Simmer & Boil

By: Dana Stevens, FoodCorps Service Member in Washington County, Maine.

Let me start by saying, no day is typical in FoodCorps. Every site is different, and every day at each site is unique. If you like variety in your life, and thrive learning on the go, you will hit the ground running; if this is not how you currently operate, you’ll definitely learn how!

That said, here is a amalgam of things you might do on a work day:

6:00am – Wake up, do yoga, go for a run or to the gym. (Practice what you preach!)

7:00am – Make a hearty breakfast from local foods you’ve purchased at the farmer’s market with your SNAP benefits: A fruit smoothie with fresh wild blueberries, or an egg scramble with spinach, goat cheese, and pepper pesto (yum!). Use the time you spend cooking for yourself to think about how the recipe might be adapted to work in a classroom setting (how many stations can it be divided into, what tools are needed, can 3rd graders be trusted to zest oranges?).

8:00am – Arrive at one of your local schools to prepare a healthy snack with the 5th grade – salad wraps perhaps? Put on some music and dance around the veggie-prepping table (people, this is no time for trying to be cool – let out your wild moves and I promise, the kids will follow suit and never forget what you did that day!).

9:00am – Pack up. Check in with the principal and other teachers on your way out to discuss events you’ll do the next week, and remind them about your garden committee meeting next Monday. Don’t run over any small ones as you leave; they might be local, but they aren’t really what we’re going for here.

10:00am – To the office. Spend an hour researching curriculum, networking, or brainstorming with your supervisor. Maybe work on writing grants for some of your garden projects. Come up with insanely awesome plans that will take much longer than your year of service to implement: ie, starting a “Farm ON School” program where schools lease their surrounding land to a young farmer in exchange for a certain amount of fresh product, grounds-keeping, and educational access. Get teary-eyed that you have the opportunity this year to be part of a program that will help you build skills you could use to make that crazy idea a possibility in the future.

11:00am – On the road again. If you are placed in a rural site like me, you’ll spend a lot of time traveling to schools and other events. Plan ahead and have some worthy gardening, cooking, or food policy podcasts on hand to make use of the time. Try to carpool and use that time for meetings. Warning: MWD’s (Meetings While Driving) are illegal in some states due to increased distraction. MWD’s should be undertaken only with a designated driver forbidden to listen to and/or participate in the discussion. The sensory-deprivation headgear provided by FoodCorps for rowdy classrooms should NOT be used by the designated driver

12:00pm – Arrive at your next school to support their Harvest Lunch. Often, you will appear as a giant colorful pea-pod, or carrot (contrary to popular belief, this may be a spontaneous occurrence over which you have no control). My advice; don’t hide in the bathroom agonizing over your new shape and colors. Use this to your advantage to start a conversation with kids about healthy eating! However, if your work has an impact, you may be in danger of being consumed alive due to the voracious vegetable appetite you have nurtured among the little folk.

The online disdain churned up by Paula Deen’s announcement of her recent history of diabetes and her endorsement of a diabetes treatment program seems to come from a pit of acid located not far from the great sea of political vitriol. Bubbling around in this case are issues of class, weight, puritanical judgment, and maybe a dose of condescension toward a self-made woman of the South.

Deen certainly made herself a target for the I-told-you-so crowd: Her gleeful history of laying on fat and sugar and oversized portions have been something to behold (though far less obnoxious than, say, a show like Man Versus Food). Of course, this sort of gleeful excess is not that much different from that shown by legions of comfort-food, pork-fat-mad restaurants in cities like New York in the past few years. But those restaurants are cool. Paula Deen isn’t cool.

What she is is popular. Her pharma partner is presumably counting on that popularity: Many in the target audience are likely to relate to her since, after all, she looks just like many in the target audience.

It’s fair game to wonder why she took three years to announce her condition and to look askance at the timing of her endorsement deal. But the lasting issue will be the quality of her conversion: Will she take a heartfelt, consistent, concrete approach to healthy eating and share the details of what must surely be a difficult struggle with her millions of fans? If so, she could be more of a force for change than the snipers who seem morally outraged that a successful, rather jolly woman is sick.

This guest post was written by Joanna Phillips of Phillips Seafood. Her family has owned their business for four generations. Joanna first blogged for Cooking Light over at The Twelve during our Eat More Fish! Healthy Habits challenge in September.

For the Phillips family, the holidays is one of our favorite times of the year. While we spend a lot of time together throughout the year for Phillips Seafood, the holidays are when we slow down and enjoy each other’s company. And like most families, we love to eat lots of delicious food during Christmas time!

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that crab cakes are a holiday tradition for our family, always making an appearance in some form. Rather than always serve them as a part of the main event, we enjoy making appetizers to enjoy earlier in the day with crab cake minis. We recently tried out Crab Mini Crostini with Artichoke Pesto at a family get-together and it was a big hit – not an easy feat for a family that’s had crab every way imaginable! While the crostini look and sound sophisticated, they’re a total breeze to throw together, which is a real lifesaver for holiday parties.

This holiday season, we want to make sure that our seasonal favorites are healthy as well. Thankfully, we’re lucky enough to have a nutritionist on the Phillips Seafood staff, Alexa Bosshardt, who whips up creations that are as tasty as they are light. I can’t wait to give these Thanksgiving Crab Cakes a try. We love to have a traditional dinner complete with turkey and stuffing at Christmas, so I will definitely be repurposing some leftover stuffing for crab cakes with a holiday twist.

If you’re looking for other ideas on how to serve seafood this time of the year, follow us on Twitter @PhillipsSeafood – I’ll be sharing holiday seafood ideas throughout the season. And from the Phillips family to yours, we wish you very Happy Holidays!

We’ve been invited to another virtual potluck! FoodNetwork.com and their blog, FN Dish, asked us to participate in a virtual cookie swap. For this sweet get-together, I’m bringing our Iced Sugar Cookies, with two fun variations—Gingerbread Cookies and Pecan Cookies. The sugar cookie recipe is a classic: buttery, short-textured cookies with icing for decorating. I am a bona fide cookie decorating junkie—I love finishing a brown-hued reindeer cutout with red “sugar pearls” or dragees to turn them into Rudolph cookies! Oh, and my kids and I get giddy over stringing sprinkles or sugar pearls along a Christmas tree cookie to look like garland. This recipe includes a great secret for icing that sets up firm: stirring in a little egg white powder, available in craft stores or on the baking aisle of larger supermarkets.

With just a few tweaks to the basic dough, you also get fragrant Gingerbread Cookies (think beyond the classic gingerbread people and do gingerbread pets, trees, and stars) and Pecan Cookies, which are something like nut-flecked shortbread. Those are my favorite to eat—crisp, not too sweet, and perfect with a cup of coffee… or that glass of milk left out on Christmas Eve.

Check out what some of your favorite food sites are bringing to the virtual cookie swap:

All You Magazine: Pecan and Honey Diamonds
Oprah.com: Sugar Cookies
Gilt Taste: Momofuku Milk Bar's Holiday Cookie Recipes
Liquor.com: Drink in the Holidays
Cooking Light: Iced Sugar Cookies
MyRecipes.com: Ultimate Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Food52: Ginger Spiced Molasses Sugar Cookies
Cooking Channel: The White House’s Molasses Spice Cookies “Gingersnaps”
BlogHer: Triple Chocolate Almond Cookies
CafeMom: Marvelous Mini Apple Crisp Cookies
The Daily Meal: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Food Republic: Gingerbread Cheesecake Cookies
EatingWell: 5 Tips for Perfect Gingerbread Cookies
Redbook Magazine: Candy Cane Cookies
Gourmet Live: Pistachio Cranberry Icebox Cookies 
AP/ J.M. Hirsch: Ginger Fig Crumb Bars
Fox News: White Chocolate Cherry Oatmeal Cookies
Epicurious: Italian Almond Cookies
Big Girls Small Kitchen: Cowboy Cookies
FN Dish: Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip-Bacon Cookies
Food & Wine: Chocolate-Espresso Snowballs
YumSugar: Coconut Date Balls
Yahoo! Shine: Nutmeg Rosettes

In our November 2011 issue, editor Scott Mowbray posed the question: Does your mom make the best pie in America? Not surprisingly, the answer was a resounding, “Yes!” In fact, we got so many wonderful letters about people’s pie memories, we thought you might enjoy them, too. Here are a few of our favorites.

Happy Birthday Pie

Growing up in Northern California the youngest of 6 kids, we never celebrated birthdays with the traditional birthday cake, we had birthday pies. And when you are feeding a family of 8, that means my mom had to make two. Which meant that, as the birthday girl or boy, there might be a left over piece the next morning with your name on it (That is, if my dad did not hide it or gobble it down as a late night snack!) We never celebrated birthdays with the traditional birthday cake. We had birthday pies. And when you are feeding a family of 8, that meant my mom had to make two pies. Which meant that, as the birthday girl or boy, there might be a leftover piece for you the next morning. (That is, if my dad did not gobble it down as a late night snack!) As I got older and went to childhood birthday parties, I remember thinking, “Oh wow! I get to try a real birthday cake.” The store bought cakes seemed so exotic by comparison. They weren’t. But some how they seemed like the thing to have and there wwere a few times when I thought about asking for a cake, but usually when my birthday rolled around, there was no question that I would always have pie for my birthday. My mom, rest her soul, was a master pie maker. When I make my pies for my family now, I always remember the love and kindness and great birthday memories that were created when we all sat down together and enjoyed her wonderful birthday pies.

—Annette Kosterman Ewanich
  Chico, California

 Mama’s Pies…

My mom’s pies were so good that my boyfriend in high school (now my husband) stole her pie slices from my brown bag lunch. Her pies were so good that when I went to work at a firm in Philadelphia, my co-workers took her pie from my lunch and left money. (I thought this was odd, but my sister who had worked at the same firm before me told me that this had happened to her as well.) Her pies were so good that when she became a cook at a retirement home, residents would wait outside the kitchen door on Wednesday (pie day) to find out what kind of pie Connie was making. She taught me to make her crust when my husband and I became engaged so I could take pumpkin pie to my future in-laws’ dinner. After several tries I learned her secret of a light hand, and her secret ingredient was...  well, if I told you it would no longer be a secret. Thank you for igniting a wonderful memory.

—Cheryl Bostoc
  Palmyra, NJ

When we were invited by the editors of FoodNetwork.com and their blog FN Dish to attend a virtual Thanksgiving dinner, where we’d be joined by other members of the food community who all would contribute a dish, I knew immediately what dish I would choose: Fennel, Sausage, and Caramelized Apple Stuffing.

Why? Well, because it’s just that good. The flavors are classic—sausage, apple, sage—so the Thanksgiving traditionalists will be happy. (After all, isn’t this holiday meal the most tied-to-tradition of all?) But for those who like a little oomph mixed into their tradition, there are some new flavor twists that make this stuffing more interesting. It starts with the choice of bread—sourdough, with its full, tangy flavor. We also toss in fennel (both fennel bulb and a hint of fennel seeds) to add light anise notes to the mix. Even the apple gets a little extra: It’s caramelized for deeper, richer flavor with the slightest whiff of burned sugar. And the cooking technique is perfect. Once everything is stirred together, the dish bakes covered for a while and then uncovered for a while, giving you the best of both worlds, texture-wise: a moist, almost creamy-bready interior and a deliciously crisp top crust. With every bite, you discover something new that you love about this stuffing! And there’s even more to love… It’s a healthy option for a meal that’s usually anything but. This stuffing includes over nine cups of fruits and vegetables, and it’s much lower in calories, sat fat, and sodium than a traditional bread stuffing with sausage—saving you as much as 500 calories, 16 grams sat fat, and 1800 milligrams sodium per serving!

Browse all of our Thanksgiving stuffing recipes—from traditional to those with a twist plus our entire collection of Thanksgiving Menus.

HERE'S THE MENU FOR THE FULL VIRTUAL THANKSGIVING DINNER:

At the end of September, Cooking Light hosted a bake sale at the local farmer’s market to support one of our favorite causes, Cookies for Kids Cancer (see a post about the organization by Julie Grimes).

Gretchen Witt founded the nonprofit in 2008 to raise money and awareness for pediatric cancer research; her son, Liam, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma at age 2. Since the organization began, Gretchen and her team have raised more than $400,000 through the sale of their own delicious cookies, but also by encouraging communities around the country to host their own bake sales for the cause.

Being lovers of sweets and huge fans of Gretchen, the Cooking Light team jumped at the chance to help.

Senior editor Cindy Hatcher (left) spearheaded the sale. She was joined by recipe tester Adam Hickman (right) and other members of our editorial and test kitchen staff. In addition to mountains of cookies, cakes, and brownies, our sale also included a cookie decorating station and raffle prizes of cookbooks and cool kitchen gadgets. By morning’s end, we raised just over $1,000!

Interested in hosting your own bake sale? Check out the CFKC website. And don't miss test kitchen director Vanessa Pruett’s Chocolate Shortbread.      

See that humongous tree there? It’s full of ripe sweet-tart apples. And by the time it’s picked clean, hundreds of pounds of fresh fruit will make its way out of this family’s yard directly to different needy charities. 

The pickers (with long orange poles topped by a claw basket) and sorters (boxing fruit) are all volunteers called to action by two young Denver guys, Jason and Philip. Seems these two good friends had this idea for a nonprofit that could harvest plums, figs, grapes, or whatever fruit homeowners didn’t need, and match it up with folks who otherwise might go without. After untangling all the legalities, this fall is the premier picking season for “Yard Harvest.”

Homeowners contact the nonprofit when apples, plums, or grapes are about to drop. Volunteers pick. And local charities get “A” or “B” fruits. (“A” fruits are ready to eat. “B” are a little too ripe but perfect for canning or cooking.) Any “C” fruits, the mushy overripe stuff, go directly to the compost pile. That’s one of the volunteers, Matt, sitting down on the job to sort apples by the A, B, C method.

So far this fall, Yard Harvest volunteers have nabbed, bundled, and delivered over 1000 pounds of fruit to local charities that include seniors, a group that delivers meals to the sick, and a food bank.  

I helped out one night after work and four of us managed to pick over 100 pounds of apples, plums, and green grapes in about an hour and a half. Another time, it took less than an hour for five of us to harvest about 10 big grocery sacks full of green and concord grapes.

Another day, volunteers picked over 300 pounds of apples from one particularly prolific tree. Can you believe it? Just one tree in somebody’s yard. It’s fruit that would have otherwise rotted or gone to waste but is now being eaten by needy folks. It’s a win-win for both homeowners (who can take a tax deduction for their donation) and for charities who don’t often see big donations of fresh fruit. 

I think it’s an amazing idea that could take place in any city and any backyard across the country. I just had to tell you about it. 

Baking is, no doubt, a science. Not a science that requires a degree in chemical engineering, but it still requires some measure of attention. As someone who’d rather bake than do many, many other things, I have gone down the misguided path of “winging it,” much to my disappointment. You can’t really throw in a pinch of this and that when making a cake batter (although I regularly add heaping cupfuls of chocolate chips to cookies…a little more chocolate never hurt anyone). You need a good recipe that works; then the satisfaction of warm bread, even cake layers, and cookies that are both crispy and gooey soon follows.

Light baking is something the Cooking Light test kitchen chefs have perfected. Lightening baked recipes is a balancing act, and I rely on their hard work to ensure my baking success. And for those who think, “Light baking? What’s the point?”: I dare you to try Pecan Spice Cake with Maple Frosting and Boston Cream Pie, two recipes from the soon-to-be released Cooking Light Way To Bake. These recipes offer all the decadence you expect with way less fat and calories as their “heavy” original.

So for all you bakers and aspiring bakers out there, we’re going to give away a copy of Way to Bake. Describe for us here in 100 words or less: What’s your favorite weekend baking project? Entries should be typed into the comments field of this post. Entries are due by Friday, October 21st at 11:59 a.m. EST.

Editors will select their favorites based on originality, creativity, and how well you address our question. Winner will be notified via email by November 1, 2011. For full contest rules, click here.