In spite of this, I’ve observed that when I take personal responsibility for my food–either by growing, gathering, or cooking it myself–gratitude comes easily. Watching a loaf of bread rise or seeing how lettuce sprouts in the garden puts me in touch with a mysterious force, and this, I think, maybe a missing link, a necessary starting point for gratitude.

One obstacle to feeling thankful, then, may be the striking disconnect around food within our culture. What we eat appears to many of us to originate at the grocery store, and so what is there to be grateful for? And there is an exchange that may also interfere: I offer money and receive food in return. Everyone gets something and so, again, is there anything more to be grateful for than the dollar that enabled the deal?

© Photo courtesy of: DTR@Ruhlman.com

In and around the kitchen, there is a different energy exchange, one I can’t fully explain though I can describe it. I mix flour and water and together these turn into bread. I put cucumbers and salt into a crock and get pickles ten days later. I put seeds in the soil and get vegetables and herbs, which I turn into salads, soups and more. These are wonders, all of them. And I am amazed by transformations that I can never fully understand; I’m grateful, too, because they are powered by a force beyond my grasp, one I cannot touch or see but have learned to rely on again and again.

You could say, then, that instead of engaging in commerce I am engaging in a collaboration with a mysterious force, and it’s my connection to this force that stokes the fires of gratitude.

I’ve thought a lot lately about how to strengthen this connection, and about whether it might help to see cooking in the same fascinated way that children do: “Wow, how did those eggs whip up so fluffy and light? What made that cake rise? And look at those pickles; they were cucumbers before!

I wonder if this might be a better way to inhabit the kitchen: with childlike curiosity and awe, and with an awareness that there’s mystery behind the creation of these foods. If it is, and I think it is, I suspect we might get there by slowing down and paying closer attention, by allowing ourselves to be surprised by the beauty of our ingredients and the magical way they turn into meals that nourish us.

Making room in our busy lives, enough to allow an everyday task that’s as useful and necessary as cooking to hold our attention and engage our imagination, is a gift we can give to ourselves. Growing food, gathering it in ways that are interesting and fun and, most of all, cooking: these are worth some time and effort because gratitude is the reward, and so is hope. These are necessary and uplifting feelings–and just right to hold within us as we begin a new year.

There is, of course, the issue of propitious timing, and there is also the natural evolution of whims and desires. My own evolution was helped along by people like Joan Dye Gussow, a passionate advocate for eating locally and well. In her book, This Organic Life, which I read many years ago, she describes the challenge she took on in  mid-life of growing all of her own food in a large and ambitious garden.  Back then, her commitment helped firm my resolve to eat as locally and cleanly as I could. This year I read her new book, Growing Older, and renewed my commitment to self sufficiency; hence the perpetuation of the 7-year cycle and the hens.

It’s not entirely Joan’s fault. I have long wanted hens though, to be honest, I was afraid. With so many predators around, I wondered how I would I keep the hens alive. More to the self-absorbed point, I wondered how I would personally face and deal with death when it happened. How would I clean up the mess?

Hens on pasture

My two youngest!

After months of burying my nose in books and articles, and some forced experience cleaning up dead mice, I convinced myself I could do it. So this spring, I welcomed new life and there is so much about it that I love. The hens run free on pasture, they eat bugs and stir up my compost pile, and here is the kicker: they turn grass and bugs and kitchen scraps into really superior eggs.

If you have ever daydreamed about small-scale farming, raising livestock in your own backyard, or taking personal responsibility for raising some portion of the food you eat, I cannot tell you what a joy you would find tending hens to be. They are smart; who knew? They are wonderfully athletic. They have distinct personalities, and recognize and greet those who tend them. They let me know when they’re happy and what they need, and they make a soft cluck-clucking noise with a sort of rolling, back-of-the-throat purr that is both soothing and reassuring.

For the linguist in you, there is another fun aspect to raising hens: there are so many figures of speech that come from chicken tending. They will come to mind daily and you will say, “Oh, that’s where that turn of phrase originated.” Here are a few to help you understand what I mean:

• Coming home to roost: At the end of the day, hens run to the coop and fly up to a horizontal bar–or a tree branch if they live in the wild–to roost for the night.
• Rooster: The male of the species sits high on a tree branch where he roosts to watch over his hens. So, he is the “roost-er.”
• Hen pecked: When hens are irritated with each other, which doesn’t happen often if they have ample space, they peck at each other with sharp beaks.
• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket: If, when you go out to gather eggs, you put all of them into one basket, you might lose the whole bunch by dropping or knocking it. If you put some eggs in one basket and the rest in another, there is a greater likelihood you will have eggs for breakfast.
• Running chicken: When young hens are threatened, they don’t run toward the aggressor to defend themselves, they turn and run away.
• Scratching out a living: Chickens scratch the soil to find bugs to fill their bellies.
• Pecking order: Within a group of hens, there exists a hierarchy, and pecking is the means to put an up-and-comer in her place.
• Flying the coop: A hen will occasionally take flight and leave the coop, which brings us to a related figure of speech…
• The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Hens might roam on a pasture full of grass, weeds, bugs and all a chicken could desire. But they will still stick their heads through the fence, or go over the fence, in search of some imagined improvement in circumstances.

Here are a few more examples to give you some idea of what an agricultural people we once were, with an entire lexicon established around the shared experience of chicken tending: nest egg, hatch an idea, cock-eyed, feather your nest, hen house, mother hen, rule the roost, bad egg, walking on eggshells; and there are more. If you someday get your own hens, you will have the fun of conjuring up the rest yourself!

If thinking about hens and eggs is making you wonder about the quality of the eggs you find at the grocery store, here is my own deciphering of our modern egg labels: Understanding Egg Labels

Copyright 2011, Ellen Arian, Ellen’s Food & Soul

Background

Factory farming began in the 1920s, and the timing is meaningful. This was just after the discovery of vitamins A and D. Once farmers could add these vitamins in synthetic form to animal feed, there was no longer a need to give animals access to pasture for sun and growth. There was no longer a need to have them live as animals do. So, motivated by a potential for increased profits, farmers moved their animals off of grass and onto industrial farms. The complication was that living in confinement and indoors made animals sick, but antibiotics–which came along in the 1940s–fixed that problem. Today, 80% of antibiotics are used on animals.

Egg Quality

When considering the quality of eggs, there are many factors to take into account. Chief among them is  their balance of essential fats; how hens live and what they eat affects this balance directly and the balance then affects us. Essential fats are called essential because we need them but can’t make them; we have to get these fats from food. They are called “omega-3″ and “omega-6.” There is much evidence to suggest that traditional diets balanced these two essential fats, which is what our bodies require. Now, however, most of us consume far more omega-6 than omega-3 fats, causing internal inflammation and perhaps explaining our epidemics of obesity and cancer, as well as high rates of heart disease and neurological problems.

What do essential fats have to do with how hens live and what they are fed? When chickens live indoors and are fed grain alone, they are living in a manufactured environment, which makes their eggs less than what nature intended; these eggs can contain up to 30 times more omega-6 fats than omega-3 fats. Hens on pasture produce eggs with a 1:1 essential fat ratio.  So hens that are outside absorbing vitamin D from the sun and eating bugs for protein have eggs (and meat) that are more nutritious; these eggs are also anti-inflammatory.

The Egg Labels

In the list below, I’ve attempted to decipher the most common egg labels. Some speak to how the hens live, others speak to what they are fed, and a few focus on both.

Pastured: This is the gold standard for an egg. Pastured eggs come from hens that roam free, foraging for grass, weeds, seeds and bugs. The hens return to a hen house at night to roost, nest and lay eggs; they are generally fed grain in the evening. Pastured eggs usually come from small farms, and are often sold at the farm itself, or at farmers’ markets or small health food stores. The label on these eggs will always include the word “pastured.” Because these hens live as hens should–on grass and in the sunshine, running, taking dust baths, eating bugs and pecking at the soil–their diet contains necessary minerals and their eggs have an ideal balance of essential fats. The question to ask the farmer is, “Did these eggs come from hens that live on pasture?”

High-Omega  or Omega-3 Enriched: This label refers specifically to what the hens eat: a diet rich in a source of omega-3 fats like flax seed or fish oil. If your concern is your own health and the balance of essential fats in your eggs, and if you do not have access to pastured eggs, these eggs might be a reasonable option. Note that, like most labels, this one is unregulated so, unless it is specified, there is no way to know the true omega-3 content of the eggs and there is no listing of what else the hens eat other than omega-3 rich foods. In addition, the label gives us no information about how the hens live. These eggs may have a better balance of essential fats than those that follow.

Without grass and sunshine for the hens, the following eggs all have an imbalance of essential fats:

Certified Organic: This label requires that hens be uncaged, but most live inside barns and warehouses. Access to the outdoors is a must, but it can be a small door that the hens neither know about nor use–”access” being the key word. The hens consume a certified-organic feed free of antibiotics, pesticides and genetically-modified ingredients, but beak cutting and forced molting through starvation (to simulate the natural molting that occurs when hens are exposed to sunlight) are allowed. Certified organic eggs are the only eggs is this list that have inspections and enforcement to ensure that guidelines are met. But know that while giving organic grain to hens without giving them access to pasture does make their eggs “organic;” it does not improve the life of the hens or make their eggs more nutritious. The yolks are still pale and the eggs are often shipped long distances.

Free-Range or  Free-Roaming: While there are no standards that qualify eggs as coming from free-range hens, these hens are most often uncaged and housed inside barns or warehouses with some access to the outdoors. They can sometimes enjoy natural behaviors like dust bathing, roosting and foraging, but there is no grass, and there are few bugs and little, if any, sunshine. We have no information about what free-range hens are fed, and beak cutting and forced molting are permitted.

Cage-Free: This label makes it seem as if the hens are on pasture, and it is meant to, but cage-free is a marketing term. Hens are uncaged, as the name suggests, but they most often live in a barn or warehouse without access to pasture. Beak cutting and forced molting are permitted. On the other hand, cage-free hens can walk, nest and spread their wings, which caged birds are prevented from doing.

Vegetarian-fed: To my mind, this might be the most misleading label, meant to make the eggs seem somehow virtuous. As I understand it, the label means that the hens’ feed contains no animal matter, but the hidden implication is that the hens are locked indoors. Bugs are a mainstay of a hen’s diet, and even small bugs that fly through the air will be food. To ensure that a hen eats no animal matter, I can surmise that a vegetarian-fed hen must be kept in a warehouse with no access to fresh air. If the point is consideration for all living beings, these eggs miss it entirely.

Fertile: This tells us that the hens that lay eggs live with a rooster, which probably means they are uncaged. But there is no guarantee and the label says little else about how the hens live or what they eat.

Hormone Free: Another label that sounds good, but means nothing. Hormones in poultry were banned in the 1960s.

Natural: This is a marketing term that has no consistent meaning, and tells us nothing about how the hens live or what they eat.

The Take-Home Message

Labels are necessary when we manufacture food, but eggs, in the ideal, are not manufactured. When hens are raised on pasture, we don’t need a fancy name or label; we simply need to know our farmer. Shop at farmers’ markets, farm stands or small health food stores for eggs from hens that live as they were meant to: on grass, in the sunshine, running, taking dust baths, and eating bugs. The egg carton will say “pastured,” and it is really this simple.

Copyright 2011, Ellen Arian, Ellen’s Food & Soul

It pays to look for ways to welcome anticipation back into our lives and, in the summer kitchen, making pickles is one way to do this. The process of making pickles slows us down because it unfolds over days or weeks and can’t be rushed. It is a process that has a beginning, middle and end and, with each phase, expectation builds.

There is, of course, a familiar and circular challenge: making pickles takes time when we have none to spare. But pickle making is unique among many kitchen endeavors in that it allows us to rely on an invisible team of helpmates: the bacterial cultures that make fermentation happen. These cultures move our labors along and toil for us as we tend to other tasks. Once we establish a home for them, we have the pleasure of observing their work–marveling at their bubbles, smelling, poking, and tasting from time to time.

What’s better is that if you are at home as much as I am, you will appreciate experiencing adventure without ever leaving your kitchen because pickle making is an endless source of mystery and wonder. The process is fascinating; it is also the cherished source of a quiet and particular kind of excitement.

© Photo courtesy of: DTR@Ruhlman.com

What I find most memorable about a good batch of homemade pickles is its telltale crunch: sour and salty, cool and refreshing, and especially welcome in the heat of summer. Each batch of pickles has subtle variations in taste, texture and color but, with each, you can bite into a pickle and hear and feel it give. This is what separates real pickles from all others.  Behind the crunch is the fact that real pickles are fermented in a salty brine, not preserved in vinegar; fermentation enhances their vitality and makes them a living food.

Homemade pickles are so easy to make. The recipe is as fool proof as a fermentation recipe can be, which is a confession of sorts. Once a summer, when it’s really hot and my kitchen is especially inviting to an army of microbes, I have a batch that fails. The reason why remains a mystery, but then how cucumbers become pickles is a mystery, too.

Here, then, is a recipe for you to use and enjoy. It comes from Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Katz, and has been tweaked a bit by me:

Ingredients

3-4 pounds small pickling cucumbers
6 tablespoons coarse sea salt (I use gray Celtic Sea Salt)
3-4 heads fresh flowering dill, or 3-4 tablespoons dill in any form
2-3 heads fresh garlic, scrubbed with loose peels discarded and cloves separated (there is no need to fully peel the cloves)
1 handful fresh oak, horseradish, cherry or grape leaves
6-8 whole black peppercorns

Recipe

1. Rinse cucumbers and scrape off any remaining blossoms. If you are using cucumbers that were not just picked, soak them for a couple of hours in cold water to freshen them. Then, using a small toothpick, poke a hole in the stem end of each cucumber.

2. Place sea salt in 1/2 gallon of filtered water to create a brine solution. Stir until the sea salt is thoroughly dissolved.

3. Clean your crock. I use a Harsch Pickling Crock, but the recipe will also work with any ceramic crock (in this case, you will also need a plate that fits inside the crock, a gallon jug of water or other weight, and a dishcloth to cover). Then, at the bottom of the crock, place the dill, garlic cloves, fresh leaves (most often, I use fresh grape leaves), and peppercorns.

4. Place the cucumbers in the crock and gently cover them with either the Harsch weights or a plate. Then add enough brine to cover the cucumbers by several inches. If you do not have enough brine, mix more using the same ratio of just under 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt to 1 cup of water.

5. If you are using a Harsch crock, cover the crock with its lid and then fill the outer rim with water. If you are using an ordinary crock, gently place the jug of water on the plate and cover the crock and jug with a dish towel to keep out dust.

6. In either case, check the crock every few days. Skim any mold from the surface, but don’t worry if you can’t get it all. If you are using an ordinary crock, you may want to rinse any mold from the plate and jug and replace them, taking care that all pickles are submerged under the plate.

7. Taste the pickles 7-10 days after starting them. If you like the flavor, you can enjoy them from the crock as they ferment over several weeks. Or you can remove them from the crock and store them, covered, in the refrigerator. In this case, strain the brine you used for pickling and add it to the storage jar, covering the pickles completely. If you are fond of garlic, you can also collect the whole garlic cloves from the crock, cover them with brine and store them in a separate jar in the refrigerator.

I love experimenting in the kitchen, which means I learn many lessons through trial and error. Based on my own experience, here are some hard-won pickle-making tips: Pickle-Making Wisdom

Copyright 2011, Ellen Arian, Ellen’s Food & Soul

• It is best to make pickles from small cucumbers, usually Kirby, that are the freshest you can find. If they are not recently picked, soak them in cold water to revive them. Fresh Kirbys are easy to get at farmers’ markets all summer long. They don’t all need to be the same size, but look for the smallest, “tightest,” cucumbers and forgo those that are large–even if they are labeled Kirby–as you will not get a good result. Juicy cucumbers are not a pickle maker’s friend.
• Since proper crunch is essential, it is important to know the secret behind it: it seems to be the leaves you place in the pickling crock with the rest of your ingredients. According to fermentation guru, Sandor Katz, it’s the tannin in these leaves that preserves the crunch. I used to use oak leaves; I now use fresh grape leaves and these are my preference. Katz says that cherry and horseradish leaves work as well.
• Homemade pickles are fermented, and later preserved, in a salty brine. After getting a batch or two of pickles that didn’t preserve well, I tried making a fresh brine for storing finished pickles. This new brine ruined the pickles as I was never able to attain the correct ratio of salt to water.  To avoid the heartache that comes with ruining perfectly good pickles, strain your pickling brine and use it to store your finished pickles.
• Most pickle recipes call for dill heads; these are flowers that form at the end of dill stalks as they grow in the garden. If you like to grow herbs and you simply allow your dill to go to seed, you will have all the dill heads you need. If you have no garden, you can use a fresh bunch of purchased dill and this will work, too.
• Knowing that beneficial compounds in garlic are released when cloves are cut or crushed, I tried cutting the garlic that I added to my brine and this approach ruined several batches of pickles. It is not a good idea to create such a potent garlic flavor if you want to keep your friends and family close to you; whole garlic cloves give a more pleasing result.
• Cucumbers are held under weight in the pickle-making crock. It took me years to learn that this weight should not put any real pressure on the cucumbers. On the contrary, it should be placed gently on top as its only purpose is to submerge the cucumbers under the brine.
• Mold, alas, is part of the pickle-making process. Do not fear it. You can skim and toss it if there’s a lot. As long as mold stays on the surface of the brine and doesn’t touch the tops of the cucumbers, you will get good pickles. When you are ready to store the pickles, skim the mold. Then strain the brine into your storage container.
• In my New Jersey kitchen, pickles predictably take ten days to mature. You might eat yours earlier or later depending on the flavor you seek. They improve, for a time, after you store them in the refrigerator. I have had success keeping pickles for a couple of months, but not longer than that.

Copyright 2011, Ellen Arian, Ellen’s Food & Soul

Blocks away, in my Italian kitchen, I could feel the bustle and energy of the market. People streamed toward it from every direction–on foot, bicycle, or motorcycle–and I joined them each morning as I set out to gather ingredients for the day’s meals.

What the mercato offered was a vision; even now, it takes no effort to conjure it in my mind. Barrels of capers in salt. Anchovies. Artichokes. Fresh beans in their pods. Porcini mushrooms and handfuls of wild mint to go with them. More vegetables and fruit, full of color, odd shapes and personalities, and all at the peak of ripeness, the best and most they would ever be. There was rich, creamy yogurt that must have been a thousand calories. There were fresh whole fish that smelled of salt air and sea, squat yellow peaches, and eggs with deep golden yolks. Rather than pack these eggs twelve to a carton, the farmers offered them one by one, each a treasure.

© Photo courtesy of: DTR@Ruhlman.com

Perhaps my favorite moments at the mercato were when I needed herbs, aromatiques. The farmers treated them as weeds and gave them away free and by the handful, choosing which herbs to offer based on what I bought. The assumption was that I would know what to do with them, that I knew how to cook; and I did, because the ingredients spoke a language, not in words but by some otherworldly means, that told me how they wanted to be prepared. I had only to observe and respond, imposing little, and my meals never tasted so good.

As I reflect on the way I gathered food before my Italian adventure, I can point to an emptiness, to a missing story in vegetables neatly packed into grocery store bins, or in shrink-wrapped meat displayed on uniform refrigerator shelves. I knew nothing of the farmer, the farm, or the story behind this food.

Shopping at the mercato reminded me that food comes from some place and some one, that behind every bite we eat are hands and hearts that bring food from the fields so we can put it on the table. Behind every bite are stories that most of us have lost and that we can learn again by getting to know our farmers.

I realize that shopping at farmers’ markets may not be a way to restore anything we have actually lost; it may, in fact, imitate a slow-paced way of gathering and savoring food that was never an integral part of our food culture. I’m not sure. But knowing the animals who will provide, or become, our dinner is not new, and knowing the farmers who put seeds into the soil and pull vegetables out of it is not new either. Finally, enjoying the process of gathering food, and spending time doing it, has enriched us since the beginning of time.

Visiting a farmers’ market each week may not work for everyone, and it may not work all of the time. But it is possible, especially now and for most of us. If we make it a priority, we can participate in the process of reaping the harvest, and it’s worth it because where else can you find so many happy people engaged in food commerce: buying and selling, swapping recipes, and sharing details of the harvest? Where else can you inhale the aroma of fresh, beautiful ingredients while you shop? And where can you find more potent inspiration than from deliciously ripe, seasonal food?

Finding Love (Or a Farmers’ Market) Of Your Own

Farmers’ markets have become hip and they’re increasing in number, with more than 6,000 spread across the country and, as of this winter, at least 900 open year-round. Regardless of the season, farmers’ markets provide more than just food. By reorganizing the buying and selling of ingredients around fresh air and community, they add vitality and interest to a process that might otherwise be depleting. In contrast to supermarket shopping, farmers’ markets lift our spirits by connecting us to others and allowing us to exercise our right to choose food that’s wholesome, fresh and nourishing.

To find a market near you, follow this link: Local Harvest. Or this one: USDA. And if you feel like skipping the market and going straight to the farm, have a look at this site: Eat Wild.

More Reasons to Connect to Local Farmers and Farms

If you have any doubt about the importance of knowing where our food comes from, how it was grown, and by whom, take 18 minutes to watch this exceptional video: Robyn O’Brien’s Personal Story. You will be glad you did. It’s one of the most powerful TED talks I have seen.

Copyright 2011, Ellen Arian, Ellen’s Food & Soul

Background

Both sweet and savory baked goods can pose health concerns for a variety of reasons:

• When we eat baked goods made with white flour, blood sugar can spike upward after eating (the glycemic index, or carbohydrate component, is too high).
• When we eat baked goods made with with whole-grain flour, blood sugar remains relatively stable, but phytic acid* stored in the bran may prevent us from absorbing such minerals as iron, calcium, magnesium and zinc. This can lead, over time, to mineral depletion and bone loss.
• When we bake with white or whole-grain flour and allow the batter to rest (soak) for a period of hours before baking, phytic acid is reduced, but grains become super-digestible and the result is a dramatic spike in blood sugar (the glycemic index is again too high).

The problem, then, is circular in nature, with each solution creating a new problem.

As a sourdough bread baker and teacher, I knew that sourdough creates an ideal carbohydrate: bread with a low glycemic index and almost no phytic acid due to the dough’s long rest before baking. I therefore wondered if I could use sourdough to improve the healthfulness of everyday baked goods by adding it to a batter and then allowing it to rest for a period of hours, just as when making sourdough bread. I believed this approach would lower the glycemic index of baked goods and reduce their phytic acid, a simple and elegant solution to the challenges listed above. This approach might be useful to those with insulin resistance or diabetes, those with mineral deficiencies (like low calcium or iron), and those who simply wish to lower the blood sugar impact of the baked goods they consume.

The rest of this post describes my tests and their promising results.

A Graphic Summary of Test Results

Sourdough is an ancient leavener, created when wild yeasts and beneficial bacteria feed on a mixture of flour and water. Sourdough preserves, moistens, and leavens baked goods. It also reduces or eliminates phytic acid and improves the nutritional value of foods. Since sourdough is easy to maintain in a home kitchen, the goal of my experiments was to explore whether I could use sourdough in everyday baking to lower the glycemic index of baked goods and to reduce their phytic acid.

Test Results

I conducted four series of tests** centered around two recipes, one savory (buttermilk biscuits) and one sweet (banana muffins). In each case, I prepared the recipes using stone-ground flour, which may be important. The results of these tests were consistent and clear.

• The top chart summarizes the results of adding sourdough to a savory biscuit recipe. The whole-wheat sourdough biscuit–soaked for 24 hours–caused only a modest rise in blood sugar and gave the most impressive result (see the red bottom line on the graph). These biscuits had the lowest blood sugar impact after 30 minutes, which is when blood sugar typically spikes upward, and provided the most substantial satiety and blood sugar stability. You can see this in the low arc, and the slow, steady blood sugar decline. This last factor illustrates why lessening blood sugar impact can also prevent hunger and overeating. In contrast, soaking a whole-wheat batter with buttermilk instead of sourdough causes blood sugar to spike and then plummet (the blue top line).
• The bottom chart summarizes the results of adding sourdough to a sweetened banana muffin. The whole-wheat sourdough muffin–soaked for 12 hours–gave the best result (see the blue line on the graph). These muffins caused a moderate increase in blood sugar, coupled with sustained blood sugar levels over a full two hours and a slow, steady decline. Interestingly, in this experiment the same sourdough batter soaked for 24 hours  (the yellow line) yielded the worst results. More research would be needed to understand why.
• While not illustrated in the charts, I conducted further tests to determine the quantity of sourdough needed to achieve these same results. Using just one quarter the amount of sourdough worked, proving that where a sour taste is not desired, less sourdough can be used. (I have so far experimented with using as little as 1 ounce of sourdough starter to 31 ounces of  savoy biscuit dough to achieve this same result.)
• In each case, unsoaked whole-wheat batters traced a gentle glycemic curve but, without soaking, phytic acid in the finished baked good may remain an issue.
• Test results also indicated that the inclusion of sourdough in a batter–but without a soak–has no impact on the glycemic index. A soak is required, and soaking time seems to matter.

Conclusion

These tests demonstrated that we can indeed use sourdough to reduce the glycemic index of everyday baked goods and to reduce their phytic acid, as long as the flours we use are stone-ground (see below), and as long as we allow the batter or dough to rest before baking. In these experiments, a 12-hour sourdough soak rendered the best results in sweetened baked goods. For savory baked goods, a 24-hour soak worked better. Soaking with buttermilk, and without sourdough, caused blood sugar to spike dramatically and then plummet downward. In recipes where a sour taste is not needed, sourdough can comfortably be cut to a quarter of the amount initially tested.

There is more to learn. Most importantly, what is the ideal amount of sourdough and length of soaking time needed to give the optimum result? Also, studies by others show that stone-ground flour is necessary for lowering blood sugar. My own tests confirmed this, but a closer look is needed. Finally, in what other varieties of baked goods can we use sourdough to lower glycemic response, and where is this a palatable approach and where is it not? From a culinary perspective, I have used sourdough in other sweetened baked goods (cakes–including chocolate cakes, cookies, cornbread, muffins and quick breads) and achieved a very good result, often better than without. On the savory side, I have made sourdough pizza, pancakes, English muffins, and a variety of breads. All this is to say that sourdough offers delicious potential to lower the glycemic index of everyday baked goods.

Copyright 2011, Ellen Arian, Ellen’s Food & Soul

______________________________________________________________________

* Phytic acid is a nutrient inhibitor found in the outer layer–the “bran”–of whole grains. It can inhibit our ability to absorb calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc, as well as digestive enzymes such as pepsin and amylase.

** I conducted these tests in my home kitchen, and I have normal insulin responses. My measurements were exact and portions were controlled with tests conducted at the first morning meal following a 12-hour overnight fast. I consumed only the baked good being tested and water. Using a True2Go blood glucose monitor, I measured blood sugar before eating, and again at 30-60 and 120 minutes after eating.

• The first tests determined how savory and sweetened baked goods, prepared with both white and whole-wheat flour, affect blood sugar. I conducted these tests on just-prepared batters, and on batters allowed to rest for 12 and 24 hours before baking. I added no sourdough to these batters.
• The second tests explored whether the addition of sourdough, both with a rest and without, has an impact on glycemic response.
• The third tests explored whether an acid other than sourdough–in this case, buttermilk–might impact glycemic response.
• The fourth tests attempted to determine how much sourdough is needed to lower glycemic response.

Once these mistakes were corrected, order was finally restored–or so I thought–until I glanced at the kitchen ceiling and noticed a haphazard configuration of lights; it was an arrangement so illogical that it became an ongoing reminder of our chaos, heartache, and misguided investment. I was stuck with bitter feelings until, one day, one of my children glanced upward and said, “Look, we have a smiley face on our ceiling!”

That moment–that new way of looking at a situation that had, by then, become familiar–transformed the lights into an orderly, artistic arrangement. And so on that day I learned, and I mean really learned, the importance of outlook. I look up now and see a smiley face and, even when I strain to see chaos, it simply isn’t there.

In the same way, when it comes to cooking happily and with a joyful acceptance of the task, outlook may be the largest hurdle any of us will need to leap.

Photo courtesy of: DTR@Ruhlman.com

Seen anew, nearly everything in the kitchen can bring delight–from bowls of fresh produce, to piles of clean dish towels, to a set of well-stocked pantry shelves. Take a look around your own kitchen and ask yourself how it makes you feel. Does it relax you or leave you feeling tense? It’s an important question to consider because one way to keep cooking front and center in your life is to make sure your kitchen is exactly the kind of place in which you like to spend time.

In my own kitchen, I feel connected to nearly all that surrounds me, which may be why the work and the setting rarely tire me. I know many of the farmers who grow my food; I also know the man who made my wooden spoons, and the potter who crafted my mixing bowls and mugs. The dishes on my table belonged to my grandmother, as did many of my serving bowls and platters. My impulse to spend time in the kitchen has been nurtured by these ingredients and tools, all of which have a history. Feeling connected in this way makes it easier to care. Knowing where it all came from makes the kitchen interesting; and then, of course, there is the cooking itself.

Once you master a set of basics, the process of cooking is predictable and outcomes are mostly consistent. The time and care you invest generally correlate with the results you achieve. These are results you can measure, unlike the effects of a day’s worth of other work–parenting, for example–whose rewards and gratifications can be delayed months or even years.

Another aspect to cooking I appreciate is that the kitchen is not only about production and output. When I open myself to possibility, it can be so much more because, while I cook, I can let my mind wander and figure things out–if not all of the time, then surely some of the time. So as I’m cooking, I am moving myself forward in life. When I am chopping vegetables, I am also really dreaming up ideas and sorting out challenges. When I invite my children into the process, I may be working out a conflict from earlier in the day, or helping a child who’s had a rough go find success in a well peeled carrot or a lightly whipped cream. It may look like we’re chopping and mixing, dicing and stirring, but on a deeper level we’re weaving and reweaving the delicate strands of our relationship.

There’s an elegance to all this, to cooking alone or together and well, that can make time spent in the kitchen satisfying and worthwhile. Cooking also opens the door to rituals that are themselves a comfort and that pattern our days at home: a cup of tea in the morning, birthday meals, Friday night dinner or Sunday brunch. The seasons of our lives and, if we are parents, our years spent raising children are enlivened and fortified by food, and the kitchen is where we bring many of our hopes for these years to life.

The kitchen is, finally, the place where we grant wishes. “If it’s a cake you want, then a cake you shall have!” In its own special way, time spent in the kitchen bestows upon cooks the power of magic.

Favorite Summer Cake

Copyright 2011, Ellen Arian, Ellen’s Food & Soul

It would be difficult to look honestly at the way we eat and not see that it is contributing to the erosion of so much that matters: our good health, the vitality of our small farms and local communities, and the resources offered to us by our planet. The problem, at its root, is one we might blame on a profit-driven food industry, yet the challenges we face are not due to highly-processed foods or poor quality ingredients, at least not really. These are, more specifically, being degraded by poor ways of living.

As a society, we have come to place an unusually high premium on time-saving, labor-saving approaches, and on a lifestyle that minimizes the “drudgery” of putting food on the table. An entire industry has been created to support our culinary leisure. A look to the past, however, reminds us that our great-grandparents worked hard at being food producers. They grew and cooked much of what they ate. Their days were centered around output and, without seeming virtuous, around maintaining a household and sustaining life. We, on the other hand, are food consumers. We shop for what we eat.

When we let go of daily cooking, we lost more than good nutrition; we gave up our ability to think in relevant and discerning ways about food. We deprived ourselves of a crucial connection to that which sustains us, and I don’t only mean real food, but also the process of growing, gathering and preparing it. That, too, is nourishment, and without it we are often left subtly wanting.

While living the way our great-grandparents did may not seem reasonable or possible for many of us, reversing this trend to at least some degree is a goal we might all want to embrace. By forging a solid connection to the food we eat, and to the sources of that food, we uphold the ripples that we put forth with every bite–ripples that either lift up or bring down much that is around and within us.

©Photo courtesy of: DTR@Ruhlman.com

Eating well demands a willingness to look squarely at where our food comes from. It calls for open eyes, and asks that we acknowledge this truth: we are all farmers and we are all cooks, each one of us. We may not personally use our hands to handle these tasks, but someone, somewhere is tilling the soil and raising animals on our behalf. Someone, somewhere, is harvesting food and preparing it so that we can eat, and so we are responsible for the animals and the patch of earth that feed us. Their welfare is our responsibility and our direct concern.

We might all want to commit to ensuring that the food we eat doesn’t come at the expense of anyone or anything, whether nearby or across the globe. This is a commitment we can act on over time, aiming for solid forward momentum around steps like these:

• Spend time sourcing and gathering ingredients. Invest yourself in the process of learning where your food comes from and how it was grown or raised. Try to know, too, how many miles it traveled, and how complicated the connection was from producer to you. If you have a yard or even a window box or planter, try growing some of your own food. Container gardening is a simple way to get started, and many herbs and vegetables are easy to raise in small spaces. As you reap your harvest, you may feel a deepened gratitude for farmers who do the hard work of feeding us. You may also come to appreciate the wondrous cycle of life: seed to plant to fruit to seed once again.
• Read labels. Become familiar with the ingredients that are in the foods you buy and understand, for better or worse, what they do. Know, too, who owns the company that produces your food, and pay close attention to the messages that food manufacturers give you and to the claims of health on their packaging. Remember that new is not usually improved and real healthfulness requires no loud assurances.
• Get to know small, local farmers. One important way of engaging with and strengthening your local community is to step around distant middle-men (manufacturers, transporters and preparers) who have no connection to you or your table, and instead buy as much as you can from small, local farmers. Your meals will be fresher, more flavorful and more nutritious. And you will lose some of your reliance on food that has been shipped hundreds or thousands of miles, using petroleum that someone else might need, or that we might need in future years.
• Cook more often. Cooking is practical and necessary and good for us. It is also a way of using our hands and creativity to express caring and love. Preparing even one meal for yourself or your family is a way to begin. Momentum will build. You will save money, improve the quality of your meals, and eliminate additives and preservatives that do nothing for you. You will become a food producer rather than a food buyer and, over time, you will likely find nourishment in the goodness of your meals and in the task of bringing them to the table.
• Believe that cooking matters. Your willingness to cook has a broad reach, extending far beyond the walls of your own kitchen. Cooking gives you the means to move your corner of the world, preserving resources rather than depleting them, sustaining small farms, keeping air and water clean, and caring for animals with respect and gratitude. There is no single way to act on this belief. Our tastes, preferences, and talents differ, but the practice is the same. A willingness and determination to apply yourself to the task of preparing meals is all that is required.

By approaching these steps with curiosity and care, you may begin to appreciate the significance of cooking and to value it as a source of power. Through cooking, we place a premium on being good to ourselves and our families, making our own health, and the well being of our communities, small farms, and planet the axis around which our kitchens revolve. Each meal we prepare and all that we eat becomes a vote cast in favor of a more considerate and responsible world. As Shannon Hayes wrote about homemaking, and as I will write about cooking: “It is not an act of submission or family servitude. It is an act of social transformation.”

I am indebted to Wendell Berry, whose writing about farming and food provided the ballast for my thoughts. I can recommend any of his non-fiction, but especially Bringing It To The Table and What Are People For.

How to Roast a Pepper

Copyright 2011, Ellen Arian, Ellen’s Food & Soul

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed spending time in Italy, where salad is served daily in every sort of restaurant. Alongside bowls of undressed greens, four ingredients are placed on the table: extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. The  last two are in mills so you can grind them yourself. The offering of these ingredients is based on two underlying assumptions. First, that anyone big enough to eat a salad is also big enough to dress it–without measuring spoons and without a recipe. And second, that our personal preferences vary.

The power to dress a salad–that is, the power to choose and do for oneself–is granted and taken daily. Implicit in the granting is a message so ennobling that it’s worth pausing to consider: you can do this; without a recipe, you can dress a salad using ingredients that are simple and real, and you can make it taste good. You have that ability.

How different salads are for most of us, having lost much of our self reliance in the kitchen, along with the conviction that we are capable of preparing simple and delicious fare. It is not too strong to say that this is emblematic of the larger ways, in the realm of cooking, that we have let our power go, giving it to an industry that generally has profit, rather than our well being, as its motive. It is an industry that has reduced personal choice to an array of inferior bottled dressings.

Photo courtesy of: DTR@Ruhlman.com

Making a good vinaigrette is a worthwhile step toward self reliance. It is so easy and takes so little time that I wonder how we’ve been persuaded to spend money on bottled dressings that cost more and are comprised of mostly poor-quality oils and artificial ingredients.

The concept of a vinaigrette is as simple as combining a fat with an acid, and the ways you can then embellish it are almost endless. You can vary your choice of oil–from neutral to intense, or fruity to peppery. You can alternate vinegars, choosing red wine, balsamic, sherry, or a different acid altogether like orange or lemon juice. And you can experiment with texture, making your vinaigrette thin or, if you prefer, creamy like mayonnaise. For everyday use, you might rely on a standard recipe of vinegar and oil, combined with shallots, mustard, salt and pepper. You can also add fresh herbs for color and flavor.

As you embark upon making your own vinaigrette, keep in mind that quality and proportion matter most. You will want to use a fine fresh oil, delicious vinegar, and good sea salt. A standard ratio is three parts oil to one part acid. Also remember that vinaigrette can be prepared in the moment, or made a day ahead to give the flavors a chance to meld.

Vinaigrette is, most of all, a can-do creation that allows you to imprint your preferences and personality onto everyday dishes. It asks so little and gives so much, and I’ll illustrate this point by concluding with a story about my six-year-old daughter, Rebecca.

One day, when Rebecca was about four years-old, I asked her to help me finish making a vinaigrette, the one I toss with almost every salad I make. I needed someone else to taste it. It turns out that Rebecca has an impeccable palate, which I do not. She seasoned and finished it so beautifully that I would no longer dream of making this vinaigrette without her. It has become Rebecca’s signature dressing. She makes it for company. People ask her for the recipe and for advice on duplicating her results in their own kitchens. All this at the age of six, and from a child who doesn’t give a whit about cooking.

That’s the beauty of vinaigrette: it allows even a six-year-old to sparkle and shine. If you let it, it will work its magic for you, too.

Two Vinaigrettes

Copyright 2011, Ellen Arian, Ellen’s Food & Soul