Refill Not Landfill

I came across the Refill Not Landfill campaign by Nalgene on fellow blogger's gezellig-girl's site. I have been following the press on tap vs. bottled water for quite some time. It is refreshing that people are starting to understand the actual costs of drinking imported, bottled water.

I am a proud tap water drinker. My mom's philosophy was, "Why pay for water when there is perfectly good water coming out of the faucet?" Then with college came the must-have Brita. But we never changed the filter so basically we were drink cold tap water. Then in New York City, there was no way in the world I was carrying bottled water from the store up to my apartment. Bottled water is heavy! One of my friends made a good point, "City tap water is the best, there is no way they are going to give bad water to an entire city full of people. Think of the lawsuits!" I never looked back, guzzling down all the tap water I could in both NYC and SF. And, I always drink tap water, unless in a foreign country, at restaurants. Not necessarily for the environment, but because I am cheap, and I drink a lot of water. Now some restaurants in San Francisco have taken bottled water off the menu and are using in-house filtering systems for sparkling and still water.

Many San Franciscian's carry their trusty Nalgene everywhere they go. At my old job, I kept one at my desk, refilling it frequently. That is why I think the Nalgene, Refill not Landfill, campaign is so great. Nalgene water bottle's are easy to wash, carry, and refill. They come in a variety of sizes and are trendy. So why not paste on a great message to the bottle so that your Nalgene drinkers can spread the word? Think Lance Armstrong's "Live Strong" yellow bracelet. I have high hopes for this campaign!

My five top reasons for drinking tap water:

1. Tap water quality is well regulated and it is publically available information. There are more regulations governing the quality of tap water than bottled water, thus tap water is likely healthier for you.

2. There is no waste. There is no bottle to dispose of when you are done drinking. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86% of plastic water bottles used in the US end up in the trash. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic byproducts such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals. Buried water bottles can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.

3. Tap water is an energy-efficient infrastructure. Transporting bottled water long distances involves the use of a lot of fossil fuels. Think about it. Shipping water from Fiji or just turning on the tap.? Maybe if there is less demand for fossil fuels, your gas prices will go down?

4. It is free. I admit it again, I am cheap. Not so cheap that I don't purchase organic products and support sustainable farming practices though. But seriously, why waste the money?

5. Tastes great! If it doesn't, install a filter on your main faucet. I believe I read somewhere the average cost of installing a filter is 10 cents a gallon.

Find out more about the benefits of drinking tap water at Drinktap.org.

Top Chef - Mid-season antics

The latest widget. Things are getting very competitive! Both teams had so many flaws in last week's restaurant challenge that they get a redo. Tre is still my personal favorite, but CJ is a close second. He has a lot of natural leadership abilities which would come in handy as a "Top Chef." The lady chefs are dropping like flies with only Casey and Sara left in the running. Howie is loose cannon. No one in the industry is going to want to work with him after seeing his behavior. Keep watching on Wednesdays things are just starting to heat up as the contestants dwindle!

Sustainable Table

I discovered the Sustainable Table website about a month ago. Every time I visit, I end up a little more educated about sustainability thanks to the wealth of information that is available. As you might have guessed, this organization supports the sustainable food movement and educates people on food-related issues. Their goal is to offer a guide to the increasing number of consumers who want to shopping smarter, eat healthier, and enjoy fresh, locally-grown products. I am one such consumer and this site not only explains the sustainability movement, but also offers news about the movement from around the country, as well as where to shop for sustainable products. I recently used their site to help a friend find out what fish would be environmentally-friendly to serve her wedding guests. This is not a one-time website visit. They have tools that you will want to use often, so bookmark the site.

They also have a blog, The Daily Table, that I read regularly (add it to your Reader). Currently, the blog is devoted to the happenings on the Eat Well Guided Tour of America, a cross-country tour promoting local food. They are making stops at sustainable farms and restaurants. There are some truly amazing things that are being done around the US to support sustainability. It is quite inspirational.

I encourage you to check out this website. It will broaden your horizons about how you eat and shop for food!

Rats in the kitchen

I finally went to see Ratatouille last night. I had been waiting to take my "Little Sister," JaiAnna, with me to see this movie because she loves going to the movies. I thought we should see this movie because we do a lot of cooking together. We stationed ourselves in the very last row of the movie theater (Jai's favorite viewing location) and settled in to view the movie.

I know that every adult foodie out there is raving about this movie and I have to agree with them. It really is as entertaining as they say. The animation is out of this world. It is so realistic. At lot of what has been said about this movie is that is geared more for adults, than for children. Watching this movie with a 10 year-old got me thinking about the positive messages embedded throughout the movie.

• Anyone Can Cook!
• Dare to be creative.
• Even your toughest critics can be won over.
• Food is meant to be enjoyed, not shoveled into your mouth as fast as you can.
• Be tolerate toward things that are different (like rats).
• Teamwork can lead to great things.
• Stealing from others is wrong.
• Families and friends should help each other out.
• Wash your hands before handling food.

All these themes and more are found in this movie. Not just good lessons for children, but great reminders for adults too.

On our way to drop Jai off at her house, she entertained me by recapping all the scenes in the movie and commenting on the characters. She also kept repeating the title of the movie. Apparently the word, "ratatouille" is fun to say again and again and again. It sort of is, I guess, but I control myself.

Having nearly finished the book, Heat, by Bill Buford, I can't help but think that some of the script in Ratatouille was influenced by that book.

Typical Nicaraguan food

Nicaraguan food is a great example of dishes made with locally grown (and free range) ingredients. The staples are gallo pinto (rice and beans made with leftovers from the previous dinner), tropical fruits, meats, and seafood in the coastal towns. Their speciality is nacatamales, which is corn dough with vegetables and pork, chicken, or beef wrapped in banana leaves. They are popular on the weekends. Rondon, meaning "to cook" is a stew of yucca, chayote and other vegetables with meat added. Eskimo brand ice cream, with its selection of tropical flavors is available from a push cart on every street corner, but it is of poor quality and melts so fast you are left with ice cream soup.

In Leon, I had one of the most interesting meals of my trip. I ordered Indio Viejo off a menu that boasted that the dish was a Nicaraguan specialty. It was a stew made of onions, garlic, sweet red and green peppers, tomatoes and chicken all suspended in a corn tortilla broth mixture. After some Internet research, I found that the corn tortilla broth is made by putting some tortillas into water and then grinding them until they form dough. The meat is shredded and then fried with the aforementioned vegetables, the dough, and orange juice. Finally, you add broth. It tasted heavenly. I am going to try and recreate this dish at home.

We made a point to visit the Cental Market in Leon because we were there on a Saturday. Here is a picture I took there. There were many women selling these corn, milk, and cheese breads at the ends of the stalls. They had an interesting texture and were very dense.

In Granada our meals were varied. In this city they cater to the money bearing gringoes and the restaurants are accomodating as such. Not ideal when you want to try local foods. However, we did stumble upon a place, Dona Conchi's, that dished up some large postions of typical foods. The dish I had was sea bass with a garlic and parsley sauce paired with two jumbo shrimps and sides of rice and french fries. The sangria was excellent and the garden dining was que romantico! The following evening we ate a late dinner at the American-style BBQ joint because we experienced, yet another, city-wide power outage. This non-memorable restaurant had a generator which meant we did not have to go to bed hungry. And after a long day of sightseeing: pottery making, arts and crafts market visiting, Spanish fort turned prison viewing, volcano hiking, bat cave exploring, and lava watching, we were HUNGRY!

On Isla de Ometepe, we ate all our meals at the hotel where we were staying. There were not many places to dine as we were miles from the small town center where the ferry dropped us off. The food wasn't the best, but it was edible. I finally caved in and ordered pasta for dinner the evening after our seriously challenging hike up, and down, Volcano Maderas. On the hike we saw banana trees, cocoa beans, and unripe coffee beans. I have never sweat so much in my life! This picture is taken at the crest of the volcano. We then climbed down into the crater for lunch where soggy sandwiches never tasted so good. Then out of the crater and back down the volcano through the rainforest, being careful not to slip in the extremely muddy stream beds, to return home absolutely covered in mud.

Here is a little more information on traditional Nicaraguan food. And like everywhere else in Central America, rice, beans, eggs, and fresh fruits are the staples in everyday diets.

Obsession with Top Chef

I love the TV Show Top Chef, on Bravo. Just love, love, love it. It is sophisticated reality TV with a tolerable amount of drama. I really admire how these competing chefs think so quickly on their feet and how fast they cook (with the exception of Howie, who is always stressed about time)! What they manage to create in the 30 minute Quickfire Challenges is incredible. It is a competition of brains, creativity, raw talent, and a little brawn. Season 3, Miami, has not let me down. It is just as good, if not better than, the first two seasons. The competitions are more difficult and the contestants come from some highly-regarded restaurants and from very entrepreneurial backgrounds. Competition is fierce, which makes for good television.

Season 3 is underway and the contestants are thinning from the original 15. I really admire how honest and fair the judges are about how they make their choice to eliminate someone. The judges are Queer Eye's culinary expert, Ted Allen, show host, Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio, celebrated culinary figure and co-founder of Craft Restaurants, and Gail Simmons of Food & Wine. Their decisions are based on each chef's response to each specific challenge, not on their performance to date. So on Top Chef, when a chef wows and even wins a challenge one week, they might be kicked off the next. The guest judge is also always a very interesting and admirable person from the world of food. This season, not surprisingly, represents a variety of celebrated chefs from Miami. Personally, I would be shaking in my socks if Anthony Bourdain was going to be judging something I made. Thanks to excellent video editing, I can hardly ever guess who is going to be asked to "pack their knives and go home." Did I mention this is the best reality TV show ever?

This season my favorite chef is Tre. Tre is self-taught (so cool!) and his style is refined and simple. I admire his consistency cooking and plating very nice dishes which meet the challenge. I think that while he has been riding in the middle (not winning or losing much) he is going to excel as more and more chefs are eliminated. He has the versatility and ability to execute under pressure that the other chefs lack. My least favorite chef is Hung. Hung is the drama factor this season (much like Marcel was in Season 2). He is pompous, rude, hyper, and does not accept any criticism. He is not courteous in the kitchen. He makes terrible messes running around like a mad man and nearly cut someone with his knife on last night's episode. But, he'll be around for a while. Between the drama that he adds to the show and the fact that he is, as much as I hate to admit it, an excellent chef. Mike's favorite chef is CJ. I think that is because, like Mike, he is very tall and has a great sense of humor.

Best yet, this season Bravo is putting some of the recipes on the Top Chef website. You can make some of the successful creations at home without the pressure of the clock.

So watch, Wednesdays at 10pm ET/9pm CT. The show repeats immediately afterwards at 11 ET/10pm CT. There are lots of reruns if you want to catch up on missed episodes.

My husband just started working for a start-up that makes awesome widgets. Here is the very cool widget that they made for Top Chef. You can check out some of the judges' blogs to get their insights on the show.

A Honduran food primer

We started our culinary quest in Honduras. We arrived far too late in Antigua, Guatemala to sample any Guatemalan foods. It was a disappointment, but we were relieved to arrive on the same day we were originally scheduled to arrive, albeit eight hours later.

Our food consumption philosophy while traveling was to try any and all local foods whenever possible, short of going, uninvited, into a Central American home. We avoided, to the best of our ability, all the restaurants that catered to "gringos." This was sometimes difficult to do as most of the families eat their main meals at home and many times there were not many restaurants in the areas we visited that served local, traditional foods.

In Honduras, there were two food items that stood out as being particularly indigenous to Honduras. One was pan de coco or coconut bread which, to my disappointment, is really only a bun made with coconut milk. I think I was envisioning a coconut crumb cake or a banana bread-type item. It is a little sweeter and slightly more dense than a normal, white bun. We tasted pan de coco at a place called Thompson's Bakery along with their yummy sticky cinnamon rolls. Working in a hot bakery in Honduras has to be one tough job thanks to the extreme heat and humidity!

Everywhere we stopped on the buses for a potty break, we heard ladies yelling, "baleadas, baleadas," which are snack that they were selling through the bus windows. Baleadas are white flour tortillas folded in half and filled with refried beans, crumbly cheese, and crema (think runny sour cream.) Quite a heavy snack, if you ask me.

Breakfast in Honduras usually consisted of scrambled or fried eggs, refried black beans, rice, a piece of rubbery, tasteless cheese, a piece of ham that resembled Spam, and homemade corn tortillas. I loved it all but the ham and cheese. That was a breakfast made to stick to your ribs which was a good thing as we often did not get to eat again until dinner.

In Copan we ate dinner at a restaurant called Momo's. It was a bbq place for all practical purposes with pleasant outdoor seating. Though there was a one-eyed dog that came to visit us during our meal that made me loose my appetite for a few minutes. We all order various meat kebabs that were skewered with veggies and marinaded with a garlic, lemon, and oil. The meat was very tender and fresh. I ate up every last bite. (After I forgot about the dog.)

Once we got to Utila of The Bay Islands, we went in search of a place called Cross Creek which is where all the divers and locals supposedly hang out. We had some trouble finding it as we continued to walk further and further on a wooden path that seemed to led to nowhere. Some other guests came up behind us and told us that, "when you think you are lost, you are halfway there" and it was true! After a near 1/4 of a mile we stumbled upon a shack which houses the kitchen and a covered deck which has the tables. You order at the shack and have a choice between fish or a meat and one of three sauces. Very simple. I ordered the grilled fresh tuna fillet with the soy ginger sauce and it was amazing. The fish tasted like it had just come out of the ocean. But look all that food! I ate and ate and it looked like I didn't make a dent. The restaurant owner's wife was very concerned that I did not like my meal. I reassured her I did, very much!

The following evening we joined our other travel mates for a barbecue at the hotel where we were staying. Some of our new friends had gone deep sea fishing that day and we grilled up their "daily catch" of barracuda and tuna. People from around the world gathered in small kitchen with minimum utensils and prepared a feast of grilled potatoes with red onion and garlic, steamed carrots, zucchinis, and green peppers, all of which had to be cooked on the grill with the fish. It took a while to grill everything as the coals were damp, but the end result was really quite good. Pictured here are a few of my fellow cooks who were from Australia and Canada.

On our last night in Utila we tried to go to a restaurant called Tropical Sunset, but it was closed, without apparent reason, on Thursdays. Lots of places in Utila kept somewhat odd hours/days. We did run into the chef who was helpful in recommending another place to eat called La Pirrata. We splurged and ordered lobster tails because they were caught of the neighboring island of Roatan and they were only $15USD. They were pretty good, but a bit burnt. I must admit my palate isn't terribly discriminating when I am starving.

The next Central American installment will be about Nicaragua. Get excited!

Bittman, you've gone one step too far

I like Mark Bittman, "The Minimalist," who is a frequently published food writer for the NYTimes. I like the concept of minimalistic cooking. And even more than those things, I LOVE hamburgers (and so does my Aunt Helen, so it must be genetic). So when today's NYTime's Food Section cover article was "For the Love of a Good Burger," I was pretty excited. In fact, I had been craving red meat and so for dinner last night I made burgers.

Mark kicks off the article about how most burgers are mediocre, at best. And I agree. It is very hard to find a good hamburger. I like mine medium-rare and I almost always get them served to me medium-well. And the quality of the meat is often questionable. Yuck.

He spends nearly the entire article speaking to his idea that the only way to get a decent hamburger is to ground your own meat. He cautions to not buy packaged ground beef in any form. What? Are you kidding? I have a job. I am not grinding meat at 7:30pm to get a hamburger after I have been "grinding" away at the office for the last ten hours. Not a chance. Grinding meat does not seem one bit minimal. I cannot imagine that many readers are going to commit to grinding there own beef now that Mark told them it is better to do so. Consider your audience Bittman, we are busy people!

Why couldn't he have spent the article discussing what type of ground beef to buy and where to buy it in order to get the best burger possible with minimal fuss. For example, for grilling burgers I usually buy organic beef, 90% lean (80% lean probably tastes even better, but I can't do it). The fat drips off the burger when grilled and leaves the burgers quite tender and tasty. I try to buy my ground beef at the local butcher, Whole Foods, Mollie Stones, etc., somewhere that is going to have better quality meat than Costco's frozen beef patties. I always season and form my own patties, but that is as much effort as I will am willing to go to to get a good burger.

Some good points of the article include not packing the meat too tightly or the burger will be tough and that you can season the patty adequately with just salt and pepper. But the most helpful part of the article describes how to grill the perfect burger:

"Burgers cook so fast that the heat source doesn’t matter much. You want a hot fire, but not a blazing hot one; that fat, as we all know, is quick to ignite. The rack, which should be very clean, should be three or four inches above it. Turn the burger only after the first side releases its grip on the grill, after a few minutes; if you don’t press with the spatula, you’ll get less sticking, too. Cooking time depends on the size of the burger, of course, but mine take about 6 to 8 minutes total, for rare to medium-rare. Pork takes a little longer, but not much."

Check out Bittman's recipe for the Inside-out Lamb Burger, but get ground lamb or ask the butcher to do it. It looks very tasty. See the picture above and that will get your mouth watering.

If cooking your own hamburgers is just too much work in general, might I suggest stopping by one of my favorite places in New York City for the absolute best hamburger - The Half King. They have the best burgers I have ever tasted, hands down. Order a pint, splurge and get the french fries as your side, and you are set to eat a truly wonderful American meal.

Wednesdays are my favorite days

While typically Wednesdays in the business world are "hump days," I personally look at Wednesday as the best day of the week. Why? Well, the Dining and Wine or Food Section is published in all the major newspapers. I pour over the NYTimes online and then pray that my husband has bought a San Francisco Chronicle that day and has saved the Food Section for me.

Today was no different. Today, the NYTimes went green and the SF Chronicle went crazy over clams (Seafood again! Can someone please tell me where they serve all this seafood?? No restaurant here, except maybe Swan Oyster Depot.) One article that caught my eye was the NYTimes article entitled, A Soft Spot for the Anti-Artisanal. The article takes about how author tries to buy "green," organic, sustainable and labor of love foods. But she acknowledges there is a place in one's heart for the foods you grew up on no matter how unhealthy or processed they are. Her example of such food is Wonder Bread.

My mother was sophisticated about what she fed us. We were never allowed Wonder Bread or Koolaid. Perhaps she was ahead of her time. When my brother and I were babies we were wearing cloth diapers and eating homemade baby food.

However, I ate things in my childhood that are not healthy or good for you or the environment that I cannot help but continue to love, including:
- New York sharp cheddar cheese
- White bakery bread, sliced no thicker than 3/8" thick
- Dannon Fat Free yogurt
- Deviled ham and swiss on an english muffin
- Ruffles Potato Chips (I used to put them on turkey sandwiches for the crunch!)
- Oreos (We were allowed to eat four! Mom had some tough rules about junk food.)
- Fresh peaches in August
- Corn on the cob from the farm up the road
- Right off the vine strawberries and the accompanying strawberry shortcake
- Beef stroganoff, an unusual sort of comfort food to me
- Aunt Jess's Chicken: a baked rice, cream of mushroom soup, and chicken dish which is so good!
- Cornell Dairy ice cream and cottage cheese remind me of my visiting my grandmother

As I cook for my husband/family there will be things I remember from my mother and childhood, like hard shell taco night when Dad was out of town, that I will definitely make for my kids. There is always a place for "home cookin'" in your life no matter what your definition of home cookin' happens to be.