Quick & Dee-licious: Roasted Asparagus with Arugula & Hazelnuts
If you are ready for some fresh spring asparagus that is crisp, lemony and divine—and can be on the table in a snap—our Food As Medicine Executive Chef Rebecca Katz’s recipe is just the thing. Ummmm good.
Alum Entrepreneur: Whole Foods Feeding Tube Formula
Ask any Food As Medicine graduate what their favorite thing about the program is and for sure their difficulty will be in choosing between the food and the people. It’s a given that the education is superlative– science-based, heart-centered, practical and inspiring. FAM 2011 will make it an even dozen times we’ve presented it, and we have gotten very good at it, indeed. Rebecca Katz is designing the food, so again, prepare to be both nourished and dazzled. The people? Robin Gentry McGee is a perfect example of our amazing attendees.
Our Wonderful Alums: Mary-Beth in the Drip Room
Right after Food As Medicine in June 2010, we received the following email from a participant:
Thank you and the staff for an incredible experience.
It is still very alive for me. I came home and right away started
weekly food demonstrations at the oncology clinic
where I work. Patients are loving it!
Peace & blessings,
Mary-Beth Charno, RN, BSN, HNB-BC, OCN
Linchitz Medical Wellness,Glen Cove, NY
This kind of email goes in my electronic folder labeled Cloud Nine. Seriously– what would you like to hear if you managed a nutrition training program for healthcare professionals? The paycheck is not why we work late. So I contacted Mary-Beth for details, and she was kind enough to share photos and recipes.
My new friend Abate Fetel
The produce manager at my local Whole Foods caught me appreciatively smelling the organic Bartlett pears on sale last night (1.69 a pound) and asked if I had ever tried Abate Fetel? He led me to a mound of slender, elongated greenish pears and explained that they are Italian, and only available briefly at this very time of year.
Handy: Spaghetti Scrubs
I don’t buy a lot of stuff, but I appreciate useful, practical things that possess virtue. These spaghetti scrubs do.
On a Chilly Winter Night: Lentil Soup
I love PCRM (Physicians Committe for Responsible Medicine), especially because they generously offer so much cooking education free to the public through the Cancer Project, their diabetes education network, their 21-day vegan kickstart programs, etc… and the recipes are often terrific.
Case in point: this lentil soup recipe from the Cancer Project, perfect for a cold winter’s night with the wind howling, as it has often been here on the East Coast this winter.
A Fondness for Dark Chocolate
Ok, I confess: I love dark chocolate. When I learned that Food As Medicine faculty member Joe Pizzorno, ND, founding President of Bastyr University and a wellness expert if ever there was one, eats some every day, I gave myself over to this one small, off-the-charts delicious treat. I eat tons of fruits and vegetables daily, walk to work and am mindful, I promise- so, what can be the harm? Especially since dark chocolate is packed with antioxidants?
Well, I just found a good new one. I usually don’t share products, but this one is worth taking note of: organic dark chocolate with sea salt in it. Golly!
The story goes that the folks who started Salazon Chocolate Company were hiking in Utah and noticed that the chocolate they broke into their trail mix was enhanced by the saltiness. Indeed! Imagine excellent quality dark chocolate with the bright, engaging tang of a lovely fleur de sel.
Goodness!
The one in the photo is their bar with sea salt and cracked pepper. I prefer the one with just sea salt, but Whole Foods and Marvelous Market up the street were both sold out– and believe me, this will do very nicely in a pinch 
Make Magic Mineral Broth!
A reminder for those of you who know about it, and an epiphany for those of you who don’t: Magic Mineral Broth!
Food As Medicine Executive Chef & faculty member Rebecca Katz, MA, first published the recipe for this potent potion in her cookbook One Bite at a Time: Nourishing Recipes for Cancer Survivors and Their Friends– and has since generously offered it on her website rebeccakatz.com. She calls it her “Rosetta stone of soup”.
This time of year, with colds and flu swirling about, I feel naked without it. And that’s a simple problem to fix– a trip to the farm market or grocery store for a sack full of everything on the list, a few minutes to wash and chop, and several hours of cozy reading time while the broth simmers and the kitchen fills with a healthy, rich aroma– and you’re good to go. One recipe makes quite a lot of broth– see photo of results in the slide show– most of which I freeze for those moments when you need a mineral-rich broth to pick you right up. My kind of health insurance
Thank you, Rebecca!
The value of a dollar
I asked our popular Food As Medicine faculty member, farmer, teacher and author John Bagnulo, MPH, PhD, to take a few moments and view this thought-provoking slide show, Marketplace Photo Gallery: The value of a dollar, in which photographer Jonathan Blaustein photographs a dollar’s worth of various types of food.
Bon Appetit: Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian
A trip downtown to the the National Museum of American History to view Julia Child’s kitchen proved to be a delightful outing for the culinary devotees in my family on New Year’s weekend.
If you have seen the film Julie & Julia then you already know that the Smithsonian Museum received the original kitchen and all its contents from her Cambridge, MA house from the grand Julia as a gift in 2001, when she was moving back home to her native California. Stuffed with Julia memorabilia along with the actual kitchen (yes, the real kitchen, not a model) a visit is such fun!
I especially savored her bookshelf, which ranges far beyond the expected cookbooks to field guides, world history, “How to Clean Everything”, and Bulfinche’s Mythology. I can picture her leaping up from dinner conversation to consult one of these for a salient point, can’t you?
Click here for a link to the exhibit website, which includes an item-by-item tour of some of her fascinating batterie de cuisine.
Bon appétit and bonne année!
