More Farmer's Market Veggies!

I went to my local farmer's market again today.  Sure, I have to get up early on a Saturday morning, but it's so worth it!  I have become a bit of a veggie snob.  The drab, supermarket veggies that have been picked green and ripened on the back of a truck and shipped across the country, coated in a film of petroleum (even the organic ones) do nothing for me now.  I have come to realize that fresh veggies that have been picked ripe and eaten within a few days are far superior!  Not just in taste but in texture.  They snap, they crisp, they have bite, etc.


Anyway, since I'm spoiled I went out again today.  Here's what I got:
Kale, fava beans, broccoli, an English cucumber, purple green onions, asparagus, strawberries, hydroponic escarole, spinach, herb plants, lamb chops, local, free-range eggs, and shrimp.

Look how beautiful these shrimp are!  (...and only $7 for all of these shrimp.)

I have never seen purple green onions like these before but they looked interesting.  I tried them when I got home and they have a delicate, sweet taste.

No hot cross bun today for Ted  (hmm... that could be a good band name couldn't it?  "No Hot Cross Buns for Ted".)   However, the bread lady had homemade Granny Smith apple and pecan muffins so I got him one.  The bread lady said she would make us some hot cross buns if we wanted to buy at least a dozen.  When I got home and told this to Ted, his eyes lit up and he nodded vehemently.  I guess we're getting a dozen hot cross buns next week!

The farmer's market has transformed the whole shopping/cooking experience for me.  It used to be a chore to plan out the week's menus, make a list, then go to the store and try to find everything.  Now, I have no list!  I just go and see what they have and what looks good.  Then, I decide what to make with it when I get home.  It makes the process much more enjoyable and creative.  Here's a salad, that I threw together from the things I bought today, to have with lunch:

It has strawberries, spinach, mixed lettuce, parsley, pecans, lemon juice, and olive oil.  A little weird I know, but it was delicious!

So here is my garden-to-be.  I bought some basil, English thyme, and oregano plants.  Hopefully, I won't kill them and they will be the start of my herb/veggie garden.  We'll see. 

Jamie Oliver is a super cool dude!

Last night, I watched the sneak preview to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.  This famous, British, "Naked Chef" is trying to educate America about what we're feeding our kids.  I would encourage everyone to watch it (the 2-hour premier is this Friday).

School lunch just is not the same as it was when I and my fellow genXers were in school.  Rarely does anything actually get cooked in the cafeteria.  I remember having some kind of meat with some kind of vegetables every day when I was a kid at school.  Also, they used to make the bread and we had a salad bar option.  Not so now!  As a teacher, I see all the junk that passes for school lunch around here.  Kids are being given pizza, nachos, hamburgers, or hotdogs almost EVERY day!  They count ketchup as a vegetable!  Also, too much starch is put on there.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen chicken nuggets with mashed potatoes AND french fries on the plates.  (They count potato as a vegetable, apparently.)  This is wrong!  If I were a parent, I would raise hell about this with the school board and I certainly would  not sign my child up for the school lunch plan!  As a school, we should be educating the kids about what they should be eating.  We should not be programming them to think that junk food is okay to be eaten every day.   

Unfortunately, we have allowed the food lobbyists and big agri-business to hi-jack our health.  Jamie is trying to point how exactly how bad processed food is for us.  He makes a good point about how most people laugh and say, "yeah, I know this food is bad" and act like it's no big deal.  But when confronted with the fact that they are killing their children (taking as much as 14 years off their lives), suddenly it becomes much more serious for them.  There are so many scary chemicals added to processed food these days....and we're giving it to kids!

Jamie has already done a show like this in England.  In it, he proved that school lunches COULD be made from fresh, healthy ingredients and cost the same as the junk!  (In some cases, the healthy food actually cost less.)  The sad thing is that a lot of the schools in England couldn't start serving the healthy food because of contracts they had with the food companies.  I fear that in America, the deals with the devil...I mean food companies....will be even more restrictive.  Still, I love what Jamie is trying to do here.

The "S" Rule

Lately I've been taken with the idea of eating awesomely delicious food while maintaining health and a healthy weight.  To this end, I came across a good tip today.

The "S" Rule:
No Snacks, no Seconds, and no Sweets; except for days that begin with "S".

This way, you can still enjoy them, but not every day.  I'm going to add this rule to my life.  Except for the snack part because I have found that I HAVE to have a mid-morning snack or else I totally pig out at lunch.  (A handful of nuts usually does the trick!)

Another good tip I found is to limit "treat foods" (and we all know what they are:  chips, fries, cookies, cakes, ice-cream, etc).  America has the highest amount of processed food in the world.  We also have the highest obesity rate in the world.  Do you think this is a coincidence?  I don't!  The food companies have turned special "treat foods" into everyday foods.  It used to be that in order to have fried chicken, cake, or ice-cream, you had to spend a lot of time to make it so people only had these foods for special occasions.  Now, you can snarf them on your way to work or any time of the day or night!

If you want to have a "treat food", make sure that only have those that you make yourself (and I don't mean from a mix).  This will help to limit your consumption of them (and also limit your waist line).  It's a pain to make these things from scratch so you won't want to  do it everyday.  Also, the treat will be healthier because it won't contain all the horrible chemicals that food companies add in order to prolong shelf-life (they don't do anything good for your body).  If it's your birthday, and you don't want to cook, make sure your treat is made by a person (like a good chef) and not from a corporation's assembly line.  Not only will it contain less harmful chemicals, it will taste SO much better!

Do any of you out there have any good tips that you are willing to share?