Liz On Food

In Praise of Home-Delivered Milk

With three teenagers in our home, we go through a lot of milk. Several years ago, I decided to switch from store-bought to home-delivered milk. My primary motive at the time was convenience. I found myself running to the store too often for my busy schedule. Royal Crest Dairy delivers milk and other products in our rural neighborhood once a week, so I stock up on a weekly supply of milk and recruit family members to bring it in off the porch. On Wednesday mornings, our top refrigerator shelf is nearly full of milk (save the space allotted for microbrewery beer).

While I value the time-saving aspect of the home delivery, other benefits exist as well:

• Royal Crest is a Colorado family-owned dairy processor, a rarity in dairy industry consolidation.
• If I can reduce my trips to town (10 miles round trip), I'm reducing fuel consumption. Royal Crest milk delivery vehicles run on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). According to the federal government, LPG-fueled vehicles produce fewer toxic and smog-forming air pollutants. Royal Crest has earned several environmental awards for its efforts.
• Royal Crest milk is packaged in sturdy reusable/recyclable plastic milk bottles made with #2 recyclable plastic (HDPE, high-density polyethylene). According to Royal Crest, these bottles can be reused up to 100 times before recycling. HDPE is considered safe and is approved by the FDA for use in a variety of food packages. Just like other plastics, HDPE is not biodegradable so it's a plus that Royal Crest reuses the containers, unlike the one-time use of store-purchased milk jugs.
• For those interested, Royal Crest milk comes from cows that have not been treated with recombinant bovine somatotropin (also known as rBGH). From a food safety perspective, this feature did not influence my decision to go with Royal Crest. However, Colorado Front Range consumers might find the price appealing as it is often lower than the store-purchased certified organic milks. (Note, Royal Crest milk is not certified organic.)
• Consistently over the years, our home-delivered milk has tasted great and had a long-lasting shelf-life.

No, this is not my photo - but it's a great splash, eh? Every once in a while, I rely on Fotolia to spice up my blog photography. and when I see photos like this, it makes me glad I have a day job as a culinary dietitian! None-the-less, It's the simple domestic management tools, like home-delivered milk...and Fotolia, that allow for less stress and more creativity with a busy family. That leaves more time for culinary pursuits, gardening and blogging.

By the way, Happy June Dairy Month!

No Food Blogging By Accident

Well, nothing like a head-on auto collision followed by the flu to put a halt to blogging as well as culinary and gardening pursuits...for the past month.

About the collision: Let me first say, I am fine. I cannot say the same for the van; it's totaled. It was a dark and stormy morning....to be precise, a winter storm warning was in effect. But school was not canceled so we headed out to take the kids to school, retrieving the Honda Odyssey minivan from the shop where we had taken it for routine maintenance. I was on my way back home (sans teenage passengers) on a rural stretch of snow-packed highway north of Boulder when an SUV headed from the opposite direction spun out and into my lane. With a steep embankment and very little shoulder on the side of the road there was no escaping. I could do little but break and brace for the crash. Airbags deployed and the front end crunched. Fortunately , both drivers (me included) sustained only minor injuries, but the accident managed to stop traffic in both directions. County sheriff, state patrol, two tow trucks, fire truck and ambulances all arrived within minutes. Since my neck hurt, I was strapped to a back board and whisked off to ER in an ambulance. The drama! I had called my husband immediately after the accident so he was in the long line of traffic trying to get to the scene. Knowing he'd see an ambulance go by, I called him from the stretcher..."Honey, I don't want you to freak out. You're going to see an ambulance go by, and I'm in it. It's just a precaution." After I described the vehicle he was driving, the EMT driving the ambulance yelled out the window to my husband...."We've got her. Turn around and follow us." I was released from ER after X-rays and a CAT scan ruled out an significant injuries. And I'm singing praises of our Honda Odyssey cushioning the brunt of the crash. With 150,000 miles, the minivan did it's job to the last.

Waiting for the first responders, I thought about our plans to go to Breckenridge in two days. That trip was now up in the air. But three days post-crash, I was feeling well enough to make the two hour drive. And, well, if you fall off a horse, you have to get back on and ride. So off we went. I managed to get in two good days of skiing but I had a nagging sore throat. By mid-vacation, I had a fever and felt like I had been run over by a truck. I made the death march to the local urgent care clinic to get a dose of antibiotics. Whatever this bug was, I was sick and dragging for three weeks straight. I'm just now getting back to a near-normal level of energy.

When the primary cook in the family gets sick, it doesn't go unnoticed by other household members. My hubby, son and stepchildren very helpfully stepped in with cooking. Nonetheless, over the past month, our dining bill has climbed on account of a lot of take-out food. I also found myself frequently the grocery deli and takeout sections. I can tell you a few things about the take-out fare at Whole Foods. The chili tofu and smoked mozzarella pasta salad are flavorful and survive the holding well. I cannot say the same for the store's takeout fried chicken, which was overcooked and suffering from lack of salt. The crunchy cabbage is not much better. While it is true to it's name, indeed crunchy, the only detectable flavor is cabbage. How about a bit of salt, sugar and vinegar? That's how I repaired the salad at home. But let me tell you, the brownies and raspberry oat bars are divine.

The flu can have an odd impact on your appetite. Juices, soups, pastas and sweets were the ticket, but anything crunchy sent me into coughing spasms. I typically imbibe in beer or wine with evening meals, but I had no desire for about three weeks. I'm a milk drinker but lost my taste for milk as well. Coffee didn't hold its usual appeal, either, but rather tea seemed to taste better.

As for blogging...no cooking, no culinary creations, no blogging.

Then there's the forlorn and ghostly garden bed, leaf-blown with drip-hose stakes poking out having worked their way up during the repeated freezing and thawing through the winter. While the reliable perennial walking onions and strawberry bed are vibrant, grass and weeds are starting to encroach the open beds. I've ordered seeds from a local farm, Abbondanza and will be blogging throughout the growing season about my experience with these locally cultivated organic seeds. But first, I need to get down to the business of preparing the garden bed. Perhaps I'll start this weekend, and I'll look forward to a refreshing Left Hand Sawtooth Ale at the end of a day's work. Yes, I'm definitely getting better!

Wynkoop Beer and Food Pairing Event at ADA

Denver was the setting for the 2009 American Dietetic Association (ADA) annual convention held October 17-20. As 2009-2010 chairwoman of the Food and Culinary Professionals Dietetic Practice Group (FCP) of ADA, I had the privilege to lend a hand in planning several culinary programs at the conference, including a sell-out beer and food pairing event at the Wynkoop Brewing Company.

The Wynkoop is Colorado's oldest brew pub, founded in 1988. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper is one of the co-founders of the establishment. You know the people of Denver must take their beer very seriously if they elected a brewpub owner mayor. The Wynkoop is part of the remarkable story of Denver's downtown revival that has occurred in the past 20 years, with the building of Coors Field, the Pepsi Center, Invesco Field, Colorado Convention Center and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.These anchors, made possible through public-private partnership efforts, were the impetus for an energetic resurgence in restaurants and nightlife in a city that in was essentially a ghost town after sundown, when I first moved to Colorado in the mid-80s.

The food-beer pairing event featured four different suds as well as presentations from the brew master and the head chef. Accompanying the salad course was a seasonal organic whitbier infused with lemongrass. The brew's light citrus nodes were perfect with the greens. Next was deliciously creamy Olathe roasted corn chowder served with the pub's popular Two Guns Pilsner. B3K Schwarzbier was smartly paired with the main course of Colorado lamb and sweet potatoes. This brew black lager earned a Gold Medal at the 2008 Great American Beer Festival in the German Schwarzbier category. Despite its rich color and aroma, B3K is surprisingly light and is a lovely beverage choice for lamb. We finished off the meal with a peach tart made with Colorado Palisades fruit. Matched with the dessert was pumpkin infused beer, which balanced very nicely the spices in the pie.

Having patronized the Wynkoop for about as long as it has been in operation, I was delighted to learn more about the establishment's award-winning brews and to glean ideas for pairing beers with foods, beyond the usual barbeque fare. Management of this, and other FCP events at the ADA meeting, was expertly handled by Apple A Day, Seattle, headed up by FCP founding member and Registered Dietitian Barb Pyper, who works very closely with her sister, Mary. Fabulous work, women!

Two little Pyper birds told the brewmaster my birthday was around the corner. That resulted in the Wynkoop bestowing upon me a bottle of Deschutes Black Butte XXI, a full-on porter brewed with chocolate beans and coffee and aged in bourbon barrels. Several days later, on my birthday, we enjoyed the special reserve as an accompaniment to a chocolate mousse torte made by Gateaux pastry shop in Denver. Gateaux has been named 5280 magazine's Best Bakery for eight of the past ten years. My FCP friends thoughtfully ordered the sumptuous cake, knowing I'd be headed home on my birthday after six whirlwind days at the ADA conference and rightly assuming hubby John was merely in survival mode between work, carting around teens and caring for "my" dog. (The joint ownership seems to transfer pathetically to solo, just when I'm on trips.) Now John, my chocolate fiend of a husband, is best friends forever with FCP.

Black Butte XXI is truly a marvelous choice to accompany a substantial chocolate dessert. Its coffee-induced bitter overtones round out the sweet richness of ganache and mousse. Let me tell you, though, this brew is serious stuff, with 11% alcohol content by weight. You'll want to savor it in small portions. When it comes to food and beverages, everything in moderation, including chocolate and beer. And if you have to moderate, it might as well be the best!

Making Apple Cider

Despite the fact that we have no fruit trees on our property, we found ourselves in ample supply of apples this fall, thanks to neighbors' and families' trees. And as usual, those with laden trees are more than happy to have you pick surplus rather than facing the messy ground clean-up of fermented fruit, half eaten by squirrels, birds and dogs.

Years ago during my first marriage, my parents gave us an old-fashioned cider press made by Jaffrey. In splitting up the household inventory during the divorce, I neglected to make note of the apple press and it sat with my son's father for years. Recently, he decided to downsize his home and returned the press to me. It sits on display in our family room just off the kitchen, part of my food-obsessed home decor. When sizing up the overage of this season's apples, it didn't take me long to decide cider making was in the offing.

We made three batches of cider over a period of two weekends with great success. With each round, we included apples from at least two trees of different varieties to round out the flavor. In our mix were Granny Smith, Jonathans and Red Delicious. Knowing that we would be drinking raw cider, we used apples picked directly from the tree, none that were on the ground. Ground apples are more susceptible to microbial contamination from animal droppings. Two bushels of apples is a good amount for a cider pressing and will yield about two to three gallons of cider. After picking the apples, we fill the containers with water and let the apples soak. That helps remove dirt and debris as well as worms (not that a few worms matter much when pressing cider at home).

The washed apples are tossed whole into the grinder, which is turned manually. The apple bits land in a wooden drum that is lined with a nylon mesh bag. As the drum begins to fill, cider starts to seep, and a hole in the wooden tray under the drum allows the cider to collect in a bowl or pot. But that's just the start. Once the drum is full, a wooden disk is inserted over the top of the chopped apples and the screw press is tamped down. As the apple mash is compressed, the cider flow increases dramatically.

Pressing cider is not a one-man job. A minimum of three people is needed, making the process perfect for a fall gathering or family activity. During our first stint, my teenage stepson managed to coax his father out of the Bat Cave (our friendly name for physicist-dad's home electronics lab), and by gosh, if Herr Professor didn't actually have a good time! My 4-1/2 year-old nephew was more than a bit excited to be included in our second effort, along with his mom and my dear friend, Barb. During the grinding stage, one person tosses the apples into the grinder, another turns the grinder crank and a third helps to balance the press. For pressing, one person turns the screw press and another ensures the cider receptacle remains properly aligned, switching it out as it fills.

In return for sharing apples, our neighbors received über-fresh apple cider in quart jars filled right from the press. I felt like I was carting off moonshine as I meandered through the neighbors' backyards with my liquid-filled quart canning jars. A friend and my sister went home with containers of fresh cider as well.

We had more than our fill of fresh cider so I decided to process eight quarts for later consumption. I was tempted to start a batch of hard cider but decided I didn't have quite enough to justify the expense of purchasing the equipment. Maybe next year. Apple cider can be frozen or canned. I chose to can cider, following the simple directions provided by the National Center for Home Preservation.

Sake on a Rainy Day in Boulder

A time-honored tradition in Boulder, Colo., is the Boulder Creek Festival, held annually on Memorial Day Weekend since the late 1980s. And it wouldn't be the Boulder Creek Festival without a dousing from Mother Nature, which happened right on cue Sunday afternoon as my husband and I perused paintings and handcrafted jewelry shortly after arriving. Our original intent was to enjoy local food fare while taking in some music and art. Moving out of the arts and crafts tent, I popped open my trusty compact umbrella, which we immediately learned doesn't cover two grown people. Squeezed under our meager covering, we walked in lockstep over the bridge toward the food section. But due to the fest layout, we had to first travel through the metaphysical booth aisles, where we were promised the opportunities to get to know Jesus better through science and to learn our future fate through pulse reading. The dentist promising whiter teeth in just 7 days was pushing a broom in a failed attempt to thwart rainwater from flooding his booth. Our enthusiasm for the Boulder Creek Festival was by then completely dampened.

Backs, shoulders and feet soaked, we headed toward the refuge of Pearl Street shops, watching the fast-moving Boulder Creek filled to its banks. Destination Boulder Book Store where I picked up two new books I'm looking forward to reading: Colorado State University animal behaviorist Temple Grandin's Animals Make Us Human and How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham, Harvard University professor of biological anthropology. (Hmm, I just noticed common thread: Perhaps, I was feeling particularly inhuman at that moment in the bookstore, drenched and cold.)

Having missed the opportunity for Creek Festival noshing, we considered our options and chose Hapa Sushi, a Colorado franchise with a restaurant two doors east of the bookstore. Seated at the front window watching the deluge, we were warmed by miso soup and sake (rice wine) topped off with nigiri sushi (smoked salmon, yellowtail, yellowfin tuna and mackerel). Hapa Sushi boasts the largest collection of sake in Colorado and serves it cold, in chilled glasses. In Japan, sake is served warm, cold or at room temperature, depending on the season and quality of sake. Higher grade sakes are usually served chilled to bring out the flavor and aroma, which is masked when heated. Taking a recommendation from the waitstaff, I chose Onikoroshi, which was described on the Sake list as silky. Indeed, it was. "Onikoroshi," in Japanese, means demon or goblin killer. Specific to beverages, Onikoroshi originally described a sake so bad it could kill a demon. But its meaning morphed over time to the opposite, so that now Onikoroshi is the namesake for a sake so good it could kill a demon. It's similar to an American hipster saying, "That's so  bad, man," to describe something really good. We found Onikoroshi sake to be the perfect libation for waiting out a wicked Boulder thunderstorm.

Stevia - Dietary Supplement, Now Food Ingredient

A friend recently asked me about stevia, which is a naturally sweet plant native to Central and South America. In the United States, stevia has been marketed as a dietary supplement for years because, until recently, it did not have approval as for use as a food ingredient. However, a purified extract of stevia, rebaudioside A (trade name Rebiana), was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2008 as a general purpose sweetener for use in foods. Truvia is the consumer brand for a food sweetener made from Rebiana - being marketed by Cargill and Coca-Cola. PureVia is the consumer brand for Whole Earth Sweetener Company's Rebiana, which is a supplier to PepsiCo. Both Truvia and PureVia are available as sugar packets, similar to other non-nutritive sweeteners. Several low-calorie and calorie-reduced beverages have been launched under Sprite, Odwalla, SoBe and Tropicana brands.

The plant Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni is a member of the Compositae (astor or sunflower) family, which includes marigolds, dandelions, chrysanthemums, zinnias, artichokes, lettuce and endive. The sweetness in stevia comes from glycosides (technically a molecule comprised of a sugar attached to another component) that are natural constituents of the plant's leaves. In fact, stevia leaves contain at least ten different glycosides, the major ones being stevioside and rebaudioside A. Of note, the FDA food ingredient approval is for the purified extract of rebaudioside A; however, dietary supplement versions of stevia may contain other glycosides.

The regulatory history of stevia is an interesting tale. Steviol glycosides are used to sweeten a number of foods in China, Japan, and South America. Also, Stevia leaves are used to prepare sweetened tea in numerous countries. However, concerns about safety prompted the FDA to ban imports of stevia from 1991 to 1994, which ruled the herbal sweetener an "unsafe food additive." The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994 formed the impetus for the FDA to permit stevia to be marketed as a dietary supplement (not as a food additive). In 1999, the European Commission banned the use of stevia in foods marketed in the European Union. But the World Health Organization published an extensive literature review of stevioside and rebaudioside A in 2006 that concluded stevioside and rebaudioside A are not toxic or carcinogenic at levels consumed by humans. The report also noted that stevioside has shown some evidence of pharmacological effects in patients with hypertension or with type-2 diabetes but indicated more research is needed. And the potential therapeutic aspects may play into a future regulatory challenge. According to a March 16, 2009, Food Product Design article, "A Citizen’s Petition was filed with FDA in late 2008 to prevent the addition of steviol glycosides to foods because of the drug status alleged for the sweeteners. [The] FDA is also attempting to implement recent legislation that more broadly prohibits the addition of drugs to foods. FDA’s resolutions of these two matters could impact the future food uses of steviol glycosides."

In the mean time, the approval of Rebiana for use as a general purpose sweetener offers another non-nutritive sweetener option for U.S. consumers.