Eat Out Eat Well

food for fun and thought

Sweet! It’s Spring And Maple Sugar Time

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Americans tend to like sweet stuff and most of us eat more of it than we should.

Although we’re warned to be conscious of the amount of sugar we eat, that doesn’t mean never eat anything sweet.  Of course, some people choose not to, but if you do – eat the good stuff – like real maple syrup.

 

Who Made Maple Syrup First?

Maple trees are tapped in early Spring for the sap used to make syrup. The sap is a clear, watery liquid which is boiled down to concentrate it into syrup.

Native Indians in the US and Canada were probably the first producers of maple products. They would make gashes in the trees, collect the sap, let it partially freeze to enrich it, then reduce it by heating, sometimes by dropping heated stones into the collected sap.

 

Ideal Conditions

This year’s harsh winter created great conditions for an incredible maple syrup season. The below freezing nights and above freezing days were ideal and nearly doubled production at some sugar shacks, especially for light grades of syrup.

The syrup color generally depends on the time of the season the sap is collected.  Lighter syrup tastes cleaner and more sugary and usually results from colder temperatures earlier in the season. Dark syrup has a different sugar content, a taste that lingers in your mouth, and usually comes from sap collected later in the season.

 

Some Maple Sugaring Facts

According to the Stamford Museum and Nature Center (CT):

  • About 40 gallons maple sap are needed to make 1 gallon of maple syrup
  • Fresh sap is 2% sugar; maple syrup is 67% sugar
  • A tree must be at least 10 inches in diameter before it can be tapped; each taphole averages 10 gallons of sap a season
  • A sugar maple takes about 40 years to reach 10″ in diameter and there is no permanent damage if only 10% of its sap is collected annually
  • In the US, Vermont is the largest syrup producer, Maine is second, New York is third
  • In 2006 the US produced 1,449,000 gallons of maple syrup — Canada produced over 7 million
  • Maple syrup has 40 calories a tablespoon; corn syrup has 60

 

What’s The Difference Between Real Maple Syrup And Commercial Pancake Syrups?

The sticky stuff, often called pancake syrup, that you likely find in your local diner and in the Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth’s bottles on your supermarket shelves is not considered “real” maple syrup. That’s because it’s not made from maple sap  but rather from a mixture of corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup,  and a chemical soup of colorings, flavors, and preservatives.

Real maple syrup is graded.  In the US (Canada has different grading) the grading is:

  • Grade A Light Amber:  light amber color, light and mild maple flavor
  • Grade A Medium Amber: medium amber color, a bit more maple flavor, the most popular grade for table use
  • Grade A Dark Amber: dark amber color, strong maple flavor
  • Grade B: dark color, usually used for cooking and baking

 

 

Green Clean Your Kitchen – On The Cheap!

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Green It Up!


After a long – very long – and very harsh winter, it’s finally Spring. It even feels as though my house wants to take a deep breath of fresh air. We’ve been shut up indoors for so long – and so have our homes – gracefully taking in all of our cold germs, cooking odors, pet smells, deicing salt and mud, and every other remnant of our cloistered winter existence.

It’s Time For Spring Cleaning

The whole idea of Spring cleaning – the annual cleaning of your house from top to bottom in the first warm days of the year — is supported by many cultures. For example, for the past 3,500 years, observant Jews have done a thorough “spring cleaning” of their homes before the Passover holiday begins. It is traditional In Greece and other Orthodox countries to do the same before or during the first week of Lent – which is also called Clean Week.

In the spirit of greening and cleaning here are some environmentally sensitive suggestions to green and clean your kitchen whether you cook at home or feast on take-out. You eat well, so why not treat your kitchen and the environment well, too!

White Vinegar, Lemon, Salt and Baking Soda

So many petroleum based cleaning products can cause potentially serious health and environmental issues. Why not use natural, inexpensive, and safe wonder cleaners like white vinegar, lemon, salt, and baking soda?

I use white vinegar in water all of the time to clean my kitchen counter tops, stove, and even my tile floor. It cleans beautifully, is nontoxic, and smells like vinegar — not some nostril assaulting chemical mixture. Although some suggest using equal parts of water and white vinegar, I’m not so precise. I pour some vinegar and water in a spray bottle and keep it under my sink to use when I need it. Actually, vinegar and fresh lemon juice often serve the same purpose — but lemon has a citrusy scent that some people prefer.

For tougher stains, try making an all-purpose, non-toxic, stain-busting paste out of a mixture of vinegar and baking soda mixed with a little water. Baking soda, even on its own, is a great food-safe, odorless, and mildly abrasive green cleaning product and can be used just about everywhere (although not on waxed or easily scratched surfaces).

It’s great for cleaning up spills in the oven, on the stove-top, and for cleaning pots and pans when you forget to stir and let something burn the bottom of the pot. For oven spills, make a paste of baking soda and water, let it sit on the on the spill overnight, and scrub in the morning.

If you get to a spill – either in the oven or on the stove – right away, cover it with salt, let it sit for a few minutes, then wipe. The salt will absorb the liquid and is really good for absorbing grease and oil. Use salt to clean your coffee pot – just add 2 to 3 tablespoons to the pot and bring it to a boil.

You can also clean metal with a mixture of salt and lemon juice. My Uncle Charlie taught me this. Greeks make a New Year’s cake with a coin hidden in it. To clean the coin, Uncle Charlie would let it sit in a mixture of salt and lemon juice then rinse it and wipe it dry – something I do to this day. Aside from random coins, try it on your pots, pans, and appliances.

Then There’s The Red Wine Someone Spilled On The Carpet

Something really good to know is if a colored liquid, like red wine, spills on your carpet, dab up what you can with paper towels or a clean cloth and then cover the spill with salt. When it dries, vacuum it up. A friend taught me this when someone spilled red wine on my brand new light colored carpet. She calmly assured me that her Dad was in the carpet business and to go get the salt and dump it on the spill. Trust me, this works!

The Dishwasher As A Green Tool

Amazingly, a dishwasher uses half the energy, one-sixth the water, and less soap than if you wash dishes by hand. A report from the California Energy Commission says that you use, on average, 37% less water with a dishwasher than if you did dishes by hand under a continuous stream of water. But, if you fill one sink or basin with water to wash dishes and another to rinse rather than letting the water run, you’ll use half the water of a regular dishwasher.

And, one more plug for vinegar: using vinegar in the rinse cup of your dishwasher is an economical and environmentally friendly alternative to other kinds of rinse aids.

Is Your Cooking Costing You Money?

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I thought I knew a lot about efficient cooking, but some of this info surprised me.  It seems that my family is throwing more bucks at the electric company than we might have to.  In the spirit of the greening up – yea, it’s Spring – here’s some great tips for more efficient cooking.

Easy Ways To Save Some Money In The Kitchen

The easiest and most effective way to save money is to use energy-efficient cooking methods.  Here’s how:

The Stove:

  • Make sure you match the size of the pot to the size of the burner. On an electric stove using a 6 inch pot on an 8 inch burner wastes more than 40 percent of the heat from the burner.
  • Cover your pots and pans with tight-fitting lids during cooking to keep the heat in. A covered pot comes to a boil more quickly which reduces cooking time, using less energy.
  • When you buy pots and pans, look for flat-bottomed cookware that is made out of highly conductive materials like copper or cast iron.

The Oven:

  • Ovens are not usually the most efficient way to cook – a microwave is far more efficient (see below).  
  • Preheating is somewhat prehistoric since many newer ovens heat up very rapidly.  Often, preheating is not necessary, although it does depend on the recipe – especially for most baked goods and soufflés.
  • Turn the oven off five or ten minutes early, and let dishes finish cooking in the residual heat. (Ditto for food cooked on an electric stove top.).
  • Try to keep the oven door shut as much as possible.  Every time you open it the temperature drops about 25 degrees.
  • Ceramic, glass, and cast iron bakeware retains more heat so things cook more quickly.
  • Capitalize on your oven and its heat. Cook more than one thing at a time. If you’re cooking something small, use a toaster oven or microwave to save energy – especially if you’re reheating.

The Microwave:

  • Microwave ovens are a very efficient way to heat and cook food. Cooking energy is reduced by as much as 80 percent when you use your microwave for small portions.
  • On average, you can reduce your energy consumption by two-thirds if you cook in the microwave rather than on the stove (even if it’s gas). You’ll also help keep the kitchen cooler, a bonus in the summer.

The Pressure Cooker:

For more about “green cleaning”  check out my latest Eat Out, Eat Well newsletter article at:

http://conta.cc/igunsm

Have You Noticed That Some Well-Known Chefs Are Shrinking?

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In girth that is.  The chef’s weight loss is frequently motivated by a health scare – although sometimes just by vanity or wanting to be more mobile and agile in the kitchen — many star chefs have devised their own plans for losing weight.

Fortunately, for them, they have knowledge and their skill in the kitchen at their disposal to make food more flavorful, perhaps downright delicious, while cutting back on the use of sugar, fat, and salt.

What The Slimmed Down Chefs Do

According to an article in The Daily News, what they do is:

  • Reengineer their palates:  Richard Blais of Top Chef fame followed a vegan diet for 30 days to jump start his 60 pound weight loss.  He says it was a palate cleanser that made him aware of how sweet, fatty, and salty his food was.  Art Smith, Oprah’s former chef, lost 95 pounds by changing the way he ate – incorporating more whole foods, eating six meals a day, and making uncomplicated food, often following the same menu most days of the week.
  • Eat smaller portions:  Aside from eating smaller meals more frequently, some chefs like Houston’s Ronnie Killen, who lost 215 pounds, eats four ounces of a 16 ounce steak and saves the rest for another meal.
  • Find new ways to add flavor and devise new ways to add taste but not tons of calories:  New York City’s Michael Psilakis poaches garlic in olive oil and then adds the garlic to various foods to really punch up the flavor of lower calorie items like mussels and gigante beans.  Many of the chefs use onion, garlic, and many herbs and spices for flavor.
  • Indulge occasionally (or have a planned cheat day):  Many of the chefs, like Art Smith, build in a cheat day or leave room in their calorie budget for the occasional indulgence by eating lighter meals and fewer calories in anticipation of the indulgence.
  • Exercise:  almost all of the chefs move around more than they did.  New York’s Rocco Dispirito became a triathlete, but Art Smith, who has a rigorous workout routine, says he sometimes just blasts music and dances.

 

The Bottom Line

Whatever routine a chef follows, they all seem to have become aware of  portion sizes.  They’ve learned about calories and the overabundance of sugar, fat, and salt in many recipes.  And, they move more.  They do not deprive themselves.  They may restrict the amount of food that they eat – but they are eating whole food with good flavor and they’re making room for the occasional, not daily, indulgence.

Art Smith cautions that dessert is a treat. As he says, “If you have dessert every day, then it’s no longer a treat.”

Try following their strategies when you’re cooking at home – or even when ordering in a restaurant.

If we could just get more chefs to offer smaller portions of delicious and healthy whole foods in their restaurants and food companies to do the same with their prepared products it would be a whole lot easier to lose and/or maintain weight and to be mindful of portion size.

The Five Second Rule: Don’t Start The Countdown

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The Five Second Rule: if food falls on the floor you can safely eat it if you pick it up within five seconds.  I wrote a popular post on this last year and it’s a topic that resurfaces all of the time — recently in The New York Times.

The Truth About Five Seconds (or three, or seven)

It’s bogus!  In most cases, if bacteria are on the floor, they’ll stick to food almost immediately on contact.

Things that affect how quickly the bacteria cling are the kind of floor; the kind of food; the kind of bacteria; and how long the bacteria have been hanging around on the floor.

 

Let’s Go For Zero

A food scientist and his students at Clemson University tried to determine if the five second rule has some validity or if it’s just a bunch of bunk.

For their study, they put salmonella (as few as ten of these bacteria can cause stomach issues) on wood, tile, or carpet, and then dropped bologna on them for 5, 30, or 60 seconds. More than 99% of the bacteria were transferred nearly immediately from the wood and tile and a smaller number were transferred from the carpet. Over a number of hours, the number of bacteria that transferred decreased, but thousands per square centimeter still remained on the surfaces after 24 hours. Hundreds hung around for as long as four weeks.

 

Location, Location:  The Sidewalk Is Better Than The Kitchen Floor

Most researchers agree the important thing is not how long food takes a vacation on the floor, but where that stay is. Believe it or not, according to a professor of microbiology and pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and author of Germ Proof Your Kids, it may be okay to brush off and give back the gummed up bagel that your kid tossed out of the stroller. Pavement has fewer types of germs that cause illnesses than the kitchen floor — which is probably coated with health hazardous bacteria from uncooked meat and chicken juices.

 

Don’t Retrieve Food From The Kitchen Sink Either

Kitchen sinks have more germs than bathroom sinks and three-quarters of kitchen dish cloths and sponges are heavily contaminated with harmful bacteria like  E. coli and salmonella.  The bacteria, probably carried into the kitchen by food, kids, or pets, can cause diarrhea or infections with flu-like symptoms (especially dangerous for small children, the elderly, and pregnant women).  Bacteria adore the food collected in sponges used to wipe stuff up and can find a happy growing ground nestled in your sponge.