The Return Of Jamie Oliver

 Twenty years or so ago there was a brilliant young chef sweeping America. he was boyish , British and cheeky yet down tp earth with his practical cooking approach. The chef was Jamie Oliver and he influenced many a home chef. Now he's back again, older, practical and innovative.

I recently discovered him again on Dabl TV which is a CBS owned station featuring lifestyle shows. There's everything form pets to DIY projects to travel to food. The station is worth watching just to pick up some ideas and tips. The cooking features mot only Oliver but his fellow Brit , Gordon Ramsey. However Jamie is sweeter, and kinder, the sweet kid next door you watched grow up into a caring and genial adult. His attitude towards food really hasn't change. One refreshing change though is his turn towards more vegetarian dishes. He also has done videos for The New York Times Food and one features a tasty black bean burger that looks delicious. It's a mix of different mushrooms , from portabellas to cremini, among others, mixed with black beans, chickpeas and rye bread(!).He zings up the finished burgers with mango slices , Greek yogurt and tomato salsa on warmed buns. For Dabl he makes a tasty vegan chili featuring three different kinds of peppers. A plus is that he adds already cooked rice to the chili, a holdover from his younger days when he used already made ingredients.

Like any celebrity Chef Oliver is not without controversy,He has been trying to get English and American school kids to eat healthy for years now. Has it worked? Many say no. Newspaper reports claim that kids just didn;t want his healthy meals. They wanted chips or fries.His suggestions were also too expensive. School districts couldn't afford the fresh pasta or chicken. Kids being kids knew the upside of eating salads, fruits and healthy carbs, but wouldn't have anything  to do about them. They want the tastier fast food treats of burgers and fries along with chips and fatty dips. They regularly munch on junk food , subbing in fried chicken or a handful of cookies for  the better for you alternatives. Many claim that Oliver should have done more research both in children's eating habits and school budgets (although he should know now having five kids , from college age to age six.) He was also involved in another scandal, promoting sustainable fish with Gordon Ramsay while both created dishes using endangered fish. Still, he endures and has a huge fan base.

Jamie Oliver is here to stay. He has some good recipes that everyone can enjoy. Catch him on Dabl TV or on You Tube and learn how to cook easy and delicious.

The Straw Controversy

Hard to be believe a simple plastic tube like this is at the heart of so much controversy.

Yet it is. Plastic straws are being vilified and with good reason. They are seriously harming marine life across the globe and damaging underwater ecosystems. As an environmentalist and veteran of many a beach sweep, I have picked up dozens of these. They range from the regular sized ones people use in their sodas to the tiny juice box ones.Americans throw away a whopping 500 million a day while an ecology conscious Europe tosses out about 25.3 billion ones a year. They, along with other non biodegradable plastics are contributing to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch located halfway between California and Hawaii. The worst problem with straws contributing to this is that a straw is made from polypropylene which is derived from polypropylene gas. The real damage comes from when the plastic degrades into microscopic bits. Fish eat it. We eat the fish. It's not good.

There are alternatives and many restaurants are embracing them. Atlantic Highland's  Bahr's and its' sister eatery, Moby's has long embraced biodegradable paper straws. The family who owns these ocean front restaurants know first hand the damage these tubes can do. However paper straws do have their downside as well. They can be ingested by marine life which can ruin the animals' digestive systems. Paper straws do decompose more efficiently and quicker, by almost two hundred years. Other restaurants such as Feroce's in Manhattan use bucatini, those wide, sturdy long pasta tubes. These can be great  except for two problems. They can't be used by those with gluten allergies and they dissolve during use. Another idea is bringing your own  glass or metal straws. Amazon sells a pack of borosilicate ones in pretty colors. These are highly heat and cold resistant and also come with their own cleaning brush. A set can cost about ten dollars. They also sell metal ones with silicon mouth tips, also in pretty colors. A pack of ten goes for $9.99.

What should you do about the straw dilemma? Protect the planet by just going strawless. If you have to use them, then settle for paper, metal or glass. It's a small way to help lessen a big problem.

The Paula Dean Controversy

Normally this blog remains neutral when it comes to celebrities and their problems. Yet the whole flap with Paula Dean does affect it and also my readers, especially in the US .is she to blame, despite her upbringing? Should she be punished and why? There are so many questions and everyone has their own answers-.

Paula Dean is a Southerner. Her background is from Georgia and she spent the first twenty  years of her life in the  pre Civil Rights South. She does maintain some hard to break habits from that era.Is she a bad person? No. Granted , her food can be bad for you with it's butter and sugar rich recipes but she's not evil- just a product of her environment. Should someone like her be more enlightened in this PC day and age? Absolutely.She wasn't though.She slipped. It happened.I'm sure there have been other chefs who have had transgressions. They haven't been caught - yet. Ms. Dean was. Now sadly she is going to be severely punished and ostracized.

Luckily the Food Network will stand behind her. The question is for how long.It will be a joke if they drop her.The network has very few black chefs. This is a subtle yet truly appararent  form of racism. this brings up another interesting point. Before people question Ms Dean's thinking, they should also question her employer. Before they pass judgement on her, they should also look at this channel and wonder why it's so "white". That includes stores  and companies such as Target, K-Mart and Smithfield Farms that all carried her products . They quickly dropped her at the first whiff of problems. Would they be willing not to have their ads run on this racially biased channel. If they were true to their beliefs, yes, they would.

What Ms. Dean said was undeniably wrong. It doesn't make her a bad person however. We all slip. We all say things that we later regret as she has done. Should she be punished? No. As we all know to err is human to forgive divine.