I recently stumbled upon a great recipe for Spaghetti Squash Pancakes from Mollie Katzen’s book, The Vegetable Dishes I Can’t Live Without. It’s a winner. Although the original recipe calls for spaghetti squash (quite delicious) and gives the option of using all-purpose flour or rice flour, the recipe can accommodate any kind of squash and a variety of gluten-free flours. The topping possibilities are also endless, giving you the option to play with flavor combinations. Happy eating!

Carrots straight from the farm are dirty little freaks. Knobbly, hairy, misshapen and covered in soil, these root vegetables bear no resemblance to the neon orange and uniformly shaped clones found in your average supermarket plastic bag. But I love knowing where the vegetables came from and supporting local farms through my veg bag of organic produce (British equivalent of a CSA). I enjoy confronting an array of unfamiliar vegetables or familiar vegetables in unfamiliar guises like a large green ball of cauliflower that’s nearly 90% leaves. My favorite new game is figuring out how to use all these vegetables in delicious vegetarian dishes.

There are measurable levels of MNI’s toxic chemicals in every type of food that has been tested. Most are completely unregulated. There is no requirement that food be labeled to let consumers know that the chemicals are present. You can’t even avoid these chemicals by buying Organic. In fact, Organic produce often has even higher levels of some of the chemicals. You can’t wash them off because they are inside the food. There are very few studies on the long-term effects of ingesting these chemicals and none have ever been funded my MNI itself.  Only publicly funded studies have shed some light on the toxic nature of these chemicals.

This chemical production giant is not a public company so it does nothing to make its activities transparent. MNI has never been successfully challenged in court and isn’t subject to the jurisdiction of any government.

Conventional dairy production is a lot different from the idyllic farms you see in those Happy Cow commercials on TV. Real dairy production forces cows to live in close quarters, involves nasty growth hormones, and is just a pretty cruel business overall.

Milk’s quite easy to cut out of your diet, whether you’re using it to cook or drinking it straight out of the glass. If you’re thinking about avoiding dairy for animal rights or for health reasons, there are a slough of delicious options out there for you!

The industry that has been providing us with high quality coffee may seem to be doing well today, but it actually faces a combination of issues that may well render our lattes and capachinos a very expensive indulgence in the future.  We will probably stop worrying about whether it is “Fair Trade” or “Organic” and worry about whether we can get it at all.

“Arabica” Coffee - the Good Stuff
Any coffee aficionado will tell you that ‘arabica‘ coffee (Caffea arabica) is far better than the lowly ‘robusta’ coffee (Caffea canephora) that made up the Folgers-style “cup of Joe” that I grew up drinking.  These are actually two different species of coffee and arabica only does well in a limited range of environments - mainly consisting of higher elevations in the tropics.  At lower elevations the pests (insects and diseases that ‘robusta’ can tolerate), devastate the more delicate, arabica types. 

Since I can rarely afford non-industrial meat, I eat mostly vegetarian. But in December, I moved back to Missouri to live with my boyfriend, who is definitely a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. Luckily for me, my boyfriend shot three deer this past fall, so we’ve both been happy eaters.

Deer numbers are at historic highs and large deer populations are well-documented to wreak havoc on ecosystems. So, not only is venison a sustainable meat, but eating venison can actually help the environment.

Venison is also an extremely lean meat, with a more delicate texture than beef. Although some people complain that venison tastes “gamey,” I have found that venison only takes on a gamey flavor if cooked improperly.

A lot of supermarket vegetarian burgers try so hard to resemble meat that they ignore the fact that vegetables actually taste delicious in the first place. Why try to replicate a beef burger with a monotonously colored brown thing full of mysterious ingredients and even weirder textures when you can eat a vegetable burger that actually showcases the flavors of the vegetables? Here on Eat.Drink.Better we’ve seen fantastic burgers made of black beans, white beans, lentils and portobello, and and even beets! Here’s another veggie burger that’s brightly colored, packed with exciting flavors, and simple to make with both fresh and canned vegetables. Plus, it’s healthy but still deliciously tasty thanks to the freshness of just-grated carrots and zucchini with the heft of canned chickpeas and the salty tanginess of halloumi cheese.

Last week, a commenter on my post about giving up cheese mentioned that eggs are a real stumbling block for her. She didn’t specify whether it was eggs in baking or the whole egg that she missed, but either way it’s a topic that bears addressing!

While I can’t promise that there’s a reasonable vegan equivalent for something like deviled eggs, there are lots of options to satisfy your eggy desires without any animal products!

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably found yourself in the situation of being ready to make dinner but then realizing you haven’t bought groceries in a while and there’s not much to eat in the kitchen. When you’re hungry but also too lazy to leave the house to go shopping, it’s time for some serious MacGyver action. But instead of defusing a dangerous bomb with just a paper clip and duct tape, the task is to create a tasty meal with the only tools in front of you: the contents of your fridge and pantry.
Thankfully, there are a few recipes that can nearly always be created at the last minute with just a few ingredients. One of my favorites is Spaghetti Aglio e Olio, which sounds complicated but is just a simple and delicious dish of pasta with olive oil and garlic. I’d venture a guess that most people usually have a box of dried pasta stashed somewhere in the kitchen and olive oil and garlic are generally pantry staples. Ta-da! You’ve got the makings of Spaghetti Aglio e Olio. If you happen to have any other fresh vegetables in the house, you can toss them in as well. It’s a great way to cook green by using up produce before it goes to waste and cooking a filling and tasty meal without any meat.

Before you feed your libido with a vitamin C-packed glass of orange juice, you might want to consider reaching for the whole fruit instead.
In her recent book, Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice, Alissa Hamilton tells you what’s really in that not from concentrate box from the grocery store.

To keep it from oxidizing, manufacturers process Valencia orange juice to remove oxygen before it’s stored in huge tanks for almost a year at a time:

When the juice is stripped of oxygen it is also stripped of flavor providing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh.

In November of last year, two writers working for the Soil Association (the major Organic organization in the UK) published a 212 page document titled: “Soil Carbon and Organic Farming:  A review of the evidence on the relationship between agriculture and soil carbon sequestration, and how organic farming can contribute to climate change mitigation and adaption.”   Yesterday I posted an “open letter” to the authors of this article on SCRIBD and also emailed it directly.  I pointed out how the massive conversion to Organic that they advocate would actually be a driver of climate change, not a solution.  I hope they will respond.

Most of us know that Vitamin C is needed for a healthy immune system, but did you know that Vitamin C is also required for healthy functioning of over 300 metabolic processes, including a healthy libido? Your body does not naturally produce Vitamin C, so it must be obtained by what you eat. C aides in the production of anti-stress hormones, helps the body fight off toxins and may even reduce your levels of LDL (the “bad” cholesterol). How does Vitamin C directly affect your sexual health? For one, C can help make a man’s little swimmers strong and healthy by protecting sperm from free-radical damage and toxins, thus increasing fertility. C also helps to build and maintain blood vessels through out the body, including the female genitals. Proper blood flow through these vessels is key for female stimulation and healthy lubrication during sex. C is also involved in the synthesis of the sex hormones, estrogen, androgen and progesterone, all of which are involved in sexual function and fertility. C is required for the metabolism of Folic Acid, which is needed during pregnancy to regulate embryonic and fetal nerve cell formation and is vital for normal development. Vitamin C is now being used in many menopause products to help reduce symptoms, as well as in vaginal creams to help eliminate dryness, which can make sex painful. A healthy and de-stressed immune system, strong viable sperm and a lubricated vagina with the ability to get aroused, sounds like it’s time to load up on Vitamin C enriched foods!