Let Them Eat Cake

Qu’ils mangent de la brioche. Those famous lines are often attributed (abeit incorrectly) to Marie Antoinette, Queen of France in the late 18th century, responding to food shortages and widespread  hunger. While the origins of the utterance are still hotly debated, the sentiment behind them and what they represent is quite powerful. An impoverished segment of the population complains of a lack of food - of no bread - and the wealthy, bourgeousie's response is to "let them eat cake". It demonstrates the complete lack of understanding of why people are going hungry, and the lack of empathy for the plight of those in poverty.

It's interesting that as a society we seem convinced that both the nature of and responses to contemporary poverty have changed drastically. We may no longer confront the feudal societies of lords and serfs, but there are vast inequalities present today, not only between countries but also within nations. Income inequality, one of the best studied of these topics, is still striking and a testament to the fact that capitalism and democratic societies breed elites just as do monarchies. But income is not the only measure of poverty, nor is it considered a complete one. 

Another school of thought, adopted by media sources like Fox News, reduces poverty down to material possessions, arguing that ownership of modern appliances like refrigerators and TVs negates any claims of need. Yet, it is increasingly accepted that material goods don't tell the whole story, either (see study on car ownership). Particularly where showy items are a sign of social standing - or are at least used to give this impression - people may opt for the seemingly less rational choice of buying a flatscreen rather than necessities. This complexity is part of the challenge, and why the questions of not only of how do we measure poverty, but also how we define it, continue to plague the 'development' sphere. These are no trivial matters, as what we measure and why to a large extent informs what we do.

There seems to be two tracks of interest for those of us who happen to study topics related to poverty. On the one hand, we spend a lot of time identifying where poor people exist. A recent study used an interesting combination of survey data from national statistics bureaus in Africa, 'night lights' or luminosity data, and daytime satellite images to build a model that predicts areas of poverty. This could allow poverty tracking to enter the 'data age', filling gaps and potentially replacing costly and often inaccurate household surveys.

On the other hand, what we really need to address are the root causes of poverty-driven inequities and suffering. For instance, groups that have historically been oppressed, because of ethnicity or social caste, may be more susceptible to the poverty trap. Some argue that freedom and empowerment enhance individuals' capacity to get out of poverty. Oftentimes, underlying factors are perpetuated and exacerbated by poverty itself, resulting in a viscious cycle. Poor neighborhoods many times have underperforming schools, fewer skilled job opportunities, and perhaps greater violence and drug use, making it difficult to break the cycle. These murky waters of poverty (and social injustice) were evident in a recent article in the New York Times, which explored divides resulting not just from wealth and education but by race. Of course, if this were all simple and straightforward, we would have met the Milennium (and now Sustainable) Development Goal of ridding the world of poverty ages ago. But acknowledging it's not clear-cut is a first step.

Now for those of you who only clicked the link because you thought I was offering cake, well you're partly in luck. However, rather than simply handing out sugar-laden baked goods or approving the act without providing means of obtaining or consuming, I'm giving you the first tool to enable you to bake your own cake. Sure, this assumes you live in a house with an oven and at least a bowl, spoon, and baking pan. It also assumes you have the resources to purchase the necessary ingredients. But seeing a roadmap (ie recipe) and knowing that eating your cake is possible, can be very empowering.

Citrus Polenta Cake

⅓ cup vegetable oil (canola, sunflower, etc.)

½ cup sugar (I used raw/unrefined)

1 tbs honey (or agave)

½ cup almond milk (or other non-dairy)

Zest of 2 oranges or lemons

1 ⅓ cup fine cornmeal/polenta (can also substitute up to ⅓ cup almond meal)

1 cup plain flour (unbleached)

¼ cup cornflour/cornstarch

½ tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda/bicarbonate

1 tbs cider vinegar or lemon juice

¼ cup chopped almonds

Juice of 2 oranges or lemons

¼ -⅓ cup sugar (respectively; or to taste)

1. Combine first five ingredients (‘wet’ ingredients) in a large bowl.

2. Mix five ‘dry’ ingredients (flours, salt, and bicarb) in a separate bowl* so that everything is well-incorporated.

3. Combine wet and dry ingredients until everything has come together. Add acid (vinegar or lemon) and almonds, mixing just to incorporate.

4. Pour batter into a loaf pan or small cake round (grease and flour, if not a silicone pan). Bake at 180°C for 25-30 minutes, until a knife comes out clean.

5. Meanwhile, heat citrus juice and sugar in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until it comes to a soft boil. Lower heat and simmer for 5-10 minutes. It should be a bit syrupy and lightly coat the back of a spoon.

6. When cake is done, remove from oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Pierce the top of the cake with a fork, so that the citrus syrup will the able to filter into the cake, then pour the syrup over the cake. Allow to cool completely. It will be dense!

*Can also do this in the first bowl, but make sure cornflour is added after the cornmeal and flour, otherwise it will clump.

Thirsty Thursday: A Spring Sunrise

One of my coworkers recently returned from Tanzania, bringing me back some hibiscus tea. Now Hibiscus encompasses hundreds of species of flowers found in rainy temperate, subtropical, and tropical regions of the world. Across South America, Asia, Africa, the hibiscus flower is traditionally consumed in drink form, often cold and sweetened.

High in vitamin C, hibiscus has been used for its medicinal benefits. It has been linked to lowered blood pressure and fevers, and helps to relieve coughs, manage respiratory ailments, and also act as a natural sunblock! Besides its natural healing properties, hibiscus carries with it a tart fruity flavor and, for the red variety, a vibrant hue. 

So when I was telling a friend yesterday that despite an absence of grains and their derivatives, my diet does not change drastically during Passover, it dawned on me that drinking smoothies rather than eating breakfast cereal or oatmeal plays a particularly important role in that respect. Melding my newly acquired tea, with additionally not-so-local fruits, I crafted this tangy treat to sip as the sun comes up. While it is now officially spring, it still stays dark enough in the morning to enjoy the purples and reds as the sun peaks its head over the horizon.

 

Orange Hibiscus Sunrise

(acceptable for Passover, safe for the vegan or gluten-free soul in your life)

1 orange

1/2 beet, chopped

1/2 frozen strawberries

1/4 mango, chopped (or 1/3 cup frozen)

4-6 oz hibiscus tea, chilled

3-5 drops liquid stevia

handful spinach (optional)

1. Puree in blender or with hand blender. Enjoy!

For more visit Wellness Weekends and Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays.

What's Cooking? Rawsome or Toasty Warm

It is my last day in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Contrasting the city to which I will return this afternoon, there is quite a different vibe than the sometimes sterile and a bit uptight city of Washington, DC. I was visiting my friend JY from college - just for the weekend - a visit that usually involves plenty of exploration and lots of tasty vegan food.

My first night consisted of a bountiful bowl of udon and greens at Life Alive. This reminded me very much of a Portland or San Francisco/Berkeley veg eatery, with meals of vegetables, grains, and tofu, not to mention stellar smoothies. And while we also had good intentions to bake a pie after dinner for Pi Day, that activity was actually postponed until the following evening (a beautiful gluten-free vegan ginger peach pie with lattice crust...we were so proud!).

So moving on to Friday. Feeling like we could undertake just about anything in the kitchen, we embarked on creating a particularly complex salad. While chopping and dicing and shredding, M (JY's roommate who joined us) asked whether we would be cooking the kale. When I replied that we would keep it raw, she raised the important question about whether it's better to consume crudites or cooked vegetables, and what is the ideal combination of cooked and raw. This is an issue because, in my most basic understanding, raw vegetables can be difficult to digest but heating vegetables can destroy certain phytochemicals.

After a bit of online sleuthing, I found that the short of it is that we need to eat a mix of raw and cooked vegetables. The impact of cooking differs depending on the vegetable, and it's best to steam over boil, cook for a short time versus long and on high heat (so much for roasting...). This is consistent with a study a few years back, which found that raw foodists had high levels of certain vitamins and deficiencies in others. SO, our fabulous salad has a mix of raw and cooked vegetables to cover all our bases, a bit of fat to help absorb nutrients, and some fruit for a touch of sweetness. If you want to enhance the digestibility of the raw kale, make sure to massage it or let it sit overnight in the dressing.

Hale and Hearty Green Meal

Dressing

1 tbs toasted sesame oil

1 tbs canola oil

1/3 cup orange juice (can be fresh)

1 tbs wheat-free tamari

1 tbs dijon mustard (and/or miso)

1 tbs agave (or honey)

pinch salt

1 tsp grated fresh ginger (optional)

Apple-Brussels Hash

1 pound brussels sprouts, sliced

2 medium apples, chopped

1 onion, chopped

1 package tempeh, cubed (optional)

1 tbs olive oil

Salt to taste

Salad Assembly

2 bunches of kale, chopped or ripped (we used Red Russian and Purple Curly)

1 ripe avocado, sliced or diced

1/2 cup roasted almonds, chopped (optional)

1. Make the dressing by mixing all the ingredients together in a lidded jar. Put tempeh in a bowl and pour in about half the dressing to marinate.

2. In a medium skillet, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add onions and a pinch of salt. Cook for about 4 minutes until beginning to caramelize and brown. Toss in apples and a pinch of salt. Cook for another 2 minute or so. Finally, add the brussels sprouts and continue to cook until starting to soften.

3. At that point, incorporate the tempeh, reserving the rest of the marinade to dress the salad. Continue to cook until sprouts are tender and everything has a nice caramelly "crust"

4. Assemble to salad in a large bowl, tossing together kale, avocado, AB hash, and the dressing. Serve with warm, crusty, whole grain bread!

Check out more tastiness on Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays and Wellness Weekends.

What's Cooking? A Dose of Ginger

Daylight hours are still scarce; temperatures continue to drop; and trees are bare of any remnant foliage. When the world didn't end on the Winter Solstice a week and a half ago, I resigned myself to yet another winter, and yet another season of nagging colds taking advantage of a weakened immune system.

Ginger, a root in the same family of plants as turmeric and cardamom, has been used across the ages for use in medicine and spice. As would be expected considering its relatives, cultivation of the root originated in South Asia, spreading to East Africa and the Caribbean. Ginger grows in tropical, subtropical, and humid climates, which could be why it fares well in the Mid-Atlantic during the muggy summer months. I stashed away a bit of our harvest of fresh ginger in the freezer for later use, to brighten up a winter day.

Ginger Sunshine Shake

4-6 slices frozen peaches

1/2 orange, peeled

1/2 medium banana

1/2 cup plain almond milk

1 tsp grated fresh ginger

2 tsp agave (optional)

Well, this is super-easy. Just blend! Add water as needed for consistency. 

Also, if you have a good amount of the fresh stuff, you make David Lebovitz's Fresh Ginger Cake, which is phenomenal! Add an extra teaspoon of baking powder and a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar instead of the egg, and you should be golden!

Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, anyone?Also check out Raw Foods Thursdays! (there's something every day now :)

What's Cooking? A Dose of Omegas

Summer is nearly upon us (ok, so it's still winter...), and the body tends to crave lighter fare. Raw food often provides a nice cooling change from heavier winter foods. Todays lunch hits home on some excellent sources of vegan omega-3 fatty acids: walnuts and flaxseed oil! And while I have made a similar concoction with Israeli couscous or barley, the wild rice (a grass) is a nice change that is a highly nutritious plant.

Super Food Wild Rice
1/2 cup wild rice, soaked 24 hours
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
3 dried figs, chopped (other dried fruit would work, as well)

1 orange, juiced
1 tbs flax oil
1 tbs orange muscat vinegar (optional)
1 tsp coarse grain mustard
pinch salt
1 tsp agave (optional)

Couple shakes cinnamon

1. Whisk together dressing ingredients until they emulsify and thicken slightly. Pour about 1/3 over the rice, walnut, date mixture. Add cinnamon. Mix. Refrigerate for at least an hour to "marinate". Enjoy over a bed of raw kale.

This is going up on Wellness Weekends and Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays!

Fifty Second Friday: Drink Your Greens

"Are you drinking salad dressing?" one of my co-workers queried earlier today, as I sipped a creamy green-studded concoction. That doesn't sound too appealing, but my peachy, orange, spinach smoothie does! Winter is a time of a hardy greens and root vegetables; but it is also citrus season in California and Florida. My biggest local produce downfall this time of year is the Cara Cara Orange bags on sale at Trader Joe's...I am only human. So, using the last of my precious stock of frozen peaches and some of the organic spinach from the farmers market, I pureed up a tasty morning milkshake!

Another Peachy Green Smoothie!
1/2 cup frozen peach slices
1 small orange
1/2 cup spinach leaves
1/4 cup almond milk
1/3 cup non-dairy yogurt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
5 drops stevia/1 tsp agave (optional)

1. Blend together. Enjoy!

I'm up on Wellness Weekends and Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, too.

Dare to Bake - Orange You Glad?

Another month, another Daring Bakers Challenge. This time, we celebrated the ever so popular citrus season of California and Florida (too bad I'm in Washington, now). Generally, I don't care a whole lot for fruit and chocolate mixing - except if it's covering strawberries - but it was time for a chocolate dessert! I am also trying to improve my presentation skills. Anywho, here is the recipe for my vegan version of a Chocolate Orange Tian:

Chocolate Sable Cookie (based on lavender sable cookies from Love, Eric)

1/4 cup vegetable or nut oil

1/4 cup agave nectar

1/4 cup sugar (or to taste)

1 tbs chocolate peanut butter

3/4 cup all-purpose flour whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup non-alkalized cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

1. Whisk wet ingredients together. Mix in cocoa powder and then add other dry ingredients.

2. Roll dough into a ball or log and refrigerate for an hour.

3. Use cookie cutters or cut log into circular cookies.

4. Bake for 12 minutes at 350F, until set but not browning yet.

Chocolate Tofu Mousse (based on Chocolate-Almond Midnight in The Millennium Cookbook)

2 cup/16 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips or bar

24 oz firm silken tofu

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/8 tsp salt

1. Melt chocolate in microwave (at 30 second intervals) or in a double broiler.

2. Food process tofu, sugar, salt, and vanilla. Add chocolate and process until smooth.

3. Pour into well-greased ramekins and bake at 350F for 30 minutes, or until top is set.

Blood Orange Marmalade

Freshly pressed orange juice ¼ cup + 3 tablespoons; 3.5 oz; 100 grams

2 medium orange used to make orange slices

cold water to cook the orange slices

pectin 5 grams

granulated sugar: use the same weight as the weight of orange slices once they are cooked

1. Finely slice the orange. Place the orange slices in a medium-sized pot filled with cold water. Simmer for about 10 minutes, discard the water, re-fill with cold water and blanch the oranges for another 10 minutes.

2. Blanch the orange slices 3 times. This process removes the bitterness from the orange peel, so it is essential to use a new batch of cold water every time when you blanch the slices.

3. Once blanched 3 times, drain the slices and let them cool.

4. Once they are cool enough to handle, finely mince them (using a knife or a food processor).

5. Weigh the slices and use the same amount of granulated sugar . If you don’t have a scale, you can place the slices in a cup measurer and use the same amount of sugar.

6. In a pot over medium heat, add the minced orange slices, the sugar you just weighed, the orange juice and the pectin. Cook until the mixture reaches a jam consistency (10-15 minutes).

7. Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge.

To Assemble

1. Using a circle cake form (or a tin can with both ends removed, like I did), layer the ingredients - cookie, marmalade, mousse (scoop out and smooth after cooled), and then arranged orange segments on top.

2. Unmold and refrigerate until serving!

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.

Stay tuned for my initiation into "You Want Pies with That"

Produce of the Week: Beets!

Ah, beets. These hearty roots are versatile, beautiful, and delicious! Beet cultivation, like that of turnips, goes way back to ancient times - domesticated somewhere around the Mediterranean. Of course this was the leafy variety...little did I know that beets are actually the same species as chard, just bred for root rather than greens. According to my reliable reference, Wikipedia, the beet encompasses uses from your common table beet to fodder and sugar. As far as the kind of beet you would eat, they come in all sorts of varieties - candy cane and golden beets hold a particularly fond place in my heart.

These lovely little gems in gold and ruby make for excellent sides and main courses. The golden beet and blood orange salad I made the other night was a slightly downplayed version of Heidi Swanson's Roasted Beet and Blood Orange Salad and looked lovely.

Beets are also excellent incorporated into cakes, as they provide moisture and, if using Bull's Blood or other deeply colored roots, a rich color. Beet greens can be used like chard, understandable, as they are related. As an ancient Babylonian veggie, it is of no surprise that an excellent compliment is the luscious pomegranate. And, of course, beets are always excellent doused in olive oil and sea salt and roasted for an hour in the oven.