Introducing the Burgeriest (soy-free, gluten-free, vegan) homemade Veggie Burger

For some time, friends and readers have been asking me to share a recipe for a good, easy to make, homemade veggie burger.  And so my New Year’s Resolution this year was to make good on my promises to do so. (Besides, it’s a heck of a lot easier than losing weight.)

As it turns out, there’s a lot of dissatisfaction out there with the available options.  Most commercial offerings have gluten or soy; ingredients which many people avoid by choice or necessity.  And most recipes for homemade versions are incredibly time-consuming, multi-step ordeals; I still have nightmares about the 2-hour Shutter’s veggie burger project I took on two summers ago that involved cooking brown rice from scratch (45 minutes), cooking beets from scratch (1 hour), and mixing them with a laundry list of hard-to-find-GF-versions-of  pantry items* to produce a delicious but exhausting veggie burger.  Then there was that Martha Stewart Chickpea burger that tasted suspiciously similar to falafel.  (Tasty…but if I had wanted falafel, I would have just made falafel…).  I had all but given up on finding a tasty, easy homemade burgery veggie burger until the most recent article in a recent New York Times series on the safety (or lack thereof) of ground beef sold in America provided the second wind I needed to find a delicious, easy, healthful ground beefless recipe for my dear readers to make at home.

Resolved: Eat Less Red Meat in 2010

Even if you’re not a vegetarian, swapping out a beefy burger for a meatless one every so often will do you good– and help you make good on those New Year’s Resolutions to start eating more healthily.  In a landmark study of over 550,000 people aged 50-71 years (that’s crazy huge, by the way) by Sinha et al published in March, 2009 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers followed subjects for 10 years to determine how various dietary factors contributed to mortality. They controlled for all sorts of factors, including race, smoking, alcohol use, weight, exercise habits, vitamin use and multiple dietary habits.  And they found that men and women who ate more red meat were  31% and 36%, respectively, more likely to die for any reason during the 10 year period when compared to people to ate the least red meat. Cancer was the leading cause of mortality, followed by cardiovascular disease.  On average, the group with the lowest red meat consumption ate only about 1/3 of an ounce per 1,000 calories in their diet, compared with the highest meat consumption group, which ate about 2.5 oz red meat per 1,000 calories in their diet.  In other words, in a typical 2,000 calorie diet, the lowest-risk group ate less than 1 oz red meat per day on average (~4.5 oz per week), versus the highest risk group who ate about 5oz per day (~17 oz per week).  The results were statistically significant for trend, meaning that even reducing red meat consumption somewhat from the highest level (without going as low as the lowest-intake level) was still associated with a reduced risk of death.

The bottom line: swapping out one average beef burger a week with a meatless version brings you 3-6oz closer to the group whose dietary habits have been associated with the lowest risk of death within 10 years. And what better New Year’s Resolution than to live past New Year’s 2020?

The Best Homemade Veggie Burger Recipe

And so, after countless veggie burger experiments, spanning several years and multiple genres, I’m pleased to point you in the direction of Mollie Katzen’s Lentil-Walnut Burger. I know what you’re thinking when you hear “lentil-walnut.”  You’re thinking about long-

Two Lentil Walnut burgers on a (gluten-free) bun

haired tree huggers.  70’s style health food stores that smell like vitamins. Hemp, bean sprouts and Birkenstocks.   But do try to keep an open mind.  Mollie loves food, and she knows food.  As such, this burger tastes nothing of lentils or walnuts; it’s greater than the sum of its parts.  The batter has a similar texture and appearance to ground beef–it looks like a beef burger when cooking and when cooked.  Not in the creepy Boca Burger way, but in a ‘it definitely feels burgery rather than bean-pattyish’ way.   The burgers have that same savory, umami flavor profile of a beef burger–delivered by the cider vinegar and mushrooms?–rather than the more bean-and-vegetably flavor typical of a veggie burger.  And you can make the whole batter in the time it takes to cook lentils: 30 minutes flat.  (If I may offer a tip: mash the cooked lentils with your hands–squeeze ‘em real good until they’re totally mush.  It helps make a very coherent batter.) So give this tie-dyed, hippie burger a chance, will you?

To make Mollie’s recipe gluten-free you have several options instead of the bread crumbs/wheat germ/oats she calls for:

1. Use gluten free breadcrumbs, like Gillian’s, Hol-Grain, or Glutino
2. Use gluten-free oats, like Bob’s Red Mill
3. Use the Quinoa Flakes you have leftover from making my gluten-free Quatzoh Balls (of course this will make the recipe more hippie than it is already)
   
4. Make your own gluten-free breadcrumbs by toasting your favorite frozen gluten-free waffle and tossing it in a food processor (Click here for instructions from the clever gluten-free goddess who came up with this nifty idea

Approximate nutrition info per burger (assumes each recipe makes 6 burgers and you use 1 TBSP of oil to cook the burgers in a non-stick pan.  Excludes bun.):  250 calories, 29g carbohydrate–of which 10 huge grams are fiber (so, a net of 19g of carbohydrate–or one and a half diabetic exchanges), 11g protein, 12g (heart-healthy, unsaturated) fat, and 3.8mg iron (~20% of the daily value of 18mg).  Serve with ketchup and a slice of tomato to help absorb the iron from the beans and spinach.

** If I haven’t scared you away from the Shutter’s recipe and you’re up for the challenge, you can substitute Wheat-free Tamari sauce for the soy sauce.  Premier Japan makes a gluten-free Hoisin sauce.  And use any of the bread-crumb-replacement strategies listed above in place of the oat bran or wheat germ she calls for.  And for goodness sake, use canned beets instead of roasting your own fresh ones as I foolishly did and you can redeem that extra hour of your life to play Rhythm Kung Fu on the Wii Fit Plus you got for Christmas.

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Dear Santa (and by “Santa” I mean food manufacturers and marketers):

Below is my wish list of products I wish you’d develop and market.  Instead of filling supermarket shelves with more crap we don’t need, won’t you please make any of these useful products and put them in our collective stockings?

Readers: I hereby invite you to add to this wish-list by submitting your comments below!

• Lactose-free, (organic) cow’s milk yogurt:  The #1 search term that brings people to my blog, hands down, is “lactose-free yogurt.”  There is a huge need for it in the marketplace, and the only company that had been marketing such a product, True Yogurt, has recently disappeared from supermarket shelves due to the loss of their production facilities.  I hope they will re-appear in the not-too-distant future, but their absence calls attention to this massive gap in the over-assorted yogurt aisle.  Instead of launching more so-called “functional yogurts” with bogus, unsubstantiated health claims about immunity, heart health and digestive health, won’t someone just make a plain ol’ lactose-free cow’s milk yogurt? Not a highly-processed soy yogurt.   Not a highly-processed rice milk yogurt.  Just a natural, just-sweet-enough yogurt made with lowfat lactose-free milk and no processed crap, preferably made with hormone-free, organic milk.  At the risk of being called greedy, I’d order up a lactose-free Greek Yogurt variety, too.

• Individual packets of wheat-free Tamari sauce: If these babies existed, I’d keep them in my purse (just like my mom keeps Sweet & Low in her wallet) and feel at liberty to join my friends for sushi whenever I pleased.   If they were reduced sodium, all the better.  Of course, if enlightened Asian restaurants across the country started offering these on the table for us wheat-free customers, that’d be swell, too.

• Mini cans of LITE coconut milk:  A few food companies have finally caught on that very few of us ever use a 14.5 oz can of coconut milk at a time, and are tired of seeing the leftovers grow moldy in the fridge within a few days.  The resulting 5.6 oz can is a welcome addition to the supermarket, and given the price premium per ounce that marketers are charging, would seem to be a profitable item for manufacturers as well.  Unfortunately, these baby cans are as yet only available in full-fat coconut milk, which I am loathe to use for its whopping saturated fat and calorie content.  Won’t someone please start selling LITE coconut milk in the 5.6oz can?

• Whole grain, gluten-free cereal fortified with iron, B12 and folic acid:  While the universe of gluten-free cereals is slowly growing, the universe of healthy gluten-free cereals made with whole grains and containing fiber is not.  While I appreciate the gesture that Chex made with their gluten-free varieties of corn, rice, honey nut and cinnamon Chex cereals, these products contain a maximum of 1g fiber per serving–and some varieties have none at all.  I think you can do better, General Mills.  Take a page out of the Puffins playbook: Barbara’s Bakery managed to squeeze a more respectable 3g of fiber into their new gluten-free Multigrain Puffins cereal from whole grain sources and they fortified it with Iron, Vitamin D and calcium to boot… all of which are nutrients that people consuming a plant-based diet have a hard time getting enough of.  If they had thrown in some B12, it would have been perfection…

• Oat Matzoh: Granted, matzoh is a bit of a niche product, purchased by Jews (and the closeted non-Jewish Matzoh fans whose love for this constipation-inducing, bland, aptly-nicknamed “bread of affliction” continues to puzzle me), once a year during Passover.  Each year, the presumably static matzoh market is further segmented by new and fashionable varieties to address imagined consumer need states: whole wheat matzoh, “thin tea matzoh” (perhaps for those Jews expecting to have High Tea with the Queen of England during Passover?), spelt matzoh, unsalted matzoh, egg matzoh, yolk-free egg matzoh (for lovers of Egg Matzoh with high-cholesterol?).  And yet, not one gluten-free Matzoh variety is available for a population with higher than average incidence rates of Celiac disease.  (Sounds like someone in marketing has not been doing their homework…)  Last year, my mom hunted down a box of gluten-free Oat Matzoh from England for me.  They cost her $30 for an 8 oz box whose ingredient label read: “Oat flour, water.”  At $60 a pound, these matzohs produced a week’s worth of matzoh brie for breakfast that cost about the same as an equivalent amount of Kobe beef.  Surely, an American company could produce an equivalent product locally to meet the demands of the wheat-free crowd?

• Heirloom, heritage and novel varieties of fruits and vegetables: Overwhelming–and arguably unnecessary– variety dominate the modern supermarket in all aisles except one: the produce aisle.  Why is it that I can get 20 different types of Colgate toothpaste in most supermarkets, but only 3 types of lettuce?  Or just 4 types of apple?  Some scary stats to ponder from the Sustainable Table:
  • Almost 96% of the commercial vegetable varieties available in 1903 are now extinct
  • Twelve plant crops account for more than 3/4 of the food consumed in the world, and just three–rice, wheat and maize–are relied on for more than half of the world’s food.

The textbook rationale for this unacceptable state of affairs is that marketers can only make money from selling “value added” (read: processed) foods, and that produce is a commodity with thin margins.  Perhaps this is true if you are producing and selling commoditized varieties of produce, like generic, tasteless heads of iceberg lettuce for which consumers are understandably unwilling to pay a premium.  But those few growers who have dared to introduce a unique varietal of fruit or vegetable that is differentiated on the basis of its awesome flavor (like Honeycrisp apples, for example) have demonstrated that there are price premiums to achieve and profit to be made even in the produce aisle. (Mind you: I’m not talking genetically-modified species here.)  News flash, produce managers and agribusiness mongers: you can actually make money while restoring some of the planet’s biodiversity and enriching our collective lives by reaching back into the vast archive of plant species that once roamed the earth and re-introducing the delicious-est ones back into our diets.

Thank you in advance, Santa, for considering my requests above and passing them along to the naughty food marketers who seek to make your “nice” list by next Christmas.

Love, Tamara

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My sister Ariella, an NYC Sommelier-at-Large, suggested that I dedicate this week’s installment of What I’m Eating Now to What I’m Drinking Now.  It just so happens that she’s been on a quest to help me find local (New York State) wines to serve at an upcoming event on Sustainable Seafood.  The quest has led her to fall in love again with the much-maligned Chardonnay grape, which, being the grape of most champagnes, has a special place in her boozy little heart.  And so, I’ve agreed to turn over my soapbox this week so that she can plead her case in favor of us giving New York chardonnays a taste this summer as we grill ourselves some healthy and sustainable fish.

Perhaps you’ve overheard someone order “ABC” wine (that’s code for “Anything But Chardonnay”), and have been shamed into eschewing this varietal of wine.  Or perhaps you’ve tasted enough mediocre chardonnays at weddings to have categorized the entire varietal as a sort-of generic catering-hall white.  Ariella explains that Chardonnay’s current reputation results from the fact that chardonnay grapes  themselves are not aromatic per se, so the flavor of the wine depends more on a winemaker’s skill than the characteristics of the grape itself.  In this way, chardonnay is like the tofu of the grape world: it’s sort of plain when cooked by itself, but it takes on the flavor of whatever you “cook” it with.  Traditionally, California winemakers have chosen to flavor their Chardonnays by fermenting them in brand-spanking new, toasted oak barrels, which impart a strong vanilla smokiness to the wine that totally overwhelms the fruit.  The result is a heavy wine that isn’t particularly “sippable” on its own during cocktail hour.  Rather, it needs heavier foods to stand up to it: think richer, meatier deep sea fish.  Unfortunately, many such fish are of the overfished–and therefore environmentally unsustainable– variety (think Chilean Sea Bass and Bluefin Tuna).

So what to pair with those lighter, more sustainably-caught fish, you might ask? 

Our resident sommelier recommends you give a New York State chardonnay a try.

All across the state, from Long Island to the Finger Lakes, winemakers have been producing un-oaked chardonnays fermented in stainless steel tanks (or lesser-oaked chardonnays, in which only a small portion of oaked wine is mixed into a batch of unoaked wine to produce a more balanced flavor).  The result is new wave of “fruit-forward” chardonnays (don’t you love it when sommeliers say things like that?) that are crisp and bright and summery with apple-y and stone fruit flavors.  These light and lovely wines are way more versatile and sippable, and pair divinely with sustainable fish at the low end of the food chain: think grilled fresh sardines, clams and mussels.

Interested in trying some of New York’s Finest?  Ariella recommends Channing Daughters 2007 Scuttle Hole chardonnay (~$16/bottle), which she likes for its sweet, peachy quality that tastes like summer in a bottle.  Try pairing it with any seafood, or spicy foods of all varieties… like Thai or Vietnamese.  She also likes Dr. Konstantin Frank’s Salmon Run (2007) chardonnay from the Finger Lakes region, which has crisp green apple and citrusy notes for about $10/bottle.  The wine is named in honor of the wild salmon that live in nearby Keuka Lake and pairs well with briny shellfish or a happy wild fish like salmon, wild striped bass or brook trout.

Of course, all this talk about white wine begs the question as to whether it’s indeed healthy to drink wine at all?

Perhaps you’ve heard that red wine is heart healthy… and healthier for you than white wine, at that.  Well, although it’s true that red wine contains higher levels of a phytochemical called resveratrol that has been associated with cardiovascular health benefits, there isn’t much scientific data that compares health outcomes of red wine drinkers to white wine drinkers. Therefore, it’s not clear that red is definitively “healthier” than white… and there’s certainly no evidence that passing up a heavy, spicy red in favor of a cold, fruity glass of chardonnay on a hot summer night is somehow going to put you at some sort of disadvantage health-wise.  For me personally, supporting small, local NY State wineries does my heart quite good, thank you very much.

Now as for whether to drink at all, the best answer researchers have is the same, vague party line: *if* you choose to drink any alcohol at all, moderation appears to be associated with the best health outcomes. As a reminder, I’ll re-state what I’ve said before.. and apologize in advance for being a buzz-kill:  

1. If you currently drink ~2 drinks/day or less (males) or 1 drink/day or less (females), you may get a slightly protective benefit against heart disease, so enjoy! While it seems that red wine may possibly afford an even better benefit, any type of alcohol should do the trick. If you’re drinking more than this amount, you may want to consider cutting down.  
2. Bear in mind that “one drink” is not necessarily one glass of wine as poured by your neighborhood bartender in a monster-sized goblet. It’s 5 fluid ounces of wine. In other words, 1 bottle of wine is 5 standard servings. So if you’re used to splitting a bottle every night with your best friend or spouse, try inviting a few more people on on the fun.
3. If you don’t drink at all now, I wouldn’t recommend taking it up for ‘health reasons,’ as there are plenty of ‘health reasons’ not to drink, too.  Even moderate drinking appears to increase the risk for breast cancer in women, and regular drinking can aggravate high blood pressure and increase your triglyceride levels, both of which are actually risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Got a wine pairing question for our resident sommelier?  Looking for a special recommendation?  Post a comment on this post for Ariella Duker, Sommelier-at-Large, and she’ll respond to your every wine query!

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One of the many guest appearances Ratatouille made on our honeymoon; here, as a base for seared fish

I’m back from my magical trip to Provence, and am delighted to report that the South of France turned out to be a surprisingly GF-friendly place to eat! In fact, it was SO much easier for me to eat out at restaurants there than it is for me here in New York.

Unlike the cuisine that dominates in Paris and in most Parisian-style French bistros in the US, the regional Provencal cuisine is NOT based on the classic French ‘mother sauces’ that contain a butter and flour roux as their thickening agent. Instead, Provencal cuisine employs flour-free vegetable,  fish and/or cream-based sauces such as tomato coulis, anchoïade (anchovy & garlic sauce), and various vegetable cream sauces (mushroom, red peppers…) to accent their vegetable, fish and meat dishes.  Gluten-free vegetable tapenades and terrines (olive, artichoke, red pepper, eggplant…) are also widely served as flavorful accents to a meal,  and you’re as likely to see them served with bread as you are with an omelet or a piece of fish.  After having multiple restauarant owners walk me through their menus item by item to tell me what was safe for me to eat and what wasn’t, I came to conclude that the Provencal cuisine is much more “honest” than is American cuisine; in other words, there tended to only be gluten in foods that one would expect to find gluten in, and I did not encounter any hidden gluten in unexpected places. The only foods that were off limits to me on menus were pastas (obviously) and the toasted croutons served alongside the bouilliabase (obviously).  As a result, I was able to easily gain the requisite weight one would expect to gain on a proper French Honeymoon.  Now back the gym…

The other thing so wonderful and different about eating in Provence in July was the monopoly that locally-grown, in-season vegetables had on the region’s menus.  There was not a head of broccoli or cauliflower in

Another ratatouille sighting, this time as a heaping side dish served at a prix fixe meal to hundreds of revelers at the Vacqueyras Wine Festival

sight at any market or in any restauarant. Instead, tomatoes, zucchini, eggplants and artichokes dominated the local markets and the restauarant menus. It struck me that starting around late July through August, we face a similar glut of tomatoes and zucchini here in the northeast; our gardens produce more than we can eat, the farmers’ markets beckon with stacks of inexpensive, sweet heirloom tomatoes that just beg to be bought by the pound… and we collectively fantasize about learning how to can our own veggies at home to capture the fleeting summer bounty and stretch it out beyond its short, natural life.

So what do the French do with their embarassing riches of the world’s most flavorful tomatoes, zucchini and eggplants?

They make Ratatouille.

Ratatouille is a dish that originated in Provence, and it appeared on our plates in some incarnation at outdoor festivals and Michelin-starred restaurants alike.  We had it served to us warm and cold.  We had versions with peppers and without peppers.  We had it offered up as a standalone side dish to fish or chicken and as a filling for omelets and crepes.  Each chef put their own spin on it, and each version we tasted was equally delicious.  It’s hardly a surprise, then, that I chose it as the topic for my first post-vacation blog post.

This recipe for Ratatouille comes from a cookbook I bought while traveling called When Our Grandmothers Cooked in Provence, by Frédérique Féraud-Espérandieu.  (Based on the number accent marks in her name, I decided she must be a huge authority on all things French, so I chose her cookbook above the others.)  Make up a big old batch, freeze some, keep some in the fridge, and serve it for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner, take it to potluck picnics, eat it hot or cold and don’t feel guilty about buying that enormous bag of tomatoes from the Farmer’s Market next month.

Recipe: Somebody’s French Grandmother’s Ratatouille

Serves 6

Olive oil

4 (small) eggplants (or 2 medium-sized ones), peeled and diced

4 (small-medium) zucchinis, diced

4 green peppers, seeded and cut into strips

2 lbs ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and quartered

2 (large) onions, sliced

3 garlic cloves, crushed

1 bay leaf

1 pinch ground thyme

A few chopped basil leaves (to your own taste)

2 twigs of fresh tarragon

3-4 pinches minced parsley

Salt & pepper

Optional: a handful of pitted green olives (the author recommends “Picholine” variety if you can find them; they’re a firm, immature type of green olive)

Directions:

Heat 3 TBSP olive oil in a large saute pan over medium/high heat.

Saute zucchini until golden.  Season with salt & pepper, remove from heat and drain. Set aside.

Using same pan, repeat the same process for the eggplant until brown.

Repeat the same process for the peppers (you can use less oil here…)

Finally, sweat the onion in 3 TBSP of olive oil, add the tomatoes, garlic, thyme, basil, bay leaf and tarragon.  Cook uncovered and leave this “coulis” to reduce.

Add all of the cooked vegetables back into the with the saucepan with the coulis, add the olives if you wish, stir  until blended, and let simmer on a very low heat for an additional 15 minutes.

Check the seasoning and adjust to taste.

Garnish with the chopped parsley.

Because it would be un-French of me to calculate the precise nutrition info of this dish, suffice it to say that even if you use the total of 12 (!) TBSP of olive oil that the recipe calls for, that makes for 2 TBSP per person, or about 240 calories.  The vegetables are so low calorie that each serving will still only come in at around the 300 calorie range, so enjoy it like the French do: avec pleasure and sans guilt.

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Dear readers,

I will be taking the next 2 weeks off from blogging to take a long-overdue honeymoon.  Destination: the south of France.

Since France isn’t exactly the most celiac-friendly of destinations, in anticipation of my trip, I’ve done a little bit of research to help me eat my way safely through this bastion of regional culinary delights.  If ever you find yourself planning a similar trip, perhaps it will be of use to you, too:

• I downloaded the Gluten Free Passport: a nifty list of French phrases to help me communicate my “blé-free” dietary needs at a restaurant
• I discovered that local health food stores (”magasin bio”) are my best bet to find gluten-free baguettes (!) and crackers to serve as delivery vehicles for the region’s famous cheeses, honeys and confitures.  In fact, a google search for “magasin bio aix en provence”  turned up the names and addresses of multiple health food stores near the place we’ll be staying.
• Rather than dwell on all of the delicacies I’ll be missing out on, I compiled a list of gluten-free regional specialties that I plan to seek out.  These include:
  • Socca, a chickpea flatbread traditionally topped with savory deliciousness like anchovies and onions.  (Eat it along with me by trying out Mark Bittman’s recipe for it here)
  • Summer soups, like Soupe au pistou (vegetable soup with garlic/basil/olive oil) or bouillabaisse (seafood soup in a saffron broth that features locally-caught fish like red mullet (rouget), sea bass (loup), eels and all manner of shellfish … but I’ll have to pass on the toast that it’s traditionally served with)
  • Salads!  The Salade Niçoise originated in Nice, which was in the south of France last time I checked.  (But you certainly don’t need to visit France to enjoy one; here’s a classic recipe for the dish popularized by Julia Child herself.)
  • Calissons, a glazed, flourless-cake-like almond confection flavored with melon or orange that originated in Aix-en-Provence
  • And of course, the fish are locally caught, the lamb is locally-raised and grass-fed, the fruits and vegetables are all locally-grown and the herbs that flavor everything are literally grown in each restaurant’s backyard.  It’s long trip to make in order to be able to truly experience local cuisine, but I can’t wait…

I promise to take lots of food pictures and share some recipes upon my return.  But meanwhile, feel free to peruse the archives to visit some of my favorite posts until I’m back on the blogging circuit the week of 7/20:

• On a summer smoothie kick?  Learn about why adding some ground flaxseed into the mix is so beneficial.
• Check out this tasty recipe for Shakshouka, a light, healthy and vegetably Moroccan brunch dish
• If you’re eating more salads now that it’s summer, try topping yours with my grandma’s Salmon Croquette recipe for some extra protein and omega-3’s
• Have you moved your gym workout outdoors?  If so, try replacing the electrolytes you’re sweating away with Coconut Water, nature’s so-called sports drink

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An ostrich egg is the equivalent of 20-24 chicken eggs

At first, I regarded those oversized ostrich and emu eggs in the Whole Foods produce department as an oddity intended to amuse us shoppers as we bagged our loose cremini mushrooms.  Surely no one *actually* spent $39.99 on an enormous exotic egg, I thought to myself.

But those eggs somehow infiltrated my psyche.  And on each return visit to the store, I allowed my imagination to entertain the absurd notion of actually buying one of those eggs.  ’What would I do with it?’, I asked myself. (Omelet, I decided.) Just for kicks, I asked the produce manager how many people an Ostrich egg might, hypothetically, feed, if said ostrich egg was whipped into a hypothetical omelet.  Twelve, I was told.

Twelve people from one egg?  Granted it was a big egg, but twelve seemed like an exaggeration.  Later that evening, a google search confirmed what I had been told: that an average ostrich egg was indeed the equivalent of about 2 dozen chicken eggs.  And at that, the gauntlet had been thrown down: at the first occasion I had to feed 12 people, I was going to buy that $39.99 egg and see for myself.

The weekend of the 4th of July was my first such opportunity.  Our family and friends were gathering at the beach in Rhode Island for the holiday weekend, and Alex and I would be in charge of breakfast, as usual. We snagged the last of the ostrich eggs at the Paramus, NJ, Whole Foods (um… who else is actually buying these things, too?  Please identify yourselves…), wrapped it gingerly in a ShamWow, and transported it to Rhode Island.  At every pothole, I envisioned nine discrete scenarios in which our precious egg would shatter before fulfilling its destiny as an omelet-for-twelve.  But the thick-shelled egg survived the trip, and when Saturday morning arrived, it was time to make the most expensive omelet of our lives.

The mis en place involved sauteing 2 diced onions and 2 diced peppers, sauteing about 12 oz of sliced mushrooms with fresh oregano from our backyard, and shredding some locally-made cheddar we picked up at the farmer’s market.  And then there was the matter of cracking the monster egg.  Alex placed it in a large bowl, hit it three times with a chef’s knife, carefully peeled away the shell fragments and pierced a hole in the exposed membrane.  The egg contents were somewhat surprising: rather than a discrete yolk and white, we encountered a creamy-yellow emulsion whose smooth texture was interrupted only by a disturbingly large chalize (the gloppy clear part of an egg that holds the yolk in place).  Oh, well.  Good thing we weren’t planning on separating it for an egg white omelet.

Pouring the egg contents into a bowl...

...the full volume of our egg's contents...

...the final product(s)!

Our egg made 3 jumbo and 1 large omelets (pictured above), which, when served to twelve moderate eaters accompanied by a pile of toast and an assortment of fresh berries, was indeed enough to provide a satisfying breakfast for all. (Myth confirmed.)  The texture of the egg was slightly airier than the typical chicken-egg omelet; in fact, its appearance was pockmarked with little air bubbles that lent it a crepe-like appearance. The flavor was exactly the same as a regular chicken egg, as far as our unrefined egg palates were concerned.  And as some additional research would reveal, the nutritional profile as ostrich egg is almost identical to that of a chicken egg.  Actually, to ~20-24 chicken eggs.

For those of you concerned about eating eggs for reasons of cholesterol, I will offer the following: for most healthy people without a family history of high cholesterol, dietary cholesterol in moderate amounts isn’t going to have much of an impact on your blood cholesterol levels. That’s because the body will adjust the amount of cholesterol it produces downward in response to a higher level of dietary cholesterol.  In fact, for most people, the amount of saturated fat in the diet will have a much greater impact of blood cholesterol than dietary cholesterol will, so I might be more concerned about an egg-white omelet stuffed with cheese and ham than I would an equivalent whole-egg omelet stuffed with just vegetables. (Of course, high-cholesterol foods are usually also high in saturated fat, so it can be hard to have one without the other.)  One large egg has ~210mg of cholesterol, which means that a 2-egg omelet will already exceed the daily recommended limit for cholesterol intake, which is 300mg.  Does that mean its unhealthy to ever have a 2 egg omelet in one sitting?  Not at all; in fact, I personally rely on eggs as an important source of inexpensive, high-quality protein in my diet, and the humble frittata happens to feature prominently in my weekday dinner playlist.   I’d recommend viewing the limit in a weekly perspective: 300mg/day translates into a guideline of 2,100mg/week; so as long as the daily average based on your weekly intake generally falls in line, you should be fine.  Egg yolks, shellfish (but not scallops), liver and red meat/poultry are the foods with the highest cholesterol content, and only animal-based foods contain cholesterol. (You can click here for a list of the cholesterol content of common foods.)  Another strategy to help reduce the amount of dietary cholesterol you absorb is to make sure you’re eating a high-fiber diet that contains 6-10g of soluble fiber per day; the soluble fiber “traps” some cholesterol in your gut and escorts it out of the body, preventing you from absorbing it. (This is why foods rich in soluble fiber, like oatmeal, oat bran and Cheerios, all claim to lower cholesterol.)   Good food sources of soluble fiber include oats/oat bran, barley, beans/peas, ground flaxseeds, nuts, apples and carrots, and soluble fiber content is listed on many nutrition facts labels as a component of total dietary fiber.

The exception is for the <1% of the population that has familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), which is a hereditary condition in which the body’s cells are less able to remove LDL particles from the bloodstream to use their contents (fat and cholesterol) for various essential cell functions.  (Don’t forget: cholesterol is a precursor for lots of beneficial substances in our body, including various hormones and Vitamin D, which is why we manufacture it to begin with.)  Because the cells of the liver cannot take up the LDL particles as efficiently, the negative feedback mechanism that suppresses endogenous cholesterol production in the liver in response to dietary cholesterol is less effective.  In other words, the liver doesn’t “know” how much cholesterol you’ve eaten because it isn’t able to take up the circulating cholesterol from your blood very efficiently.  So it just keeps on producing cholesterol to meet what it thinks the body’s needs are, no matter how much you’ve already eaten. People who have this condition are likely to experience a build-up of cholesterol-containing LDL in the bloodstream, placing them at high risk for early cardiovascular disease. In this case, eating egg (yolks) and other high-cholesterol foods even in very modest amounts *will* have an impact on blood cholesterol levels, and thus it would be prudent to lay off (no pun intended) the omelets–ostrich or otherwise– altogether.

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I've been dreaming about eating an egg salad sandwich on soft, squishy bread for over two years now.

I’ve come to regard my gluten intolerance as a blessing in disguise.  After all, it forced me to diversify my diet in ways that have been both healthful and delicious and led me to fabulous new foods that may never have crossed my radar otherwise.  My friendships with Teff, Mochi, Millet, Polenta,  Buckwheat, Quinoa and Amaranth have flourished since I broke up with wheat, and we’ve spent countless happy meals together over the years.   Plus, gluten intolerance keeps the bread basket from spoiling my appetite when I go out to eat… and in so doing, leaves me a couple hundred calories in my budget for a few bites of dessert.  (I’d take a bite or three of Flourless Chocolate Cake or Creme Brulee over a half-stale baguette any day…)  With the ever-increasing number of gluten-free products available these days–and the ever-improving quality of these products–what’s to miss?

Still, I will admit to having the *occasional* wistful moment, where a glutinous vestige of my previous life comes back to haunt me.  Catching a whiff of the aroma as I pass by a pizza parlor… encountering a brunch platter of heaving, hot NYC bagels… and, much to my own surprise, encountering something as simple as an egg salad sandwich with lettuce and tomato on two pieces of squishy sandwich bread.

It turns out that I’ve really missed squishy sandwich bread.  While my freezer is always stocked with acceptable gluten-free bread options (most recently, Whole Foods’ Gluten Free Bakehouse Prairie Bread and Kinnikinnick Many Wonder Multigrain Rice Bread, these breads have two major drawbacks.  

1. If you want them to taste good, they absolutely have to be toasted. 
2. They can be quite dense, and results in their having twice the number of calories per slice as a ‘normal’ piece of wheat bread.  Case in point: one slice of the Gluten Free Bakehouse Prairie Bread has 150 calories, 23g of carbohydrate and 5g of fat, compared with a standard piece of wheat bread, which has about 80 calories, 15g of carbohydrate and 0-1g of fat.  That’s an extra 140 calories per day if you’re having a 2-slice sandwich every day.   Furthermore, the carbohydrate difference is significant if you have diabetes and are following a carbohydrate-controlled diet.  (The Kinnikinnick product only has 90 calories per slice, but it still really needs to be toasted in order to taste good.)

But I dared not complain about these drawbacks for fear of being accused of wanting to have my bread… and eat it, too.  So I just took sandwiches out of my regular rotation, saving that frozen bread for the very occasional grilled cheese or tuna sandwich where its toastiness would be an asset.  

Then along came a man named Udi.  And I am happy to report that his tasty, squishy, airy, gluten-free sandwich bread is on its way to a supermarket near you.  How do I know this?  Because I had the chance to sample my very own piece this past weekend at the New York Fancy Food Show, where Udi’s, previously known outside their home state of Colorado only for their best-selling (but not yet gluten-free, hint, hint…) granola, was launching a whole new line of gluten-free baked goods.

The new Udi’s GF Sandwich bread comes in two varieties: white and whole-grain.  The white variety is made with tapioca starch, brown rice flour and potato starch; the whole grain version has those same flours/starches with additional teff flour and flax seed meal.  Like most other GF baked goods, the breads are not particularly good sources of fiber (0.5g per slice).   Nonetheless, having tasted both varieties, read the

Sinking my teeth into a squishy piece of sandwich bread with Udi's CEO (shown here hawking the company's new GF pizza crusts)

 nutrition label and spoken to the company’s CEO, I think these breads have a few things going for them:  

1. Taste and Texture.  The Udi’s GF breads are the first ones I’m aware of that don’t need to be toasted for best flavor/texture.  In fact, they suggest that you just thaw it and eat it soft.  Because Udi’s has its roots as a conventional bread bakery, their standards as far as acceptable taste and texture are based on conventional, wheat breads.  The breads aren’t designed to be “good enough”; they’re designed to be just plain good.  As a result, the slices are airy, soft and spongy when thawed… not dense or heavy like many other GF breads.
2. Calories.  Each slice has a much more reasonable 70-80 calories and 11-12g of carbohydrate (depending on the variety), which is the same  (or less) than a standard 1 oz slice of wheat bread.   To compensate for the relatively low fiber, serve your sandwich with a side of jicama sticks or baby carrots or chase it with a cup of fresh berries.

You can check the company’s website to see where the breads are distributed; apparently, they are expected to be in wide distribution on the East Coast by the end of this year.  If you live in Denver, please stop by their GF bakery to pester them to get their products distributed Jersey City, NJ as soon as possible.  I’ve had a hankering for an egg salad sandwich for about 2 years now…

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One of the most common questions people as me is whether paying more for organic is “worth it.”

The answer, of course, depends on a whole number of factors, and, like most questions, is best answered as “it depends.”

If your concern is environmental or related to concerns for the health of agricultural workers, then organic always wins.  But if you can’t afford to let your green inclinations dictate all of your purchases and want to prioritize your organic spending based on personal health considerations, then read on.

Health considerations of organic vs. conventional foods

Fruits & Vegetables

In my opinion, the #1 health reason to choose organic fruits and vegetables would be to minimize the number of pesticides you consume.   While the individual pesticides used in this country have been approved as “safe” by the EPA and it appears that the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables are well outweighed by the risks associated with consumption of pesticides, there are still a number of good reasons to try and minimize your pesticide intake if you can afford to do so.  For one, while individual pesticides may be considered safe by our country’s  regulatory bodies, it is unclear whether the cumulative impact of multiple pesticides consumed over a lifetime is really harmless.  There are reasons to believe that it is not.  The most compelling scientific evidence points to a role of pesticides as endocrine (hormone function) disruptors and neurotoxins that impact proper brain development and functioning.  Because hormones play a role in everything from sexual development, reproductive health and breast health to blood sugar control and metabolism, it seems prudent to try to minimize exposure to chemicals that could disrupt their ability to function properly. In fact, the Endocrine Society has recently issued a Scientific Statement regarding endocrine-disrupting chemicals, linking them to a host of adverse health conditions, from genital abnormalities in newborn boys and early puberty in girls to insulin resistance, diabetes and obesity. For those people exposed to very high levels of certain pesticides (e.g., agricultural workers), the risk of certain cancers and birth defects also appears to become elevated.  

Because organic can be more expensive (though it is NOT always necessarily so), my own practice is to prioritize buying organic for those items whose conventional versions have been shown to have the heaviest pesticide loads.  The Environmental Working Group offers a Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides: a list of the “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean 15″ that you can print out or download to your iPhone .  The “Clean 15″ refer to those fruits and vegetables that contain the lowest amount of pesticides even when grown conventionally, so if you had to compromise in your budget, this would be a good place to start.  Even cooler (but more frightening and time-consuming) is a new online tool launched by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) called “What’s On my Food?” This interactive tool allows you to pick any fruit or vegetable and see how many pesticides are found on it, what type of pesticides they are, what percent of all the fruit/vegetables actually contain this pesticide, and to compare what percent of conventional vs. organic versions of this fruit/vegetable contain the pesticide.  All of the data comes from the USDA and EPA.  If the data freaks you out, PAN offers you the chance to Take Action by sending a note to President Obama right from their website.

Other agricultural products

For some people, genetically-modified (GMO) agricultural products are also an area of concern.  The body of science is only just starting to catch up with the industry, and there’s emerging evidence to suggest that we may in fact have reason to be concerned about GMO foods for health reasons, with increased risk of food allergies/intolerances being one of the more compelling concerns. The greatest concern about GMO foods, though, is not what we know, but what we don’t know; there is very little by way of long-term safety data on human diets that include GMO foods, yet we already eat a whole heck of a lot of them.  For a list of foods that tend to be GMO in our country, you can check out the Institute for Responsible Technology’s Non-GMO Shopping Guide. Currently, a good rule of thumb is that if the corn or soybean derivatives in your food don’t explicitly claim to be organic or non-GMO, then they are GMO. Ditto for cottonseed oil, canola oil and sugar.  If that concerns you, then buy organic for these types of products.

Dairy

Moving beyond produce, legumes and grains, is organic dairy worth paying a premium for?  The #1 health reason to choose organic milk would be to avoid consuming a hormone called rBGH or rBST. Conventional milk comes from cows that were likely treated with this hormone in order to boost their milk production, and it contains significantly higher levels of a compound called Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF-1) as a result.  From a health perspective, there is a concern that this IGF-1 is absorbed by our bodies when we consume these dairy products, and since higher levels of endogenous IGF-1 are associated with breast and gastrointestinal cancers, this additional exogenous IGF-1 could produce a similar consequence. Yet the FDA has studied this matter and concluded that there is not sufficient evidence to support this linkage.  So what to do?

This is one problem that the market may resolve for you.  Due to strong pressure from consumers, more and more brands of  non-organic dairy products are now pledging that their milk comes from cows are not treated with r-BGH.  For example, Lactaid milk, Wal Mart’s private label milk brand (Great Value), Dean, Hood and Farmland Dairy have already eliminated rBGH in some or all of their products, and Dannon yogurt recently pledged to remove milk containing rBGH from all of its products by the end of 2009.  Yoplait and Starbucks have made similar commitments, with the former company having promised to phase it out by August of this year. My own practice is to choose organic milk when a suitable lactose-free version is available for me (Organic Valley makes one, as does Horizon Organic); but I’ll buy conventional lactose-free milk from Lactaid, who claims that their cows were not treated with rBGH if the organic isn’t available.  Still, given the strong, clear evidence of the bone health consequences of not getting enough calcium vs. the more tenuous evidence of a potentially elevated cancer risk associated with conventional milk, I’d choose conventional milk over no milk at all even if organic and rBGH-free options weren’t available to me. Hands down.

Meat, Poultry & Fish

When it comes to meat and poultry, organic means that the animals were not routinely injected with antibiotics, nor were they treated with growth hormones.  It also means that the feed they ate was organic, which would imply much lower pesticide levels.  For many people, these are reasons enough to choose organic over conventional.  Still, it is worth mentioning that organic meat/poultry by definition does not imply that the nutritional profile of the beef/chicken itself is healthier, nor does it imply that the animal was raised humanely.  I’d look for “grass-fed” over simply “organic” for (though any beef that claims the former will often be organic, too) if you wanted beef that was higher in healthy omega-3 fats, and I’d look for “free range,” the “Certified Humane” designation or the Niman Ranch label if you want to know that your animal was raised more humanely.

When it comes to fish labeled “organic,” things get tricky.  Currently, the USDA does not permit any fish to be labeled as organic, since they have not yet established a standard.  Theoretically, however, since wild-caught fish would not be eligible to be certified organic (by definition), the only fish that will potentially be eligible to be labeled “organic” are going to be farm-raised fish that were fed “organic” feed.   In fact, a recently-adopted USDA panel approved guidelines for organic labeling for fish which specify that the fish-feed would need to contain 75% organic material and up to 25% wild fish for it to be labeled organic; it expected that this recommendation will pave the way for a formal organic standard for fish in the near future.   This seems sort of convoluted to me, as the healthiest fish are generally those that are wild-caught and dine exclusively on their natural diets of other wild fish, plankton or algae… not “organic” corn and soy feed.  But far be it for me to question the USDA’s infinite wisdom.

Personally, I think the more important claims to look for on seafood would be those that address safety, sustainability and country of origin. As I’ve suggested here before, you can download the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch guide, which combines a multitude of factors, including safety AND sustainability, in recommending the best seafood picks.  (The guides are even customized by geographic region).  Alternatively, you can download it to your iPhone so that its always with you when shopping.  You may be surprised to see that there are plenty of farmed fish varieties that make the cut as far as safety (low mercury and PCB levels) and sustainability go, so wild isn’t automatically the best choice in all circumstances.

Got all that?

Are organically-grown foods actually more nutritious?

While there are a small but  growing number of studies which suggest that organically-grown produce may be richer in nutrients than conventionally-grown produce when all other factors are controlled for, the reality is that your choices at a supermarket hardly resemble a controlled experiment.  You may have organically-grown asparagus that was picked a week ago from Argentina sitting alongside conventionally-grown asparagus that was picked 2 days ago from your own state: in this case, the locally-grown, conventional choice is likely to be more nutritious.  Organic farming methods are just one factor that play into the nutritional value of a given fruit or vegetable, with factors like weather, ripeness when picked, storage conditions,  processing and time since picking all influencing the final product.  So it’s not a foregone conclusion that always choosing organic will be a nutritionally superior proposition.

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It won't win many beauty contests, but this Chana Saag sure does taste good!

Indian food is one of the friendliest cuisines for the gluten-eschewing set, and it happens to be one of my favorites.   While it’s true that resisting a basket of piping hot naan bread may be difficult at first, there is no lack of other starchy options that don’t contain wheat from which to choose. 

Pappadum are one of many gluten-free Indian bread-like munchies

You may recognize Pappadum as the crispy, wafery flatbreads served with a variety of chutneys that are brought to your table while you’re waiting for your food at an Indian restaurant.  But perhaps you may not have recognized that they’re made from lentil or chickpea flour and are therefore gluten-free.   If you’re eating at a Southern Indian restaurant, you’ll encounter a whole host of additional gluten-free goodness:  There are dosas, oversized wheat-free crepes made from rice and lentil flours and

Look for idli at restaurants specializing in South Indian cuisine

stuffed with all manner of savory fillings. Similarly, the steamed white, flying-saucer-esque cake called idli (or “iddly”) is another rice and lentil flour-based staple coming from Southern India. Idli is has a spongier texture than do dosas, making it a perfect, slightly tangy sauce mopper-upper.   And let’s not forget vadai, those savory little donuts made from lentil and rice or potato flour that you can dip in spicy soups or dip into a nice chutney.  Naan?  Who needs naan?

Between the wheatless bready-things and all of the vegetarian options, you can see why Indian food is such a favorite of mine when eating out.  When we lived in downtown Manhattan, my favorite place to go was a restaurant called Surya down in the village.  My friend Daryl turned me onto a dish called Chana Saag; she was so addicted that she swore they sprinkled crack on it.  Such a simple dish in theory– chickpeas in a spinach puree–seemed an unlikely candidate to produce such a strong addiction.  But sure enough, one taste and I was hooked, too.

Sadly, we moved across the Hudson river, and for reasons of convenience and economic recession, those weekly trips to Surya turned into quarterly trips–at most.  Watching me wallow in Chana Saag withdrawal, my dear husband Alex set to work to find a recipe for Chana Saag that he could make at home that would set off those same pleasure-sensing areas of my brain…without all of the ghee (clarified butter) that would typically be used in an Indian restaurant dish.  He scoured cookbooks and websites to find the perfect recipe.  Some of the earlier versions that were heavy on the spinach and fenugreek were too earthy, and not savory enough.  Later versions achieved savory, but missed the touch of sweet heat that my ideal Chana Saag had.  Months into the exercise, Alex managed to invent a hybrid recipe all of his own that I proclaimed delicious.  To be sure, it’s a very different Chana Saag than Surya’s–more saag, less chana–but it’s perfectly delicious, and addictive in its own right.    And just like that, my saga was over.

The addition of vitamin C-rich tomatoes and red peppers is a sneaky way to maximize the amount of iron you’ll absorb from the spinach and chickpeas.  Which I’m sure is what he had in mind when he concocted this recipe.

Recipe: Alex’s Addictive Chana Saag

Serves 4 incredibly generously as a main dish, 6 as a side dish.  (Put on a pot of rice to cook before starting so you can eat as soon as the Chana Saag is cooked!)

2 TBSP vegetable oil

2 medium onions, chopped

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp ground turmeric

2 tsp garam masala

1/2 tsp ground ginger

10 oz fresh spinach (bagged works great), chopped

2 medium red peppers, diced

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and coarsely chopped (optional)

1 can diced tomatoes, drained (14.5 oz, preferably low-sodium)

1 can chickpeas/garbanzos, drained (14.5 oz, preferably low sodium.  If you want the dish to be more chickpea-stewy than spinachy, feel free to use 2 cans garbanzos)

1/2 cup lowfat milk (lactose-free if you’re intolerant; or use rice milk if you’d prefer this dish to be dairy-free.  You can also use lowfat buttermilk or plain yogurt if you have that laying around.)

Salt to taste

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat.  Add onions and saute until translucent (~5 min).
2. Add garlic and spices (except salt) and saute for another 2 minutes until spices are fragrant and onions are well-covered in spices, careful not to burn the garlic.
3. Add the spinach, half of the diced red peppers, jalapeno, tomatoes and salt and bring to a boil.
4. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes, partially covered, stirring occasionally
5. Remove from heat and let it sit for a bit until its not too hot to transfer to a blender.  Transfer vegetables in batches to a blender, and puree it until it’s a smooth, even consistency.
6. Once saucepan is empty, use it to saute the remaining half of the diced red peppers until they soften.
7. Return the puree to the pan with the sauteed red pepper pieces and add the chickpeas.
8. Stir in milk/yogurt.  Simmer uncovered until desired thickness is reached.
9. Salt to taste and serve!

Approximate nutrition info per serving (assumes recipe makes four servings):  235 calories, 31g carbohydrate (of which a whopping 8g is fiber), 10g protein, 9g fat, 3mg iron and well over 100% of the daily value for vitamin C (112mg).

Serving the above with 3/4 cup of cooked basmati rice adds an additional 150 calories, 33g of carbohydrate and 3g protein… and completes a super-nutritious, totally filling and satisfying meal for less than 400 calories. Well done, Alex!

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If your gluten intolerance has ever made you feel like an outcast– like during the Sex and the City-induced cupcake-craze of the early 2000’s–then you’ll be happy to know your moment has finally arrived.  

Gluten-free living has not just gone mainstream: it’s actually gone fashionable.  That’s right: celiac is the new black.

Need proof?

Let’s start with Starbucks Coffee’s latest product launch: the gluten-free Valencia Orange Cake; a nationally-distributed product baked in a dedicated GF facility… presumably aimed at the relatively small proportion of the population that has celiac disease or wheat allergies.

Now, I have come to view my gluten-intolerance as a blessing in disguise for many reasons.  And one of these reasons is that it helps me nip temptation in the bud.  Everytime I would go into Starbucks for a tea and come face to face with that pastry case, there was no decision to be made, since there was gluten-free nothing I could safely eat. Which has been especially helpful, since here in New York, Starbucks is required by law to post the calorie content of all their food. Which has made me aware of the fact that virtually all of their baked goods contain between 400-500 calories, and for the majority of women, that’s between 20%-33% of our daily calorie requirements!  For one silly slice of mediocre pound cake!   Of course now, it’s a whole new world.  Now I must consciously resist the new gluten-free Valencia Orange Cake each time I go in there. Fortunately for me, the company is packaging the cakes in a rather unappetizing plastic wrap that makes the product look more processed and less fresh-baked, despite the fact that it is 100% natural according to the Starbucks website.  (They’re doing it to prevent cross-contamination with the glutinous items.)  So that helps.  But in case I (or any of you) ever succumb, perhaps it would be helpful to share that each cake contains 290 calories, 16g of fat, (of which 2g are saturated), 32g of carbohydrate (of which 4g are fiber–from the almonds) and 40 mg of sodium, so that we can budget accordingly.   Given that this cake clocks in at a full 100-200 calories less than most of Starbucks’ other baked goods, I wouldn’t be surprised if it gains a following beyond the celiac/wheat allergy crowd.  Finally, if you’re on the fence about whether to try it, the clever marketers at Starbucks would like us all to know that each cake contains 30% of the daily value for Vitamin C.  Of course, I would like the aforementioned clever marketers to know that so do 3 medium strawberries, and it’s sort of ridiculous to try to pass off a 290-calorie cake as a smart way to get in your Vitamin C.

Now if only they would start carrying lactose-free milk for their lattes…

So what if Starbucks has acknowledged our existence and thrown us a gluten-free crumb, you may say.  That hardly means GF is officially trendy.

To which I would offer exhibit #2:  the new Babycakes NYC cookbook.  If you’ve ever visited New York’s Greenwich Village and seen the line snaking outside the Magnolia Bakery–home of the famous cupcakes immortalized by Sex and the City–you’d know that cupcakes are still very much en vogue.  But you may not have been aware that a lesser-known bakery snagged NY Magazine’s prized award for “Best Cupcake” in 2006, and it was a place called Babycakes.  Which is a bit of a coup, since Babycakes is known for their vegan cupcakes and vegan/gluten-free cakes, brownies and cookies.  (My favorite is the Cinnamon & Sugar Toastie.)  And now, the bakery has published a cookbook with recipes for many of their famous cakey treats and endorsements from a very high-profile list of vegan or food-allergic celebs, including Pam Anderson, Zooey Deschanel, Natalie Portman and Mary Louise Parker.  Take THAT trendy Magnolia Bakery cupcakes!  Also, the bakery’s website lists nutrition information for all of their products, in case you *really* want to know.  

Now, you may be wondering what on earth a nutritionist is doing musing about cupcakes when schools across the country are banishing cupcakes from their classrooms in an attempt to help curb the childhood obesity epidemic.  So I’ll share my personal opinion, which is this:  if ever there is a time to enjoy cake, it is in celebration of birthdays.  We do our children a service when we teach them that treats like cake are for special occasions–like birthdays or vacations to New York or weddings–rather than for everyday occasions, like a trip to the bookstore or while watching Saturday morning cartoons.  I think that policies which ban cupcakes from the classroom are well-intentioned but misguided attempts to address a bigger problem that–let’s face it–is not the result of kids eating too many birthday cupcakes.  Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater!  Let us eat cake!

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