Alice Waters - Chez Panisse Vegetables

I was up in Berkeley this weekend after a great lunch at Zachary's Deep dish pizza. This post could easily be about how perfect the asparagus and red peppers and garlic deep dish pizza was. It could be about how this is my favourite pizza place in the world. Or how fresh the tomato sauce is. But it's not.

It's about the bookstore next door that B and I wandered into. I couldnt stop looking at the shelves of (vegetable) cookbooks. Of course I happened upon Alice Waters' series of books, my favourite chef of my favourite restaurant in the bay area, Chez Panisse.

I couldn't put any of the books down so I ended up walking out with the Vegetables book. Then I saw The Art of Simple Food and A platter of Figs. Exerting a little bit of self control I left the store before I went broke.

I'm so excited about this vegetable cookbook!! Recipes/chapters are indexed by vegetables. Alice goes through a little background about the vegetable, how to pick out what's good, what to do with it early in the season, late in the season, how to best prepare it if it's large or small, thin, thick, etc.

I'm going to try out the Butternut Squash Pizza, Sauteed Kale with Garlic and Vinegar and the Chard Stem Gratin this week.

Advice for Food

I finished reading In Defense of Food on the flight to NYC yesterday. It was very well written and the points were well executed. I wanted to share the advice of the book on how to escape the western diet. They're such common sense that we all know but don't do. Hopefully you'll find them useful as well. For elaboration on these, you'll have to buy the book or borrow it from me :)

1. Just eat food
- Avoid food products containing ingredients that are:
a) Unfamiliar
b) Unpronounceable
c) More than 5 in number or that include
d) High Fructose Corn Syrup

2. Avoid food products that make health claims (and thus has packaging)

3. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket (where the veggies and meats are) and avoid the middle section.

4. Get out of the supermarket - try the farmers market.

5. Eat Mostly Plant - from healthy soils (organic)

6. Remember that you are what you eat eats too. (Look for pastured not necessarily free range chickens or 100% grass fed cattle)

7. Eat well grown food from healthy soils (organic, whole foods)

8. Be the kind of person who takes supplements (but don't take them)

9. Don't eat anything that your great grandmother wouldn't recognize.

10. Pay more - eat less. (Pay more for higher quality, organic, whole foods)

11. Eat Meals - with people not alone - at a table

12. Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does

13. Eat slowly (it takes 20 min for your body to tell your brain that you're full)

14. Cook and if you can, plant a garden