Why Pay for Muesli

I'm a sucker for grains, any kind - fresh baked bread, whole wheat pasta, sprouted wheat bagels, oatmeal cookies... and one of the foods I particularly love is muesli. I never miss breakfast, and nothing starts the day better than a nice mix of rolled oats, wheat germ and some dried fruits, drenched in thirst quenching whole milk. A bowl of muesli can't be beat for good taste and filling you up.

But there are a few things that bug me about buying pre-made muesli: it always seems overpriced, it never has exactly what I want, and it's usually too sweet.

Overpriced - $5-$6 per pound (approximately) seems like too much to pay for the amount that I go through. I know it has dried fruit in it, which is expensive, but it's mostly just rolled oats, which aren't expensive.

What do I want? - Not sunflower seeds. Blech. There aren't too many foods I dislike, but that is one of them. Ideally, I'd like a muesli with lots of fruit and a mixture of grains and seeds to make it more interesting and nutritionally diverse than just rolled oats and raisins.

Given these complaints, I decided I should just make my own. After all, it's just mixed up dried ingredients. What could go wrong? Well, for once, nothing actually. It had exactly what I wanted, and I mixed it up in about 2 minutes. As a bonus, my son liked it too, expanding his repertoire of wheetabix, yogurt and berries to include one more item.

I didn't include a picture here because it looks exactly as it sounds - like a bowl of rolled oats, dried fruit and a few other extras. My photography isn't good enough to make that look any better than a pile of stuff. But it did taste pretty good, so you might want to give it a try.

What was in the cupboard Muesli

• 1 c. rolled oats
• 1/2 c. rolled rye flakes
• 1/4 c. wheat germ
• 2 Tbs. wheat bran
• 1 Tbs. brown sugar
• 1/4 c. raisins, roughly chopped (if I don't chop them, my son picks them out and eats nothing else)
  
• 10 dried apricots, sliced thin, then chopped (see raisins)
• 1/4 c. pecans, roughly chopped
• 2 Tbs. unsweetened coconut flakes
• 1 Tbs. flax seeds

Raw Milk - Will it really make me sick?

I know that I've been slacking the last few weeks. When I began this blog, I swore up and down that I'd post every two nights, but I got to feeling like that was too frequent. I was wearing out my four readers with the overload of fascinating information I was pulling together. So I decided to go down to three. That worked for a few weeks... But, you see, I have a lot going on right now, and this week I actually went four days without posting (gasp!) SO... hoping to recapture my lost reader, I'm going for the gusto, I'm finally going to resume discussing my agonizing dilemma over whether or not to get a raw milk share (see Where to Start Looking for Raw Milk).

Why, you might ask, did I wait so long? I do have a good excuse. There is so much information out there on this topic, that I couldn't figure out how to assemble it. I've read presentations, infectious disease articles, FDA warnings, watched California senate debates, and after all of this, I still can't make my mind up.

But I do feel that I've boiled it down to a few key questions...

Does raw milk carry more dangerous pathogens than pasteurized milk?

How this question has been answered is actually quite interesting in itself. The pro-raw milk articles I've read point out that in the numerous tests that have been done comparing pathogen levels of raw and pasteurized milk, the milk is usually compared from the same source.

In fact, in one study, the cows' udders were injected with bacteria to see if the bacteria was passed into the milk, which it was (shoot, sorry, I can't find my reference on this - but I know I read it somewhere). This sounds like a logical test, except that it only tells us one thing - milk with a high pathogen level will have a reduced pathogen level after pasteurization.

What if the pathogen level of the milk isn't high to begin with? What I'm getting at is, have any studies been done examining the pathogen levels of milk from pastured, grass fed cows? None that I could find, unfortunately. I am trying to be unbiased here, but I do strongly believe that cows raised on grass and fresh air are going to be infinitely healthier than industrial dairy cows crammed together in a building eating corn meal and antibiotics. Healthier cows probably produce cleaner milk. For instance, "Vitamin E and selenium improve immune cell function and allow proper closing of the streak canal after milking, the canal through which pathogens generally infect the mammary gland ... Vitamin E intakes of lactating cows on pasture can be four to five times higher than the average intake in the United States"^

If the cow tested in the previously mentioned study is a healthy pastured cow that does indeed deliver infected milk after her udder is injected with bacteria, but is otherwise uninfected, what does the study prove?

A more relevant study would probably be to test the infection rates of raw milk in pastured cows.

A follow-up question I have is how clean does pasteurized milk stay after pasteurization? I'm curious as to whether killing off all bacteria in milk is really a good thing - couldn't we be creating the perfect environment in which bacteria that survives pasteurization or finds its way into the milk could thrive, similar to the Superbug effect that the overuse of antibiotics has caused in humans? Statistics on rates of disease caused by pasteurized versus raw milk would probably help answer this question. So...

Is the risk of getting sick higher with raw or pasteurized milk?

Here are some interesting statistics from the Weston A. Price article, RESPONSE TO ANTI-RAW MILK ARTICLE Published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, January 2009

Statistics from the FDA attribute a 25 fold decrease in the % of foodborne illnesses due to milk since 1938 to pasteurization, but the source of the improvement cannot be isolated as states adopted many other cleanliness standards at the same time as they adopted the pasteurization standard.

"Although there were fewer outbreaks attributed to pasteurized milk than to raw milk between 1980 and 2005 (the years for which the CDC has data available in both categories), those outbreaks attributed to pasteurized milk were larger, and there were therefore nearly eleven times as many illnesses attributed to pasteurized milk as there were to raw milk."

"According to certified information the CDC has provided to us, between 1980 and 2005 there were 41 documented outbreaks attributing 19,531 illnesses to the consumption of pasteurized milk and milk products."

These numbers bring up a strong point in favor of eating local milk, pasteurized or not. Listening to the news the last few years, I can think of so many stories related to massive disease outbreaks attributed to one initial source: spinach, tomatoes, peanuts. These infections were probably not widespread to start with, but there seems to be so much consolidation in the food industry that a small outbreak can reach many, many people. This phenomenon would explain why even if pasteurized milk is safer than raw milk, the fact that it is usually produced on a large scale by industrial dairies means that it has the potential to infect many, many more people. A local dairy has a much smaller sphere of influence.

I felt that The Infectious Diseases article being rebuked by the stats just above, Unpasteurized Milk: A Continued Public Health Threat, did not seem very objective. It seemed to me to throw out common raw milk scare tactics, salmonella, E. Coli, Listeria, without discussing them in very scientific terms. Here is an example of one study:

"An overwhelming majority of dairy producers feel responsible for the safety and wholesomeness of the food products that leave their farms. Good animal health and hygienic conditions on the farm are important for the welfare of the animals and the profitability of the producers, as well as for the quality and wholesomeness of the raw food products leaving the farms for human consumption. Nevertheless, many dairy producers are unaware of the zoonotic potential of the most common bacterial contaminants in milk. In a recent mail‐based survey of 461 Ohio dairy farm respondants, 36% did not think Salmonella species caused disease in humans. Likewise, 81%, 88%, and 91% of farmers indicated that Listeria, Cryptosporidium, and Campylobacter species, respectively, were not associated with disease in humans (J.T.L., unpublished data)."

I'm sorry, but I do not find that to be a particularly compelling statistic. I can see why we would like a dairy farmer to understand the link between food poisoning and the hygiene standards he or she follows, but I'd bet there are plenty of passionate, humane, clean dairy farmers that don't.

I have primarily referenced two articles above, but I did read a few more, and felt that the two sides of the argument were roughly the same.

To me the core of the debate seems to be this

• Pasteurized milk probably does kill some dangerous bacteria. Does this benefit last until the milk reaches your table, or is there potential for subsequent infection due to the now nearly sterile environment created by pasteurization?
• Has pasteurization actually made milk safer, or is it just part of a general improvement in industrial dairy cleanliness standards?
• Is milk from cows raised on pasture safer than milk from industrial cows, regardless of pasteurization?
• If raw milk has a higher potential for infection, but pasteurized milk infections reach more people, from a statistical point of view, which one is really safer?

Given the one-sidedness of the articles I read, I don't feel like any of these questions were truly addressed. I've come away from this feeling like it's a complex question that every person has the right to answer for themselves.

For my part, I've made up my mind that if I am to drink raw milk, it will have to come from cows that are 100% grass fed and free range. I believe this gives me the best chance of avoiding the higher infection risk of raw milk, if indeed there is one. This means that I'll probably need to check it out myself to be sure.

Next question,

Is raw milk more nutritionally complete than pasteurized milk?

Phew, more on this another time.

The Endless Value of Vermouth

In the midst of making potato leek soup for tonight's dinner, I tried to get a little clever and do the dishes before instead of after dinner. Silly me... I lost track of time and realized a little too late that the heat under my gently sweating diced potatoes, leeks and onions was set too high.

There was a slightly burnt layer on the bottom of the pan. It didn't smell bad yet, but I knew that if I didn't get it off it would become charcoal because the soup had some time left to cook. I tried scraping them off but no dice. Stuck.

That's when I turned to my trusty friend dry white vermouth. As I poured in a 1/4 cup or so (maybe a little more), I realized that this incredibly useful trick might be worth sharing...

Deglazing is a common technique - splash a small amount of cold liquid into a hot, caramelized saute pan. I don't understand the chemistry, but this causes the crust on the pan to temporarily soften so that you can rub it with a wooden spoon causing it to dissolve into the liquid. Any cold liquid can be used to deglaze, but I've found that alcohol works best. Let most of this liquid burn off, then add the main liquid for whatever you're making.

Dissolving the caramelized meat, veggies or spices that were cooking in the pan adds a tremendous rich flavor to your dish that you just won't get if you add all the liquid to the pan at once. As a nice bonus, the reduced alcohol adds complexity to the dish as well.

After practicing this technique in a few recipes, I've gone crazy and started using it every time I saute or roast something in the oven, whether the recipe calls for it or not, and always with good results.

A few general guidelines. Try using it in soups, stews, sauces, gravies or stir fries. Vermouth works well in poultry, or seafood, as well as white sauce based dishes. For heavier dishes, specifically ones containing red meat or tomatoes, red wine or sherry works well.

What's even better about this trick is that vermouth and sherry are quite cheap, and because they don't taste good on their own, they're easy to keep stocked - there is absolutely no temptation to sneak some as an aperitif.

So next time you're in danger of burning up your dinner, give it a try!

Here's a much more eloquent explanation of deglazing and making a pan sauce from the Los Angeles Times.

Exploring the Term Organic

Just wanted to point out an interesting article in today's New York Times by Mark Bittman. In it he discusses the difference between eating certified organic and eating "real" food and why being organic doesn't necessarily equate to being healthy or environmentally friendly. He does a nice job in a short space of summarizing a few of the issues that are causing people to rethink industrially produced food, organic or not, although as he points out, unfortunately not enough people are rethinking it yet.

Getting My Hands Dirty

Today I am going to digress slightly from the food topic to discuss my CSA in more detail. As I've discussed before, I'm a member of Abbondanza CSA here in the Boulder, Colorado area. Last year we got a fall share, which was great, and for this summer, we have signed up for a summer share. I can't wait... the first pickup is May 13th.

Last weekend, they needed volunteers to help with some labor in the field, so I decided to join them. The whole experience was quite interesting, so I'd like to share...

For some reason, I thought that we would show up, they'd all give us jobs to do and away we'd go. Not quite. It seemed like they asked us out to educate us about the CSA as much as to do some work.

The first thing we discussed was the origin of the CSA. The field in which we were standing is a 10 acre plot of open space (Thomas Open Space) next to a housing subdivision. In 2005, the subdivision residents convinced the city of Lafayette that rather than let another subdivision be built, they should buy the adjacent land and create an organic farm. A ballot measure was passed and the land was purchased. The city irrigated it, ran electricity, added a parking area, created rows and roads up and down the ends.

Abbondanza started originally as a farm for organic seeds on 40 acres about 8 miles north of where we were. Two years ago, they leased the open space from the city and added it to their farm. In 2008, the farm gained official organic status.

From looking at the project description on the city website, the farm is still funded annually by the city to the tune of $100k in 2008. I'm curious why, given that Abbo is paying a lease, and I've sent an email to the project city manager... I'll post a follow up if he replies.

It is starting to become apparent to me that creating a local food supply must be a truly community effort. You can't just pay your share and pick up your veggies. If that is all anyone does, this idea will never fully take root :) It seems to require a combination of impassioned farmers, volunteers, committed communities and some subsidies. Some might say that this not very free market, but is supermarket food any more free market? I doubt it - the subsidies are just harder for the average consumer to identify. Hmmm, that sounds like another interesting blog topic.

Moving on, we next discussed our job for the day, which was to pull carrots. Carrots? Isn't the season over? Not completely.

These carrots are being grown for seed. They were planted last August and have been hibernating underground all winter, protected by a few layers of plastic. Because they weren't harvested, they'll now start to grow prolific greens and eventually go to seed, all of which will be collected and sold. We needed to pull up the carrots for transplanting at the other farm (the original 40 acres). Why, you might ask?

That's an interesting question, and one about which all of us were confused. It was explained to us many times...

Abbondanza sells hand selected, open-pollinated seeds. This means, "a seed which produces offspring just like the parent plants. Open-pollinated seed allows growers to harvest and save seed for the following year".¹

The alternative is hybrid seeds, in which the seeds are harvested from a plant pollinated by a plant of a different species. "The one big negative is that hybrid seeds do not produce true reproductions of the mother plants. This makes buying new seed every year a necessary, expensive, and for someone who wants to become self-reliant, a dangerous practice."²

This is great for seed sellers that want to resell their seeds year after year. Abbondanza is more interested in creating self sustaining gardeners in its community and preserving high quality local species than in generating large profits. Hence their open-pollinated philosophy.

Why were we pulling the carrots again? Because they planted two varieties of carrots in the field over the winter. In order to keep the varieties from crossing with each other, they have to separate them. So in a few weeks, they'll put the carrots we pulled into the other farm and later in the summer, they'll harvest their seeds.

So no carrots for us, or so we thought... In one row, about 90% of carrots had their tops eaten off by geese from a nearby pond. Without tops, carrots can't go to seed. But they're still edible! As we searched for the few remaining intact carrots, each of us hoarded as many half eaten carrots as we could hold.

I've been making carrot cake, carrot salad, and anything else carrot I can think of ever since. There is something really cool about being able to eat for a week from 1) food that I shared with a goose and 2) food that was going to be left in the ground to rot. As you might guess, I'm no gardener or this wouldn't be such a novelty.

All in all, it was a fun day. I met some interesting people, learned a lot about my CSA, carrots and seeds. And went home with not just carrots... we were all allowed to raid the stash of root vegetables that weren't fit for sale last fall. So now I have a whole new load of potatoes. Just when I was starting to crave them again.

And in an interesting twist, the walk-in cooler at the farm is a weekly pick up site for Windsor Dairy, the raw milk dairy I've been interested in. I love seeing how all of these things are connected. It almost makes me feel like I live in a ... what's the word... community.

¹http://www.victoryseeds.com/information/glossary.html#open-pollinated%20seed
²http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/clay56.html

St. Paddy's Stripy Cat

As a little preview for St. Patrick's day and for my first time participating in Bread Baking Day, I've decided to make a sweet variation of Irish soda bread. Thanks to Mansi of the Fun and Food Blog for hosting this most appropriate event of making quick breads in the month of St. Patrick's Day!

The recipe comes from Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course. Darina Allen runs a cookery school in Ireland. She is a leader in the movement towards eating local, organic cuisine and has been for a lot longer than it has been in fashion.

Simply put, I cannot say enough good things about this cookbook. It seems to be on the shelf in every house I visit in Ireland (about 6), but I have never considered buying it. I have a lot of cookbooks and having skimmed through it, I decided that it was too similar to the Joy of Cooking in its encyclopedic coverage of every topic under the sun. Having lugged home too many cookbooks in my suitcase, I was also put off by its massive bulk. But it couldn't be avoided - we were given it as a gift this last Christmas.

And boy am I glad - in a few short months it has become one of two (Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food is the other) that I turn to almost daily. What's so great about it?

Ms. Allen is a passionate advocate for eating locally and seasonally, which is reflected in most of the recipes. The recipes generally group foods from the same season, which means that I can easily find a recipe to match whatever happens to be in my cupboard.

The sheer number of recipes at first seems like overkill, and I thought it would be hard to choose between recipes. For a reasons I can't understand, the number of recipes seems exactly right - for example, there are 13 recipes for preparing cauliflower, one to fit every mood.

So enough about my cookbook - what is Stripy Cat? It's a variation of Spotted Dog, which is a variation of Irish Soda Bread. Soda bread is a traditional Irish white flour bread, leavened with baking soda and buttermilk. It's a crunchy, rustic, tender, flavorful loaf, a little lighter than the delicious Irish Brown Bread, about which you already know I have passionate feelings.

Spotted Dog is a slightly sweeter version of soda bread, containing an egg, a little sugar and raisins, mmm. Good, but I was looking for something a little richer, and apparently so were they....

Stripy Cat is Spotted Dog but with dark chocolate chunks instead of raisins - even better!

We've made it before, but it wasn't quite what we were looking for ... today we added about 50% more chocolate, a handful of nuts, and a few more teaspoons of sugar. It turned out exactly as we hoped. Rich, crunchy, moist, chocolaty, but not too sweet.

Here is the recipe, with my variations.

In a few of my past bread posts, I've discussed the necessity to reduce flour if you're in Colorado. I do not find that to be the case with soda leavened breads. A friend of mine in New York who experimented with Brown Bread after my first post found that she had to reduce the liquid in order to get the same texture. The takeaway from this is that you should cut in the liquid slowly and stop when the dough seems only just moistened but picks up all the flour.

Stripy Cat

• 450 g (1 lb) plain (or all-purpose) unbleached flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tbs sugar
• 120g (4 1/2 oz) best quality, bittersweet dark chocolate, chopped roughly
• 1 handful walnuts, chopped
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
  
• 350ml (12 fl oz) buttermilk
  

Preheat the oven to 425⁰, with a baking stone if you have one.

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Mix well by lifting everything with your hands repeatedly to aerate the flour.

Mix the egg and buttermilk in a small bowl. Pour half of them over the dry ingredients and use a spatula to gently cut them in. Pour the rest of the milk mixture over the dough bit by bit, cutting it in - be sure not to overmix or add to much liquid.

The dough will be very thick and sticky and have lumps of unincorporated flour. Pat the dough into a rough ball and then drop it on a cookie sheet or pizza paddle. Flatten the ball a little into a loaf, and then cut in a deep X.

Cook on the sheet or stone at 425⁰ for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 400⁰ and cook for 35 minutes more. The finished bread will look golden and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

This recipe is a basic summary of instructions - my older post on Irish Brown Bread gives helpful tips which I didn't want to repeat here. Also, if you haven't tried this bread - you're missing out. But that's not the topic for today...

This rich, buttery, crunchy bread is a nice contemporary twist on a great traditional Irish bread. Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Where to Start Looking for Real Milk?

The next step in my quest for eating real food will be the exploration of milk. As I've mentioned before, my son isn't drinking a whole lot of milk, but he does drink some, and he eats quite a bit of homemade yogurt. Because this is an important part of his diet, I'd like to give it a little more thought than I have in the past.

Based on my prior research, I know that I'd like to find milk from cows that are pastured, or 100% grass fed. A cow is a ruminant; grass is the food source to which they are adapted, and I subscribe to the belief that milk and meat from cows/cattle that have eaten their natural diet is far more nutritious than that from cows that are fed otherwise. Also, cows that are pastured live in their natural habitat, which is the least we can do in exchange for what they're doing for us.

So what are my choices?

My investigations in this area so far have led to more questions than answers - specifically one major question, why is milk pasteurized and is it safe to drink raw (or unpasteurized) milk?

Why do I ask this, you might wonder? Because raw milk shares (I'll explain this later) are becoming increasingly common in my area, and in my search for pastured milk, raw milk dairies seem to follow pasturing practices more strictly. So the question of whether or not to drink raw milk has been on my mind for quite some time.

When my son was younger, I simply wasn't comfortable experimenting with this topic. I'll confess that I didn't research it much. While I do believe that it is important not to over-sterilize a baby's environment because they need to build their immune system, I was reluctant to go against a century of common acceptance of the pasteurization process and potentially introduce a foodborne illness to my son.

So until now, we've been getting milk delivered from an all natural, but non-organic, local dairy. I decided that a compromise of getting fresh milk from a local, all natural source, with zero waste due to the use of glass bottles, was preferable to buying organic milk from a large company at the local health food store.

Now that my son is almost two, it's time to reconsider this decision. But first I need to answer the question of whether or not I'm comfortable giving him raw milk.

I found a few commonly cited sources in favor of drinking raw milk:

• William Campbell Douglass II, MD. wrote a well known book called The Milk Book: The Milk of Human Kindness is Not Pasteurized. After quite a bit of surfing, I've noticed a few things - first, this book is commonly cited as the sole source of evidence in favor of drinking raw milk. Second - Dr. Douglass has written a lot of literature, including a book touting the health benefits of tobacco. Hmmm, I'm open minded, but perhaps not that open minded. Maybe I'll keep looking for sources.
• The Weston A. Price Foundation runs an interesting website devoted to raw milk. "The Foundation is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research and activism. It supports a number of movements that contribute to this objective including accurate nutrition instruction, organic and biodynamic farming, pasture-feeding of livestock, community-supported farms, honest and informative labeling, prepared parenting and nurturing therapies." This mission describes a number of my beliefs and passions perfectly. Their website contains a number of interesting articles challenging FDA publications promoting pasteurized milk. They also publish their board of directors, which looks like a reasonably qualified group. So... this looks like a good place to start reading.
  

Against drinking raw milk, I found quite a bit of information on the FDA website, for instance Got Milk? Make Sure It's Pasteurized.

When I began putting this post together, I planned on doing only a single entry on milk. But I've been doing research for two nights now and come up with a wealth of interesting information. So I had a think... if I was reading someone else's blog, would I want to read a list of sources followed by the writer's ultimate conclusion, or would I want to read a more detailed analysis of the two sides? Given that I couldn't find any blogs or articles that I felt compared both sides objectively, I'd like to do that here (I'll try to be objective!). Which means that one post isn't enough. (You might have guessed that after reading my egg posts.)

So stay tuned for the rest of my milk posts - in the next one, I'll try to outline the major arguments for and against raw milk, primarily using sources from the FDA and the Weston A. Price Foundation.