Froot Loops for Smart People Making Smart Choices

A food industry group is putting a "smart choice" label on foods like Froot Loops.

I'm speechless.

Some random quotes from the NYTimes article:

[T]he program’s criteria were based on government dietary guidelines and widely accepted nutritional standards.

“Froot Loops is an excellent source of many essential vitamins and minerals and it is also a good source of fiber with only 12 grams of sugar."

“small amounts of sugar” added to nutrient-dense foods like breakfast cereals can make them taste better. That, in theory, will encourage people to eat more of them, which would increase the nutrients in their diet.

One more reason to be suspicious of all government nutritional standards, and, in many cases, nutritionists.

Queens County Farm Museum Campout

This looks like a lot of fun...

BBQ, beer, bloody marys.... on a NYC farm.

Perfect Pie

While we were up in the Catskills, I had the experience of making as close to a perfect pie as I have ever made.

There were apple trees all over the place, but we didn't pay attention to them at first, because the apples were mostly small, gnarled little crabs. But one day I saw one on the ground that looked smooth and big. I picked it up and took a bite out of it. It was PERFECT.

We gathered a bunch. It turned out about half of them were inedibly sour and bitter, but most were merely eye-cinchingly tart. So I made a pie with these sour little buggers. It made me think that the distinction between "baking" apples and "eating" apples may have once carried much more weight than it does now. Because sour-ish apples mixed with a cup of sugar yields a perfectly tart, sweet pie.

Then, because it was summer and I had nothing else to do, I made a crust using the most neurotic, perfectionist, type-A recipe for pie crust I have ever heard of. It involved Zip-loc bags, and refrigerating bowls and flour, and freezing part of the butter, and apple cider vinegar. It's hard for me to follow these kinds of recipes, but I forced myself to pay attention. Wow was it worth it.

I know you can get away with a lot less effort and still get a great pie, but this was pretty perfect.

Fig Surprise

I came back to Brooklyn to find the most amazing surprise: a dish of figs on the kitchen table, from our backyard tree.

I once said I would move to California if it meant I could have a fig tree. Then I found out you could grow them in Brooklyn, and, most improbably and idealistically, planted one smack in the middle of my tiny sliver of shady backyard. The kind of fig tree we have likes to sprawl and take over a sizeable portion of land as it bakes in many brutal hours of sunshine. We had no space, and lots of shade. Hmm.

But I kept pruning the tree, and showing it its one narrow pathway up high into the sunny sky. Through the years our neighbors kept trimming back their centuries-old tree that canopies out backyard, and this summer -- lo and behold, after six years of mid-summer shriveled baby figs -- our six-year-old tree suddenly figured out how to bring its babes to late summer maturity. Lots of them.

I scarfed down the three figs my husband had picked. Then today, I pulled over a ladder and picked a handful more. My daughter joined in, pointing out figs I hadn't seen, and insisting on getting to pick some of her own.

Chickens on a barge? Yeah, whatever. I've got figs in my part-shade Brooklyn backyard. I am in heaven over this.

Breakfast Pastoral

We're up in the Catskills now in a friend's bungalow. Sullivan County is farmland, and I followed my friend Nicole's half-remembered advice (by me-- a lot of wine that night she told me about it) to a stunning farm stand. The purple cabbage almost sent me into fits. (The price, too, but that was another kind of fit). It was this deep, lusciously ultra-saturated purple.


We got eggs there, a beautiful variety of brown, speckled and bluish eggs. The eggs scrambled up so beautifully-- a deep orange color that shocked even my kids. The scrambled eggs were delicious, with homemade whole wheat bread, sliced local peaches, and coffee. Okay, the coffee wasn't local and neither was the raspberry jam. But I was still in hog heaven eating this beautiful summery farm country breakfast.

Brooklyn Pastoral

Who says you need to leave the city to get some farmy time?

Cool Meal: Vietnamese

On these sultry days there is almost nothing better than Vietnamese food, which not even counting the extreme air-conditioning, was made for hot humid weather.

We went down to Nha Trang Palace in the Brooklyn's Chinatown the other day, for a fix of summer rolls, spring rolls, bun cha (those great platters of vermicelli noodles with some kind of meat or shrimp, basil and mint, and lettuce leaves) and one of my all-time favorites, pho. AND Vietnamese coffee. A perfect summer meal.

School Garden-apalooza

Our school's garden made amazing progress this year -- basically went from concrete slabs to a little jungle of peas, lettuce, squash, tomatoes of every color, broom corn, bamboo, basil, mint, and more.

Unfortunately, it was so blazingly hot and humid when I visited today that I neglected to get a full picture of the Jurassic park situation that has erupted in this concrete alley.

We'll have to make do with these pictures of ecstatically-picked micro carrots (the next trend?) and my kids' efforts to climb over the enthusiastic squash vines.





The best part was, as my guide Mirem explained to me, that the teachers and the principal are involved. "Pre-K did this section... this is a three-sisters box [squash, corn, beans-- a native american symbiotic gardening concept -- to be used in the 4th grade Native American curriculum]... the afterschool program did the peas...." It was incredible, and only the first year.

Grilled Cheese Croutons....

... on a poached egg salad... This is an all around good thing.

A highly sustainable, ecologically minded meal, as well, since I cut the crusts -- which probably would have gone to waste but are delicious to me -- off my daughter's grilled cheese and used those.

I will indeed make this for the rest of my life.

Bittman Again

I thought I was over my Bittman phase, but he's written one of his grand round-ups, and, get out the scissors, it's a clipper. 101 Simple Salads in today's dining section may blow your mind, or at least may relegate your current favorite standards to the back shelf in the fridge.

Here are a few, randomly considered:

#29 Cherries gently steeped in in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, then tossed with chopped radicchio or endive and toasted hazelnuts.

#48 Chopped dandelion greens with chopped preserved lemons, chickpeas, feta and olive oil. (I'm having that one tonight.)

# 82 Crisp pancetta and carmelized onions tossed with chopped bitter greens, toasted pine nuts and halved cherry tomatoes.

#76 Sliced fresh figs with crumbled bacon, balasamic vinegar and crumbled blue cheese. (If my fig tree produces this year, which it looks like it might, we'll be having this every night)

He even has a hot dog salad: #78 Sliced grilled dog with tomato wedges, chopped pickles hot peppers and shredded lettuce, dressed with a mustard vinaigrette.

I'm not so sure about the hot dog one, but #44 suggests making a grilled cheese, letting it cool and cutting it into croutons for use on any salad. "This," he says, "you will do forever." I believe him, and I have a grim vision of the rejected grilled cheeses I've let go to waste in recent months as my kids have alternately toyed with their appreciation for the grilled cheese.

There are countless salads in here that will find as they say in the dog world, forever homes with all of us. Good girls, come to mama. Thank you, Mark Bittman.