I've been thinking about food lately. Actually, I think about food all the time, since I'm the person in our house who shops for it and prepares it and we're all big eaters.

But what I've been thinking about more is how normal it is for women not to eat, how a woman can be engaging in very bizarre behavior when it comes to food and no one really bats an eye. For example:

1. I work with a woman who is thin to the point where her shoulder bones jut out. I seriously could put my fingers around her ankle - and I don't have big hands. She keeps a big jar of candy in her office and routinely brings in homemade cupcakes for the staff. But she never eats the treats herself, at least not in view of anyone else in the office.

2. Another woman I work with, whom I see only occasionally, gets thinner and thinner and thinner each time, like she is slowly disappearing. This is a bright, dynamic person who is very smart and engaging. But I took her out to lunch at a very nice restaurant and had to sit there while she pretended to eat. I seriously don't think she took more than one bite of her food.

My husband is from a red-meat loving family; its not dinner unless it bled on the way there. I myself was raised by very omnivorous folks, we can throw down BBQ with the best of them, but beans and rice were also a staple. The first time I served dear hubby our favorite summer-time supper; big garden salad with chopped boiled eggs and a sprinkiling of Baco-s with chewy whole grain bread, he ate it up! And then asked what was for dinner.

I've been buying basically the same list of groceries for months, and the bill just keeps ticking up and up.  Apparently, it's not just in my head; food prices really are on the rise.  

According to a recent NY Times article, food prices in general have been rising, with organic food prices holding, at least for the past year or so.  Well, that's over, according to the article. In many parts of the country, a loaf of organic bread is going for $4.50, a gallon of organic milk over $7, a pound of organic pasta is $3 and a dozen organic eggs $5.

Some reasons:

Organic prices are rising for many of the same reasons affecting conventional food prices: higher fuel costs, rising demand and a tight supply of the grains needed for animal feed and bakery items. In fact, demand for organic wheat, soybeans and corn is so great that farmers are receiving unheard-of prices.

Blame ethanol?

“There has been no new surge of land going into organic,” said Lynn Clarkson, who buys organic grain as president of Clarkson Grain in central Illinois. “We are having to compete with this ethanol juggernaut,” he added, referring to the growing use of field corn for fuel.

so, the other forum i spend too many working hours checking obsessively is a work related one, cheftalk.com.
there have been a couple of recent posts from some of my fellow (male) chefs about parents bringing their children into fine dining restaurants, as well as some sneering remarks about feeding children chicken fingers and pasta.
http://www.cheftalk.com/forums/late-night-cafe-non-food-cooking-discussion/42497-magnum-opus-touchy- subject.html
and:
http://www.cheftalk.com/forums/professional-chef-s-forum/42473-people-their-stupid-kids.html

Recent investigation by a consumer advocacy group and a newspaper have found that organic labelling of food products in Australia is potentially misleading. Because there are multiple bodies – none governmental - that can provide certification for organic products, confusion abounds about what “organic” means in the Australian context. Forgive me for dabbling in areas that others, like Expat Chef, so expertly skewer; I can only look upon this as a concerned layperson.  I know that for myself, if I see a can of something like tomatoes or beans or what-have-you labelled “organic”, I automatically assume that somebody behind that label has assessed the contents and manufacture to certify that result. Sometimes yes, and sometimes no, this article shows:

[S]ome own-brand organic products bought by The Sun-Herald in Coles and Woolworths [NB: Coles and Woolworth’s are the two biggest chain supermarkets in Australia. Rachel]last week had none of the official logos. Woolworths' organic tinned tomatoes had no official certification, and the small print on Coles organic carrots stated "product in conversion to national standard" with no other explanation.

Five different products bought in Coles used five different organic logos.

The Sun-Herald also looked at the cost of organic goods compared with conventional products.

Organic carrots from Coles cost $3.48 for one kilogram compared with $1.68 for the conventionally produced equivalent.

In Woolworths, organic carrots were $3.98 compared with 94 cents for the mainstream equivalent.

Organic tinned tomatoes in Woolworths cost $1.15, compared with 58 cents for a "normal" tin.

And 500 grams of regular minced beef from Coles cost $5.55 compared with $7.33 for its organic rival.

I am throwing her an 18th birhtday. She's vegan, I am not.  Making it vegetarian honors her, but there will be a lot of people who probably have never had or seen some of this food.Looks like we will have over sixty people. I have put together a menu that I think is interesting and won't scream WEIRD >>>NO MEAT.

Here's what I have so far. I need another dish

1 Felafel. Right now unless I can find someone who will sell me the uncooked mix and not the sandwich, I will make from the fantastic food mix. I can buy small pita from Trader Joes and make hummus.
2 Veggie chilli. I make with black beans and use tvp, mushrooms,onions
and peppers. Will serve with soy cheese and regualr cheese.
3 Pesto...including whole wheat with soy cheese for dd4 Big salad
4 Breads..I make great challah, will have pitas and last night I made a bread that was 2/3's unbleached white and 1 cup of chick pea flour. I added a litle cumin and it was yummy...
Desserts

I keep trying to make vegan desserts that she likes. Most are awful. But I finally found a whole wheat carrot cake recipe that is decent. I will also have pound cake and fruit...

But I need another dish????

Anyone reading or want to read Pollan's new book?  I'm about 3/4 through and finding it both enjoyable and provacative.  I'd be happy to host a discussion if others want to read.

Otherwise, I may just wait and share some of my favorite parts with all of you when I finish.

Expat Brit - have you read this - I think you'd find it very affirming!

This is fascinating.  It's a picture of what a family of four in Cleveland ate for one year in the early 1950s.

Click here for an enlarged view.

The Cleveland family shown in the photo below was surrounded by enough food to feed a typical American family of four for a year in the early 1950s. Mr. Czekalinski, the father, earned about $30,000 a year (in today’s dollars) at a Du Pont plant. The family spent more than a quarter of that on food alone ...

You will find items labeled Crisco, Albro, Wheaties, Sunnyfield, Beech-Nut and Jack Frost – but no Coke, Oreos or Doritos. How did this family survive?

See below for the complete grocery list.

Check out how small the cart is, the tons of sugar and shortening and flour and meat but also lots of fruit and veggies.

What do you think MotherTalkers?  Healthier than what we eat now or not?

We've all heard the warning that people gain a ton of weight during the holidays. I remember reading somewhere that it's closer to 1 or 2 pounds than the oft-cited 10 pounds, but still: as someone who has lost weight and managed to keep (most of) it off, I can tell you that 1 or 2 pounds is nothing to sneeze at.

So I found this article on how to save some serious calories at holiday gatherings practical and realistic. A few of the tips:

Eat this
12 Large Cocktail Shrimp w/ Cocktail Sauce
165 calories
1 g fat

Not that!
1 Crab Cake
290 calories
19 g fat

When it comes to cocktail parties, it's important to know your crustaceans. In this case, you can have a dozen huge shrimp and 125 calories to save for a rainy day, or you can have one measly crab cake. Not such a tough choice once you know the facts.

Seems reasonable to me. I also learned that yummy pecan pie is basically extra pounds on a plate:

Eat this
Chocolate Fondue With Angel Food Cake
340 calories
10g fat

Not that!
One Medium Slice Pecan Pie
610 calories
45g fat

In the wide world of holiday pies, nothing is worse than a slice of pecan. True, some of the fat is healthy, from the nuts themselves. Most of these calories, though, come from the filling, which is a sickly sweet sludge of corn syrup and sugar.

Sigh. Why must all the stuff that's awful for you taste so darn good?

I am guilty of slacking in the exercise department this holiday season, and I haven't given much thought to how many tamales and cookies I have eaten. But I like being armed with this info on how to make healthier choices while not depriving yourself of holiday treats. I'm a firm believer that everything in moderation is OK. It keeps me from fixating on what I can't have and then losing all control later on.

What about you ladies? Do you remain conscious of your diet and exercise during the holiday season, or do you let loose and enjoy? What about the kids? Do you limit their candy cane consumption or let them stuff themselves with Christmas cookies? Maya is eating more sweets than she usually does, but not an unreasonable amount. and it turns out she doesn't care for candy canes.

We're heading to brunch at my brother-in-law's, followed by dinner at my MILs...and there will be a fair amount of munching involved. :-)

Merry Christmas, all!

The end of October is always a perfect storm of business for me.  Just as 1st quarter grades are coming due, and I have 118 essays to read and 30 make-up assignments to grade, and the school computers go down making uploading grades into the district's database impossible, Halloween rears its spooky head and costumes must be found, candy must be purchased, and Halloween activities must be completed.  

In the midst of all this I must attend a Parent-Teacher conference with my 1st grader's teacher, cheer on same son at soccer, get a very necessary haircut, consider a summons to jury duty, and write several teacher recommendations for very deserving seniors who are all lovely young women who would be assets to any college or university that deigned to accept them into their student bodies.

It's National School Lunch Week, and I'm glad President Bush has proclaimed it—part of his ongoing commitment to our children's health. (Yeah, right.) How to celebrate such an occasion? Whip up a batch of "American Chop Suey," a meat, tomatoes, and macaroni mixture I remember from my own tray-carrying days? Throw some canned fruit into orange Jello and have a party?

I think a better way is to share the advice of Chef Ann Cooper, the "renegade lunch lady" with a mission to improve the quality of school food in our nation and instill our children with healthy habits for life. In honor of this week, she suggests in her podcast, "I think every single parent in America should go and eat lunch with children at their schools and really see if the food they're eating in their schools is delicious and nutritious."

Her current podcast is also a good introduction to her ideas on how schools can find money to serve fresh foods, things parents can do to build healthy habits in their kids, and why we need to make childhood food and nutrition a priority in the U.S. In fact, she wants to make the issue of school-lunch funding "part of the 2008 presidential debate," as she told me last December when I spoke with her and reviewed her book Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children. Below are a few of the sobering statistics from that post; here's the full original.

• Children born in the year 2000 will be the first in our country's history to die at a younger age than their parents.
• More than 35 percent of our nation's children are overweight, 25 percent are obese, and 14 percent have type 2 diabetes, a condition previously seen primarily in adults.
• Current research shows that 40 percent of all cancers are attributable to diet.
• 78 percent of the schools in America do not actually meet the USDA's nutritional guidelines.

Are you happy with the lunch options in your school district? Discuss, or take the poll.

Okay, here it is, 2:00 in the afternoon and suddenly, as if this has never happened before, I am wondering what to fix for dinner. You would think with two 10 year olds in the house, I would have figured this out a long time ago. Surely it's not that hard? Dinner comes around every day, so it certainly shouldn't be a surprise to me that it's here again, and that as the SAHM I am the one responsible for preparing something.

And, yet, here I am again.