Traditional applesauce recipe gets California twist

Pineapple guavas: seasonal addition to applesauce

Pineapple Guava Applesauce Recipe

Labels: apples, applesauce, canning applesauce, childhood story, fall recipe, local recipe, locavore, pineapple guava, pineapple guava applesauce recipe, seasonal recipe

Labels: berry picking, food bloggers, food trend, foraging, Hank Shaw, IFBC, locavore, Morgan Spurlock, rising food trend, wild berries

Labels: 100 mile diet, book review, Farm City, Ghost Town, locavore, Novella Carpenter, Sacramento locavore, urban farmer

Last July, I wrote a review for a documentary that has been sweeping America: Food, Inc. The movie has even enjoyed its moment in the limelight on Oprah. Food, Inc. is required viewing if you buy or eat food. Yep. That’s pretty much everybody. So, tune in. Trust me. You want to know what’s going on with our food system. And Food, Inc. leaves no question unanswered.
Thanks to our local PBS station, KVIE, you won’t even have to pay the $9 ticket price to see it. Just turn your TV dial from the comfort of your home. It airs twice this week: Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 10:00 P.M. and again on Sunday at 3:00 P.M.

I recommend hosting a gathering of friends to celebrate Earth Day and watch Food, Inc. together. This is the kind of movie that generates conversation, so make sure you have people around you to converse. You’ll all be ready to take action when the movie ends, so plan for that, too. For starters, you can use my handy guide to the farmers’ market. I have a feeling you’ll be shopping there more often.

You’ll probably come up with other great ideas to improve the way you eat. Write me. Comment on my blog. Share your views with all the locavores who gather here. We want to hear from you!

This incredible film moved my meat-eating husband to start ordering veggie burgers at our local brew pub. I can’t wait to hear how it inspires you.

Labels: documentary, Earth Day, farmers' market, Food Inc., food system, KVIE, locavore, PBS, Sacramento locavore

Labels: cheese curd, food chemicals, Illinois, locavore, Midwest, morel mushroom, rhubarb, Ropp cheese

As the country plunges further into recession, Deep Economy offers a financial solution based on common sense. Written long before the current financial crisis, Bill McKibben’s book casts doubt on our current model of capitalism, a system sustained by the production of everything from food to fuel on a massive scale: a model that benefits some, but leaves many behind. Instead, McKibben suggests we take a look closer to home at a financial model benefitting everyone, including our planet.

Chock full of case studies, the book features community organic farms in Cuba, solar energy sharing plans in U.S. neighborhoods, and rabbit micro-businesses in China. Globally, community members are coming together to develop new financial projects that branch out and touch the lives of all affected, while simultaneously protecting our planet. Sure, most folks realize the ecological benefits of eating locally—but who knew it could have financial pay-offs as well?

Deep Economy is not a liberal or a conservative text. Well researched, it draws upon economic studies to poke holes in the current American capitalist logic that suggests “more is better. “

McKibben points out that “The idea that there is a state called happiness, and that we can dependably figure out what it feels like and how to measure it, is extremely subversive. It would allow economists to start thinking about life in far richer terms, allow them to stop asking ‘What did you buy?’ and start asking ‘Is your life good?’…Because if you ask someone ‘Is your life good?’ and count on the answer to mean something, then you’ll be able to move to the real heart of the matter, the question haunting our moment on earth: Is more better?”

McKibben examines the benefits—psychological, financial, and environmental—of being part of a thriving community structure. The book dismisses as flawed our current economic model, which relies heavily on a sense of individualism, a model that the planet physically cannot sustain.

If Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle proves that eating locally is good for our planet, and Dr. Daphne Miller’s The Jungle Effect illustrates the health benefits of such a diet, then Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy casts the final, favorable vote by showing the financial benefits of local eating. This book stands up in favor of family, community, quality over quantity, planet sustainability, and richness of life.

As our politicians discuss bailout packages and CEO salaries, perhaps one of them will pick up a copy of Deep Economy. I believe they will find a winning solution in its pages. In the meantime, the book offers a way for all of us to follow its wisdom in our own, simple lives.

Labels: "Animal, "The Jungle Effect", Bill McKibben, book review, community garden, Deep Economy, eating locally, economics, locavore, Miracle", planet, recession, sustainability, vegetable

Grab your mosquito net and your whisk. You’re about to embark upon a culinary health journey the likes of which no other book offers.

The Jungle Effect by Dr. Daphne Miller provides medical evidence of the health benefits from eating seasonally, locally, and organically. We all knew these diets were good for the planet; Miller points out why they are good for people, too. Her travels take place in the world’s “cold spots:” regions with little prevalence of diseases like colon cancer, heart disease, or depression. What do their diets have in common with being disease-free?

Miller provides delightful tales of digging for wild greens on the hillsides of the Mediterranean or guzzling mountain-made sports drinks in Copper Canyon. You’ll learn of foods as unique as cactus and as common as the potato. Why are they so good for our bodies? How do we prepare them? Where can we buy them?

Don’t let the medical science scare you away from one of this year’s best reads. The Jungle Effect is easily digestible—both the reading and the recipes included. Each chapter carries you to a new corner of the world where neon yellow cheese in a box and foam-wrapped, fast-food burgers have yet to penetrate. (Did you know such places still exist?)

Cast all prejudices aside: this is not a wacky new health book preaching a fad diet. Based in nutritional science, foraged at the local farmers’ market, and brought to life in easy-to-prepare home kitchen recipes, the diet Miller suggests borrows heavily from what other locavores have been touting for years. If you have already been filing your kitchen pantry with the bounty of your garden or farmers’ market, you are already firmly prepared to incorporate Miller’s recipes. Even if you haven’t, you’re just a hop, skip, and a cabbage from making the transition. No international passport required.

For any true food nerd interested in why our bodies crave anti-oxidants, or what benefits we reap from pork, this book is for you! Do you know someone with a family history of breast cancer? Then you’ll want to lend her this book. Have a parent with arthritis? Read up before the next family dinner.

From Iceland to Okinawa, The Jungle Effect offers travel tastes from around the globe that will tempt your tummy. Put that together with the nutritional knowledge you will gain and you’ve got the actual recipes to a happy, healthy diet. As they say in Denmark: Ver så godt. Or in Paris: Bon appétit!

Labels: "cold spot", "The Jungle Effect", book review, Daphne Miller, diet, health, locavore, nutrition, recipes, travel

Grow your own peanuts! Make your own cheese! Pluck your own turkeys!

This is the stuff of Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a memoir in which her whole family devotes a year to living off the land. The tales of their strict locavore diet make for humorous and delightful reading, but importantly, this story will invoke action.

The book marches the reader through the seasons on Kingsolver’s Midwestern farm, unveiling at each page turn a new garden discovery or pleasant culinary surprise brought from their local lifestyle. Her teenage daughter provides seasonal recipes, and journal-style entries of a modern youth wholeheartedly embracing what might otherwise seem a quaint, hippie parent’s fad. Kingsolver’s husband contributes sidebars to each chapter, providing statistics and historical research that will send you running (not driving) straight to the farmers’ market.

For instance, he explains that "If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That's not gallons, but barrels."

Part of the charm of this tale lies in its ability to entice the reader with the joys, but also the manageability, of eating locally. Kingsolver describes making homemade mozzarella cheese at home (she claims it can be done in under 30 minutes!), growing bean sprouts on her window sill, or using their bread maker on a regular basis. Also, for those not ready to dive head-first into a “purist” locavore lifestyle, she offers suggestions to make the transition easier. For instance, each of her family members selected one must-have product that would not be grown locally. From coffee to spices to chocolate, they each chose an item that could be shipped in dry, bulk form, thereby creating less ecological damage than, say, shipping bottles of orange juice cross-country.

The book also provides guidance for finding heirloom seeds for your garden, and reviews of farmers and restaurants that are committed to sustainable practices that support a locavore lifestyle.

Chock-full of advice, information, and tasty tales, this book will satisfy your reading cravings, while inspiring you to step out and fill your life with a richness that is unattainable through the aisles of your local supermarket. Read this book, and let the inspiration begin!

Labels: animal, barbara kingsolver, book review, farm, locavore, vegetable

Most folks jump-start their mornings with a jolt of liquid caffeine. I was once among the coffee addicts of the world. When I quit, cold turkey, it was orange juice that took its place. Each morning, I need a kick in the pants from nature’s sugar to get my own juices flowing.


After reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I began to resent my fruity, orange wake-up. Every fresh carton or can of concentrate proudly proclaimed, “Florida oranges.” That’s an awfully long haul, and plenty of fuel burned, to bring me a morning cup of nectar. I was ashamed. Meanwhile, up and down the orange tree-lined streets of Sacramento, the beautiful orbs were falling to the ground like unwanted trash. What’s wrong with me?—buying juice from Florida that can clearly be made right here?! The farmers’ markets are teeming with oranges at all times of year. That’s the beautiful thing about citrus. There are varieties that will bare fruit in winter, and other varieties that will fruit in summer. In California, we can proudly gather ripe oranges nearly year-round.

In my kitchen cabinet, sitting alone and waiting for some attention, was my juicer. It’s a simple gadget, purchased for less than $30 at a Target. All it takes is a sliced orange, a bit of pressure, and “Wallah!”—orange juice.

Each week for the past six months or so, I have purchased a large bag of oranges at the farmers’ market. For a whopping price tag ranging between $3-5 for a 10lb bag, I easily fill a large pitcher with fresh-squeezed orange juice. It takes about 20 minutes of my day, once a week. This amount of juice lasts my husband and I exactly one week—until the next farmers market rolls around and I can buy another fresh bag of oranges.

For $5, I could buy a half-gallon of “fresh” orange juice that has just been shipped in from Florida—a trip that would take several days on a refrigerated truck. I could buy this orange juice, which may be made from a concentrate, or which may have added sugars or preservatives. Or, I could spend the same amount of money on a bag of oranges purchased from a local farmer.

Ultimately, my husband and I hope to plant our own orange trees. We have one mature tree already. It ripens in the winter, when we take full advantage of the glorious fruit for orange juice, fruit salads, and succulent snacks. In due time, we hope to plant a summer-ripening variety as well. But in the meantime, we love having quick access to the oranges grown proudly by local farmers.

Labels: books, farmers market, locavore, orange juice

Look, Mom! I’m on the Internet!
For anyone who isn’t my mom, allow me to introduce myself (I’m Amber!) and my new blog: Awake at the Whisk.

Born Baker
I don’t believe I was born with a whisk in my hand, but shortly thereafter, my mom—and aunt and grandma and great grandma—made sure I knew how to use one. I was sous chef and taste-tester first, painting food-colored egg wash over sugar cookie cutouts, or dipping fingers into large vats of whipped frosting at my aunt’s bakery for “quality control.”

Later, I graduated to My First Baking Book by Rena Coyle, baking Power Bars, Baked Apple Pancakes and her version of cream puffs—a book I could bake from all by myself. Soon enough, I was helping Mom with dinner, chopping lettuce for taco night, or stirring hot pots of chili. In summer, I would help Mom and Dad can tomatoes, applesauce, and at least three flavors of jam from fruits picked in our yard. I was always free to roam the yard, eating raspberries right from the bush, plucking grapes from the vine, or dipping thick stalks of ruby red rhubarb into sugar to munch raw. I was also in charge of less-appealing tasks, like loading my wagon with rotten pears that had fallen to the ground (so Dad could later haul them away).

About once a year, my uncle would visit from out of state. During his visits, Mom made a big deal to remove meat from our meals. Our uncle was—gasp!—a “vegetarian.” (Did I mention we lived in rural Illinois in those days?) Mom seemed to think it was a pretty cool thing to be, and I secretly wished I had the willpower to commit to this lifestyle. My mom explained my uncle’s thoughts about a small planet with limited resources, and a human race that was gobbling these resources up far too quickly. She told me how meat was produced using grain that was inedible to humans, yet people were starving in Ethiopia a half world away. But when our uncle left, we returned promptly to eating cheese burgers on the grill.

Have Whisk, Will Travel
At the age of 16, I left America to live for one year as an exchange student in Denmark—the land of the boiled potato and the chocolate-covered marshmallow—a country of 5 million people and 10 million pigs. By Thanksgiving, I had eaten my share of sausages and was ready to share a real, American meal with my host family. I was allowed to stay home from school to prepare the festivities: turkey, mashed potatoes, jell-o, cranberries, pumpkin pie, and apple pie. Mom and Grandma sent pages of recipes, boxes of jell-o mix, and cans of pumpkin. All by myself, I prepared my first-ever Thanksgiving for a houseful of Danes, who graciously gobbled up the food—all except the pumpkin pie. (More for me!)

About 30 extra pounds into my pork-and-potato-filled year, I came up with “the lie” that would change the course of my life forever. I was sick of eating the same basic meal every day: boiled potatoes and some form of pork. It was considered rude to trim the fat from your ham and leave it on your plate: in Denmark, they ate it. So, I told my host parents that I was a Methodist (a religion with which they were unfamiliar) and that we were not allowed to eat meat during that part of the year—with the exception of fish. My fib worked! Vegetables entered my life! Sausages left it! Despite the added burden I created for my loving host families (my apologies!), fifteen years later a vegetarian diet remains a firm part of my life. (I still eat fish.)

I Don’t Know What to Feed a Vegetarian
Returning to high school in Illinois, folks around me didn’t quite know what to think, and they sure as shine-ola didn’t know what to feed me. Cheese pizza every night! Cheese sandwiches! Cheese nachos! A bowl of cereal?

When I went away to college, I was fed more of the same in the dorms: melted cheese in all its forms of glory. But I was also fed something healthy: knowledge. My understanding of mercury in the oceans, pesticides in our rivers, and global hunger expanded. My sister, who worked at an organic restaurant, explained the need to buy organic groceries, and why it was important even if I was living on a student’s meager wages.

When I finally got an apartment, I bought dozens of plastic pots at the dollar store and filled them with seedlings on the porch of my studio apartment. Fresh basil! Bell peppers! Tomatoes! Just like the garden of my youth—only much smaller. I began to cook for myself—not the recipes of my youth (most of which contained hamburger in some form or another), but new, meatless versions—with extra veggies.

I met a guy who was equally dismayed about the state of the world’s water, and was working to do something about it. Like me, he was not a fan of red meat, but a lover of veggies. I lured him deeper into my life by cooking something new for dinner every night and inviting him over. Homemade pesto pizza, peach salsa, and garlicky hummus filled our lives, and next thing I knew, we had finished school and were moving out West together.

My Food Philosophy
Now, we live in California, happily married. Almost every day is a new culinary adventure (or misadventure) at home in our kitchen or garden. I shop every week religiously at the farmers market. I buy organic food whenever possible, despite the growing cost of groceries. I try to make local and seasonal recipes. We try to grow foods we like in our own garden—and share extras with our neighbors. Pretty soon, we’re also going to start our first compost pile. I’m trying to be as much a locavore now as I am a vegetarian. I’m not perfect, but I’m trying.

But most of all, I focus on making food that tastes great and is good for us. I love baking muffins and cakes that are lighter on fats and sugars, but always high on flavor. I’m a huge fan of spices, fresh herbs, or heat in my food. I’m addicted to reading just about every book and magazine devoted to food. My favorites: Harvest for Hope by Jane Goodall and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

Awake at the Whisk reflects my attempt to be a conscious eater, baker, cook, and consumer. Sometimes that means making an amazing dessert to satisfy my sweet tooth, using the best ingredients I can find—ingredients that are organic, local and seasonal whenever possible—and packed with flavor.

It might also mean putting my garden vegetables to use in new, creative ways when the 20th cucumber rears its head at me from under the vine.

It means eating healthfully. I would not feel proud to call myself a “friend” if I bake someone a birthday cake loaded with saturated fats and cholesterol. Whole grains, nuts, fruits and veggies fill my recipes and kitchen cupboards. (So does sugar, I’ll admit. But at least it’s organic.)

It also means making smart choices when I go out to eat—whenever possible. Thankfully, more and more restaurants are catching on to the “trend” of living a conscious food life and are offering local, seasonal, organic menus. I heart these restaurants!

And for me, it always means a vegetarian diet, awake to the needs of the precious planet we inhabit, ensuring its sustainable future for the kids and future grandkids of our species.

Importantly, “Awake at the Whisk” means being alive and enjoying the vast world of food that is at our finger tips! When I travel, I love finding local eats and trying new cuisine. I might buy a new spice to try at home, or indulge myself at a local bakery. If all this isn’t fun, then what’s the point?!

Whether it’s baking, growing, or tasting something new, I will always remain Awake at the Whisk!

Labels: baking, food, garden, health, locavore, recipes, vegetarian