A delicious recipe for sorbet

Sorbet is something that is very delicious, especially if made more towards fruit than Popsicle. Here is just such a recipe...

Take 1 1/2 lbs of peaches, or nectarines, or other stone fruit you enjoy. Bake them in a glass baking dish in a 350 degree oven for one hour. Let them cool until you can handle them without burning yourself. Remove the stones and place in a blender. Note: I find that with peaches or apricots there is no need to remove the skin. If the idea revolts you, take charge and remove those skins.

Next, add 2 Tbls of unflavored or complementary flavored vodka, to the baking dish. Add 1/3 cup of water also. Using a wooden spoon or soft spatula, so as not to scratch the glass dish, stir up any carmelized fruit juices. When done, add that to the blender.

Next, put 1/3 cup of white sugar into the blender.

Now, blend away until it is smooth.

If time permits, refrigerate the mixture for a while to cool it. This is particularly important if you are using an old-fashioned ice-cream maker.

When ready, pour mixture into an ice-cream maker for 15-30 minutes. Check it periodically until the texture is more like ice-cream than Popsicle.

That's all there is to it. You might find a few toasted almonds go well on top.

Good eating!

Vegetarians and cancer

Researchers from universities in the UK and New Zealand published a study in the British Journal of Cancer which found that those who followed a vegetarian diet developed notably fewer cancers of the blood, bladder and stomach.

You can read a BBC News report here

Once again a diet with more plants in it tips the scales of human health towards healthy.

I have been mostly adopting a produce diet and so far it is going well. I say mostly because I am intent not to be a fanatic about this. Here is my outlook:

* I have meat in the freezer that I'm not going to throw out since an animal died to provide it.

* I don't have much experience with vegemite dishes, so I've been perusing vegetarian cooking magazines. That has provided an influx of ideas.

* One success was the idea of fixing a nice meal, to both try out new recipes and to illustrate that a change like this doesn't have to be a martyr's experience. On the menu were stir-fry turnovers and sage/pumpkin-balls with white wine and then desert (a chocolate-pie with date-nut crust). Everything looked, smelled and tasted good and I was both satisfied and full.

* Cheese is really good on a lot of things and that will be tough to eliminate. I think I'll start to reduce the amount of cheese I eat by using Parmesan cheese grated on things, as well as a sprinkling of nutritional yeast. It is a quality vs. quantity approach.

* Life is short and uncertain and there are times when I am going to consume animal protein (i.e. holidays, Super-Bowl parties, weddings). I'll leave horror, guilt, and shame (and moral superiority) to the vegans.

* I want to strive to make food that tastes good in-and-of itself. Vegetables have a lot of color and flavor and simple techniques like roasting or sautéing develops them further. I don't think there is any need to make "meat-like" dishes and I believe this approach only invites comparison and sets you up for disappointment (whether you admit it or not).

So far this approach is working out well-enough for me. I have had a pizza with friends here, and burger at a BBQ joint there, but on the whole I have reduced the animal protein in my diet to approximately a meal a week.

A term for it

I've written that I don't like the term "Vegan" because it implies a whole culture that I find pompous, self-satisfied, and negative. But it has left me without a good label for the way in which I wish to eat and I don't want that to lead to an identity crisis.

Dr. Colin Campbell in his book, The China Study called what he recommends plant-eating, which is accurate but lacks appeal for me.

The term herbivore is accurate, and although I am certainly a direct competitor with ground-hogs, it is too clinical for me.

So, I've decided to say I mostly eat produce.

The Produce Diet has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

The free dictionary says that produce is "Farm products, especially fresh fruits and vegetables, considered as a group". Maybe that doesn't include grains. Maybe that doesn't include labratory-tofu products. But, a good name for something should evoke an emotion and an idea at the same time.

Have you ever watched people shopping for produce?

They pick stuff up. They pinch it. They smell it. They slow down. I think there are good vibes there and I like that about this name.

Why do it?

If you are looking for justifications to adopt an herbivore's diet, then consider this...

Michael Pollan, in this articled titled "Why Bother?", says that giving up meat is, "an act that would reduce your carbon footprint by as much as a quarter."

An herbivore's diet helps reduce greenhouse gases.

If you, in addition, plant your own garden then you will also reduce your fossil-fuel-calorie to food-calorie ratio too (which typically requires 10 fossil fuel calories per calorie of food).

The more I learn about my new diet, the better I feel about adopting it.

Vegetarian's Dilemma

I came across a passage in Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" that I thought captured the essence of what I have been advocating here, which is eat a healthy plant-based diet, but don't employ a martyr's fanaticism. In a chapter called, "The Ethics of Eating Animals", he writes...

"Even if the vegetarian is a more highly evolved human being (???), it seems to me he has lost something along the way, something I'm not prepared to dismiss as trivial. Healthy and virtuous as I may feel these days, I also feel alienated from traditions I value: cultural traditions like the Thanksgiving turkey, or even franks at the ballpark, and family traditions like my mother's beef brisket at Passover. These ritual meals link us to our history along multiple lines - family, religion, landscape, nation, and, if you want to go back much further, biology. For although humans no longer need meat in order to survive (now that we can get our B-12 from fermented foods or supplements), we have been meat eaters for most of our time on earth. This fact of evolutionary history is reflected in the design of our teeth, the structure of our digestion, and, quite possibly, in the way my mouth still waters at the sight of a steak cooked medium rare. Meat eating helped make us what we are in a physical as well as social sense. Under the pressure of the hunt, anthropologists tell us, the human brain grew in size and complexity, and around the hearth where the spoils of the hunt were cooked and then apportioned, human culture first flourished."

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Michael Pollan
Penguin Books
p. 314

I would argue that Passover is once a year and there are worse moral failings than eating your mother's cooking. Also, think of how much more powerful the ritual will become when you give it a place of honor in your own diet. And finally, learn from this by creating rituals centered on a Vegan meal for your friends and family. You might celebrate October 4th (feast day of St. Francis of Assisi) with a vegetarian, candlelit supper. You might instead choose Arbor day, or Earth day, but whatever you choose stick with it and make it a tradition.

You might be slightly less healthy than the pure vegan, but perhaps slightly more happy.

Pizza

I have always liked pizza and was trying to resign myself to avoiding it as often as possible when I discovered I could make very good, in fact better, pizza without floating all the ingredients in cheese.

I started out by frying a few cloves of garlic in a 4-6 tbs of good-quality olive oil. Then I removed the browned garlic and added greens (like spinach or arugula) to the oil and cooked it until good and wilted. When done I mixed in the brown garlic bits and spread it on top of a prepared pizza dough (precook for 5 mins in a 375 degree oven).

Next I added a bunch of vegetables, and I mean a pile. I added carmelized onions, brine-cured olives, roasted red bell peppers, thinly sliced tomatoes (with their seeds removed), leftover grilled zucchini and/or eggplant, and mushrooms toasted to remove their water.

Finally, I drizzle everything with olive oil and shake on some garlic powder, salt, and brewer's yeast. Then I stick it in the oven and cook it until the crust is browned on the bottom. Afterwards it goes under the broiler to roast the vegetables a bit. When it comes out of the oven I add oregano and red pepper flakes and some finishing salt.

Now, when I grill I often toss on extra vegetables with a fridge-clearing pizza in mind. I also try to keep frozen whole-wheat doughs on-hand.

Other good additions are...

tapenade, marinated artichokes (I like those made by Pastene), marinated and grilled eggplant, hot peppers, grilled until soft fennel, small-cut lightly pre-cooked broccoli, and maybe one of those imitation meat products.

When you hit the right combination of ingredients your pizza will look, smell, and taste fantastic and that is the way food should be.