School Breakfast and Lunch

This is what my kids at Seneca Center had for breakfast today. Homemade Orange Marmalade Buttermilk Pancakes, Saggs Chicken Apple Sausages, and fresh warm fruit.

As many of you know, I have been working with the Slow Food folks on the School Lunch Initiative and awareness about this upcoming legislation coming before Congress in March this year. I guess you could say, it has become my passion to get all of my friends, family and acquaintances to lobby Congress that we need change across the board in school food. A move to healthier, more localised food....prepared daily for our kids by people like me who care.

It boggles my mind when I think of the slop my Husband Troy's daughter is served at school in Benicia. This is one of the Bay's wealthiest suburbs....lovely waterfront homes, a historic downtown and a safe town to raise your kid in with highly acclaimed schools. But what do they have for lunch? Steamed hamburgers out of wrappers. Soggy deep fried stuff. Canned fruit and vegetables or when the fruit is fresh....it has been sitting around for a very long time.

Why? Well like many school districts around the state of California and our great country...it is because we spend less per week on our kid's school food than we do FOR A SINGLE VENTI LATTE at Peet's.

Yes.......you heard me correctly. We spend less than $5 a week per child for breakfast and lunch for our kids. No wonder today's children are stressed, unhealthy, and hard to control! They have no nutrients in their little bodies to run them and their minds efficiently!!! This is not rocket science folks! What we put in.....we get out. We are creating an unhealthy future for our children and habits that will put them in the running to die before we do (for the first time in history). 1 in 5 children in this generation will have insulin dependant diabetes by the time they are 15. If you know any one with diabetes....you know that they can lose mobility, eye sight, and in the worse cases, people with uncontrolled diabetes can lose their limbs! Did you know that people with diabetes cannot get life insurance? Did you know that people with diabetes pay higher medical premiums? Did you know that automatically, many MDs will put people who have diabetes on blood pressure and cholesterol meds too? Did you know that all this medicine and the things that go with it can cost upwards of $200 a month?

Yes.......I have first hand experience. My sweet husband Troy is diabetic. He has learned about the damage to his body all too late. I know what this horrific disease can do and it is the food that we are choosing and the food that our government is choosing to feed our children everyday that is creating this epidemic.

But it can be stopped. WE can stop it. YOU can stop it!!! Demand from Congress that our schools get just $1 a day more for each student for nutritious, healthy, local, largely organic and sustainable food. Just a dollar a day more, can change everything.

It is up to you and me. If you would like to join me in lobbying Congress for just a dollar more for our kids.....for good, clean and fair food for everyone. Please click on the link below and let your voice be heard!

http://capwiz.com/ffff/utr/1/JGZUMAABWG/JUPUMAALPC/4652622756

Home Grown and Cherishing Simple Pleasures

This has been a time of growth for our family.  We have had to let go of a home, realize that serious illness can strike a healthy person at any time...and learn to go on, making difficult decisions along the way.  We have moved, stood by while a young man got shot dead by a machine gun in our new neighborhood a result of senseless gang violence.  We have watched our friends face hard decisions, leave relationships and friends, move away and have hardship with their businesses. These have all been obvious areas of difficulty.  

But with the bad, also comes good.  We still have our jobs, each other, a nice roof over our heads, great local food to eat and our youngest daughter starts kindergarten at a great school in two weeks and my niece starts law school.  We have made many new friends, helped to spread the word about supporting our local economy and farms, we have volunteered at the Edible Schoolyard and other Slow Food events, we have planted our own garden and are starting to reap the rewards of it all.

This weekend, we picked so many cherry tomatoes, we decided to can some.  I haven't really done much canning in my culinary career, but like so many people have come to lately, in these challenging times, I find comfort in the ways of my Mother and her Mother before her.  These things ignite my sense memory and bring my cherished deceased loved ones close again in my heart and mind.  

So Lucia and I halved tomatoes, chopped garlic and decided to take our very favorite tomato recipe, and can them so that we have the chance to savor the sweetness of summer when it is cold and wintry outside.  Below you will find the recipe for these Slow Roasted Tomatoes.  They are amazing.  Served with softly scrambled eggs and basil for breakfast or to top lightly toasted Acme baguettes spread with a mild goat cheese and a glass of wine.  I have had this for dinner more times lately than I can tell you, and I still never tire of the concentrated tomato sweetness.

Slow Roasted Tomatoes

2 pints of tomatoes, cherry or Roma work best

2 cloves of garlic

good olive oil

sea salt

Herbs de Provence

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. 

Coat a cookie sheet lightly with olive oil.

Slice the tomatoes in half and place on the cookie sheet cut side down, close together.

Smash the garlic with a chef's knife, and chop finely.

Sprinkle the garlic over the tomatoes and then with the olive oil.

Season with sea salt and herbs de provence to taste.

Roast in the oven 45 minutes or until tomatoes have shriveled slightly and  about half the size.

Remove from the oven and put the roasted tomatoes, garlic, oil and all the juice into a covered 

   container in the refrigerator.

Will keep about a week, but I guarantee that these wont last that long!

Back to San Francisco Values!

Good Sunday Morning!

A sunny morning here in the North Bay following a cool night. Perfect weather for many winter crops. As my almost three year old watches "toons" on NOGGIN, I drink my Costa Riccan coffee and reflect on the events of this quickly waning year.

In April this year, we moved our little family back to the Bay from Arizona, where two years ago, we thought the grass might be cheaper (if not greener!) with a new home and a new start.

We were on the edge of a dot com layoff, the birth of our daughter, and the deaths of both of my parents. It felt like the world as we knew it was caving in and we needed a fresh start. Life in Arizona was like living in the old wild west, with lots of silicone and spray on tans thrown in.....being from the culturally diverse Bay Area, we soon found it wasn't for us no matter how nice the new house was!

So we traded our new dream home and affordable mortgage in Arizona for our nearly hundred year old, everything needs updating or repair, double the price, city home here in the North Bay. But we are counting our blessings and embracing the San Francisco Values that we took for granted before!

I am overwhelmed as I look around at the cracked plaster, the old carpet, the 50's ugly brown and green electric kitchen and two bath house with no insulation and only one toilet that works, the plumbing that is largely cast iron and the non-grounded two to a room electrical outlets and wonder how we will ever afford to do all this....but somehow, we will. We are not newbies to old houses after all.

And for a Chef to have to deal with an electric stove and just one outlet in the kitchen is a real experiment in patience! I unplug the microwave who's main function is to heat my daughter's "gok-o-witz" (chocolate milk) in the morning...to plug in the coffee maker (a real must for a 5am daily rise) and unplug that to plug in my fancy toaster! Never mind that I have a garbage disposal but no under sink electric to support it.....and even if I did, do I really want to risk adding to the sludge coating the cast iron pipes before we can afford to re-pipe?

As Thanksgiving is past, I am starting to think about the nightmare of trying to do my annual holiday bake with such an arrangement....but somehow, I will manage....I always do. I close my eyes and remember my dual fuel range that I gave up with our new home; and wonder if I will live to regret leaving it. Will my Quarsemali, Christmas Crescents, Date Pinwheels, Mincemeat Stars, Sprtiz and Giandulia Truffles be edible if forged from only electricity? I will let you know.

Every week here, I will update you on seasonal recipes, menus and food related goings on in the Bay Area and Napa Valley. I will also include one or more recipes and will welcome feedback about your thoughts and recipe results. I am also happy to post benefits and happenings for you.

One of my real fortes is to research and find great ingredients and really, I attribute that skill to much of my success in all things culinary. I use mainly organic ingredients and local products whenever possible and will site these products by name and places they have been available to me.

Date Pinwheels

Date Filling:
1# pitted and chopped dates
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup walnuts, finely chopped

Cook and stir first three ingredients until boiling and thickened slightly. Cool, stir in walnuts.

Cookie Dough:
1/2 cup butter, unsalted, slightly softened
1/2 cup brown Sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar, superfine
2 cups all purposed flour, sifted
1 whole egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt

Cream together butter and both sugars. Add egg and vanilla, beating well. Sift together flour and salt and stir into creamed mixture. Chill well.
Divide dough in half.

On a lightly floured surface, roll one part of the dough into 12x8" rectangle, about 1/4" thick. Spread half of the cooled date filling over the surface, being patient and careful not to tear the dough....it is helpful to use your clean fingers.
Beginning at the long edge, roll up like a jelly roll. Wrap in waxed paper and chill in freezer overnight. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.

Slice each chilled roll into 1/4" thick slices. Bake on greased cookie sheet for 8 minutes at 400 degrees. Cool cookies on a wire rack and store in a tightly lidded tin or cookie jar.

Makes 5 dozen cookies