School lunch menu before and after the reform bill. Major improvement!
(found on the Huffington Post, posted by: http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com )
When I first began this blog over a year ago I posted a recipe inspired by my favorite pizza from Zinc Cafe. I suggested that the pizza be made using Trader Joe’s Pizza dough for $1.99. Times have changed greatly since I posted the recipe… I have begun baking my own bread, simmering my own chicken stock, and making pasta from scratch… so naturally I now make my own pizza dough! It honestly is one of the easiest things in the world to whip up, and it’s a great crowd pleaser for parties. The recipe is taken from Saveur’s reporting of pizza inspired by Pizzeria Mozza in LA.
Ingredients:
1/2 tbsp Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
1/2 tbsp active dry yeast
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tbsp salt
1 cup warm water
3 cups flour
Directions:
In a bowl, combine the olive oil, yeast, sugar, salt and warm water: let sit until foamy, about 10 minutes. Stir in the flour to make a dough. Transfer to a floured surface and knead until smooth (about 10 minutes). Cut the dough in half and roll each portion into a ball. Put the balls on a floured baking sheet, cover with plastic, and let sit in a warm place until soft and tripled in size (about 2-3 hours).
Once the dough is made your options for pizza toppings are limitless! The pizza in the photo had cooked simple tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, pitted black olives and prociutto crudo. MMMM. Enjoy!
“The first printed recipe for guacamole published in English in the United States appeared in 1931 in Fashions in Food in Beverly Hills, published by the Beverly Hills Woman’s Club.” — Interesting fact from Saveur on a day when I am reminiscing about last summer’s Guac Off!
Weight Watchers Changes their Points System -
Weight Watchers is one of the most popular weight loss regimes in the world. The whole program is successful because of it’s simplicity. Foods are assigned numerical values and weight loss is dependent on sticking to a specific point regiment. In general the mantra is on point nutritionally…. vegetables good, chocolate cake bad… but there have been deviations from that that always bothered me. For example, as noted in the article you could hold an apple in one hand which was two points and a little bag of 100 calorie oreos in the other, also two points. It completely irked me that the old system deemed all calories equal and processed food was the obvious winner of the system. Now, it isn’t ENTIRELY better, but the new system at least realizes that there is a difference between real food and not real food. Read the article to learn more!
It is incredibly easy to feel bogged down by food choices in the winter months. Root vegetables are in season and it’s cold outside, making it easy to do roast after roast. Not to mention the abundance of baked goods and “holiday cheer”. This week our bodies were not so subtly telling us they had had too much and it was time for something much lighter for dinner. I scrapped up this salad using the left over chicken from Sunday night’s roast and a handful of other things already in the fridge. Check it out! 
Ingredients:
Salad:
Half a head of Red Cabbage, shredded
Half a head of Green Cabbage, shredded
4 or 5 carrots, julienned (or cut into matchsticks)
half a cucumber, julienned
a handful of sliced almonds
leftover roasted chicken, shredded
handful of bean sprouts
Dressing:
2 parts Olive Oil (I would have used sesame oil but I didn’t have any on hand)
1 part Soy Sauce
1 part Rice Vinegar
pinch of dried red pepper
1 part chopped ginger (I used ginger jarred with white wine vinegar)
Directions:
Like any salad: Chop, Assemble, Dress, Toss, Enjoy!
Driven by Flavor: A Conversation with Dan Barber -
I have been trying to upload just the audio, but I can’t figure it out— so here is the link. Check it out! I love listening to Dan Barber speak… it inspires me about the future of the food revolution!
Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals is the fastest selling Non-Fiction book OF ALL TIME. This is excellent news! Hopefully this means that the food revolution is alive and well amongst the masses!
Good.is is having a competition to design the new food pyramid. The submissions are all really interesting, both in design and in advice offered. Check them out here!
I don’t normally write about celebrity chefs or restaurant gossip. In general the tabloid-esque aspect of restaurant buzz has no baring on anything that I care about in food, but this is somewhat interesting. Nate Appleman, the award-winning chef who opened San Francisco’s A-16 and then left for a turn at opening a Keith McNally restaurant- Pulino, has now left to work for Chipotle. Apparently you can find him making burritos at the Chelsea location of the chain. Don’t be fooled, though, he will not be a burrito maker for long— he is just getting a hang of the day to day before returning to work corporate for the company to help achieve their goals of sourcing the best local ingredients possible and creating a better burrito. Appleman discusses how this is much more fulfilling than being a chef… what do you think?
Obesity a Greater Threat to National Security than Homosexuality -
Click to read this super interesting article about obesity versus don’t ask don’t tell in the military. Where do you think we should be focusing our attention?