

In looking over Smart Balance's ingredients, which are both numerous and alien, I paused when I came to palm oil. I had just read an article in Nat Geo about deforestation in Borneo, caused in large part by supplying the growing demand for, you guessed it, palm oil. (For a rebuke of the article, see the very suspiciously named Palm Oil Truth Foundation, which seems like something out of communist Russia. It also calls the article's style "meandering" and states that "there has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming." Red flag!)

Without seriously researching the subject, I can't say that the palm oil in Smart or Earth Balance comes from Borneo, though the odds seem good, since most of the world's supply does come from there. Palm fruit plantations now cover much of the island, replacing habitat for the local indigenous people and the orangutans and pygmy elephants they share it with.

The deforestation necessary to create the plantations also helps Indonesia to rank third for greenhouse gas emissions, just behind the U.S. and China (!). I don't know about you, but that's not something I want to spread on my pancakes.

Again, I can't comment on how direct the link is (unless any editors out there want to pay me to), but here's something I can say.

It sure seems a lot more simple to just buy butter from your local dairy farm. It has one (two if there's salt) ingredients, and your great grandmother would definitely know what to do with it.

The Best French Fries I've Ever Had

Until now, the best fries I'd ever had were in Ithaca, NY. It's no secret that I have a soft spot for the town, but it's with good reason.

A friend of mine who is also a former Chez Panisse employee is considering moving from the Bay Area, and Ithaca is near the top of her list. Partly because she's interested in a grad program there, but partly because it's one of the few towns in America that won't make a former Bay Area foodie feel like they live in the desert outside of the house in Beetlejuice.

So it was no surprise that I had great fries there, especially because the region is also known for something called salt potatoes. But yesterday, all that changed. Elise had a rare free night now that her new show is up, and there was only one thing on her mind: making fries.

They were the perfect fry, with crisp skin and light and creamy guts. She admittedly has a heavy hand with salt, but in this case it was just right, going toe to toe with the surprisingly sweet taste of the taters. Crispy, fluffy, sweet, salty - may my epitaph be so kind.

We have three guesses as to why they were so ethereal. First was her general skill, including the decision to steam and then fry. Then there was our luck of having the right potatoes chilling in the hallway thanks to our winter CSA. But the third and most unusual reason was the choice of fat, or fats, rather.

We just so happened to be low on all oils, so she made a blend of peanut, canola, and olive. We wouldn't have done so for any other reason but necessity, but it just might have been the killing stroke that made these the best fries of my life.

Now who's gorges?

Kimchee Pancake

In damp, cold, snowy weather, a hot, crusty, kimchee pancake seems like the perfect food. It also makes sense seasonally, since this is the time of year when fermented veggies are the only kind available, excluding root vegetables and Chilean green beans.

A pajeon is also a good way to use up kimchee if you've got more than you can handle. I've started buying mine at Little Pusan, our local Korean restaurant and home of the best food in town. When I realized that they sold their excellent homemade kimchee in bulk, I had the following conversation with the owner, a charmingly opinionated woman:

Me: What size does the kimchee come in?
Her: Eight-fifty, six dollar, twelve.
Me: I'll take an eight-fifty.
(She disappears into the kitchen, returning with a five pound jar.)
Me: Whoah, that's a lot of kimchee!
Her: Not a lot.
Me: How long will it last?
Her: (Huff!) Three month. Six month.

It lasted me about one month, which helps me structure my visits to the restaurant. I always want to eat there, but don't want to get to a place where I lose interest or take it for granted. But now when the jar runs out, I know that it's time to go back for a meal and a reload.

I'd include my recipe but it's not quite there yet. I basically mixed kimchee with an egg and enough flour to bind, then fried it in hot oil. That wasn't bad, but see Wandering Chopsticks for a little more precision.

Roasted Rotating Root Veggies

If you aren't doing so already, start eating this.

This year roasted root veggies are making up a large part of my winter diet. Partly because we're getting a lot from our CSA, and partly because they seem like the most perfect cold weather food. There's something about this season that just makes me want to eat things that grow underground.

A hearty portion of veggies like these goes a long way. I'm finding that a big dose of tubers and bulbs takes the place of both the starch and vegetable in a given meal, thereby compromising about 80% of what I feel the need to eat. A plate of these plus a drumstick or a slab of tofu and you're in business. A slice of bread and some salad? Superfluous.

I used to think of this dish as a specialty item, but I recommend that everyone bump it up to staple status. The key to not getting bored with it is to keep things in rotation. Thanks to the CSA, I have turnips, sweet potatoes, unsweet potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, parsnips, and some stuff I can't identify but which looks great. Any three of those will do, so you can imagine the possibilities and varying degrees of sweetness.

My advice is to buy a bunch of different kinds of root veggies and then make them in different combinations. They'll last forever, plus you don't need much of any one of them at once. When you take a little from each root, your pan is often too full. And like the price of olives at an olive bar, the roasting temp for all of these is roughly the same, so mix and match with abandon.

Filling veggies may sound like an oxymoron to anyone who hasn't experienced them, but I could almost live on these alone.

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Recipe: Roasted Root Veggies

1 tbsp coarse salt
3/4 tbsp rosemary (more if fresh)
3 twists of a pepper grinder
oil to coat
Equal parts of any of the following: beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, carrots, onion, parsnip

Pre-heat the oven to 400.

Cut the veggies into bite sized pieces - they smaller they are, the faster they cook.

Note: I only peel the parsnip and beets.

Toss well with the remaining ingredients.

Roast at 400 for 45 minutes to an hour, tossing three times to ensure equal oil coverage. Toss gently, with two metal spoons, to avoid breakdown.

They're done when a fork meets little resistance from each variety of veggie.