Microgreens

Perhaps you've been to a restaurant that offers a salad of microgreens or you've seen them sold in a farmers' market.  But do you know what they are?  And why would you want to eat these tiny versions of familiar greens and herbs?
Well, basically, microgreens are young greens like radish, arugula, lettuce, peas, herbs, etc.  But they're even younger than some of the "baby" vegetables we see--baby spinach, for example.  These greens are usually no more than 14 days old.

While similar to sprouts (like bean sprouts), microgreens are different.  According to this NPR article,

Sprouts are seeds germinated in water just long enough (usually 48 hours) to grow roots, a stem and pale, underdeveloped leaves. Microgreens, on the other hand, need soil and sunlight and at least 7 days to grow before you can harvest them.

Microgreens have been getting more and more popular because of their sweet and tender taste as well as their look--really, they are kind of cute, aren't they?

But now some studies show that these tiny leaves give us a huge nutritional package.  From the same article:

The researchers looked at four groups of vitamins and other phytochemicals – including vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta carotene — in 25 varieties of microgreens. They found that leaves from almost all of the microgreens had four to six times more nutrients than the mature leaves of the same plant. But there was variation among them – red cabbage was highest in vitamin C, for instance, while the green daikon radish microgreens had the most vitamin E.
 

While microgreens will not overtake the popularity of their full-grown versions, it's good to know that great things can come in little packages.  As little fresh fruits and vegetables as we Americans eat, any place we can find to get these nutrients into our bodies is a great thing.

So next time you see some of these tiny greens on your plate, don't just move them aside like some common garnish.  Munch them down and get as much nutrition from your meal as you can!

Fruit & Veggies

Yet another study shows that most Americans don't eat the amount of fruits and vegetables that we should.  Most people, according to the survey, eat less than half of what the recommendations are.  The typical person eats about 1 cup of vegetables a day and just under a half cup of fruits.  (I would have thought it was the other way around.)  This, by the way, includes not-as-healthy veggies like potatoes (not French fries). 

Young children and their parents seem to be getting the idea--their intake of fruits and veggies are climbing.  But teens and the elderly tend to eat less. 

This information comes from a USA Today article that does a good idea of explaining about how it's actually fairly easy to eat the recommended amount of these foods.  One suggestion is to fill at least half your plate with fruits and veggies. 

Also, one of the experts quoted in the article says:

[E]very little bit counts: raisins in cereal, frozen berries in smoothies, vegetables in soup, tomato sauce on spaghetti, beans in chili, veggies on sandwiches, 100% fruit juices.

In general, one cup of raw or cooked vegetables or vegetable juice, or two cups of raw leafy greens, counts as one cup from the vegetable group. One cup (or one piece) of fruit or 100% fruit juice, or half a cup of dried fruit, is considered one cup from the fruit group. So if you eat an apple or banana, that counts as one cup of fruit for the day; a medium side salad could equal about one cup of vegetables.

My suggestion: Join a CSA!  Since we've joined Blooming Glen Farm, we eat way more veggies than we ever have before.  And there's not much better than fresh produce grown within a mile of home.  Or go to farmers' markets and buy local fruits--it's almost peach time!

Oh, by the way.  If you read the article, scroll down to the comments.  Some are incredibly idiotic and entertaining.

Be Strong to the Finish

Spinach.  It's one of the most healthy foods you can find--filled with loads of vitamins (especially A & C) and extremely high in antioxidants.  It's also considered to be high in folic acit, iron and calcium among many other nutrients.

But to some, spinach is just an ugly blob of goo sitting on their plate.  It doesn't have to be that way. 

Spinach does not have to be cooked very much (many like to eat it raw) and it only takes minutes to prepare by sauteeing, steaming, wilting, etc--making it a great weeknight side dish. 

Mark Bittman of the New York Times has come up with tasty and easy ways of putting more of this great veggie on your dinner plate. 

While there are many ways of cooking spinach, Bittman uses wilting, steaming, braising and super-slow cooking to create 12 distinct, but simple dishes.  Read about them here.

Fresh spinach should be appearing soon in your local farmers' market (if it hasn't already), so pick up a bunch or two and try these recipes--or your own favorite!

Super Broccoli!

One of Jake's favorite veggies is broccoli, which is great.  Broccoli is really good for you.  (I must admit that it's not one of my favorites, but I eat it.)

But now there apparently is even more reason to eat a new variety of broccoli--a "super broccoli" that British scientists have bred to contain 2-3 times regular broccoli's amount of glucoraphanin, a nutrient that is believed to help prevent heart disease.

Photo by Mark Dunham/AP

According to scientists in an AP article on the subject, the new broccoli could actually lower your cholesterol.  It supposedly tastes sweeter than regular-strength broccoli because there is less sulphur in it.

It has been for sale in California and Texas for the last year, has recently been sold in Britain and should be sold throughout the US sometime this fall. 

Of course, there are those who question the need for such a thing--you can read some of the pros and cons of it in the article--but I suppose there could be worse things than healthier broccoli. 

What they need to come up with now is something like cheese that lowers your blood pressure.  That, I'd pay for!

Post-Halloween Pumpkins

Halloween is over.  You've taken the kids trick-or-treating, carved your pumpkin, shoveled the sidewalk (huh?!!) and now what?

Well, food-wise, there's all that left-over candy.  We don't get many trick-or-treaters, so we always buy what we like because we know we'll have plenty left over. 

But what about pumpkins?  As you know, they're not just for carving.  They're a tasty, nutritious food that is very versatile. 

The versatility is evident in the recipes from these two articles I've run across.

The first is from the Washington Post and discusses the writer's experimenting with smoking pumpkins.  He even includes a Pumpkin S'more recipe.  Actually sounds pretty good.  Read this article here.

The second article is from the Patriot Ledger in Massachusetts.  In the article, a nutritionist talks about the health benefits of adding pumpkin to your diet by doing things like adding pumpkin puree to oatmeal or brownies.  This adds flavor, vitamins, fiber.  Read this article here.

So visit your local farm stand, dig a couple of pumpkins out of the snow and have fun doing something creative with them!

Kids These Days

Jake having fun at dinner--
as usual!

As an eater, Jake is pretty good for a 4 1/2 year-old.  He doesn't like cheese or potatoes or most sauces (unlike pretty much every other kid in this country).  But he has been trying things more readily lately--kalamata olives, gravy (I told you he doesn't like sauces), various veggies, fish.  He likes most of it once he tries it.  As you have heard, in Maine he learned that he loves fried shrimp.

To top it off, he's a pretty healthy eater, too.  He's much more apt to eat some sort of fruit or veggie (broccoli, sugar snap peas, etc) than chips or some other snack food.  He loves his candy--especially chocolate--but those are a treat, not something he has a lot of. 

He has a good attitude toward food that we've helped to foster in him--we talk about food and treat it with respect, take him to farmers' markets, eat a wide variety of foods, let him help prepare the food when he wants to, make meal time a time for fun.

Snack of choice at today's farmers' market?
Carrot!

The Morning Call recently ran an article including an interview with Tanya Wenman Steel, the editor-in-chief of epicurious.com, co-author of the "Real Food for Healthy Kids" cookbook and mother of twin 12-year-old boys.  She gives some great tips about getting kids to eat--and eat well.

• Have young kids help clean lettuce or peas or whatever.  Have it be fun for them to come in contact with the food.  Steel says not to worry about the mess.  "It's more about creating a fun environment and warm memory and a Pavlovian instinct that the kitchen equals fun."
• Teach your kids that fresh foods are better.  Explain how the perimeter of the grocery store is where the better foods are.  Take them to farmers' markets.  Get excited about the colors and textures of the foods.  Let them pick out things to try--most likely younger kids will go for the colorful things, which just happen to be the most nutritious.  Involve them in the preparation of meals. 
• Many people say that their kid doesn't eat.  But, Steel says, most of the time those parents don't eat either and don't sing the praises of healthy foods. 

  You have to be the ultimate PR person for spinach.  You've got to be a spokesperson for the deliciousness of fresh food.  And that means not just talking the talk, but walking the walk and eating that way every day in front of them.



Starting him early.

• Start them early.  Putting something new on their plate when they are learning to feed themselves is the time to do it--they'll try it.  Studies show that kids need to try something over a dozen times to get used to the flavor and smell of a food.
• Challenge teens (especially boys) by appealing to their competitive side.  I'll bet you I can make these Brussels spouts taste good to you.
• Require them to at least try the food.  If they don't like it, then they can say, no thank you.  But don't negotiate with them.  They should eat what's on the table--you should not be making 3 different veggies for 3 different tastes.
• Try substituting healthy foods for other favorites.  Make a healthy trail mix instead of chips.  Offer peanut butter on an apple instead of candy. 
• Portion sizes are important.  Steel says:

  Portion sizes are probably half of what parents think they should be.  It takes 20 minutes for the stomach to tell the brain it's full.  So I always start my kids with fresh veggies...By the time they're eating dessert, hopefully it has been 20 minutes and they're going to say, 'I don't need another thing to eat.'  But if they do, give them whatever fruit is in season that will satisfy the sweetness they're craving.

  Admittedly, these tips aren't the easiest things to implement.  Although we think we do a pretty good job with Jake, there are times that he just won't eat what we give him.  But the key is trying to do it--try to make these tips work and you'll have a healthier kid who will enjoy and respect food much more than if you didn't make an effort.

Mala Insana

Tomatoes.  I think they're the reason that July and August exist.  Not only are they delicious right off the vine, but they are incredibly healthy--full of vitamins and the cancer-fighting substance, lycopene.  Here's a piece I wrote for my August '09 newsletter that gives the history, nutrition and other information about these orbs of happiness.

The heat and humidity of the Dog Days of Summer make our green vegetable friends very happy. Without a doubt, the thing I most look forward to each summer is a fresh, ripe, juicy tomato. In my mind, there’s not much that tastes better than a freshly picked tomato with a little sprinkle of salt. Mmmm…. I know that many of you agree with me. But these fruits (botanically, they really are fruits, not vegetables) haven’t always been favorites.

In the 16th Century, botanists called tomatoes mala insana or “unhealthy apple”. Why? Tomatoes were thought to be poisonous since they are a member of the nightshade family. I suppose that IS unhealthy. This unfortunate belief continued in America long after Italians disproved it by making tomatoes a staple of their cuisine. In fact, it wasn’t until 1848 that the tomato was first mentioned in an American cookbook. And that was only to describe how to temper its taste. Luckily, some brave folks finally started eating and realized that

these gems were far from unhealthy. Today we know that besides great taste, tomatoes are filled with Vitamins C, A, B6 & E among other things. In addition, as many as 72 studies show that the more tomatoes and tomato products people eat, the lower their risk of many different kinds of cancer. Tomatoes contain lycopene, the cancer-fighting chemical that gives them their red color. Cooked tomatoes—including ketchup, tomato sauce, etc—have even more lycopene, since cooking breaks down cell walls and releases the chemical.

Tomatoes come in many different varieties. Salad tomatoes are small to medium in size and are not very juicy—perfect for a salad. Slicing tomatoes are large and are full of juice. Currant tomatoes, the closest we can find to wild tomatoes, are grown in South America and are very tiny and ultrasweet. Cherry and grape tomatoes are plentiful in the U.S. and are delicious in a salad or eaten out of hand. Some of the most popular and versatile tomatoes are the plum varieties, such as the Roma. Plum (or Paste) tomatoes are meaty and firm and are the favorites of sauce makers the world over.

Heritage or Heirloom tomatoes are becoming more available these days—mostly in specialty stores or farmers’ markets. They are grown from non-hybrid plants that have not been grown in large numbers.  These plants have been cultivated from those of the past—before cross pollination spoiled their uniqueness. The result is delicious fruit in a rainbow of colors—red, orange, yellow, purple, green and more. Many have patterns such as stripes or swirls. A colorful platter of heirloom tomatoes looks beautiful on your summer table.

Tomatoes ripen after being picked, but their sugars do not continue to develop, so taste won’t improve after being picked. When choosing fresh tomatoes, pick firm, brightly colored fruits that feel heavy for their size. They should also have a nice “tomatoey” smell to them. You should eat freshly picked tomatoes as soon as possible. Never store tomatoes in the refrigerator—they’ll get mealy and lose their flavor. Store them at room temperature with the stem side down.  This helps to prevent moisture from escaping and mold and bacteria from entering.

This truly is the time to enjoy the wonderful flavor of tomatoes. Did you ever taste a tomato from a supermarket that’s been shipped, artificially ripened and picked out of season? Yuck. These tasteless red balls can be sold as tomatoes, but they sure don’t taste like it. Out of season, use canned tomatoes. They’re

picked and canned at their ripest and have very good flavor.

But now in the heat of the summer fresh tomatoes are everywhere. So grab a salt shaker, sit out in the garden and let the juices flow!