Posts Tagged ‘cooking’

TEDxCLE…Cooking makes us human

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

I have to preface these post with a shout out:  the images are from Kyle Roth, a local photographer who does beautiful work and who is a big champion of Cleveland, be sure to read his blog at North Coast Lifestyle and Epstein Design Partners.

Michael Ruhlman is an author and culinary grad. As he stood on the stage and talked, I found myself nodding. He spoke about food and cooking. I can tell you from personally experience that most people do not know what most veggies are, or how they are raised. We are becoming farther detached from our food. He gave us a great talk about food and how cooking are what makes us human.. He quoted from Richard Wrangham’s book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Taking us from our food preparation has made us more separate and more unhealthy. He spoke about how we feed our livestock foods that they were never meant to eat. Furthermore, social problems and illness are on the rise as more of our food is processed and provided to us. Cooking makes us think about what we are eating. It takes effort, which brings families together. When you cook, you look for better ingredients and you learn more about what you are eating and how to make your life better.


Michael Ruhlman is so passionate that he helped to start North Union Farmer’s Market, which has grown to one of the top farmers markets in the region, with multiple locations around the city.  He showed us slides of some local producers.  Local farms that are doing good things by raising humanely produced pigs that are well treated and humanely slaughtered.   Local food is making a comeback because we are starting to learn that cooking makes us better, and not cooking takes stuff away from our lives.  We can change things now, simply by taking the time and effort to cook for ourselves and our family. One of the things he mentioned was voting with our dollars. When we buy raw ingredients and cook, we spend our money in support of those who are promoting this industry. On the other hand, those who do spent money on crap are voting for more crap.  So what do you want to vote for?  And take the time to pick up a pan, rather than McDonald’s for dinner.

image courtesy of Susie Sharp

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Posted in Arts & Culture, Cleveland, Green | 1 Comment »

Foodies for kids…Koodies!

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

I was just turned on to a new website.  It is called Koodies.  Koodies is a play on kids and foodies and it is the brainchild of Supermarket Guru Phil Lambert.  Lambert was realizing that as the world seems to be spinning faster, less and less parents are cooking at home.  When they do cook, they have less time to include the kids.  The result is that even less children are learning how to cook.

What’s the big deal?  We are already a nation that has a huge problem with childhood obesity and diabetes.  Not knowing what is in the foods that we eat is part of this issue.   So kids (and many of their parents), do not understand that a McDonald’s lunch has between 30 and 50 grams of fat.  Hell, many do not realize that you need to even worry about how much fat we consume.  We also have very little connection to the food that we eat.  People do not realize how food is grown, what it takes to produce it, and how tenuous our system is.  Without our connection to the products that we consume, how can we expect anyone to care about changing the system.

So enter Phil Lambert and his new interactive community called Koodies.  Loaded with videos like “Harry Makes Alfredo Sauce” and “Simple Fruit Tart.”  You can share recipes, see pictures of food and other kids, and learn about things like kumquats.  You can even win an iPod nano.  This is an interactive community so you can not just learn from experts, but also from other parents and kids.  This is a chance for you to teach and learn with your kids.  Lambert realizes that the kids of today are the consumers of tomorrow.  In order to make the next generation less dependent on restaurants and more reliant on themselves, and to keep the art of cooking at home alive, we need to engage children now.  I encourage you to all check it out and see how you can make a connection with your kids (or even your grandkids).

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Posted in Arts & Culture, Grocery Stores | 2 Comments »

100 ways to save energy-Part 6

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

This information is reprinted from a booklet called “100+ Ways To Improve Your Electric Bill.” These simple, low- or no-cost tips can assist you in making your energy decisions and in gaining greater control over your electric bill. By following these tips, you also will improve the comfort and convenience of your home. And you’ll help to protect the environment by using energy wisely. Compiled by the Edison Electric Institute 2008© Washington, D. C. www.eei.org

COOKING

Range Tops

To cook efficiently, heat must be trans-ferred from the electric cooking element to the food with minimum loss to the surroundings. To help do this, select pots and pans with absolutely flat bottoms. Spherical bottoms leave an air gap that provides a ready escape route for heat.

Expand your family’s menus to include stews and other single-dish meals that can be prepared in a slow cooker. Such meals require far less energy than those calling for the simultaneous use of the oven plus two or three surface units.

Develop the habit of “lids-on” cooking. Tightly fitted lids help keep heat within pots and pans, permitting the use of lower temperature settings and shorter cooking times.

Reflector pans beneath stovetop-heating elements should be kept bright and clean. Shiny pans help focus heat rays on utensil bottoms; dull or soiled pans absorb heat wastefully.

Begin cooking on highest heat until liquid begins to boil. Then lower the heat control setting and allow food to simmer until fully cooked.

Ovens

Use your microwave oven whenever possible. Microwave ovens draw less than half the power of their conventional counterparts and cook for a much shorter period of time. For example, an item that needs to be cooked in a full-sized oven at 3500 F for one hour will take only 15 minutes to cook in a microwave on the “high” setting.

Rather than using the oven for preparing small quantities of food, consider cooking in small portable electric appliances such as a frying pan, grill, or toaster oven. On average, these use only about one-third of the electric power of an oven broiler.

When operating an electric oven, at-tempt to cook as much of the meal in it at one time as possible. Foods with different cooking temperatures can often be cooked simultaneously at one temperature—variations of 25 degrees in either direction still produce good results and save energy.

When preheating an oven for baking, time the preheat period carefully. Five to eight minutes should be sufficient. There is no need to preheat for broiling or roasting.

Rearrange oven shelves before turning the oven on. To do this after the oven has preheated not only allows wasteful escape of heat but poses a burn hazard as well.

When roasting or baking, avoid making frequent progress checks that entail opening the oven door. Each time the door is opened, a considerable portion of the oven’s heat escapes.

Energy You’ll Save: Using a microwave oven can reduce your energy used for cooking by more than 50 percent.

Activate the self-cleaning cycle on an electric oven only for major cleaning jobs. Wipe up minor spills and splatters with a damp cloth. When self-cleaning is neces-sary, start the cycle right after cooking, while the oven is still hot, or wait until late evening hours when use of electricity is lowest.

Never use an open electric oven as a room heater or as a source of warm air for drying rain-dampened outerwear. If the kitchen is furnished with the type of refrigerator or freezer that exhausts warm air through a front floor-level grille, damp shoes can be dried quite nicely and at no extra energy cost by placing them on the floor near the grille.

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