When an award-winning chef and avid meat consumer starts telling folks to eat more vegetables it’s a story worth hearing. New York Times bestselling author Mark Bittman’s newest book Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating tells this story.

Bittman’s book reads like a diet book, complete with meal plans and suggested recipes. Yet, it is far more than this. It provides critical education about how our food is produced, subsidized, introduced into our schools, and advertised to our children.

Written in quick, readable chapters, Bittman’s book provides thorough evidence of the need for higher vegetable consumption in our diets, and importantly, less animal-based foods. He takes the USDA to task over its inadequate food pyramid, which lists unhealthy sugars, fats, and processed “food” as an actual food group.

The author points out that, in practice, the USDA does not support its own recommendations to consume fruits and vegetables. In fact, Bittman says, our country does not grow enough produce for every American to meet the USDA’s recommended daily allowance. Instead, he writes, “agricultural subsidies cost taxpayers $19 billion a year and benefit only 3100 farmers”—most of them producing meat and dairy.

But don’t worry: we haven’t reached a tipping point in vegetable consumption. Meat still reigns supreme. And this, Bittman points out, is part of a larger global problem affecting our environment, the obesity epidemic, and the overall health of Americans. He asks us to curb meat consumption and increase our intake of fresh fruits and veggies. After all, there are still plenty available for your diet.

The crux of Bittman’s sometimes-vegetarian diet plan is simple: eat only plant-based foods such as grains, vegetables and fruits for breakfast and lunch, and then lavish yourself at dinnertime with anything from a steak to pizza and even ice cream for dessert. By cutting back on the amount of animal products we consume, and increasingly eating more plant-based foods, Bittman believes that both our planet and our bodies will benefit.

Half this book is devoted to recipes, almost all of which are strictly vegetarian. Yet meat is not completely eliminated from the repertoire: he sprinkles pro-meat recipes throughout. His menu ranges from sweet to savory, including ideas for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and desserts.

Even if you love bacon and can’t imagine life without it, this book will fit into your diet. If you already consume a hefty helping of veggies on a regular basis, this book will inspire new twists. It’s a quick read packed with hearty amounts of well-researched nutritional information and recipes that meet the current demands of our planet and our bodies.

Labels: diet, Food Matters, Mark Bittman, recipes, USDA food pyramid, vegetarian

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

I hear his footsteps coming up the front porch. I hold my breath. I am motionless with anticipation. Clomp. Clomp. Up one step. Then the next. Finally! He reaches the door. Through a crack in the window blinds, I see his tall figure. I hear the creak of the mail slot, the swish of a letter dropping inside. Who cares about a letter?! I want the REAL goods, Mr. Mailman. I wait for it. Then I hear the awaited “thud” of heavy paper hitting the ground in front of my door. The mailman retreats back down the steps and across the yard. That’s when I make my leap. I throw open the door, shout a polite “Thank you!” and scoop up the precious Cooking Light Magazine he has delivered just for me.

I wipe the drool from my lip as I stare lovingly at the front cover image: this month, a “sweet and easy apple pancake” shown under a light drizzle of powdered sugar and nestled in a rustic cast iron skillet. A large headline is stamped proudly next to it: “Fresh from the farmer’s market.” Oh, Cooking Light. I love you!

Cooking Light’s motto reflects my own: “Eat Smart. Be Fit. Live Well.” Its contents contain everything I need to feed my passion for food and my quest for healthy food knowledge. I want to know how to put better foods in my body and incorporate them in my recipes. Each issue provides the latest nutrition research, detailed information on the healthful benefits of featured foods, and of course, recipes that put this knowledge to work. They also include a section called “Lighten Up,” taking readers’ high-fat family recipes (often desserts or cheesy entrees) and making them more figure-friendly without eliminating the flavor.

The magazine also provides fitness tips, a section titled “Enlightened Traveler,” wine pairing, and even green living tips to update your home.

My idea of a perfect day includes sitting back on my lounge chair, sipping a hot chai, and slowly digesting every word of this wonderful magazine. My husband, if he’s in the same room while I’m reading, must also endure my constant interruptions. “Honey, did you know…” “Honey, this says…” “Hey, listen to this!” Quote after quote pour from my mouth as I learn something new on every page and am driven to share each gem of knowledge with the person that I love—and feed.

Labels: cooking light magazine, farmers market, fit, food, healthy, recipes

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