Vegan for a Week:

This post was written by a good friend and former colleague of mine, Daphne. I (Hungry Sam) am clearly not a vegan, nor do I aspire to be, and yet there remains the question of ethical, healthy eating, as well as the implicit challenge: Could I even do it? Daphne, who, as you will read, has experience with a restricted diet, takes this challenge. Read on!
 
(Also, I can tell you from experience, Daphne is right: Sitting down and eating a pound of baby carrots is an express train to one unfun stomach ache.)

Google Images "Vegan." Odd.

I am generally mindful of what I eat.  As an observant Jew, I don't mix milk and meat, I don't eat pork or shellfish, and I choose food that is certified kosher.  As someone who is relatively health conscious, I try to maintain a balanced diet and to make healthier choices about the foods that I eat.  And because I do my best to be an ethical consumer, I've been spending more time exploring local, organic, and other ethical and sustainable food options.  When it comes to food, I'm often thinking about how I can do better. 

I started thinking again about some of these questions - and the relationship among these concerns - after I heard Rabbi Yoffie deliver his 2009 Biennial Sermon, launching the URJ's Shulhan Yarok, Shulhan Tzedek (Green Table, Just Table) initiative. Rabbi Yoffie inspired a room of 3,000 Jews to think critically about how they eat and what foods they buy, and how these decisions impact our own health, the strength of our communities, and our global environment.  There are valuable lessons to be learned from this initiative, and synagogues and individuals continue to explore the various changes they can incorporate into their lifestyles (find out what leading synagogues are up to and what you can do on the Green Table, Just Table program bank).

Then, a couple of weeks ago, Oprah Winfrey caught my attention when she challenged her 378 person staff to embrace a vegan diet for a whole week.  Rabbi Yoffie had encouraged us to reduce our red meat intake, but Oprah was going further - no meat, chicken, fish, eggs or dairy.  Her staff took the challenge, and the testimonials about their "vegan week" experiences were entertaining, encouraging and inspiring.  The next day, I mentioned to a Rabbi David Saperstein how interested I was by the show. As I was describing the episode, I thought that experimenting with a vegan diet could be an interesting way to bring together all of my dietary requirements - kosher, healthy and ethical.  So he and I decided to challenge ourselves and to become vegan for one week too. 

Initially I found myself stressing over what the next week might look like: with my limited food choices, I might be hungry all the time, or fall into the French fry/cracker/potato chip trap.  So I decided to think about food a little more creatively, and made the conscious decision to eat as many whole/non-processed foods as possible.  I pureed my own hummus, made 2 different vegetable-based soups (zucchini and butternut squash-pear) and baked enough chocolate fudgy brownies to hold me through the week. (Feel free to ask me for my recipes.) I carried lots of nuts, fruits and vegetables to snack on.

To my surprise, I felt pretty good!  I wasn't hungry for a moment - probably because I was better prepared for meals than usual.  I felt (ahem) cleansed.  I felt healthy.   I discovered which fruits and vegetables worked for me, and which worked against me.  (Note to self, it's never a good idea to eat a pound of baby carrots in a single sitting.)  And as an added bonus, at the end of the week, I discovered that I lost four lbs. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to become vegan.  This week-long experiment may have worked, but it wasn't easy. I avoided restaurants so I wouldn't be tempted by meat, and so that I wouldn't feel deprived as I coveted my friend's meal. I missed having milk in my cereal and in my coffee (neither soy nor almond milk did the trick for me).  I missed sharing a pizza with my kids.  I missed eating chili on Super Bowl Sunday.  I missed nibbling on the milk chocolate kisses that sit on my desk.  Even so, after eating vegan for a week, I am giving serious thought to changing some of my eating habits for the long-term -- maybe taking on a "Meatless Monday" and/or a "Tofu Tuesday." I can be an omnivore and still continue to be thoughtful about what I buy, how my food is prepared, and what I eat.

I have a newfound understanding of vegans and veganism - of the challenges of a restricted diet and the rewards of being more thoughtful and intentional about my food choices. I'll carry this week-long lesson with me for a long time to come.  How about you?  What changes have you considered making to your dietary lifestyle, and what motivates those changes?

This entry was originally posted at RACBlog.

Mini-post: Homemade Crepes

Why do crepes feel like such a treat? Why do so many people whip up epic quantities of pancakes on Sunday morning but haven't thought of making crepes? As Jen and I discovered this weekend, it's as easy as making pancakes, healthier, and the opportunities for creative genius in fillings are endless. And it's fun in pretty much the same way making your own pizza is fun.

Ham, apple, swiss cheese, and honey crepe.

Inspired by my favorite cooking magazine, Everyday Food, we whipped up a half-batch of crepe batter -- enough for four crepes. The key here was pureeing the batter to ensure even blending of the ingredients, and I added a little cinnamon because I like cinnamon. Nutmeg would be interesting too. You should also allow the batter to sit once blended, apparently in order to let bubbles dissipate.

We did a sweet (Nutella and banana; boring but delicious) and a savory/sweet (ham, apple, swiss, and honey). The genesis of the latter came in me wandering Whole Foods, in my own mischievous and hungry little world, as Jen trailed behind making sure I was actually picking the right things off the shelf. She's used to this sort of thing. It's probably a lot like babysitting.

I have to say, making the crepes, stuffing them, and baking them was A LOT of fun. I fully intend to host a build-your-own-crepe brunch at my house (takers?) and do a far more in-depth post about crepe-ing at that time, but for now, awesome and easy dinner. 

A Few Good Sandwiches

OK, cooking is all well and good, but sometimes, you really just want a sandwich.

Making a sandwich is an art form -- don't try to deny it. Why else would Subway call them "Sandwich Artists"? But I digress.

I don't always keep sandwichy things around my house -- after all, lettuce, tomato and other sandwich accoutrement often go bad faster than I can eat them. But seized as I was by a craving the other night, I constructed a pretty tasty sandwich:

Sandwich dominated.

We're talking about some honey-roasted turkey, thick-sliced on toasted nine grain bread with romaine lettuce, swiss cheese, tomato, red onion, and stone-ground maple mustard. The sandwich is pictured here with my signature chipotle-cinnamon baked sweet potato fries (recipe at the bottom of the post).

I have an identical sandwich for lunch today. I combat the all-too-frequent soggifying of the bread by the tomato by ensuring a protecting layer of turkey AND lettuce rests between the bread and tomato.

If you like looking at pictures of sandwiches I have eaten (and why wouldn't you?) hit up some blasts from the Hungry Sam past discussing sandwiches!

• Potbelly's Breakfast Sandwich
• Chicken Salad, Apple, and Cheddar Panini
• Amazing Turkey Club at Lawson's (z"l)
• PB&B&J Awesomeness

And as promised, a recipe:

Chipotle-Cinnamon Baked Sweet Potato Fries

-One sweet potato per person
-Olive oil
-Ground Chipotle Peppers
-Cinnamon
-Salt and Pepper

1) Preheat oven to 425 degrees
2) Using a sharp knife, cut sweet potatoes into wedges. The goal is to cut them into as similar a size as possible so they cook at the same rate.
3) In a large bowl or plastic bag, toss potatoes with olive oil (about 1 tsp/potato), chipotle (about 1/2 tsp/potato or to taste), cinnamon (1 tsp/person), salt and pepper (just eyeball it).  Make sure wedges are coated thoroughly.
4) Grease a baking sheet and spread the wedges out so they're just one layer deep.
5) Bake 30 minutes or until wedges reach desired doneness (crispy, soft, whatever you like). It helps is at some point you flip them.
6) Enjoy!

Chocolate Destruction!

I have...destructive...tendancies. My brothers and I would build then, more importantly, destroy Lego cities; I have a weird unconscious habit of tearing apart my dinner napkins and shredding paper in my hands; and I have the same fascination with knives, axes, fire, and small- to mid- range explosives as do many boys.

Given all this, the thought of a food the preparation of which entails a little physical violence inspires in me no small amount of glee.

Faced with this prospect, I may have overdone the chocolate orange.

I have, for years, seen Ferrara Chocolate Oranges in stores and chocolate shops, yet never have I tried one. So when my parents threw one into my Christmas stocking, I was delighted. Here was chocolate that didn't just benefit from, but straight-up required, the application of directed force.

Yet when the time came, and I slammed it once -- twice -- three times -- four times into surfaces of increasing hardness (wood to granite) -- the orange, wrapped in its foil, barely seemed to feel it.

Then I opened it -- I'd shattered half into tiny slivers and chunks, and maybe half had split into the desired wedges. Good enough!

Coming soon: Marination clarification and pictures/recipe for my family's Christmas Tree Coffee Cake!

Why Marinate? And a Recipe. And News.

UPDATE: Chef friends have added info in the comments section. Check it out!

Before I launch into the purpose and science of marinades, two quick pieces of cool, Hungry Sam-oriented news. One, that only I and perhaps my blogger friends might consider interesting -- I'm getting up to 100 views on a couple of my semi-recent posts. Sweet.

Much more interesting: Someone sent a screenshot of my recent post RE: Candy Cane Tootsie Pops to the good people at Tootsie. Said people emailed me AND ARE SENDING ME SEVERAL BAGS OF THEM. WHAT NOW?!?!?!

This is awesome, wonderful news. (Also SUPER public relations. All my readers should go out and spend money on Tootsie products.)

Anyways, to the point: Marinades.

I'll admit, I have gone back and forth on marinades, particularly for meats. Often, I find it easier, faster, and nearly as good to use a good dry rub or some such. However, having decided the other night that I deserved a steak, I opted to whip up a quick marinade since I had tome on my hands anyways.

First, the recipe: For .6 lbs New York strip, I mixed 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup soy sauce, and pinches each of dried rosemary, garlic, and fresh ground ginger. I seasoned my beef in salt and pepper, threw it in a plastic bag with my marinade, and left it in the fridge for 4 hours, flipping whenever I thought to (maybe 3 times all told).

I grilled my steaks to rare on my Foreman grill, and boy, did they come out beautifully. Savory and well-flavored throughout, they had a perfect caramelized crusting on the exterior. Interior was that just-cooked texture, just-pink coloring that marks (in my opinion) a perfect rare steak.

Now, these particular New York strips had very little marbling of fat, which is often what makes an expensive steak tender, as fat breaks down quickly while cooking. Yet the steaks I cooked had that melt-on-your-tongue-like-a-pat-of-butter tenderness. Why?

The marinade. Chef's know this from experience, but from a chemical perspective, why do marinades tenderize as well as flavor...ize?

Basically, not all connective tissue in meat is created equal -- some breaks down during the cooking process at a faster rate or to a different degree than others. This is why cheap meats are best when cooked for a long time, such as in braising, and more expensive meats tend to have more fat marbled throughout, since fat breaks down VERY quickly when heat is applied. The goal of marinating is to help all the meat break down a little faster, leaving less tough meat remaining when it's cooked fast (as in grilling). Marinades do this by imbuing the meat with enzymes that themselves break down the connective tissue in meat, enzymes such as papain, found in ginger, garlic, papaya, pineapple, etc.

Things to remember when marinating:

• Contact is key -- the smaller the pieces of meat that are marinating, the better able the marinade is at getting in and tenderizing the interior of your meat.


• Marinating breaks down meat -- so don't marinate too long. The more fat (i.e. higher quality) the meat, particularly beef and lamb, the less time, generally speaking, you should marinate.


• Marinating can dry meat out -- so either cook quickly or in liquid after marinating.

Also, as a bonus, I'll tell you that while I'm writing this I'm watching the Patriots crush the Bears while beer-and-mustard braising a beef stew and making fig and walnut biscotti. Yeah Sunday night!

Frying Potatoes, Sustainably

Latke's sizzling away...

Latkes. Delicious, greasy, fried potatoes smothered in sour cream and/or (definitely and) apple sauce. Runs contrary to the Hungry Sam healthy mentality, no? Well, yes, insofar as that mentality is absolute. It's not; treats are an important part of living a healthy lifestyle -- as long as they're infrequent indulgences and not an everyday thing.

But this post isn't about treats, it's about diving, spoons and graters first, into latke making with my ninth grade religious school class last night.

But wait, you ask. What sort of awesome curriculum has room for latke cooking?

The sustainability sort! See, my fellow teachers and I have been teaching our students all about sustainability this semester, how choices can be made to promote a future and a world that can sustain our children and children's children. 

The idea in doing a sustainable cooking program was this: Making the sustainable choice for all of our meals all of the time is hard. But making it SOMETIMES is easy, and doesn't necessarily impact flavor or price of the dish you're making.

Furthermore, cooking is a basic skill that facilitates making sustainable choices. When you're doing the cooking (as opposed to eating out or buying pre-made), you can control the ingredients, you know where they come from, how they've been prepared, what sort of carbon footprint they have, or at least you're more able to determine that information. (There are other good reasons to cook, outlined in Hungry Sam's new "Why Cook? A Guide" page.)

When you don't have a Cuisinart...

So, in order to inject some competition into all of this (of course), I picked up three sets of ingredients: a regular, non-organic set, an organic set, and a farm stand set. My challenge was to buy approximately the same quantities of each set of ingredients for about the same price. I did so -- at least in this case, buying ingredients from a variety of sources didn't need to impact the budget. For their part, three teams of students were to cook the best latkes possible, and our judges (the rabbis and high school program director) were to both select the best-tasting latke and try to guess the ingredients' source.

I have to hand it to them, my guys threw themselves into this, grating, peeling, and frying their way to crispy goodness. Some of our students had solid cooking experience, others had little or none, but the energy was absolutely there -- which of course, as a food enthusiast, I appreciated. These young adults wanted those latkes, and the victory.

In the judging process, our three judges each tried the latkes with their toppings of choice. Only one judge correctly determined the source of the winning batch, the organic latkes, but the judge's decision underscored our very unscientific conclusion: if organic is at all a more sustainable choice, it doesn't need to mean a more expensive or less tasty latke.

A photograph of the winning latkes, one which CERTAINLY fails to do them justice:

The "recipe" we used:
-Some amount of potatoes, like 2 lbs.-ish
-Half an onion
-An eggs worth of egg whites
-Two pinches of flour

Mix, make little latke patties, squish 'em flat and dry, then fry.

Delicious.

Falafel: Wicked Good

Allow me to talk to you about falafel.

Photo: Flickr CC/yummyporky

No, I’m not just doing it so Liz adds me to a list of Israeli resources she is compiling. Though that would be sweet as well.

I’m doing it because falafel is wicked good. I will elaborate.

As a lover of food, I form, at times, vivid, powerful memories of standout meals –whether exceptionally good or superbly bad. What’s interesting about falafel is that I think I’ve experienced falafel meals that have fallen into both categories. Truly excellent falafel is a thing of beauty, a fast-food delicacy the likes of which lifts my soul to soaring heights – and bad falafel is worse than ovoid bricks.

Before I dive into my feelings for falafel, I should note that this is one dish I’ve never before prepared myself. Maybe it’s fear, a gripping fear of disillusionment that I could never create falafel that brings tears to mine own eyes. Maybe I feel part of the magic is building a sandwich in a shop or at a stand. Maybe it’s laziness. Could go any which way. Regardless, I am drawing upon my several and varied experiences with the dish in this discussion.

First: What is Falafel?

Falafel is a fried ball of chickpeas or fava beans with spices. It is frequently served in a pita pocket and topped with various salads, relishes, pickles, and sauces, including (but CERTAINLY not limited to) hummus and tahini (sesame seed paste). These toppings are frequently presented buffet style such that you receive your falafel and pita at the counter and it is up to you to stuff as much as possible in alongside. Many consider the toppings so essential to the experience that falafel as a term may also refer to the falafel balls, pita, and toppings in totality.

Falafel is a traditional and well-loved Middle-Eastern dish. It is so well-loved, such an emotional trigger for so many that Lebanon recently sued Israel over it. Yes. Really.

(At least they're just suing...)

What Hungry Sam likes in Falafel:

• A crisp exterior;
• A moist – but fully cooked – interior;
• A proper balance of spices such that the toppings are a complement but not completely necessary to the enjoyment of the falafel balls;
• Fresh Pita;
• Basic toppings – cucumber-and-tomato salad, tahini, hummus, red peppers, baba gannouj, dill pickles;
• Exotic toppings – pickled beets, spicy sesame sauce, leeks.

What Hungry Sam really, really dislikes in falafel (or, all the stuff that can go wrong with a Falafel Sandwich);

• Non-coherent falafel balls;
• Over-spiced falafel balls;
• Under-spiced, bland falafel balls;
• Poorly shaped falafel balls – I feel the closer to perfectly spheroid the harder they are to bite into;
• Dry falafel balls (actually the worst thing that can happen to a falafel sandwich. Ugh.);
• Dry/crumbling Pita – without the ability to truly stuff the pocket, how can you enjoy the whole experience?
• Insufficient variety or quality of toppings.

As you can see from these lists, a lot can go wrong and much must go right for me to be truly enjoying my falafel. I will now briefly tell of the three best falafel experiences of my life. In descending order:

3. Silly's Restaurant, Portland, ME

Silly's, a bizarre, "crunchy," avante-garde sort of restaurant back home breaks my mold a little by serving their falafels in a (truly enormous) wrap, pre-dressed and replete with a number of my key toppings. This rebellious attitude toward falafel (an attitude, I should note, which carries over to the rest of their menu items, like "hobo pie," which is a taco mountain made entirely from scratch) is validated with the excellence of the falafel balls themselves. In a town known better for crustaceans, Silly's is shining star of suberb falafel -- and pretty much everything else. Worth a visit. Worth a lfietime. (Maine joke.)

2. One night at Amsterdam Falafel in Adams Morgan, DC with Kate and Rachel

It's not that the falafel is perfect, but it is the best approximation of the Platonic Ideal of falafel shops that I've found in America (Maoz comes close) -- the falafel balls are well formed and spiced and the options for toppings are quite broad. Also, eating them outside on some folding chairs , talking to the drunken bongo player behind us and looking at the ridiculous people wandering Adams Morgan at 11 PM on a Sat night with my friends greatly enhanced the evening.

1. That Little Shop in Tsfat, Israel at the Top of the Stone Steps

Woah. What a flashbulb memory. This was now two years ago, and the perfection of the first full, complex bite of crispy, moist, and flavorful falafel with french fries, cucumber-and-tomato salad, hummus and tahini remains powerful. I cannot give this memory full justice. The ancient, hewn stone steps and walls, the crisp smell of fresh, Middle Eastern breeze, and Tsfat's fusion of old rabbinic life and new artist colony vibe only drew me further into this amazing snack.

Incredible.