Native Influences

Ask anyone what is American food and they'll say hot dogs, hamburgers and, of course  French fries. Except they're not. The first two are as German as schnitzel, the last as Belgian as mussels and a frosty mug of Stella Artois. What is American food? Squash and popcorn. They are as American as the First Peoples.

The indigenous tribes have contributed much to the American diet - namely healthy good for you food . We also have them to thank for helping  our struggling colonists at the Plymouth Plantation. The Wampanoag Tribe taught them how to plant The Three Sisters  - corn - squash - and beans which sustained the English during the harsh Massachusetts winters. They also taught the colonists how to work and till the area's rocky soil. Another food that came into the diet is maple syrup. The indigenous showed how to tap the trees and collects the sap used for everything from syrup to candy.Its' sugar was crucial in sweetening  cakes along with tea and coffee. The Lenni Lennape, a division of the Delaware Indians, showed colonists the local clam,oyster and eel beds in the Raritan Bay area , just outside of New York City. They also harvested the wild strawberries, blueberries and blackberries that grow throughout the state. These were in heavy rotation in many an early New York or New Jersey's housewife's pantry, being used for jams and pie fillings.

The indigenous are also responsible for introducing corn pone and hominy grits to the American diet. The Roanoke and Neusick tribes, along with many from Southeastern Native American ones developed the process of nixtamalization - in which corn is soaked and cooked in lime water or some other alkaline solution to remove the hulls.. This helped in creating the Southern staples hominy and cornbread. The mash was also important in creating whiskey too. The West Coast tribes brought salmon to settlers' diets along with native deer, duck and rabbit. The Caribbean indigenous tribes also contributed a lot to the way we modern nativists eat. Thanks to them we have barbecue , first known as barbacoa. The Taino tribe of the various islands that include Cuba and Puerto Rico gave us the method of roasting various meats such as goat and sheep over open air fires. The fiery and delicious pepperpot stew is also one of their contributions to our cuisine as is the ever popular jerk. Another gift is Mama Juana , from the Dominican Republic branch of the Tainos.It's a wild  punch with the kick of rum and red wine mixed with different tree barks and herbs.

Today we should celebrate all the contributions of the indigenous peoples of this hemisphere. They have been vital in creating new countries and new cultures. They have been responsible for our dietary success for five centuries now. It's time we honor them properly.

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 Taco Bell Bean Burrito Challenge

I've been fascinated with Taco Bell's bean burrito lately. It's a tasty marriage of kidney beans, onions and cheese stuffed into a hot chewy tortilla. Tasting it , I realized this is pretty easy to replicate. After all the homemade version is sometimes better than the original.

It was.

It's an easy recipes with these ingredients for the filling, Two cans of red kidney beans, one  small , yellow onion and one small can of tomato sauce.

The onion was quartered and put into my chopper ,

Then sauteed in olive oil for a few seconds.

The beans and tomato sauce were then added. Most recipes for the Taco Bell bean burrito call for refried beans but I wanted texture.

Two teaspoons of red wine vinegar are added for tang as well.

The spices were garlic salt and a must have in Mexican cooking -cumin.

Add a good dash of both along with a healthy dash of chili powder too.

Then it comes time to mash

Use an old fashioned potato masher for this and someone with a strong hand (Like a brother) This give the filling a new textured mouth feel. Cheese is also a big flavor booster in this, 

I used Lite Life vegan cheddar and just shredded in the pieces.

It's mashed more to get the cheese integrated and gooey.

It's also the time to get the tortillas ready. I used Old El Paso.

Each side was painted with water. They'll steam better in the microwave if you do this. Cook for 15 seconds.

This is unrolled.

This is rolled.

How was the taste? Exactly like Taco Bell's but better. This is definitely going to be one of my new go to recipes. It's easy to do and very flavorful. I like how all the spices came together and added so many dimensions to just a simple beans, onions ,and tomato sauce dish.

Try the Taco Bell Bean Burrito challenge. It's just a fun way to reinvent a classic and enjoy a tasty dish. It's sure to be a family favorite.

A Whole Meal Of Recipes

One of the hardest things for a home chef to do is come up with a three or four course meal for company. What do you start with? What do you end with? Should you have one side? Two? or three? And what about the main course - what works well for everyone? Don't despair. There's are recipes that can help you from start to finish.

Alison Roman, a regular contributor to the New York Times Food section and famed food blogger gave an appetizer to dessert menu in yesterday's issue. This is great for the home chef who loves to have friends and family over for good food.It's excerpted from her new book, Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food For Having People Over  ( Clarkson Potter 2019). where she gives low stress but high impact recipes for all sorts of dishes.It  starts out with a simple framework snacks, salads  sides, mains and sweet things. She starts off with labneh dip with sizzled scallions and chile. This is a kind of Middle Eastern yogurt dish made with Greek yogurt however you can also use sour cream too. It's swirled with lemon juice for tang. Scallions and hot pepper flakes along with cilantro are cooked in olive oil . The pepper turns a fiery shade of orange as it's drizzled into the labneh. I'd serve it with homemade pita chips  and maybe a bowl of homemade hummus too.

The main course is a roast chicken - always a crowd pleaser.Ms. Roman firsts drizzles it with olive oil and then sprinkling it with fennel seeds. The cavity is filled with  half a bunch of oregano. It gets better. Vine ripened tomatoes are put around the chicken along with the rest of the fresh herb.There's also garlic and butter, cut up and scattered around the bird as well. At the end red wine vinegar is spooned over the tomatoes and cooked from the veggies' heat. The tomatoes and carved chicken are placed over slices of  country loaf or sourdough. You would think this is enough but Ms. Roman offers the side of lemony white beans with anchovies and Parmesan.It's basically a bagna calda sauce, fired up with a teaspoon of red pepper flakes.Escarole and parsley are added.I would nix those and serve the beans and sauce on bread as a main meal. To end the meal are Tiny Salty Chocolatey Cookies, a sort of chocolate snap with a dusting of flaky seas salt like Maldon or Jacobsen. These are double chocolate thanks to the wedding of cocoa powder and 67 per cent bittersweet chocolate. You can add any nuts too, to these meringue like cookies. They do require two egg whites plus one egg . The cookies are just a nice end with coffee and tea.

Cooking an entire meal shouldn't be a head ache. It should be a fun doing , as you cook and bake for those you love. It should be unfussy , without any fanciness  - just good taste and good food.

The Vibrancy of Filipino Food

The Philippines are a combination of many  influences , from cultural to terrain. The end result is a bright, tasty cuisine that's now  a strong force here in the States. It's easy to replicate and fun for home chefs to try.

It was the subject of an article written by Angela Dimayuga with the help of New York Times Food contributor , Ligaya Mishan. Chef Dimayuga, who is not only was the chef at the famed Mission Chinese Food in New York City. and also a contributor to Bon Appetite Magazine. She returns to the food of her childhood, food that her mom made , food that the first Filipino migrant workers brought to Northern California , in the 1920's. Filipino food is just as complex and layered as the Italian and French cuisines she learned how to cook. It is also a very meticulous cuisine requiring just as much work and technique of any of those cuisines. Chef Dimayuga has the very good fortune of receiving the secrets behind family recipes from her lola,  before the elder passed at the age of 100. The family knows good food coming form the Lyon of the Philippines Papampanga. There were lessons on  bistek , steak with soy sauce and calamansi, a type of

lime. Her grandmother, who was former pharmacist also showed the chef  how to create her chicken releno, stuffed chicken with pork and sausage, similar to a farci, the French meat stuffing.  She realized her grandmother's recipe was exactly like Chef Jacques Pepin's galentine, after watching his video on it.

There are many recipes here. However Chef Dimayuga regrets that some of her favorites are not listed. The Philippines are an archipelago of 7,000 (!) islands, each with a strong culinary background. You'd need a cookbook just to list all the best. The article tries to do just that in a few essential dishes. There is the bistek recipe that has chunky rib eyes drenched in a sauce of garlic, lemon and orange juices., blended with olive oil, soy sauce and garlic. Of course there are rice dishes. There is an arroz caldo - hot rice - with chicken,collard greens and soy cured egg yolks. A fun appetizer or even a weekend meal is the lumpia  Shanghai cousins to spring rolls that Chinese traders first brought to the islands in the Ninth Century. The filling is a mix of beef and pork, with the usual spring roll  ingredients of water chestnuts,,onions carrots, and celery stalks. What's intriguing is that Chef Dimayuga and her five siblings dipped them in banana ketchup - which can be made at home. It's cooking over ripe bananas with tomato paste to create a kind of sweet and sour jam. There is also the famed adobo, brought by Spanish colonizers, however the vinegar laced chicken stew was always a staple in the cuisine long before European settlement. Hers is a coconut milk and coconut vinegar mix with chicken. To end the meal is bibingka, coconut rice cakes , with the surprising addition of salted duck eggs

Filipino food is delicious and complex. It is a treat to make and to try the many flavors and textures that represent the archipelago. The many dishes are perfect to recreate for their brightness of color and tang.

The Restaurant Diet Eating Out Eating Easy

Every dieter dreads the suggestion "Let's eat out tonight." That means days , even weeks of sacrifice blown on one meal. Yet it doesn't have to be that way. You can eat out on a diet  and have both a low calorie and delicious meal. The Restaurant Diet: How To Eat Out Every Night and Still Lose Weight (Mango Publishing Group 2019) will shows you how.

This groundbreaking new book was written by Fred Bollaci, a weight loss coach and diet strategist, who struggled with his own weight issues. Like anyone else, Mr. Bollaci loved eating out and cooking, but didn't like the side effects - weight gain. He was morbidly obese and had to lose weight. He worked with his nutritionist along with his cardiologist and therapist to create a book that can help others with weight loss and diet maintenance. There is advice on how to eat out at such various ethnic restaurants , from Italian to Chinese  and from Indian to Mexican, along with dealing with those sabotaging factors that can ruin a diet. He compartmentalizes the diet into four sections, Phase One is the beginning,  where calories will be decreased and a weekly cleanse is strongly recommended. It also has dieters purge dairy, fried foods and sweets Phase Two is the Opportunity one where some of these foods are reintroduced back  but in limited qualities. Phase Three is the Challenge where foods with a higher calorie count are added while Phase Four is the Achievement Phase where all foods that are not on the Avoid list are allowed.

What is surprising is that this is also a recipe book. Mr. Bollaci includes recipes from restaurants in  most of the fifty states plus Italy. I was pleasantly surprised at this and am looking forward to creating some. He mostly has recipes from Floridian recipes; there are pages upon pages of recipes from some of the Sunshine State. He has some from New York eateries, namely a pepper and bagna caulda recipe from Barbetta's. This last is a restaurant that my family loved with a recipe that we made often. There are also places off the beaten path like Chantal's of Traverse City, Michigan, Their recipe,baby portabella mushroom caps with caramelized shallot and Fontina cheese, make for nice hors d'ouevres or a side. Atlanta has the Buckhead Diner and the eatery's recipe for butternut squash soup. It's a low calorie, yet savory melange of butternut squash, carrots , onions and a red Fresno pepper for heat.Famous restaurants such as Manhattan's Le Grenouille  and Sag Harbor's The American Hotel. There are also the recipes from famed Italian restaurants and even a cooking school. Try the Toscana Saporita Cooking school's recipe for Insalata di Farro, farro salad, packed with the ancient grain and graced with tomatoes and basil.

The Restaurant Diet: How To Eat Out Every Night and Still Lose Weight  is a restaurant lover's perfect companion.It offers advice and recipes. It definitely deserves a four star rating!

Sharing The Pantry

Americans, like myself, have the tendency to overbuy. That's especially true with food. We wind up with too many boxes or packets,bags and containers. Will we eat all of it? No? Should we share it? Yes.

If you have overage in your pantry , then consider donating it to food drives. Of course cans are preferable. One they're easy to store and two, they do last a usual four or five years. There's also a lot that can be done with canned veggies and fruit. The first can be used as a side or mixed with rice or pasta for a more filling main course. Canned fruit is just good on its' own and the perfect snack instead of cookies and cakes, However there are other foodstuffs you can donate as well. Flour can be donated, even if you opened it back in June or July. Opened flour has a shelf life of eight months so even half a bag is good to give away. Just give it a sniff before donating. Toss if you smell any mustiness. One of the most sturdiest foods to donate is rice. It has an indefinite shelf life, meaning you can still use it two or three years from purchasing. One sign that is is bad is the appearance of the rice weevil. It's a tiny reddish-brown bug that can show up in the box or canister. Chuck the rice if those start showing up.

Many of us have those Keurig machines that use pods. That's great but there's also a dearth of leftover teabags and hot chocolate packets. Any tea bag will last between a year to two years. If you have a variety left over then put them in Mason jars, decorated with  pretty homespun bows and ribbons. Food pantries and senior centers would love to have these.Hot chocolate lasts for only six months but if you have extra that's under that time period , donate. Regular cocoa powder can last up to two years and can still be used for cooking and baking. Instant coffee has a shelf life of a whopping twenty years!!! This depends on the packaging  yet you can still donate it. Even longer lived than instant coffee is sugar. Both granulated and confectioner's can last forever as can brown sugar. White and brown sugar can turn hard and crunchy To restore them  put the crystals in a baggie and smash with a rolling pin to get rid of the hardness. Any of these will be much appreciated by bakers who want to create treats for their kids.Another baking necessity you may have over stocked is a bag of chocolate chips. Again, real chocolate is considered dry, meaning it 's not encumbered by any bacteria so it can last as long as the sugars. If your chips are hanging around donate them with your other foods.

A pantry cleaning is always necessary. Yet instead of throwing out your overage , just donate. it'll help not only declutter your kitchen but add to someone else's.