Soda is like Cigarettes, or Why I avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup

I'll admit that I've never been much of a soda drinker. I grew up on apple juice, and while there was a time we bought Diet Caffeine Free Cherry 7up, it's not something I ever consumed much of. So I don't understand why people "need" a Dr Pepper, or a Pepsi, or a Diet Coke. I had a teacher in high school who carried around her own cooler full of Pepsi, just to get her through the day. But I will admit that there was a time I smoked. I have ADHD and am terribly shy, so smoking both calmed me down, and made it easy for me to talk to people I didn't know (other smokers). But when I met my husband, and we both really considered the long tern health effects of what we were doing, we quit.

But back to the soda (or pop or coke depending on where you're from). My husband and I have, for most of the last year, been avoiding high fructose corn syrup. This began after watching the movie "King Corn" and seeing the complicated and dangerous process of making high fructose corn syrup, and was supported by the studies that came out recently about the mercury levels in corn syrup. Since neither my husband or I drink soda, or even eat much processed food, avoiding high fructose corn syrup isn't a terribly complicated task. We already read labels, and apart from the few times we couldn't find a vegan/corn syrup free bbq sauce, or the time I discovered it in my almonds, it hasn't changed our habits much.

A few weeks ago my husband and I took a trip to the coast. We camped on the beach, and I enjoyed a few rum and Blue Sky cola's. Driving home we had terrible car trouble that really slowed us down. Our jeep is sans air conditioning, and so it was a long, hot journey. About an hour outside of San Antonio, we were both dying of thirst, and the only thing we had was a few leftover Blue Sky cola's. So we split one. And I noticed something I never had before. I could only have about half a can before the sweetness was too much for me, and I just wanted a glass of water. Not something I ever remember experiencing with a conventional, corn syrup filled cola. And I got to thinking about what I've read about corn syrup, how your body absorbs it differently than sugar. Now, if you're, say, a soda company in a capitalist system who wants to sell lots and lots of your product, making something that people can only drink half of before they want water isn't really the best idea. Think about the last time you drank soda with corn syrup in it. I could drink and drink and drink it and never felt it was 'too sweet' and I sure never wanted to stop. That's dangerous to your health, and also reminds me of another addictive substance another large group of companies put into a common product: nicotine.

So this brings me around to something that happened the other day at my job. I work with kids at a recreation center. In our kitchen we have a drink machine, but my former boss would only put sports drinks and juice in it. My new boss, who is one of those people who has a rough day and just needs a Dr Pepper, filled it with soda. And I find this to be a terribly negligent act. We might as well have a cigarette machine in the building. I read an article the other day that said 40% of our health care costs as a nation are related to obesity, and that as a nation we average 60% of our caloric intake from soda. Hell, if you even just crawled out from under a rock after the last 20 years, you know obesity is currently a huge problem in this country. Not unlike smoking was a huge problem, and led to many long term health problems. High Fructose Corn Syrup has only been in our foods since the mid 90s, so we really have no idea what the long term health effects are. And from the way my co-workers who are addicted to soda act, it reminds me of when I used to step out to have a smoke. Corn syrup just makes you want more and more corn syrup, because you don't know when to stop, unlike real sugar. So why are we making this available to our kids? Why do people buy this stuff? Isn't your health worth more than drinking a can full of chemicals and a little instant gratification?

Purple Vegetable Soup

Last week we experienced what I hope was our last cold streak. It went from being in the mid 80's to a high of 45 degrees in twenty four hours. The result of this--besides a stuffed nose--was me craving some hearty vegetable soup. So Brian and I went to the co-op, bought a bunch of veggies, I browsed numerous soup/stock recipes, and this is what I came up with. The purple carrots made it very purple, but oh so delicious.


Purple Vegetable Soup (makes 10 servings)

You'll need:
6 purple carrots
1/2 onion
4 cloves of garlic
8 stalks of celery
5 red potatoes
2 cups of peas
a handful of each of the following (soaked overnight)
red lentils
green lentils
white beans
kidney beans
black beans
pinto beans
2 cup vegetable stock
half a bottle of beer (or wine if you're so inclined)
1 tbsp olive oil
water

Cut up the carrots, celery and onion, and saute it with the crushed garlic cloves in olive oil in the bottom of your soup pot. Once everything begins to soften, add the beer and turn it down low. Let it simmer for like 45 minutes.

Drain the water from your beans, and boil them in fresh water until soft (about 45 minutes). Then drain the water and add them with the stock to the soup pot. Chop and add your potatoes. Add a little water to cover everything, and whatever spices you like, and add the peas. Then bring it to a boil, turn down the stove and let the soup simmer until the potatoes are soft. Don't serve it too hot or it masks the flavors.

A word of caution: this makes a lot of soup. It barely fit in my huge Le Creuset pot. But it's so good we've gone through it amazingly fast. In fact for dinner tonight we should finish it up. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Muffins, and learning to love cooking

This post was inspired by two events. The first was my friend saying she is having a hard time with cooking. The second was watching--and being horrified by--the movie "King Corn". I needed some good ol' fashioned baking to cleanse my soul.

But first I should mention that I didn't always feel that way. I didn't used to be vegan, and I didn't used to be healthy. Though I grew up with two wonderful, involved hippie parents who used to cook and garden with me as a child, by the time I was old enough to actually *learn* we were so busy with soccer and ballet and art classes that we didn't have time to cook. Like most families today we cut dinner time to make time to drive to all the places we had to be. My family fell back onto frozen meals, and I never really learned to cook much else.

I became vegetarian in high school, and happily lived off a diet of veggie burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches. For the next eight or so years I alternated between being a vegetarian and a vegan, but because of my lack of cooking skills was never able to pull of being vegan and healthy for long. When I eventually got my own apartment, I ate lots of processed meals, salads with lots of ranch dressing, and not much in the way of vegetables besides what was hidden in meat substitutes.

Then I moved to Texas, and started getting more involved in what I was eating. I learned to read labels, began to go to a farmer's market. I worked mornings, and had my graduate classes at night, leaving me with afternoons free to cook. What *really* got me cooking, I have to admit, was watching Rachael Ray on the food network. She really took much of the mythical "mystery" out of cooking. And she gave me ideas to try and courage to experiment.

A lot of my food sucked at first. I remember the first time I made hummus, it was horrible. I burned things, undercooked things, added tablespoons when I should have been adding teaspoons. But through all of that I learned what was important in a recipe, and what could be 'fudged'. I also learned what I enjoyed making, and what wasn't worth it for me.

When Brian and I met, he already knew how to cook. He had been heading the same direction as I was, away from processed foods and towards healthy whole foods. Brian's Grandfather was a farmer in East Texas. He had lived off the food he grew, and lived on a mostly vegetable diet. Three years ago at the age of 96, having beaten cancer twice (once in his 90's), he finally passed away. Brian was very close to his Grandfather, copied his diet, and actually listened to him.

It's taken me three or four years, but I'm just now starting to be really comfortable with my abilities in the kitchen. Cooking makes me feel excited and creative, and I'm not afraid to play with recipes because I feel like I know what I'm doing.

So tonight, I made pumpkin muffins from Post Punk Kitchen. The only things that I changed were that I used applesauce instead of oil, and added raisins. They are so delicious that I'm not sure I'll be eating anything else for days. Here are some pictures:


I love those little paper cups.


Fresh ground cinnamon!


Filling the muffin tin.


And of course, the finished muffins, fresh out of the oven.

Farmers Market

A pretty haul from last Saturday. The local apples taste amazing!

Cooking and Quilting

This past weekend I went on a cooking binge. We have a new community right next to our neighborhood that is being built where the old airport used to be. This weekend they had a special farmers market, and Brian and I went and got some yummy fall vegetables. This inspired me to use up some of what we had lying around. I made caramelized squash from this recipe and some rice with tomatoes and pineapple in it.

We've just recently cleaned, seasoned and started using an old cast iron pan that belonged to Brian, and I've been trying to come up with a recipe where I can use it on both the stove top and the oven (because that's just part of the fun!). I ended up veganizing a recipe for something like a chili pie with cornbread on top. Just onions, red pepper, garlic, tomatoes and beans, with Brian's favorite cornbread recipe on top. It turned out fantastic.

Then Sunday morning, because I know how much Brian loves them, I made cinnamon rolls. They were eaten very quickly.

Though I've been fooling around on my own with patchwork and quilting, I decided that it would help me along if I took a class. So Sunday I went a took a quilting class at Craft-O-Rama in South Austin. I learned some things I didn't know, improved some of the things I had already figured out, and ended up with a pretty fall table runnner.

Now I'm all set to get working on Christmas presents for everyone.

Vegan Pizza

I think that I mentioned before, that one of my favorite childhood memories is making pizza with my Dad every Saurday night as a child. With three girls it was too expensive to buy pizza, and much more fun to make it. My Dad would make the crust from scratch, and then stretch it onto one of several circular pans. He would help us spread out the sauce, layer it with cheese and toppings, and put it into the oven.

As adult vegans, Brian and I have tried to keep up the tradition of making pizza. There are places in town where we could order vegan pizza, but it tastes better when we make it. The first thing we do is make the crust in our bread machine. Our bread machine is the best Christmas present ever, since I use it weekly throughout the fall and winter. Just drop the ingredients in, set the cycle and boom, an hour later we have pizza dough. I spread the dough on our circular pan, and bake it for about fifteen minutes. Then I slide it off the pan and onto a cutting board to cool (and also so I can bake the second shell...we only have one pizza pan...)



While it's cooling, we make the cheese in our food processor. After being vegan for several years, I find that I enjoy nut cheeses more than I ever did real cheese. The nut flavor it much more satisfying that the rich flavor cheese had. Plus it's such fun to make! The recipe we use (found here) my friend Estella gave to me, and it's both delicious and works pretty well for pizza. It has red pepper in it, and that give it a unique and tasty flavor. You have to glop it on and be careful not to mix it with the sauce too much, but mmmmm it's worth it once it's baked.



After putting the sauce and 'cheese' on, we move on to the toppings. I *love* pineapple and olives on my pizza, so we always do a pineapple/olive pizza, and we had some fresh mushrooms so we did a mushroom/olive one too. We need to get more creative with this, I've been planning to try a bbq tofu pizza for a while now.



The picture above is before cooking. The 'cheese' tends to darken and thicken when you cook it. Below is the pineapple/olive pizza after it's been cooked. And partly eaten...I wasn't quick enough with my camera to catch it before we ate some of it.

Come on, into my kitchen

Brian and I don't watch much television. We don't have cable, but we do own a TV for movies and the occasional PBS show. Our set will quickly become obsolete when they switch everything over, but at that point we'll probably just give it up totally. But I digress.

Without regular television, I usually live in a commercial-free void (except for those annoying dancing aliens on websites that keep telling me interest rates are down or something) , but the other night as we were getting ready to watch a movie, I happened to catch a few commercials, one of which irritated me to no end. The commercial was for Church's Chicken's take home dinner, or whatever fancy name they call it. What they were implying with the commercial is that if you stop and buy dinner at Church's, you'll have more time to spend with your family, not slaving away in the kitchen.


It really makes me mad that cooking is portrayed like a chore that females must do alone in the kitchen...and if they really wanted to spend their time with their family, then fast food it is! Cooking is something that can be an enjoyable, shared experience with the whole family. Growing up, my sisters and I made pizza with our Dad every Friday night. We made ice cream and popcorn and helped my parents can strawberry jam, zucchini pickles and homemade ketchup. Looking back as an adult, these are some of my fondest memories. My family hardly ever went out to eat, because it was too expensive. And I don't think I ever noticed. Even when we went on vacation, we'd cook our own meals. I remember one summer we spent with my Grandmother "Gran" and her best friend, my "Great-Grandmother" Helen. My Dad cooked scrambled eggs ever single day (we were totally sick of them by vacations end).

Even now Brian and I often spend time cooking together. Lately we've been on a sushi kick, where we've been preparing the vegetables and then rolling the sushi for dinner together. But even when we're not making something special, or even when one of us isn't doing the cooking, we usually just keep each other company in the kitchen, or help out with dishes. The work isn't so daunting when there are two of us to do it.

My point with all of this is, that fast food doesn't equal spending more time with your family, and cooking isn't just for the ladies. Especially when both parents work--like mine did--it makes sense to share the cooking duties. And if you can make it fun and involve the kids, all the better. I work with children and I cook with them all the time. They love it!

And really, if you're looking for a way to bring your family together and spend more time with them, instead of giving up cooking for fast food, give up television. Giving up television, I suddenly found that I had time to do all those things that I had wanted to do for years. And no more commercials means no more slick advertising making me want things that I don't really need. Or thinking that I have to go buy fast food in order to enjoy quality time with those I love.

eat me, I'm organic

I looooove going to the Farmer's Market every Saturday. I never thought I would be one of those people able to get up early on their day off just to go buy produce. Suddenly I am. But it's so much more than that. I grew up going to art festivals, cultural festivals, county fairs. My Mother and Grandmother used to pack me and my sisters into matching dresses and strollers with big diaper bags hanging from their shoulders, and off we'd go. So going to the Farmer's Market each week is like a continuation of that.

Going to the farmer's market also allows us to be purposeful and aware of our food in a way that the grocery store, and in some ways even our beloved co-op, doesn't let us be. It gives me one on one contact with the people who grown what I eat. I know that the lady I buy peppers from every week picks them the night before and stores them in her garage , which is right next to her greenhouse. Sometimes she ever tells me about what was going on when she was picking them. Today she told me she got them picked just before it started to rain last night. A few weeks ago she told me she had picked them three hours before, by flashlight. The stand where I get my onions and carrots is run by a lady who's dream was to own an organic farm. Every week she tells people how happy she is she took the chance and gave up her desk job. The guy I buy radishes from wears a cowboy hat and has a dog named Buddy. Buddy loves people, but obediently sits on the back of his owners truck the whole morning. The lady I buy flowers from every week laments the fact that she's too busy selling flowers to go buy stuff herself. I could go on and on, but my point is that I know these people now. I know where my money is going, and it's going directly to the people who sell or make what I'm buying.

The other thing I really enjoy about the market is that it's guilt-free shopping. Instead of buying more t-shirts or brick-a-brack that I don't need, I'm buying carrots and zucchini that will feed and nourish my body all week. Brian and I try to be very purposeful about what we buy, and the market--while feeling like a weekly shopping spree--is really just 80% of my grocery shopping.

Next week my sister and father will be in town, and I'm planning on taking them with us to the market. My Dad really enjoys the same type of things that I do, it's just sometimes it takes a little push in the right direction to remind him. So I'm hoping that visiting the market will be a push, and that he'll go home and start going to the local farmer's market with my mother.