UK: Potato growers urged to reconnect with schools

Posted on January 17, 2012 by bilrob

UK: Potato growers urged to reconnect with schools

The potato industry is being encouraged to get behind two educational projects from Potato Council, to ensure that potatoes continue to feature in the daily lives of the nation.

Grow Your Own Potatoes, which is now in its eighth year, is one of the most popular growing projects for key stage 1 and 2 pupils at Primary Schools. Over 12,000 schools have already signed up to participate but Potato Council is aiming to increase numbers before registration closes in February.

Sue Lawton, education co-ordinator for Potato Council, said: “The project has been one of our biggest campaign successes, bringing potatoes to life for over one million pupils to date. For 2012, each school will receive a newly designed presentation box, which contains everything they need to chit, plant, grow and harvest two varieties of potatoes.

“We’re delighted to have eight seed potato suppliers working with us again this year, donating free seed potatoes to schools throughout the country, which means every region has a different variety to grow. This support is crucial and we’re also asking that growers, packers and suppliers help by bringing the project to the attention of their customers, friends and relatives. We have a new generation of teachers and children in the classroom since the project started, so we need to keep getting the message through to schools and help them discover the wonders of potatoes.”

Literature is available for levy payers to drop in to schools or pass onto children, grandchildren or friends to take into school. Even more rewarding is assisting with planting and harvesting events and Potato Council can help put schools in touch with growers and processors who are happy to offer advice or a talk or even host a school trip. Alternatively, growers can promote the project website www.gyop.potato.org.uk, where schools can register directly and find an extensive range of supporting on-line resources and activities.

But that isn’t where the educational work ends for Potato Council. The addition of a new project, ‘Cook Your Own Potatoes’ for secondary schools means that it is building an affinity between children and potatoes at every key stage of their education.

The project equips students with basic food preparation and cooking skills and provides them with useful information on nutrition. After a successful pilot, the scheme has been introduced nationwide to positive feedback from food technology teachers, who are keen for more resources to help deliver engaging and factual lessons.

Lesson plans, skills and recipe videos, fact sheets and many other resources about nutrition are available at www.cyop.potato.org.uk. New exciting modules will be added during the school year to include, taste, versatility and sustainability.

Sue added: “Education is a core strand of our marketing activity, after all habits formed at a young age are more likely to endure. We know that younger consumers are eating fewer potatoes than their parents and both Grow Your Own and Cook Your Own Potatoes gives us a very good chance to redress this balance and build a strong customer base for the future.”

To request literature or for more information about the educational projects, please contact Sue Lawton on 02476 478 774 or email [email protected],org.uk.

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Meatless meal gives nutritious mushrooms a starring role

Posted on January 16, 2012 by bilrob

Meatless meal gives nutritious mushrooms a starring role

Mushrooms are high on a list of things to watch in the food and beverage world for 2012. An annual trend-spotting report by JWT, a worldwide marketing communications company, pegged mushrooms as a top functional food.

“With more varieties now populating supermarket shelves, we’ll see a growing awareness that this low-calorie but highly flavorful food packs a nutritional punch,” the report says.

Mushrooms are nutritional all-stars. They are fat-free, cholesterol-free, low-calorie and low in sodium. And, according to the Mushroom Council, they’re the leading source of the essential antioxidant selenium in the produce aisle.

I am a huge fan of almost all varieties. Some are inexpensive while others, like those prized morels, are not.

The everyday mushroom I like is cremini, sometimes referred to as Italian mushrooms. These dark-brown beauties are widely available. Some sources say they are simply brown versions of white button mushrooms, but I think they have a heartier flavor. They also seem to be more uniform in size and shape.

Today’s recipe, which, by the way, is meatless, calls for a mix of cremini and dried porcini mushrooms.

Dried mushrooms can usually be found in small packages near the fresh mushrooms in the market. To reconstitute dried mushrooms, soak them in hot water or a broth. And never get rid of that soaking liquid unless you absolutely must. It’s a great addition to sauces and stuffings.

The soaking liquid goes into the creamy sauce for today’s recipe, which uses 3/4 pound of mushrooms. You can use more if you like because mushrooms shrink down when cooked.

When buying whole loose mushrooms, choose ones that are smooth, without dark spots and dry to the touch. If they are already packaged, give the package a shake so you can get a good look at all of them.

Store mushrooms in their original packaging or loosely in a paper bag. They should keep about a week. Never store them in an enclosed container. That can lead to condensation and cause them to spoil.

To clean mushrooms, use a damp paper towel to wipe away any soil. Don’t soak them because mushrooms are like sponges and will take up the water. If you do rinse them, do it quickly under cool water and immediately wipe them dry.

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Sunday Supper recipe: Mushrooms and Marsala Fettuccini

Posted on January 16, 2012 by bilrob

Sunday Supper recipe: Mushrooms and Marsala Fettuccini

Apart from our rss feeds page about potatoes and mushrooms, we have added a regular series of articles to the blog. These two items will feature recipes and useful information about potatoes and mushrooms on a regular basis. We are also planning a further series of articles all about salads from around the world. Now that were are nearly into spring, fresh and interesting salads will feature prominently in most of our diets over the coming months.

Mushrooms and Marsala Fettuccini

Serves: 4 (generously) / Preparation time: 10 minutes / Total time: 45 minutes

2 cups vegetable stock

1 ounce dried mushrooms, such as porcini

Salt

3/4 to 1 pound fettuccini or pappardelle pasta

3 tablespoons butter

3/4 pound cremini or mini portobello mushrooms, thinly sliced

1 small bunch Tuscan (lacinato) kale or Swiss chard, stemmed and thinly sliced

4 shallots, peeled, chopped

2 cloves garlic, peeled, finely chopped

Black pepper

Freshly grated nutmeg

3/4 cup Marsala wine

1 cup heavy whipping cream (or a mix of heavy cream and or half-and-half)

A few sprigs fresh sage, very thinly sliced

Grated Parmesan cheese for serving (about 1/2 cup)

In a small saucepan, place the stock and dried mushrooms. Bring to a low boil. Reduce the heat and simmer about 15 minutes to reconstitute the mushrooms. Strain the mushrooms from the stock and chop. Reserve the stock.

Bring a large pot of water to boil, salt it, add the pasta and cook until al dente. Drain, reserving a little of the cooking water.

While the pasta is cooking, in a large skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and increase the heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms darken, about 7 to 8 minutes. Add the kale, shallots and garlic; season with salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste.

Cook for about 7 minutes longer, then stir in the wine. Add the chopped reconstituted mushrooms and all but 1/4 cup of the mushroom-infused stock.

Stir in the cream and cook to reduce and thicken. Toss the pasta with the sauce, adding the reserved pasta cooking water if the sauce is too thick to coat the pasta nicely. Garnish with the sage and serve with the cheese on the side.

Adapted from Rachel Ray magazine, February 2011 issue. Tested by Susan M. Selasky for the Free Press Test Kitchen. Analysis based on 3/4 pound pasta and using mix of heavy cream and half and half. 604 calories (34% from fat), 24 grams fat (13 grams sat. fat), 81 grams carbohydrates, 23 grams protein, 553 mg sodium, 66 mg cholesterol, 6 grams fiber.

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The five minute jacket potato: But is it a spud you'll like, or a half-baked idea

Posted on January 15, 2012 by bilrob

By
Marth Delgado

Last updated at 10:25 PM on 14th January 2012

Is the new five minute potato as tasty?

The five minute jacket potato: But is it a spud you’ll like, or a half-baked idea

It is a simple, delicious dish that two-thirds of UK households eat up to four times a week – and which features in 1.4?million British meals a year.

Yet for some time-pressed modern families, the humble jacket potato has one big drawback – it takes about an hour to bake properly.

Now frozen-food giant McCain may have come up with a solution – the ‘Ready Baked Jacket’. It is a baked spud that needs to be microwaved for just five minutes but is said to taste as good as the traditional oven-cooked variety.

The product will be in the shops from tomorrow and has cost McCain – which launched the frozen chip more than
30 years ago – £6 million to develop.

The Ready Baked Jacket is bought part-baked and drizzled in sunflower oil and it is these two elements that give it the texture of a traditional ‘spud in the oven’, according to the firm.

McCain spokesman Mark Hodge said: ‘This is our most significant launch in years. It will revolutionise jacket-potato eating in the UK.’

Industry analysts were also optimistic. Richard Buchanan of branding agency The Clearing said: ‘This is the company that reinvented the frozen-chip category. If anyone can do the same for jackets, it’s McCain.’

Most jacket potatoes are cooked in the
oven for an hour, according to surveys. But that is too slow for British households, which expect a meal to be ready in just 20 minutes on average.

The McCain jackets will certainly save time and can be heated in minutes

One alternative is to microwave the potato from raw – but that fails to deliver the crunchy skin and fluffy inside that British taste demands.

The solution, according to McCain, is the Ready Baked Jacket, which will cost £1.49 for a pack of two.

McCain has solid reason to believe the public will take to the product. When its oven chips appeared in 1979, many shoppers were horrified. But research shows that an estimated 30 per cent of British households now eat chips cooked this way.

OUR FOOD CRITIC PUTS IT TO THE TASTE TEST

By Tom Parker-Bowles

The marriage between microwave and baked potato has never been a happy one.

Any notion of quick convenience is rendered utterly irrelevant by the final result – a wan, listless lump of dreary carbohydrate.
It might be cooked through but the skin is a disgrace – damp, limp and anaemic. And without that all-important skin, gloriously burnished and with a texture somewhere between the crisp and the chewy, you may as well give up.

Old-fashioned radiant heat is what you’re after to create the wonderful contrast between fluffy, cloud-like centre and the aforementioned perfect skin.

The classic oven-baked potato won but Tom Parker-Bowles praised the new McCain variation and said it was perfect if you had little time

So news of the McCain ‘Ready Baked Jacket’, ‘ready to eat in minutes’ hardly had me leaping for joy. Are people really so time-starved that they cannot twiddle the oven knob to 220C, bung in a potato and leave it for an hour or so? But using my wife Sara – a lady whose youth was sprinkled with visits to Spudulike – as guinea pig, I prepared a normal Maris Piper potato in the microwave, another in the oven and, finally, a McCain ‘Ready Baked’, which took under five minutes.

Appearance first – the microwaved standard potato looked as wretched as ever. But the McCain looked very good indeed. So much so that Sara couldn’t tell the difference from the normal oven potato.

‘Both textbook bakers,’ she said. ‘Thick, browned, wrinkled skin, with a few patches of char.’ A dead heat, then, and time for the tasting.

The conventional microwaved potato lacked a decent cooked skin, although the inside was soft. But it was a distant third place.

After a few minutes’ munching between the other two, Sara chose the victor – the classic, oven-baked potato. ‘But it was close,’ she said. ‘Both taste pretty good but the oven-baked had the edge with the skin. It had more chew and heft, and that wonderful papery, brittle surface. I’m impressed by the McCain, though. I’ve eaten far, far worse.’ High praise.

And she was right. The McCain was very respectable indeed.
The skin was a touch softer and saggier and it didn’t have that charred depth you get when a baked potato is hauled fresh from the oven.

But compared with the vast majority of second-rate baked spuds that infect the High Street, this was a winner.

And if you’re stuck at home or work, with minutes to spare and only a microwave to hand, they’re a godsend. As convenience foods go, the ‘Ready Baked’ spuds are up there with the best. But if you can spare the time needed to put a potato into the oven and wait for it to cook .??.??. well, the old ways are sometimes the best.

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Mushrooms - Shitakes, chanterelles, and porcini, oh my:

Posted on January 15, 2012 by bilrob

Mushrooms – Shitakes, chanterelles, and porcini, oh my:

SANTA CRUZ – Here in central California, there’s a whole lot of fungus among us.

For nearly 40 years, mushroom enthusiasts have been putting the fun in fungi with an annual festival that celebrates the spored specimens. Several thousand species of mushrooms grow in the Santa Cruz area, and while this year’s dry, cool weather hasn’t been very good for their growth, there are still plenty of ‘shrooms on display throughout the weekend at the 38th annual Santa Cruz Fungus Fair.

“Mushrooms tend to like warmer and wetter weather,” said scientist Phil Carpenter, co-chairman of the festival. “This hasn’t been a great season.”

Still, at least 200 different mushrooms are being shown off this weekend at the Louden Nelson Community Center, representing the myriad culinary, medical and other types that are native to the region.

Carpenter has been mired in mushrooms since he was a little boy. He recalls going with his family to hunt morels each year while growing up in northern Illinois, a tradition he says his 95-year-old mother still carries on. Morels, of which there are several kinds, are prized by chefs and foodies alike, who use them in a variety of tasty dishes. As delicious as they are though, said Carpenter, that isn’t the only reason mushrooms are fascinating.

“I’m a trained scientist,” he said. “I’m curious about things, and I like to know what I’m looking at.”

Carpenter, whose doctorate is in organic chemistry, came to California after postgraduate work in Scotland, and his love of mushrooms truly began to flourish. He read David Arora’s “Mushrooms Demystified,” considered by many to be the bible of mushrooms, and he was hooked.

Carpenter, who is also the prime minister of the Santa Cruz Fungus Federation, which holds the fair, said the annual event is a way of “introducing people to the beauty and edibility of mushrooms.”

In the main room of the event, members of the federation have painstakingly created approximations of the natural habitats of a vast number of mushrooms, and there is detailed information about each one.

While some species of mushrooms aren’t eaten for reasons other than toxicity, there are some, such as the aptly-named “destroying angel” that can be fatal if consumed. They can sometimes be confused for edible mushrooms such as the button mushroom or the horse mushroom.

That kind of mistake can be deadly, and the federation hopes to help avoid that kind of tragedy by providing information. There’s even an identification table set up at the festival where the public is invited to bring in mushrooms they’ve found for identification by a trained expert.

There are also plenty of food items made with mushrooms, ranging from the more expected – mushroom quiche – to less traditional items like chocolate with truffles and gelato made with mushrooms. Dying for a pair of mushroom earrings or your own shitake-growing kit? You’ll find those goodies and far more at this year’s fest.

“Mushrooms have always caught my fancy,” said Dr. Tom Bruns, a UC Berkeley professor who spoke Saturday about the mutualism between trees and fungi, a subject also known as ectomycorrhizal ecology.

“It’s a fascinating subject that’s grossly understudied,” he said of the field.

Santa Cruz Fungus Fair

WHAT: A celebration of fungus featuring mushroom exhibits, food booths, vendors, kids activities, interesting speakers, introductory classes and mushroom identification. Speakers on Sunday include David Arora and Christopher Hobbs, an herbalist and botanist who will speak about the medicinal uses of mushrooms.

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Louden Nelson Community Center, 301 Center St., Santa Cruz

COST: $10 general admission, seniors and students $5; kids younger than age 12 are free

DETAILS: www.scfungusfair.org

Santa Cruz Fungus Federation

On the Net: www.fungusfed.org

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Perfecting Mashed Potatoes

Posted on January 15, 2012 by bilrob

Perfecting Mashed Potatoes

Our favorite mashed potato recipe calls for boiling whole potatoes in their jackets, then peeling and mashing them right before serving. Keeping the skins on during cooking yields the best potato flavor, but the method itself isn’t all that convenient.

After boiling the potatoes for 30 minutes, there you are, right before dinner, burning your fingers on hot skins. We decided it was time to revisit this recipe to come up with something that allowed a little more of the prep work to be done in advance.

Starch Management

Ask people their favorite way to make mashed potatoes and most will say the same thing: They peel the skins, chop the spuds, then throw them into a pot of cold water to boil. We like cooking the potatoes in their jackets because it keeps the earthy potato flavor from leeching out into the water, and also because we find it yields the creamiest texture.

The skins prevent the starch granules in the potato cells from absorbing too much water and bursting like overfilled water balloons when mashed, spilling their sticky, gluey contents into the mix. But to meet my goal of cutting back on last-minute prep, clearly the skins would have to go before cooking. Waterlogged starch granules, then, were a given.

Was there a way to prevent at least some of them from bursting? One way is to use a ricer, rather than a potato masher, to finish the dish. Potatoes pass through the sieve-like hopper of this tool only once, avoiding the repeated abuse of mashing. (Pounding already-mashed portions over and over greatly increases the chance of bursting starch granules.)

Ricing aside, what else could I do? I tried a lot of unlikely techniques, most of which yielded poor results. One bright light during this early testing was a recipe in Jeffrey Steingarten’s book, The Man Who Ate.

Click here for the recipe for Fluffy Mashed Potatoes.

Click here for the recipe for Super-Crusty Grilled Steaks.

Everything that employed a technique invented by the instant-mashed-potato industry. Steingarten partially cooks the spuds in simmering water, drains and rinses them under cool water, and sets them aside for half an hour. Once fully cooled, the potatoes are cooked again and mashed. Cooling the potatoes partway through cooking causes the sticky gel in the starch granules to crystallize and become resistant to dissolving in water or milk (even if the cell walls surrounding them subsequently rupture), leading to fluffier potatoes.

The only problem: This meant cooking potatoes for over an hour in numerous changes of hot and cold water. This was not the “advance prep” I had in mind. Another method, recommended on the website of the Idaho Potato Board, was simpler and equally intriguing.

To avoid gluey mashed potatoes, the site suggests a two-step cooking process that has you start the potatoes in actively boiling water (rather than the traditional cold water) and then immediately reduce the temperature to keep the water at a bare simmer.

After 20 minutes, you crank up the heat and boil the spuds until soft. The idea is to keep the pectin that glues individual potato cells together (and helps keep water out) from degrading too quickly. At temperatures below the boiling point, the pectin won’t dissolve and can continue to act as a barrier to water.

Tasted side by side with conventional one-step potatoes started in cold water, the two-step spuds were definitely lighter. But they still tasted more thin and watery than the potatoes cooked with their jackets on. To get both fluffy consistency and great flavor, I was going to have to keep excess water from getting into the starch granules in the first place.

Why not just forget simmering and boiling and go with a method that would expose the potatoes to little or no water? Full Steam Ahead Baking the potatoes was out—it would take too long (plus, if I cooked potatoes with their skins on, I was back where I started).

Microwaving produced a starchy, pasty mash. Steaming was my best bet. I fashioned a steamer by placing a colander in a Dutch oven, then brought a few inches of water to a boil. I peeled, cut, and rinsed the spuds (to remove any surface starch) and dropped them into the colander.

About 20 minutes later, the potatoes were soft and ready for mashing. They were also covered in a sticky substance that I knew to be free amylose, the very thing that turns potatoes gluey.

I tried rinsing the potatoes before ricing to get rid of the amylose, but some of the potato flavor washed away as well, resulting in a mash that was as bland as the two-step potatoes. And the potatoes were now cold. Would rinsing the potatoes earlier in the process, before they got fully cooked, bring me better results? I put a new batch of spuds into the steamer.

Peeking after 10 minutes, I saw they were already covered in gluey amylose. I took the colander out of the pot, rinsed the hot potatoes under cold water for a couple of minutes, then returned them to the pot of still-boiling water to finish cooking. When riced, these potatoes were wonderfully light and fluffy and had the best flavor yet.

Back to Basics

Ideally, this recipe should work with a wide range of potatoes: Russets, Yukon Golds, red potatoes, and white potatoes. But due to their low starch content, the red potatoes were a bust, tasting bland and uninspiring no matter how much butter was added to the mix. While the other potatoes worked fine, tasters liked the deeper flavor of the Yukon Golds best.

With my cooking method solved and the type of potato chosen, I was ready to tackle the butter and mashing liquid. Up to this point, I had been using a stick of butter and a cup of cream. I had been getting complaints all along that the potatoes tasted a little rich—surprising, since these are the very proportions we have loved for so long in our favorite recipe.

Could it be that my cooking method was creating so much rich potato flavor on its own that less butter or cream was now necessary?

As it turned out—yes. Just 4 tablespoons of butter yielded the right amount of richness. As for liquid, my potatoes needed less than the full cup of cream.

Two-thirds of a cup of cream created the right consistency but still left the potatoes too heavy. In head-to-head tests, my tasters actually preferred whole milk to cream or half-and-half.
I now had a fluffy, smooth mash with robust, earthy potato flavor.

And I was able to get it on the table without burning my fingers once on hot skins.

David Pazmiño is one of the 42 test cooks, editors, food scientists, tasters, and cookware specialists who run the Boston-based America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) test kitchen.

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All you’d ever want to know about potatoes found in tantalizing new cookbook

Posted on January 15, 2012 by bilrob

All you’d ever want to know about potatoes

A personal childhood passion for potatoes, any way and any time, was the inspiration behind a new book on the humble spud. It examines how versatile, nutritious, inexpensive and delicious this vegetable can be.

300 Best Potato Recipes: A Complete Cook’s Guide is by Canadian food author and journalist Kathleen Sloan-McIntosh (Robert Rose, $27.95).

“Because of my upbringing there was hardly a dinner without them,” she says. “My dad was from Ireland and my mom from England, so potatoes were a big part of our regular diets.”

Readers will find recipes they may never have encountered, such as Indian-Spiced Potatoes and Spinach, Pork, Apple and Potato Crumble and Potato Skin Poutine.
Also included are multiple ways to fry, roast or bake and, for chip enthusiasts, several methods to prepare the popular snack or side dish.

Sloan-McIntosh with her husband Ted own and operate the Black Dog Village Pub Bistro in Bayfield, Ont., a picturesque village on the eastern shore of Lake Huron.
Of course, the pub menu features many recipes using potatoes, she says.

“They are so versatile, with probably the exception of onions, and can be used in many ways,” she says.

The book is also a valuable source for novice cooks because Sloan-McIntosh realizes that there are many people who don’t know which type of potato should be used for what purpose.

“It just needs a little bit of knowledge, thought and care because choosing the right potatoes for the job is the most important thing,” she says. “You will never get good mashed potatoes with new spuds and why would you want to?”

Sloan-McIntosh says that it really boils down to starch. “Simply put, potatoes come in three distinct types based on their starch content: floury, waxy or all-purpose.”

Floury potatoes such as Idaho, Russet, Burbank and King Edward are higher in starch, so they are ideal for baking, mashing, roasting and chipping or fries. Waxy potatoes are firmer fleshed, higher in water and lower in starch than floury potatoes. They hold their shape when cooked, so they are best for salads, gratins and simple boiling, steaming or sautéing.

All-purpose potatoes have a relatively even balance of water and starch. They were developed, like Yukon Gold, to be good for everything. Sloan-McIntosh has a bonus chapter which she admits was a challenge. With a great deal of painstaking research, she has included the history, legend and lore of this amazing vegetable.
There is a potato glossary from the International Potato Centre in Peru which boasts more than 4,000 potato varieties. The book contains many of them. “It shows people how many varieties there are in the world even though you might not be able to get them, like the Anna potato from Ireland, a beautiful all-purpose potato,” she says.

For the growing number of home gardeners, there’s a chapter devoted to cultivating and growing your own potatoes as well as storing them.

Baked sweet potatoes with chillies, honey and rosemary
Photo

After too many roast potatoes at Christmas you may well be up for something a little different – sweet potatoes are just the thing. They are great with grilled and roast meat or fish. Vegetarians will probably be happy to tuck into them just as they are.
4 medium-sized sweet potatoes, washed and halved
2 small red or green chillies, thinly sliced (optional)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
40ml olive oil
The leaves from a few sprigs of rosemary
1-2tbsp clear honey

Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Score the sweet potatoes in a crisscross pattern with the point of a sharp knife.
Place on a baking tray, season and spoon over the olive oil and scatter over the chillies, if using. Then spoon a little honey on each potato, cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes.
Remove the foil, add the rosemary and continue cooking for another 15 minutes or so until the potatoes are cooked.

Potatoes And Ham For A Filling Potluck Dish

I had some leftover ham and was looking for a recipe that would use it. This one is a real stick-to-your-ribs, winter comfort food. Served with freshly steamed broccoli or green beans, it makes a great cold evening meal. And you can make it ahead and just heat it in the oven before serving.

Potato/Ham Potluck Favourite
Serves 16 as a side or 6 to 8 as a main course
• 8 medium potatoes (about 2 1/2 to 3 pounds), peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
• 1 cup evaporated milk
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 cups (8-ounce package) shredded cheddar cheese, divided
• 1/2 cup diced ham
• Sliced green onions (optional)

Place potatoes in large saucepan. Cover with water; bring to a boil. Cook over medium-high heat for 15 to 20 minutes or until tender; drain.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 2 1/2- to 3-quart casserole dish.

Return potatoes to saucepan; add evaporated milk, sour cream, salt and pepper. Mash until smooth (I don’t mash them too smooth). Stir in 1 1/2 cups cheese and ham. Spoon mixture into prepared casserole dish.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until heated through. Top with remaining 1/2 cup cheese and green onions. Bake for an additional 3 minutes or until cheese is melted.
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Why Do You Need To Eat Tomatoes?

Posted on January 8, 2012 by bilrob

Why Do You Need To Eat Tomatoes?

Do you eat tomatoes? Of course you have known that tomatoes are now eaten easily around the world. You can find tomatoes everywhere as part of fruits and vegetables.

Some experts said that tomato is known as a source of power of nutrition, as it contains a large number of vitamins and minerals that can support our body’s health.

Tomatoes have been first cultivated in Peru, and then brought to Mexico. Now, tomatoes are sold everywhere. In American grocery stores, tomatoes are often picked unripe, and ripened in storage with ethylene.

Which one is better, unripe or ripe?

Tomatoes that are ripened in storage with ethylene, plant hormone produced by many fruits and acts as the cue to begin the ripening process, tend to stay longer, but have poorer flavor than tomatoes ripened on the plant. They may be recognized by their color, which is more pink or orange than the ripe tomato’s deep red.

Based on the nutrition content, red tomatoes have more vitamin A than green tomatoes. But in this case, green tomatoes have more protein.

If you eat tomatoes everyday, it is beneficial in preventing cancer to 50%. Tomatoes will fight different kinds of cancer and protect your heart from heart attack.

Why tomatoes are beneficial for health?

Tomatoes contain various kinds of ingredients. Here are some of them:
* Lycopene, one of nature’s most powerful antioxidants. It is beneficial to fight different kind of diseases, most of all to fight cancer.
* Fiber in tomatoes prevents diabetes, asthma, colon cancer, and lowers the amount of cholesterol from the body.
* Vitamin C and A, antioxidants which fight free radical. They fight against aging, soothe skin and hair.
* Potassium, vitamin B6, folate, and niacin have proven effect in lowering cholesterol level, lowering blood pressure and works against heart disease.
* Vitamin K in tomatoes helps to build bone.
* Chromium and biotin make the body’s ability to process sugar and fat, which may improve fighting diabetes and help nerve function.
* Riboflavin helps with energy metabolism and fights against migraine headaches.

So, if you consume ripe, unripe or tomato-based food products (tomato sauce, tomato pasta etc.) all deliver many nutrients with multiple mechanisms of action to prevent you from different kinds of diseases.

author:Riana Lance

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Salads from around the world

Posted on January 8, 2012 by bilrob

Salads from around the world

Every civilization has eaten some mixture of raw indigenous vegetables as a health-giving part of its diet. Salads were originally the edible parts of various herbs and plants seasoned only with salt the Latin word ‘sal’, from which the word ‘salad’ derives. As time progressed, the composition of
salads became more varied.

As early as 1699 in England, John Evelyn’s Acetaria described ‘Sallets’ as ‘a composition of Edule Plants and Roots of several kinds, to be eaten raw or green, blanched or candied, simple and serfe, or intermingled with others according to the season’. Evelyn recommended that the ingredients of a salad be carefully selected to complement and balance each other.

Acetaria distinguishes between simple and combined salads, however it is in classic French cooking where this distinction has evolved fully. French salads are traditionally of two types: a simple salad of tossed lettuce or another single vegetable, usually served after the main course, and a more complex combination salad, served as a separate hors d’oeuvre or even a light main course in itself.

It is the combination salad that has developed in the United States of America into the increasingly popular main-course salad, which now features extremely diverse ingredients, including meat, seafood, cheese, nuts and grains. Although many salads contain these rather calorific ingredients, salads are fundamentally healthy because their basic ingredients are raw vegetables or fruits with their inherent vitamins and minerals intact.

CHOOSING AND STORING INGREDIENTS

Using raw ingredients as the basis of your dish means that good quality is essential! For salad making, always choose the best and freshest ingredients available. Although most fresh produce is now found, at a price, on supermarket shelves year-round, for quality and value buy produce during its growing season.

Fresh young asparagus in early summer, sunripened strawberries a little later on and crisp seasonal lettuce will always taste better than their forced greenhouse counterparts. The availability of root vegetables, grains, dried fruits and nuts in all seasons does enable you to make tasty salads throughout the year.

Once you have bought your ingredients, store them carefully. Salad vegetables should always be kept in a cool, dark place, preferably in a refrigerator. This will keep them firm and fresh. Fresh herbs last best in the refrigerator, either sprayed with water and placed in a polythene bag or standing in bowls of water.

Nuts are an excellent source of fibre and add crunch to salads. However, their shelf-life is relatively short because they have a high oil content, and can turn rancid. Buy nuts in small quantities, store them in airtight containers and use them quickly.

DRESSINGS

Dressings are an integral part of any good salad. They should always work together with the tastes of the salad ingredients, without being overpowering. In vinaigrette dressings, my personal ideal proportions are 3 parts oil to l part vinegar or citrus juice. However, you should experiment
and alter proportions to suit your own tastes. Many different oils are readily available. The most popular, olive oil, is used in many classic European recipes and is a monounsaturate, generally accepted as lower in cholesterol than, for example, the more exotic nut oils.

For the health-conscious, use light olive oil. The dressings in this book use traditional oils, such as olive and sunflower, as well as more unusual newcomers, such as hazelnut, walnut, chilli and sesame oils. You may like to prepare your own flavoured oils by adding some dried chillies, garlic, or herb sprigs to a bottle of oil. lf you do this, allow the flavours to develop for at least two weeks.

PREPARATION

Always ensure that all vegetables are washed before using. Washed salad leaves should be dried before dressing is added. The leaves will be crisper and the dressing will coat the leaves well. The best and quickest way to dry leaves is in a salad spinner, but a clean, dry linen towel can also be used to pat leaves dry.

lf using nuts, toast them in advance as this enhances their flavour. Dressings can also be made in advance and set aside for their flavours to develop and create a stronger taste. However, dressings should be added to the salad just before serving to prevent leaves from becoming soggy. An exception is with pasta, grain and rice salads, where adding the dressings to the warm, cooked base ingredient allows the ingredient to absorb the flavours without affecting the look of the salad.

PRESENTING YOUR SALAD

The visual appeal of food is a vital part of its enjoyment, so it is worth spending time on attractive presentation. Even the simplest side salad can be made decorative by careful slicing, an imaginative combination of colours and the arrangement of the ingredients on the plate.

Not all salads need to be tossed; you can arrange the ingredients on the plate, then pour or drizzle the dressing over. Garnishing your salad before serving will also enhance its visual appeal. Garnishes can vary from a single sprig of a herb to chopped herbs sprinkled over the salad, to a single extra
ingredient from the salad, such as a prawn in its shell or a spring onion tassel.

Finally, cooking and eating should be fun! Enjoy preparing and eating the salads detailed in the following articles, but do be flexible too and experiment with the almost infinite variety of beautiful and delicious ingredients available.

As we prepare the articles for salads from around the world, we will provide links to each article here:

All American Salads : American salad recipes
European Salads (coming soon)
Oriental Salads (coming soon)
Fruit Salads (coming soon)

Vegetarian, Raw food and Vegan with Bill & Sheila

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Growing Local: Decatur's Kinky Turtle Farm Has Vegetables And Fruit, Not Turtles

Posted on January 8, 2012 by bilrob

Growing Local: Decatur’s Kinky Turtle Farm Has Vegetables And Fruit, Not Turtles

by Jen Jeffrey
posted January 7, 2012

Where are the turtles? John Fausch of the Kinky Turtle Farm in Decatur in Meigs County was asked immediately. He replied, No turtles, just vegetables and fruit.

He explained the name of his farm came about from a verse in the Bible and an old hymn:

1 Timothy 1:17 New International Version (NIV)

17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

John loved the joke about a child coming home from church telling that they had learned about The Kinky Turtle – (King Eternal).

Whenever he sang the hymn Lead on oh King Eternal in church, he would sing the words Lead on oh Kinky Turtle. His wife, Debbie, couldnt get that out of her head when she heard him sing that song. She decided the name of their business had to be Kinky Turtle Farms.

John and Debbie Fausch live on 10 acres and grow acre of produce by themselves. They are organic and sustainable growers. John was in the Air Force for 20 years and then went into sales for another 20 years selling ATVs, motorcycles and boats.

When he was laid off three years ago, he decided to try his hand at growing vegetables. He and Debbie tripled the size of their garden. We became the pepper kings; we have the hottest peppers-super hot!

John is most proud of his peppers and his fig trees. I dont know of anyone else that sells figs at the farmers markets. They are hard to grow.

John will plant more fig trees and hopes that people will be interested in coming to his farm and buying some of the started trees. He has a Facebook page for the farm and will post information about purchasing them.

The Fauschs sell their produce to the Bradley County Farmers Market on Peerless Road in Cleveland as well as 5 Points Market on 2nd Street in Cleveland.

John has a fig tree that has the perfect spot on his farm. The others grow normally, but the one that thrives is in a corner away from the wind and it is protected from the elements.

Other produce grown at Kinky Turtle includes tomatoes, sweet peppers, pears, cucumbers, asparagus, beets, turnips, lettuce, cabbage, squash, carrots, beans and okra. I pick okra while it is still young; that makes them a good size for canning, John says.

We also specialize in cherry tomatoes. They are hard to grow and not a lot of people like to grow them.

John has countless recipes he likes to share regarding the produce that he grows. I was in Vietnam when I was in the Air Force and learned about many flavors over there.

To ward off insects, John does not use chemicals. He instead uses methods placing certain plants in his crop that stave off the harmful pests. He also depends on the good insects that eat the foes. We plant radishes because they repel a lot of the bad bugs, John explains.

Debbie adds, We plant marigolds, which repel the bean beetles, so we plant them with the beans.

John said, We also plant flowers to bring bees. We need bees to pollinate.

John has a compost pile where he recycles everything unused. We compost everything. A neighbor of mine will be bringing over some leaves this week and we will mulch them.

We put mulch on what we grow – its organic and will eventually become soil. It repels certain bugs and retards weeds. Some people go out and buy mulch – I will never do that. I use the compost as my fertilizer too.

Something unique that he will grow this year is Hungarian Wax Peppers. John says they are really unique in the way they taste. You start eating from the bottom and its mild, but it gets hotter and hotter as you get to the end.

He will also grow The Star of David Okra. When you slice it open, the shape is like the Star of David. The texture of this okra is more fibrous.

KT Farm relies on a spring from the Moon Slew Creek nearby. John has built a pump house and he brings the fresh water through the pump so there are no chemicals in the water they use, which adds to the idea of being organic.

One of his favorite things to make is a cucumber-tomato dish where he slices cucumbers and tomatoes, adds virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic and onions and lets it sit overnight.

As a small child, growing up in Wisconsin, John had the traditional dreams wanting to be a policeman or fireman, but as a teenager he wanted to enlist in the Air Force, which is what he did.

John declares, The farm is more of a ministry than anything else. God has provided for Debbie and me and given us a means in which to reach others.

To reach John and Debbie Fausch for garden-fresh recipes or to purchase their produce, you may find them on Facebook; or call 423/280-1539 or visit the Cleveland Farmers Market and 5 Points Market also in Cleveland.

Jen Jeffrey

[email protected]

View Photo: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 vegetables
Baby fig trees
Beans and okra
Beans, heirloom tomatoes, banana peppers and cucumbers
Burgundy beans
Celeste figs
Compost pile
Fall onions
Fresh okra and tomatoes cooking vegetables
Kinky Turtle Farm
Pears
Starting seeds
The Kinky Turtle
Turnip
Winter cabbage

Fruit and vegetables with Bill & Sheila
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