The Red, White, and Green

Photo courtesy of The Feisty Foodie

In the month-plus since I began Meatless Monday, my goal has been to make dinners so delicious that my husband doesn’t even realize they’re vegetarian. The best and healthiest way to achieve this, I’ve found, is to stick to recipes that are inherently meatless — eggplant parmigiana, dal and rice, and falafel, for example. (Alright, I haven’t been ambitious enough yet to make my own falafel, but since I happen to be lucky enough to live near Hollywood’s legendary Falafel Arax, I figure why not help out the environment and a local business at the same time? Nowhere in the rules does it say you can’t have someone else cook your Meatless Monday dinner for you.)

But now that my husband seems to have begrudgingly wholeheartedly embraced Meatless Monday, I’m looking to the vegetarian repertoire for recipes that aren’t already a part of our regular diet. Specifically, tofu. Packed with protein and budget friendly, tofu has been a staple of Asian cooking for thousands of years. But what’s the best way to get an al pastor loving carnivore to smile at the sight of a block of bean curd? In short, fry it. Everything tastes better fried, right?

This glorious recipe for fried tofu, which I found on The Feisty Foodie, delivers golden crispy squares of bean curd without deep frying. The result is a healthy yet filling meal that will set you back about a measly $2.

Enjoy!

–Jennifer Grayson

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Still making plans for tonight? Take a swig of some Pepto-Bismol (or a holistic anti-nausea remedy of your choice) and go see Food, Inc., which opens in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco today (nationwide in July). Award-winning filmmaker Robert Kenner worked for over six years to bring this film to life, which offers an astonishing — and sometimes horrifying — behind the scenes look at our nation’s food industry. Much like Fast Food Nation (whose author, Eric Schlosser, is interviewed in the movie), Food, Inc. promises to forever change the way Americans view their food.

 
Date night tip: Save dinner for well after the movie, and then hit up a joint that serves local, sustainable fare.

–Jennifer Grayson

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Once you’ve transitioned from plastic bags to reusable totes for your grocery shopping and errands, finding ways to eliminate other plastic bags from your daily routine becomes addictive. So here’s an easy next step: Use a reusable dry cleaning bag. More than 300 million pounds of single-use plastic dry cleaning bags are sent to US landfills every year; that’s an inordinate amount of waste just so your clothes can be protected on their ride from the cleaner to your closet. (And for those who like to keep clothes “fresh” by keeping them in the closet with the dry cleaning plastic on, this actually prevents good airflow and can encourage mold and mildew growth.)

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When I read “La Vida Loba” in the April issue of Elle magazine — writer Sara Corbett’s personal narrative about her trek to a remote area of New Mexico to visit the home of her friend Loba, who had long since abandoned modern civilization to live a more primal existence — the part of the article that stuck with me the most was the description of the food that Loba prepared during the visit.

And then we ate. We ate the stuffed grape leaves. We ate steaming bowls of lentil soup and a thick slice of rye bread she’d made on the skillet. We had warm cups of brewed dandelion root topped off with capfuls of Kahlúa. Every once in a while I would blurt out some bit of small talk and Loba would silence it with one uttered word—“Yum!”—meant, I realized finally, to redirect us all to the simple, undistracted pleasure of tasting our food.

It’s always been a dream of mine to be able to grow my own food and savor it as simply and wonderfully as described above. Maybe it’s a reaction to the urban existence of my entire adult life (Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, and now Los Angeles) that has found me with nary a square of green land to call my own, but I became determined to grow something edible.

With no porch or patio in our current apartment, and a lone sunny spot in our kitchen, I decided to make use of a beautiful copper planter I had found and grow an organic indoor herb garden. It’s not a crop of vegetables, but it’s a start. And at $1.99 for each seedling I purchased from the nursery, it’s a heck of a lot more economical than spending $2.99 at Whole Foods for organic basil every time I want to make tomatoes and mozzarella.

–Jennifer Grayson

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Last week, Washington, DC, joined the ranks of cities across the US that have proposed a ban or tax on single-use shopping bags, with the DC Council voting unanimously to assess a 5-cent tax on paper and plastic bags. The proposition, which would allow businesses to keep a penny for each bag sold and designate the other four cents to a fund to clean up the Anacostia River, is up for a vote later this month. So far, San Francisco is the only major city in the US to successfully ban plastic bags in grocery stores, though similar measures are being considered in Los Angeles, Seattle, Philadelphia, and — thanks to Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Jim Moran (D-VA) — the US House of Representatives. 

With plastic (and paper) bag ban initiatives gaining momentum across the country and this morning the call from a top UN official for a worldwide ban on single-use plastic shopping bags, it seems like the perfect time to get a head start in the reusable tote department. After all, one of the best ways to stop a bad habit is to substitute a new, improved one.

Over the years, I’ve amassed quite a collection of reusable bags constructed from a rainbow of eco-friendly materials — canvas, expandable cotton mesh, woven polypropylene made from recycled soda bottles, even one fashioned from recycled rice bags. But my favorite one to date is from Los Angeles-based start-up The Inconvenient Bag.

The bags cost a bit more than your run-of-the-mill Trader Joe’s canvas tote — prices start at $17.99 if you order from the website — but if you’re lucky enough to catch owner Marc Sahara at an LA-area farmers market or festival (where I first came across his bags), you can snag one for about half that price. I own the cute natural-colored number shown here, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked where I bought it — most recently by the checkout lady at Target as I stuffed it to the gills with my purchases, for my two-mile walk home (did I mention how sturdy this tote is?).

And, unlike my Trader Joe’s canvas sacks, which are made in China, The Inconvenient Bag manufactures its bags in the LA area, so you’ll be helping the environment and the local economy at the same time.

–Jennifer Grayson

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UPDATE: The Meatless Monday campaign is fully meatless now, and has been for some time. But if you’re interested in the evolution of the campaign, read below.

© Mccool | Dreamstime.com

When I was going through the recipe archives of the Meatless Monday website last week, I was surprised to find that many of the recipes included fish; I was under the impression that the goal was for people to adopt a vegetarian diet once a week. The health benefits of fish and seafood are well proven, but since the movement is also positioning itself as an environmental one  (the concept being that if every American gave up meat just one day of the week, the resulting reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be the equivalent of all of us switching from normal cars to Toyota hybrids), it seems curious that fish and seafood would be an acceptable choice.

The ecological hazards of the fishing industry are two-fold: First, much like the factory farms used to raise large numbers of chickens, cattle, and pigs in close quarters, commercial fish farming uses myriad chemicals — including antibiotics, pesticides, and hormones — to combat disease and encourage growth. Not only do these toxic substances wind up in the tissues of the farmed fish (and then in your tissues when you eat them); in many cases, they are swept out into the open ocean, where they can contaminate other marine life. And second, many fish that are wild-caught are dangerously close to extinction; it is now estimated that 90 percent of the world’s fish have been killed.

I contacted the folks at Meatless Monday, who said that originally, MM’s focus was public health — the beneficial omega-3 fatty acids in fish have been linked to a lower incidence of heart disease and cancer, among other things — but now that the movement is shifting in a more environmental direction, it may be necessary to eliminate fish recipes from its database.

Until they decide, I’ll be sticking to vegetarian recipes on Monday, and using this handy widget from The End of the Line campaign to find out what type of fish to eat — in moderation — the rest of the week.

–Jennifer Grayson

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Photo via Flickr: Evelynishere

Last July, the Los Angeles City Council voted to ban plastic shopping bags in the city’s supermarkets and stores by July 2010, but with one condition: The ban would only take effect if the state of California fails to pass legislation that would impose a 25-cent fee on shoppers requesting plastic bags.

Assemblywoman Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica) and Assemblyman Mike Davis (D-Los Angeles) had recently introduced separate bills to the Assembly that would effect this 25-cent fee. While there was some recent speculation by the press that the competing bills would be merged, I’ve just received word from Brownley’s office that there are no plans to merge the bills; in fact, because both bills failed to get out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee and to the floor of the Assembly by today’s deadline, the bills are now considered “two-year bills.” This means that if the authors do indeed decide to move their bills forward, it’ll have to wait until next year. “Asm. Brownley has not made any decision regarding that at this time,” says Linda Rapattoni, Brownley’s press secretary.

Brownley’s bill (AB 68) would charge consumers a 25-cent fee for each plastic or paper bag they request for purchases at major supermarkets and drugstore chains.

With both bills now in limbo land, it appears that Los Angeles may be one step closer to making good on its promise to ban plastic shopping bags. The city would be in good company; South Africa, Japan, and China (among other countries) have outlawed plastic bags in order to deal with widespread pollution and rising oil costs. In 2007, San Francisco became the first US city to enact a ban on plastic bags.

–Jennifer Grayson

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© Ken Cole | Dreamstime.com

No one likes being jolted out of bed by an alarm clock — the memory of the shrill BEEP BEEP BEEP that used to rouse me from my nighttime slumber at 6 am for high school still makes me shudder. As it turns out, our hormonal systems don’t like it either. 

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about how essential a good night’s sleep is for health, which is something our grandmothers took as fact but many in modern America seem to have forgotten, guzzling Red Bull at all hours and staying up past midnight watching TV. Sleep deprivation on a regular basis — and in scientific terms, that means getting less than seven or eight hours a night — raises the risk for a number of diseases, including cancer, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. 

But sleeping seven or eight hours alone isn’t enough; the darkness of the room we sleep in, as well as how we wake in the morning, also impacts our health. Circadian rhythm, or our internal biological clock, is regulated by external cues, one of them being daylight. Before the advent of electricity, people went to sleep soon after sunset and woke with the sunrise. In this natural cycle, the early morning light signals the adrenal glands to release cortisol, our body’s accelerator, responsible for the functioning of nearly every part of the body; as the day goes on, cortisol decreases, and melatonin, the hormone that tells us it’s time for bed, begins to rise. 

Following this natural cycle — sleeping in absolute darkness, waking with the sun — encourages a strong circadian rhythm, which helps keep the body running like a well oiled machine. But mimicking this natural process is a particular challenge for city dwellers. We recently added blackout curtains to block out the floodlights on the building next door that point directly into our bedroom, and the quality of my sleep improved almost immediately. The only problem now is that I’m sleeping almost too soundly; our bedroom is so dark that were it not for my alarm, I probably wouldn’t wake till almost noon. And while I’m sleeping better, I feel way groggier in the morning than I used to. Until we move to that house in the country I’ve been fantasizing about, what’s an urbanite to do?

Enter the dawn simulator, which was originally designed to help treat seasonal affective disorder, but can be used to wake you in the morning like a natural sunrise. Here’s how it works: You set the alarm on the dawn simulator for the time you’d like to wake up, and the device times the light in the bedroom to gradually increase in brightness, typically over a period of 30 minutes to two hours. When used properly, the simulator allows the user to sleep through the “dawn” and wake with ease when the light reaches full brightness. (For those concerned about not waking in time for work or that morning test, many dawn simulators come with a backup alarm sound.)

Proponents say that using a dawn simulator as a silent alarm clock helps them feel more refreshed in the morning, and improves overall mood as well. My family doctor suggested one as a way to help alleviate that morning haze, and says it’s an effective remedy for shift workers with odd schedules as well as insomnia, since it helps to put hormones back on track. While dawn simulators typically are fairly expensive — the Philips Apollo Health Daybreak Duo I have my eye on retails for $159 (although it’s on sale right now on TrueSun.com for $99) — you can also rig your own out of a lamp with a full spectrum light bulb and a timer. 

Since June gloom seems to have firmly planted itself over Los Angeles, I think it’s time for me to finally test one out. Stay tuned for the results.

–Jennifer Grayson

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The California Senate narrowly passed Bill 797 yesterday, which would prohibit the use of toxic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) from baby bottles, sippy cups, and other food containers for children under the age of 3. The bill now moves to the State Assembly for a vote, where it is expected to face serious opposition from chemical and food industry lobbyists. Just how serious is the opposition? Well, after doing a Google search yesterday evening to determine the status of the vote, this little nugget of press release propaganda was at the top of the results list, courtesy of the American Chemistry Council:

ARLINGTON, Va., June 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Today the California Senate voted to needlessly restrict consumer products deemed to be safe by scientific experts worldwide. Sadly, SB 797 is not based on science and will not improve public health.

Eleven regulatory bodies around the world have recently assessed the science on bisphenol A (BPA) and uniformly determined that BPA is safe for use in food contact products, including the products that would be banned by SB 797. Among others, these include the European Union, European Food Safety Authority, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Danish Environmental Protection Agency, French Food Safety Authority, and the Swiss Office for Public Health.

In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stated: “With regard to BPA generally, based on all available evidence, the consensus of regulatory agencies in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan is that the current levels of exposure to BPA through food packaging do not pose an immediate health risk to the general population, including infants and young children.”

By failing to consider the conclusions of these recent assessments, it is apparent that elected officials have bowed to pressure from vocal special interest groups. If this bill becomes law, it will do nothing to enhance product safety; it will, however, result in reduced product choice for consumers and needlessly more expensive food products.

Assessing chemical and product safety requires deep scientific expertise and rigorous analysis. For this reason, the same California Legislature last year adopted what may be the world’s most comprehensive chemical management regulatory program for consumer products. If there is a need for further scientific review of BPA in California, the open and transparent process under this “Green Chemistry” initiative will provide what is needed to protect the health of all Californians. Legislative end-runs around the scientific process are not the way to achieve this goal.

I mean, could they be any more obvious? Thanks for the unbiased insight, American Chemistry Council. Ah, those “vocal special interest groups”: You parents with young children who are concerned about the more than 100 peer-reviewed studies that have found BPA to be toxic at low doses (or last month’s Harvard/CDC study). You should be ashamed of yourselves for “needlessly restricting” consumer choice!

–Jennifer Grayson

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© Yann Poirier | Dreamstime.com

It looks like California Senate Bill 797 — which, if passed would restrict the use of toxic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) from food and beverage containers designed for children 3 and under — is about to be the targeted by Washington lobbyists. According to internal emails obtained by the Washington Post, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Environmental Working Group, chemical and food industry lobbyists convened last Thursday in an emergency brainstorming session to devise a plan of attack against the California legislation.

The meeting, which was held at Washington’s exclusive Cosmos Club, was attended by representatives of Coca-Cola, Alcoa, Del Monte, Crown, the American Chemistry Council, the North American Metal Packing Alliance, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, who committed $500,000 to an effort to “prolong the life of BPA.” The chemical, which is used to harden polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins used as food linings (among other things), is estimated to generate more than $6 billion a year in worldwide sales.

Recent research has shown that BPA acts as a synthetic estrogen, disrupting the endocrine system as well as brain and reproductive system development and functioning, and is linked to cancer, behavioral and learning problems, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity.

According to the emails, the group of lobbyists, calling themselves the BPA Joint Trade Association, discussed “focusing the impact of BPA bans on minorities (African American and Hispanic) and poor” by saying that without BPA, food prices would rise. 

The California legislation, which was written by State Senator Fran Pavley, is not the first such measure in the country; last month, Minnesota and the city of Chicago banned BPA from certain children’s products, including baby bottles and sippy cups. 

Read the whole story here.

Californians: A hearing/vote on the bill is scheduled for today. Click here to get the contact information for the state senator in your district, and call to express your support for the bill.

–Jennifer Grayson

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