Book Review: The Master Your Metabolism Cookbook

Title: The Master Your Metabolism Cookbook

Author: Jillian Michaels

Author’s web page: www.jillianmichaels.com

Date: 2010

Publisher: Crown / Random House

ISBN: 978-0-307-71822-8

Length: 276 pages

Illustrations: one-color drawings, not credited; black-and-white photo page at the back

Quote: “While [medication] may be an effective short-term aid to bring things under control, it fails to address the need to reverse and eliminate the most frequent under­lying cause of chronically high insulin: poor diet.”

First, for the guys: More photos of the body underneath that too-big T-shirt in the back of the book, along with information about how to buy full-color videos showing the body in action.

Now let’s dispel any illusions: The thing to remember about all those cookbooks and exercise programs featuring sleek, beautiful young people is that, if you’re not between the ages of 18 and 25, you’re not going to look like that. If you want your mature body to look like Jane Fonda’s or Jack LaLanne’s, or even like your own body before you settled down in a desk job, however, this new book just might help you.

Maybe. The trouble with all discussions of "healthy food" today is that people keep on repeating what they learned about the nutrients found in food, and ignore the fact that those nutrients are altogether irrelevant if the food contains glyphosate, since the body will reject the food violently in any case. If it looks like it just came from Old MacDonald's farm, bursting with natural wholesome goodness, and it's found in a supermarket and it doesn't have a hard shell you throw away, it is probably a glyphosate bomb and you'd probably be healthier not even walking through the "produce" section and breathing the fumes off it. Unless you know for sure that they were not exposed to "pesticide" vapor drift, don't even touch blueberries, raspberries, green leafy vegetables, apples, carrots, grapes, tomatoes, or any of your old childhood favorites. Also avoid anything that is sold or used in a hard, dry, seedlike condition--nuts, wheat or other grains, seeds, flour--unless you know for sure. Rice and wild rice are usually safe, but not guaranteed. The allium family (onions, garlic, etc.) are usually safe.

To test foods like hard-shelled tree nuts sold in their shells, oranges, melons, beans, coconuts, etc., eat one teaspoonful and wait for the early symptoms of your typical glyphosate and/or other "pesticide" reactions. If they appear, take a charcoal capsule and throw away the rest of the food. 

The Master Your Metabolism Cookbook is loaded with fun facts about recent discoveries about the effects different foods typically have on our metabolism, plus trendy recipes that...well...some of them are on the granola side, but most of them will disappear fast if you take them to a potluck dinner. A short summary of what Michaels learned about foods that affect metabolism appears on pages 3-41, with key facts repeated as sidebars next to recipes that use the recommended foods. Most of them are not on the safe list. Briefly, metabolism-boosting foods include fish, Brazil nuts, whole grains, pumpkin seed, sesame seed, almonds, spinach and other greens, whole grains, olive oil, hazelnuts, barley, beans, oats, brown rice, onions, apples, pomegranates, cooked broccoli, carrots, molasses, apples, raspberries, blueberries, grapes, rosemary, cooked tomatoes,  sweet potatoes, oranges, turkey, walnuts, and yogurt. Meats can have mixed effects on metabolism and are used sparingly in this cookbook. 

People on restricted diets can use this book if and when we get the bans we need; plenty of recipes are “free” from whatever natural food you’re trying to avoid, and when farmers stop spraying poison on food you may find that you can enjoy that natural food again anyway. If you’re serving these dishes to people outside the family, it’s a good idea to list the ingredients, since many of them do contain stealth allergy triggers like coconut oil and orange juice in unexpected places. There’s a good-sized section of vegan entrees. Several sauces are thickened with fruit or vegetable purees rather than simple starches. A majority of recipes are lactose-free, gluten-free, and/or casein-free, or can be made whichever of those things you require. When Michaels does use a dairy product, it’s usually yogurt, usually offered as a topping.

Vintage granola-period recipes substituted honey for sugar. In the 1980s efforts were made to debunk the myth that honey had any special nutritional benefits over sugar; both are basically sucrose, only honey has more calories, is much messier, and usually costs more. “Loaded with vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and antioxidants”? Not exactly; it contains traces of nutrients—enough to make a difference to an insect, but probably not to a human. Bees store honey made from different kinds of flowers separately and even humans can see and taste differences. Unfortunately, today nearly all honey is loaded with glyphosate and should not even be handled. 

The Master Your Metabolism Cookbook suggests agave syrup as an alternative to honey or maple syrup. Agave syrup is fairly new even to the health food market; I personally don’t live where it’s made, so I’ve never tasted it. 

More can be said for real maple syrup. It does not have to be made in Vermont. Sugar maples will grow in most of the United States (and in Canada); you just tap them at a different time of year. Maple trees that are native to areas other than Vermont  also produce syrup. “Invasive” Norway maples are excellent sources of syrup—we used to construct a little “syrup camp” and boil down sap from the Norway maple in the yard, and other maples in the woodlot, right in the shade of the tree, and it would become sweet and maple-y enough that a spoonful turned pancakes into dessert before it even became syrupy. As Noel PERRIN observed, federal standards for grading maple syrup were created at a time when the blandest, sweetest, most sugar-like syrup was considered the finest. If you’re after the more distinctive flavor and trace nutrients that help preserve male reproductive health—oh, what the heck, let’s stuff in a few keywords, real maple syrup may help prevent prostate enlargement and thus extend men’s sex lives and fertility—local maple syrup may actually be better than Vermont’s Finest. So if you like and can afford to pour maple syrup over your organic corn or buckwheat pancakes, enjoy it. (Women can safely enjoy real maple syrup too—if living with men under the influence of Jillian Michaels we may need it.) If you’re cooking or baking, however, read on.

If you’re trying to reduce the amount of sugar children eat, however, forget about the “honey is better because you use less of it in cooking” argument. What grainy, bready desserts partly sweetened with honey do for children is to activate sugar cravings without satisfying them. Mothers who cook with honey raise sugar junkies who beg, borrow, smuggle, and steal candy and sugar-saturated junkfood. I was one of the lucky little sugar junkies who found that, as an adult, exercising my legal right to eat sugary junk in front of Mother brought my sugar craving under control. I’ve known other sugar junkies who managed to ingest enough of Mom’s “healthy treats” and smuggle enough sugar to be hypoglycemic, diabetic, and/or depressed before age twenty-five.

What I’d recommend for kids is letting them fill up on plenty of raw organic vegetables before exposing them to sugar—natural or unnatural. Kids hate vegetables the way adults in our culture are typically taught to serve them—cooked limp and/or smothered in oil and vinegar. Kids love vegetables fresh from the garden and will happily snack on raw carrots, asparagus, peas, celery, cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach, and almost anything else in the organic garden. The natural sugars in raw veg satisfy children’s sugar cravings, provide plenty of fibre, and are easier for children to digest than some adults would have believed. I would let a child snack on anything I tolerated in the garden, and insist on cooking a vegetable only if the child became flatulent or complained of tummy-aches after eating it raw. If this plan didn’t keep the child from gobbling up candy and commercial desserts when those were available, I’d calm myself with the knowledge that the child was well exercised and supplied with fibre anyway.

Personally, I think vinegar works best as a cleaning product because it motivates me to keep rinsing and scrubbing away all traces of that disgusting odor, so I think there’s far too much vinegar in these recipes, but the idea of serving fruit with lemon juice instead of sugar or honey, as a salad dressing, is definitely an improvement over serving mayonnaise with added sugar.

I’d heard about the mixed benefits of raw broccoli for people with thyroid problems, and about the mixed benefits of eating phytoestrogen-rich soy products, but that millet, peaches, strawberries, pine nuts, bamboo, and peanuts “have been shown to create thyroid problems” was news to me. How does that work? Well, one thing those foods have in common is that in 2010 all of them were likely to have been "ripened" with glyphosate, which does seem to cause thyroid problems, up to and including thyroid cancer. If you have a serious thyroid or ovarian disorder, you’ll want to read the recent findings Michaels reports in this book, but bear in mind that the research was done by a process of wilfully ignoring the elephant in the room. Foods that have not caused diseases for thousands of years have started to cause diseases only when and as they've been sprayed with chemicals that have been intentionally not tested, despise evidence that their use is correlated with those diseases.

Book Review: 2024 Plant Based Diet Cookbook for Beginners

Title: 2024 Plant Based Diet Cookbook for Beginners

Author: Sarah Roslin

Date: 2024

Quote: "In your plant-based culinary journey, accuracy is essential."

And that's why this is not an ideal cookbook for beginners. It has pretty computer-generated pictures in the PDF version only, not in the printed version. Recipes are not well edited and in many cases will not yield results that resemble the computer-generated pictures. 

You don't want to do a "plant-based diet" unless you have access to 100% unsprayed plants...and that means free from drifting residues of poison sprays. That's why reading and reviewing this e-book has not been a high priority for me. I didn't want let the file sit until it was totally out of date (calling for products, like specific size packages of tofu, that may have gone off the market) but it's still not ready for the general public to use. 

Because you can't really go wrong with clean fruit and vegetables, as long as you have good-quality ingredients, what these recipes produce will be edible and may even taste good, but it may be very strange. Sometimes you can see how the computer-generated picture presupposes chunks of a vegetable where the recipe tells you to shred it. Sometimes you can't see how the picture shows a different size dish than the recipe will make. One recipe makes about a cup of a grain-legume mix, a good snack for the single cook, but the picture shows about a quart-sized pan full. 

Additionally, several recipes' lists of ingredients don't match the instructions given. Ingredients are not listed in the order they need to be used, so you'll be reading and rereading, going "Lime juice? It says nothing about lime juice...she must have meant the lemon juice in the ingredients list." 

Amounts of ingredients seem to have been copied verbatim from some other source. European cooks typically use postal-size scales and weigh out ingredients American cooks typically measure by volume. There are arguments in favor of either method. You get more precise equivalents of the original cook's recipe by weighing, but atmospheric conditions have a lot to do with the success of some recipes and you may have to spend less time tweaking proportions if you measure by volume. The only trouble is that beginner cooks in the US usually don't have scales. Knowing that a pound equals approximately 455 grams is only a little bit of help in measuring flour out of a 5-pound sack. 

For experienced cooks who have access to wide varieties of clean fruits and vegetables, however, here are some classic and some innovative combinations of produce from gardens around the world that are likely to delight the palate...because very few combinations of fruits and vegetables, in reasonable amounts, ever fail to taste good. 

"Plant-based" is explained at length in comparison with other trendy names for diet plans in the text. It means cooks use plant products when they can--in some recipes corn oil margarine or soybean sausages, assuming clean corn or soybeans, works just fine--but may use milk or egg products when they feel that they must. No recipe in this book calls for meat but some do call for butter, cheese, or honey. 

Most, not all, of these recipes are gluten-free. Most, not all, are sugar-free. All can be made completely nondairy, though some apparently disappointed the original cook when they were. The wide variety of plant products used means it's easy to avoid any specific allergy triggers you may still have even when plant products aren't poisoned with chemicals. (Most people, however, can tolerate clean fruits and vegetables. Most food allergies are sensitivities to chemicals rather than actual food.) 

Is it worth keeping a cookbook like this in the house? Meh. If you're going to find it terribly annoying or frustrating, don't buy a plant-based cookbook yet, but I personally like to keep them around as reminders of hope.

Bad Poetry: Desserts

This post combines the prompt at Napowrimo.net ("something magical and strange that happens at night, and could be a dream, but feels lifelike") and the one at Poets & Storytellers United ("something about desserts, or just desserts"). The dream is one I really had. The rest of the story also happened, but later.

In a dream I held out a plate to take

A slice of the very most fanciful cake

Ever. Little beads of sugar ran round and round,

Colored or gilt. The top was a mound

Of icing and candies. "Vanilla?" I said,

Taking a bite. "Why--it's just cold cornbread!"

I went to the kitchen, and there I made

A salad of fresh fruit in circles arrayed:

Green grapes and tangerine, strawberry slices,

June apple, banana, and raspberries; spices

Not needed, just a few squeezes of lemon

And sprinkle of sugar to please all the women

Expected for luncheon. And please them it did.

It pleased my palate, too. Only one dear old kid

Wanted no fruit but cookies just out of a box.

This was good; it left just enough. Fruit salad rocks.

None of it was left over. I thought I could eat

The whole thing by myself, but I'm glad, now, they beat

Me to that salad's finish. Some food treats are best

Enjoyed when there's just enough for all the rest

And those six perfect bites give delight that's unique,

Not compared with the leftovers eaten all week.

That way memories of the best dessert you ever made

Stay piquant and perfect, and never do fade.

Photo from Google, where it's credited to Natasha's Kitchen. Google has dozens of photos of fruit salads that aren't mine...enough to inspire any cook, whatever may be in the kitchen. Any good fresh unsprayed fruits, alone or together, are likely to become a great, memorable summer dessert.

Grandma Bonnie Peters' Gluten-Free Recipe: Garbanzo Salad, Soup, or Spread

Garbanzos are most often planted, in the United States, as cover crops in between wheat growing seasons. Because wheat is the hardest of all crops to weed, the one that gave people the idea of trying just to poison the field so weeds couldn't grow, garbanzos tend to be loaded with pesticide residues. 

Before glyphosate many people formed a prejudice against garbanzos, thinking they were allergic to these "chick peas" themselves. Since 2010 a different set of people may have thought we were allergic to garbanzos and to so many other things. The good new is that the majority of those people aren't even allergic to wheat. They have been reacting to glyphosate. 

When garbanzos have not had chemicals sprayed on them, and not grown in chemical-poisoned soil, they've always been a good healthy food, full of nutrients, to which very few people are allergic. They do need to be fully cooked, which takes a few hours, and used in a diet that includes plenty of water. Like all legumes they react with the acid in our bodies to form gas bubbles that are harmless, but annoying, if we're not well hydrated.

Grandma Bonnie Peters started cooking gluten-free vegan food before 2010, and never adjusted to the horrible new reality that the diet that had restored her health had become toxic in its own way, with glyphosate. All the vegetables in this recipe tend, even today, to be full of glyphosate. 

We still need a ban on this poison. Chemical companies are still fighting tooth and nail to prevent our getting one. We need to fight back. Identify farms that use glyphosate. Publicize where those farms are located, so that everyone can refuse to buy anything from those farms. In the local area, everyone should also avoid speaking to, or touching, or working with, or trading with, or meeting in any social group, the farmers who are still bitterly clinging to glyphosate. If people agree to do this consistently there will be no need for violence or for additional government regulations. 

The Bitter Clingers to Glyphosate are not decent human beings. We stop treating them like human beings. They have become things--walking vats of toxic waste. They have no place in human society. Make them know it, and within a year they should be begging people to accept payment for holding their "farms" for the seven to ten years the land will need to recover from the Vicious Pesticide Cycle, while the Bitter Clingers move to basement apartments in cities and do menial work that feels penitential to them, and pray daily that people will show more empathy toward them than they have shown toward other people. 

If and when this strategy works, then this recipe will stop being a sad memory and become an actual recipe we can use, as it used to be.

Gluten-Free Vegan Garbanzo Salad, Soup, or Spread all begin with the same ingredients:

2 heaping cups cooked garbanzos (2 15-16-oz cans)

1 bell pepper

2 carrots

2 celery sticks

2 T chopped parsley, or more

½ cup chopped English walnuts

Optional seasonings: salt, pepper, lemon juice, onion, garlic, etc., as you like, but taste the dish before seasoning. It’s flavorful all by itself.

Method for Gluten-Free Garbanzo Salad

Clean and chop the raw vegetables. Toss with nuts and garbanzos. Serve on plates lined with lettuce. Garnish with radishes when they’re in season. Pass salt, pepper, lemon juice, and/or mayonnaise. 

Alternatively, break up green leaf lettuce, romaine, or other salad greens; toss them with the salad, and serve in bowls.

Method for Gluten-Free Garbanzo Soup

Heat the garbanzos in a generous amount of water and/or broth, adding the chopped peppers, carrots, and celery while bringing the liquid to boil. Simmer until the vegetables are soft. Sprinkle in parsley and nuts.

Method for Gluten-Free Garbanzo Spread

Cook the garbanzos, but leave the other vegetables raw. Grind everything, including the parsley and nuts, with a few spoonfuls of broth in a blender or food processor. Season as you like. Lay a piece of rice bread or corn bread, or lettuce, on a plate. Carefully spread the vegetable mixture thickly over the bread, and eat with a fork.

Truly gluten-free bread, by definition, doesn’t make the kind of sandwiches you can hold in one hand and eat while doing something else. Some gluten-intolerant people can use bread thickened with potato and tapioca starch; some breads of this type can be used for sandwiches. Gluten-tolerant people can, of course, spread the mixture on wheat bread. 

 

GBP advertised vegan meals, and she herself was one of the people who thrived on the no-added-fats school of vegan cuisine. She would never have added even a teaspoon of oil to any of these dishes. I don't think they need oil either, but some people might  want to add a teaspoon of flaxseed oil for essential fatty acids or sesame oil for flavor. Some gluten-free people might even spread this vegetable spread on a piece of boned and flattened chicken.

Meet the Blogroll: Bethany (Vegan Venus)

I am not a vegan. I live and share food with obligate carnivores. However, before glyphosate, I phased in and out of being vegetarian or vegan; I still enjoy individual vegan meals. 

Grandma Bonnie Peters originally wanted to have a blog where we'd write about all the delicious gluten-free vegan meals we cooked and ate, when she and I were "best case" celiacs. When being "Celiactivists" mean primarily being active, healthy celiacs. When I was paying my bills by writing for Associated Content, a height I reached within a year after posting there that "of course I didn't depend on AC to pay the bills! No one could!"...so I didn't have time for blogging, but there were a few ominous signs on the horizon...

A teenaged writer from India, writing for AC just to show off her English, described having gone from being sensitive to wheat to being sensitive to everything. She didn't write for long, God rest her. And people in Africa, where the celiac gene does not exist, started complaining of pseudo-celiac symptoms. AC was interested in articles about life with celiac disease because the numbers of reported cases of celiac disease were exploding, worldwide. What could Irish and Irish-American celiacs who'd been living comfortably with the celiac trait for years say to all those people? 

GBP and I noted flares of celiac symptoms, increasingly, between 2009 and 2015. We received review copies of books that argued that people just might not have been meant to eat grain, that genetically modified wheat might be the problem, or selective breeding of wheat was, or this, or that. What worked out for us when tested was that glyphosate was to blame for our symptoms. Entirely and alone. Increasing use of glyphosate had probably had something to do with my developing celiac sprue, traditionally a late-stage symptom Irish celiacs used to develop after middle age if at all, around age 30. While all sorts of chronic conditions and general malaise had defined the lives of at least three previous generations in the maternal bloodline in our family, and those symptoms were a textbook case of the Irish celiac trait and our symptoms disappeared after the year or so it takes for celiacs to recover from a lifetime of eating wheat products, we also had pseudo-celiac reactions to glyphosate that were worse than our celiac reactions to wheat. 

I'm told that not all celiacs have pseudo-celiac reactions to glyphosate. I've never actually met any of the ones who reportedly don't have those. 

Well, that story's been told here. Anyone who's managed not to read it can use the search bar on this page to search this site for "glyphosate" or "Glyphosate Awareness." I'll probably never be famous for anything else but I am the Principal Revolting Hag of Glyphosate Awareness. Worldwide. I do it so The Nephews don't have to do it, I hope.

(Mary Daly, the glorious, uproarious Revolting Hag of Boston, often affirmed that the different meanings of "Revolting Hag," a female activist who rejoices in increasing age, and "revolting hag," a repulsive female, is easy to hear in speech. I've always been sort of glad I never met her and tested this. But it's easy to see the difference in writing. I used to intend to become a Revolting Hag and now I've become one. Anyone who thinks I'm a revolting hag can go and take a long walk off a short dock.)

But I digress. Enough about me. This post started out to be about a blogger I e-met on Associated Content, just before it fell apart. Her screen name was Bethany. She, too, moved to Blogspot and started the Vegan Venus, or sometimes Veg*n Venus, blog. 

https://vegnvenus.blogspot.com/

There's not much of it. 

But there ought to be. 

One day soon, please God and Robert Kennedy and the survivors of the late lamented Dr. John McDougall, a plant-based diet is going to be a healthy, delicious, and frugal option again. No, all the people who've taken vegetarian or vegan vows and remained healthy, slim, active, and even good-looking in their nineties weren't lying. Yes, although in a world where most plant-based food is loaded with toxic chemicals some people feel good on a carnivore diet with only the occasional "seasoning" of garlic or onion, food crops were not always genetically modified to survive absorbing appalling amounts of toxic chemical, and people used to feel even better on a cleansing, healing vegan diet with only an occasional "feast" of eggs or fish. We will make that possible again.

I don't know whether Bethany will revive the Vegan Venus blog when it becomes possible to talk about the health benefits of a plant-based diet. But I hope she does. I added this blog to my reading list just in time to watch it die. I hope to see it return to active life.

Social Cat Family Like Pepitas

This post is a rerun. It went down for a while because Serena didn't like pepitas. Diego, Drudge, and Dilbert like pepitas.

Pepitas are the flat, crunchy green seeds of pumpkins. As a snack they were most popular in Mexico, and, when sold in the U.S., they're usually identified by their Mexican name. What's packaged as "pumpkin seeds" are usually still in their white outer shells, for which I personally don't care. But I do like shelled pepitas, and so do the resident cats at the Cat Sanctuary.

Pepitas have a mild, nutty flavor that I find pleasing with or without salt. The cats like them without salt.

One reason why the cats may enjoy these seeds is that cats and dogs inevitably tend to pick up intestinal parasites, and eating pepitas apparently helps the animals expel these parasites. I'm not an expert, but I have seen scrawny, wormy-looking animals gain strength and weight after they developed a taste for pepitas.

Pepitas also contain vitamins, minerals, and protein, and have a lower fat content than nuts. They can be considered a healthy snack. I hesitate to mention this because I'm turned off any food or drink by any other person trying to tell me that it's "good for me" and suspect other people feel the same way, but pepitas are nutritious for humans or animals.

When I share a pot of rice with the cats, I started mixing in a few pepitas when I didn't have chicken. (Back then I often made a cheap meal of brown rice mixed with a package of ramen noodles, which were of course flavored with meat "extracts.") I learned that some cats liked pepitas and would eat plain rice, mixed with pepitas, without any meat flavoring.

Grandma Bonnie Peters uses pepitas in some of her vegan concoctions; she buys them in bulk and often sends a package of cracked or ground pepitas to the cats. Heather, Irene, and Ivy are pepita enthusiasts.

"The web site hasn't heard from you for a while," I said to GBP. "What do you want to post? What does the web site need?"

She said, "Pumpkin seeds." There's no such thing as a vegan cat, although I have known house cats who lived with Seventh-Day Adventists who ate vegan meals in the house and did their hunting out of sight of their human friends. There are Seventh-Day Adventists who seriously try to encourage cats to eat vegan meals.

"Not the cats, the web site," I said.

She said, "Maybe the web site needs pumpkin seeds too."

Well, maybe it does.

Pepitas are not necessarily a substitute for a worm treatment by a vet, but if your cat enjoys the nutty crunch pepitas add to her (or his) dinner, indulging this taste now and then just might extend the time between those pricey (and not very pleasant) treatments.

Ingredients for a Pepita Meal for Cats and Their Humans 

1/2 to 1 cup brown rice

1/4 to 1/2 cup cracked and/or crushed and/or ground pepitas

1 to 2 cups cooked spinach or other greens

Salt, pepper, garlic powder, or other seasonings (humans only)

Method for a Pepita Meal for Cats and Their Humans 

1. Cook the rice as directed.

2. Cook the greens by heating them in the water that clings to them after washing, or use a can of precooked greens.

3. Combine rice, greens, and pepitas. Divide among humans' and cats' dishes.

4. Pass seasonings for the humans.

Variations 

Although this is a nutritious, protein-rich meal all by itself, you can add meat if you want to. Or any of those wheat-and-soy "meat analogs" Seventh-Day Adventists prefer, if you eat them.

Or sunflower seeds.

Or slivered almonds.

Or garbanzos.

One of the Recipes for Grandma Bonnie's Veggie Burgers

During Grandma Bonnie Peters' lifetime, the recipe for her Veggie Burgers was an official trade secret. I don't know whether she wrote it down or memorized it. I know that the Veggie Burgers that were sold in stores were made in industrial quantities and shipped out frozen. So this is not the recipe for the popular sage-flavored version some readers may remember eating. The proportions for a family meal's worth of any recipe are different from the proportions for the industrial version. 

Actually, because it was fresh baked, this version tasted better. Actually, finding the recipe brought back long-buried memories of the fun we used to have, cooking with vegetables, before 2009 when most commercially grown vegetables started to have glyphosate sprayed right on the part people ate. Will we ever be able to trust and enjoy vegetables in that way again? 

These Veggie Burgers were developed specifically for use with a low-protein diet. For me, the key to enjoying them is to recognize that they're "burgers" in name only, or resemble hamburgers only in their size and the ways you could heat up pre-frozen ones. They are a vegetable loaf designed for patients eating a low-protein, low-fat diet. The onion and potato give them a savory flavor people on such diets tend to miss, but in protein and calories they're closer to the bun than to the hamburger. If a low-fat, low-protein diet has not been recommended for you, as it was for the patients who inspired GBP to market Veggie Burgers, you can eat these "burgers" with a bean soup or even a meat stew.

Anyway, this was something close to the recipe for Grandma Bonnie's Allergy-Ease Veggie Burgers, in a size you can easily make at home. Some recipes for veggie burgers can be quite elaborate. GBP had worked out a few recipes that were as easy for her to throw together as a vegetable stir-fry or a pan of cornbread.

Ingredients for Family-Size Batch of Sage Veggie Burgers

1 can green beans (a pint-sized can)

2 cups your own vegetable stock

1/2 cup sunflower seed kernels

2 tablespoons oil

2 teaspoons molasses

1/4 cup of a safe soy sauce or Bragg's Liquid Aminos

 

1/4 cup dried onion flakes

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon paprika

2 teaspoons sage

1 cup rice flour

1-2 cups Betty Crocker Potato Buds (potato flakes) as necessary to make a dough

Salt

Method for Family-Size Batch of Sage Veggie Burgers

Heat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

1. Grind the sunflower seed kernels and finely chop the green beans. This is most easily done in the blender or food processor. Drain the beans, saving their liquid to add to your vegetable stock pot or jar, and put them in the blender container.

2. Measure in two cups of vegetable stock. GBP used whatever vegetable cooking and canning liquids she had. Supermarkets sell vegetable stock, but I don't think GBP ever used it. It tends to contain added salt and monosodium glutamate and may contain glyphosate residues. Carrots and celery are key ingredients of traditional vegetable stock; they also soak up glyphosate like sponges. 

3. Blend these ingredients almost completely smooth. Then combine with the others in the blender or in a mixing bowl. Use enough potato flakes to make a wet but cohesive dough. Taste, and add up to a teaspoon of salt as needed. GBP said salt probably wouldn't be needed if you used soy sauce.

4. Shape patties. You will have six burger-sized patties, which will fit nicely on a baking sheet you can oil or line with your Silpat baking sheet liner. 

5. Bake 20 minutes, then turn the pan and check for browning and doneness. They will need to bake 5 or 10 minutes more.

6. Although people who eat wheat could eat these burgers in buns, the burgers are breadlike and make a very bready sandwich. GBP served them with a hot soup, vegetable, or bread and a cold lettuce-tomato-cucumber salad. 

Is It Safe to Make These Veggie Burgers Yet?

The commercial conglomerates refuse to tell you whether commercially sold vegetables, even the ones misleadingly labelled "organic," have been sprayed with glyphosate or something else that may cause symptoms. You have to be vigilant. Know your reactions and, if you have a reaction to vegetables, don't use that kind again. 

However, people have been complaining about and not using glyphosate-sprayed veg for several years now, and most companies have taken heed. My experience has been that green beans are usually fit to eat these days. Potatoes are riskier, but often safe. Rice and spices are usually safe to eat. If you have good sources of unsprayed vegetables, it's safe to enjoy these Veggie Burgers. Soy sauce is the ingredient in this recipe that is most likely to be contaminated. If you can't find glyphosate-free soy sauce, substitute a a little more vegetable broth and use the full teaspoon of salt.

And if GBP had not clung to the idea that "vegetables are so good for us, we should keep on eating them even if they're poisoned," she might have lived longer. So be careful about using vegetables. I love vegetables and recommend eating them when you can, but stop using them if you find that they contain glyphosate or other poisons.

Status Update: "Plant-Based" Fish Is Poison

So I know, as I'm sure you know, several people who are attracted to the idea of going vegan, or at least learning to cook vegan food. I see nothing wrong with that. Even though so many vegetables are still contaminated by glyphosate or other chemical residues, it's possible even for glyphosate-sensitive me to find enough different veg that are "clean enough" for days of delicious, naturally vegan meals.

For some people, however, combinations of rice, beans, corn, peas, tomatoes, and wild veg from a safe site aren't enough. Never were. While competing products have come and gone, often generating bad reviews, the Seventh-Day Adventist food packers at Loma Linda and Worthington have been marketing their "Protose" products--have generated mostly good reviews and sold well to a varied audience for over a hundred years. The only problem is that the textured vegetable protein base for all of their products is a mix of wheat and soybeans, and Adventists have long struggled with the question of whether they can feed people who don't digest one or the other of those vegetable proteins. Since the 1980s, as wheat raisers have sought higher crop yields by basically marinating wheat fields in glyphosate from pre-planting to harvest, and soybean plants have been bioengineered to survive the same abuse, the incidence of inability to digest wheat and soy has exploded. 

As regular readers know, genuine wheat intolerance is a minority gene. All true celiacs probably share a common ancestor, back in the mists of Irish prehistory. The incidence of celiac disease (though some people who share the gene don't show the disease) used to be about 1 in 10,000 among people who live in Ireland or identify as Irish, 1 in 100,000 among other Western Europeans, and unknown in the rest of the world. The fact that a majority of humankind now feel better when they avoid eating wheat does not indicate that the human genome has changed radically during our lifeitmes. It means that most of those people are reacting to glyphosate. When they visit places where glyphosate is not used--European countries that have been able to enforce good tight bans, or the rare isolated True Green farm that specializes in the heirloom hard wheats called spelt and einkorn--they can digest wheat as well as our ancestors did for hundreds of years. Soy, likewise. Nature intended that all people should be able to get by for years on the proiteins and nutrients found in grains and beans, because primitive human hunters did not bring home a kill every day, but since the 1980s certain members of my generation, some of whom are in fact brilliant men, have suffered from a delusion that they were cleverer than God, and the direct result is that millions of people now suffer from chronic disease conditions our ancestors never had. And may Bill Gates live a lifetime with each and every one of them in Purgatory.

Anyway the cirremt century has seen new Textured Vegetable Protein products that many people claim to prefer to Protose. For one thing they can be described as gluten-free! "Just for you!" some friends have said gleefully when offering those new TVP products. Up until last week I just said no. Pure soy protein gets a truly meaty texture by being genetically modified. I didn't want to be the first by whom the new is tried.

Ah, but Jane Doe wanted to be. This person I'm calling Jane Doe is not a native of my town, or related to me through any common ancestors during the last 250 years, but is another best-case example of what the mix of Irish, Cherokee, and English genes produce. Lots of long livers in the family, the facial bone structure that's considered "good" because it tends to appear in families with long healthy lives worldwide, slightly top-heavy figure, lots of energy and interests, fun to know although my family tend to see her family as irresponsible rich brats. Jane Doe has been raving about the "Incredible" soy-protein-only vegan products for years. Jane Doe is not a celiac, and has never admitted to noticing a glyphosate reaction, but since about age 70, when that strain of flu went around, she has had a hard time shaking off the vertigo that was the special feature of that strain of flu. She says it's been chronic, but I observe that, if other people see her wobble when walking, she's been exposed to glyphosate.

She does not wobble after eating Incredible Burgers. 

"Maybe the soybeans they use aren't full of glyphosate any more?"

"Right. Maybe they're full of paraquat."

"Maybe they are just modified for flavor and texture, because Incredible Burgers sell so well!"

I have a reason for mentioning vertigo. It is not to gloat that Jane Doe is in fact over 70. In neither of our families is there any question about competence before age 90, anyway. It is because, although most celiacs don't complain of vertigo and most people who have the polio-survivor gene, who do notice vertigo, don't associate it with food or glyphosate reactions, as a sensation vertigo is closely related to nausea. So it can be part of a celiac reaction, too. I knew this, theoretically, before last week. I've noticed vertigo as a perceptual reaction to looking either up or down a steep height, and as a short-lived symptom of that strain of flu, during which I used to wake up thinking "On a boat...how nice, where's my old boat buddy...oh wait!" 

I liked boats, of course. Serious boats, with sails and room for a person to stretch out and sleep, on the Eastern Shore, and cute little kayaks I used to like to paddle around the Anacostia River. I still do like kayaks, btw, if anyone's interested.

Anyway last week I was offered some TVP-enhanced canned tuna, and I thought, "Jane Doe eats that and doesn't seem to react to it. I think I will, finally, try it myself before I share it with the cats." So I mixed it with some tomato sauce, corn, and beans, and ate it.

The first thing I noticed was that it was not the best, freshest tuna I've ever had. It did not even smell the way I expect a can of mackerel to smell. It smelled more like beans that are past their prime, though not toxic--at the stage that gave people the idea of mixing beans, fish, and boiled eggs in a salad because they all have just a slight whiff of sulphur.

"People take sulphur as a supplement," I reminded myself, and took a bite. As usual with food odors, after the first bite it didn't bother me so much, so I finished my share of the dish.Then I sat up reading an e-book for a few more hours. I remember noticing just a faint sensation of vertigo before I lay down, with the laptop on my knees, for the night.

Then I woke up and immediately wished I hadn't. Waking up felt like a mistake. It did not feel like waking up on a friend's yacht tied up near a house on the Eastern Shore. It felt like waking up on a ship that was sinking because all the sailors had eaten some of the old dead fish of which the ship stank, and were all lying in puddles of partially digested dead fish, adding to the stench.

But I forced my eyes open, just to reassure myself that the sick sailors were only a dream, and regretted that, too, as it made me feel even sicker. 

"From a chest cold to a head cold to a stomach virus," I thought. "Coronavirus meets our old friend the sore-throat flu," and I reached for my cold and flu remedy, a garlic clove and a couple of Vitamin C. 

Then I looked for an empty bowl or bottle. The only thing handy was the dish of fish I had somehow forgotten to take out to the cats, the night before. I reached for it and immediately ruined it for the cats. The Vitamin C tablets came up intact, along with the water I'd drunk after dinner. The garlic stayed down. I stayed down, after setting down the dish of fish. I think, if the house had been a boat and had drifted out to sea, as it felt as if it were doing, I would have stayed in bed. 

The cats tried scratching at the door. They tried knocking at the door. They tried meowing piteously. I stayed in that bed.

The odd-jobs man tooted his horn, down on the road, asking whether I needed a lift into town or anything picked up in town. I remembered that some publisher was supposed to have mailed me a payment that would probably be at the post office. I remembered that I was runnnng low on everything I had not already run out of. I remembered that, if I could squeeze a few extra dollars out of the payment for him, the odd-jobs man likes to drive all the way to the Wal-Mart that has the best selection of yarn, and I'm out of cotton yarn and low on knitted cotton dish rags for sale. Those are fairly powerful motivating influences, for me. And I stayed right there in that bed! 

I think I was holding on to the bed, because, although the driver's tooting the horn sounded as if he was on a solid road, it felt as if the house was out on a rather choppy sea. If the bed were to become separated from the house the metal frame would probably sink, but holding on to the board under the sheet might keep me afloat, I think was the idea. The conscious, rational part of my brain was asleep after all. 

Yes. Vertigo is not normally part of my celiac reactions, but it was part of that one.

When my celiac reactions are produced by food, there's always a bit of a race between two conflicting internal mechanisms, the one that empties the colon and the one that locks it down. Fortunately the colon wasn't too full, so the emptying mechanism one, which is always a good sign for the next couple of days. Some of the GMO-soy-enhanced tuna was in the toilet, along with some of the corn and beans. And tomatoes? No, not tomatoes, or not only tomatoes. I could feel the little blisters on one side of my swollen tongue, see the complete absence of a waistline where one had been the night before. Those soybeans are still full of glyphosate all right,. No points for guessing., Jane Doe has a higher genetic threshold of tolerance for glyphosate than I have. Most non-celiacs do. I was losing blood.

If it hadn't been for the blood, I might have blamed the nausea and vertigo on the virus. Virus-es. I grew up saying "one virus, two virus," but other people are saying that distinct kinds of virus are circulating this winter and may attack people in combinations. Other people are also typing "viruses," and presumably saying it, though it doesn't look like a word to me. I'm not sure whether my vocabulary could benefit from the idea of "one virus, two virus" when we're talking about virus organisms as seen under a very high-powered microscope, and "virus-es" when we're talking about some unholy alliance between coronavirus, adenovirus, norovirus, and maybe Epstein-Barr and hantavirus coming along for the ride. I'll see whether that makes sense to people in the real world.

But the internal bleeding and inflammation are specific. They are my reaction to gluten and/or glyphosate, as distinct from any virus infection, as distinct even from salmonella infections, which are occasionally known to cause bleeding in the bowels in very bad cases. Salmonella, in my experience, makes itself noticeable--green slime in the toilet, and yeasty-smelling gas, if it's the non-problem it usually is in my family--at levels of exposure far below the tarry-looking-blood-in-the-toilet level, or even the acute diarrhea level. And this was not tarry blood, or green slime. No distinct odor of norovirus, either. It was a glyphosate reaction, but an unusually bad one, whether because I'd been ill or because some other poisonous "pesticide" was also in the soybeans, or both.

I still enjoy cooking--and eating--real Mary McDougall vegan meals, no "plant-based protein" fake-outs, just that endless variety of combinations of veg, grains, nuts, and for additional variety spices. I used to like to do geography with some of The Nephews by mixing veg, grains, and spices that came from different countries for meals that could have been eaten in a different place every night. ("Potatoes aren't really native to Germany, but German people eat a lot of them," which is fortunate because the other complex carbs found in Germany and further north come from the grains celiacs don't digest: wheat, rye, barley.) 

But. No. GMO soy protein. Not for me. Not ever again. Stuff is poison.

(Obviously I got out of bed to type this...I was sick on Saturday morning, got up long enough to feed the cats and use the bathroom about 1 p.m., and was sitting up and sipping soda pop by 2 p.m. on Saturday.)

Book Review: Southern Living Vegetable Cookbook

I'm reading new books for you as fast as I can...I can read only so many pages on a screen at a time, and when new books turn out to be 800 pages long, that does slow down the queue. Here's an old book some people may want.

Title: Southern Living Vegetables Cookbook

Author: Lena Sturges

Date: 1975

Publisher: Oxmoor House

ISBN: none

Length: 80 pages

Illustrations: drawings by Ralph Mark

Quote: “If the vegetable begins to lose color, it is beginning to overcook.”

Southern Living was a spin-off from Progressive Farmer. These recipes show where progress was being made. When did Grandma ever worry about vegetables being overcooked? Did she ever eat them any other way? Crispness was undesirable in a world where most adults had bad teeth.

Still, it was only 1975, and several recipes call for four tablespoons of butter where one would do, or half a cup of oil and half a cup of vinegar where the juice and rind of one lemon would add as much oiliness and sourness as the salad could need.

What vegetarians and dieters will love about the Southern Living Vegetables Cookbook is that vegetables are promoted from side dishes to entrées. If you’re not a total vegan, but are trying to consume more vegetables and less meat, this is a cookbook for you. Vegetable omelets, or vegetables cooked with milk, contain enough animal fat and protein to make cruelty-free meals. Several recipes leave room for meat as flavoring or garnish for a dish that features vegetables.

What children, and adults with childlike taste such as the writer of this review, won’t love about this cookbook is that many recipes are designed to sneak second-rate veggies to the table behind layers of cream sauce, crumb topping, cheese, or even pie crust. To make an asparagus casserole, after cooking asparagus in the usual way you use the water to make a cream sauce, spread the asparagus in a greased dish, cover with cornflake crumbs, then chopped boiled egg, then cream sauce, more crumbs, more sauce, and shredded cheese, and bake for half an hour. Right. What I want to know is, who would let asparagus get into a shabby enough condition to need such a deep burial? Fresh asparagus is something you have to stop children from eating right out in the garden. I prefer to wash off the topsoil, myself, but I’ve never seen any reason to cook asparagus. It looks so much more, er, adult, while it’s raw, with a droplet of water glistening on the tip...

Grandma didn’t use recipes like these because she liked to nag children to eat vegetables. She invented these recipes during the long dark winters when the family ate their way through crocks of salted-and-vinegared vegetables and jars of overcooked vegetables they’d put up during the summer, and since they had no other vegetables and were on the verge of scurvy, they found it good. But Southern living is about having a garden and using vegetables while they’re so fresh that even the shelled peas, stringbeans, and potatoes taste good raw. Crisp, juicy, just slightly sweet, Southern vegetables are supposed to be treats for children.

The Southern Living Vegetables Cookbook was not written with restricted diets in mind, but does contain several meat-free, grain-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free recipes. Several recipes use all natural ingredients and can be made entirely from garden produce. And some don’t even bury the healthy veg in saturated fats and simple carbs.

Glyphosate Awareness Newsletter 6

The Glyphosate Awareness Newsletter is published weekly by Priscilla King, c/o Boxholders, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322. It’s available free, in plain text as an e-mail or attachment. Printed or audiocassette versions are available for the cost of production. (Audiofiles are free to anyone who can convince me that s/he is blind and can’t read a document aloud using widely available software.) Reprinting, recirculating, and sharing this information at the reader’s own expense is encouraged, provided that all sources of material are credited.

1. WHY THE IMPOSSIBLE BURGER WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE TO DIGEST

Vegan meat analogs are nothing new. George Washington Carver and Jethro Kloss worked on some of the earliest ways to mix grain and legume proteins into a “nutritionally complete” vegan protein loaf. In the early twentieth century, researchers from Loma Linda University, at Loma Linda Foods, and the Kettering College of Medical Arts, at Worthington Foods, marketed some commercially successful, highly palatable, wheat-soy versions of “Numete,” “Protose,” “Proteena,” “Veja-Links,” “Bolo-No,” “Wham,” “Skallops,” “Big Franks,” “Little Links,” “Chicketts,” “Turketts,” and others. In the 1980s Morningstar Farms (a division of Worthington) brought out Breakfast Links, Breakfast Patties, Grillers, and Scramblers, followed by other “Textured Vegetable Protein” products that sold well enough to be stocked by big-chain supermarkets.

Since most of these products were wheat-based, most contained monosodium glutamate, and some also contained milk or egg, they were unacceptable to many vegans. Specialty “veggie burgers” became quite a fad at the turn of the century. Grandma Bonnie’s Allergy-Ease Veggie Burgers were made of rice, beans, potatoes, squash, sometimes tomatoes, herbs, and salt for a nutritious, low-fat, hypoallergenic vegetable protein patty. Boca Burgers contained a little more salt and fat but were also totally gluten-free, vegan, and hypoallergenic. Other “veggie burgers” that contained either wheat or soy were also marketed. While none of these products tasted much like the ground and grilled beef patties known as hamburgers, they were intended to be equally fast and tidy to prepare.

Now, a company calling itself Impossible Foods proudly presents the Impossible Burger, a bioengineered soy product that they claim has been made so “meaty” it even “bleeds juices” onto the grill. They’ve even invested enough in this thing to get national fast food chains to offer the Impossible Burger; other Veggie Burgers have been available only in locally owned restaurants. Their promotional drivel even presumes to call the Impossible Burger “clean food.”

We really need a federal law about this. If “organic” food might be allowed to contain 1 discernible part per billion of any chemical “pesticide residue,” which had better be borax, tobacco, or chrysanthemum, then “clean” food should have to be proved to contain ZERO “pesticide residue.” One part per billion of glyphosate in something advertised as “clean food” should be grounds for a million-dollar lawsuit.

And no point for guessing: the Impossible Burger started with “Roundup-Ready” soybeans, so it oozes glyphosate.

Don’t eat it. Don’t touch it. Don’t use utensils that could have touched it. The Impossible Burger is not only not “clean food”; it’s poison.

https://www.goodstuffnw.com/2019/05/impossible-burger-industrial-scam-with.html?spref=tw

2. BUT OTHER FOODS HAVE BECOME POISON, TOO

Basically, if you want to eat truly “clean” food in any part of North America, you need to have (or be very, very nice to someone who has) a genuinely organic, “pesticide”-free farm. In the supermarkets? Deep-sea fish, eggs, chicken, and turkey are likely, but not guaranteed, to be fit to eat. Beef and milk are likely to contain glyphosate. In the produce department, garlic and onions typically need less “protection” than other food and are likely, but not guaranteed, to contain very little glyphosate. Grains, beans, seeds, greens, and fruit are likely, though not guaranteed, to contain enough glyphosate to cause people who show celiac or pseudo-celiac reactions to gush blood.

While a lot of people are going to say “Well, I have to eat something; if it kills me it kills me,” those of us who can get clean plant food—even if it’s unconventional plants like dandelions—can potentially help other people survive by just saying no to all commercial produce that’s not certified “3-G-Free.” Supermarkets typically make it easy to ignore the fruit and vegetables sections. Do that. Here I stand to testify that many of us will feel better if we eat raw wild vegetables picked out of our never-sprayed gardens rather than glyphosate-tainted lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, apples and carrots. And the farmers need to know that spraying poison on food is just not an option they can use to increase yields, ever any more; that sprayed veg are going to lie somewhere and rot while people risk short-term nutrient deficiencies to eat clean, glyphosate-free diets.

3. QUANTIFYING THE OBVIOUS: GLYPHOSATE AND COLORECTAL CANCER IN THE YOUNG

And in the older, no doubt...Robert Kennedy traces the links between exposure to glyphosate, which is known to cause colorectal tissue damage in a minority of all living creatures studied, and colorectal cancer. Yes, the more times you tear strips off any part of the body, the better chance cancer has to grow in the damaged area.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/child-health-topics/known-culprit/glyphosate-and-colorectal-cancer-in-young-adults/

4. THEY CAN’T GO BACK...

Monsanto/Bayer want to keep us in the box of thinking that the alternative to one “herbicide” spray is another “herbicide” spray. They’ve been warning for a long time that if we get glyphosate banned, farmers will “have to” use dicamba (the active ingredient in “Spectracide”), “which is even worse.”

“Worse” may vary—if your body forms bleeding ulcers every time it’s exposed to glyphosate, as mine does, you don’t think the nose and throat irritation dicamba causes to everybody, impartially, is worse. You think “What fun to be suffering only as much as the people who sprayed the poison are suffering,” and actually you suffer less, coughing for a few hours, than you would from the bleeding ulcers. However, all spray-on poisons harm other living things, including other humans, typically without their knowledge or consent. All spraying of poison on plants or soil should be recognized by our legal system as a violent crime.

In my neighborhood some people tried switching from “Roundup” to “Spectracide.” The whole neighborhood coughed, sneezed, and rasped alike. The people who were less aware of their reactions to glyphosate, who almost want to believe that dizziness and fainting and vomiting are normal parts of the aging process rather than that they need to move their lazy bones to weed their gardens, rushed back to “Roundup.” Here’s a study that may show why the resulting reactions, this summer, have been even worse...Why I didn’t just see blood in the toilet bowl as usual, but saw nothing but blood in the toilet bowl for nine days, after eating one little can of spinach (which used to be something I ate while recovering from celiac reactions. Why John Doe didn’t just feel queasy after drinking one little V8, but had to bolt out and lean over the porch railing. Mixing these two poisons apparently aggravates the effects of both.

https://sustainablepulse.com/2019/08/21/new-study-finds-glyphosate-increases-volatility-of-dicamba-herbicides/

5. IF YOU KNOW ANYONE IN ST. LOUIS, SEND THEM THESE NEWSLETTERS

It’s no longer news: Bayer’s persuaded the judicial system to stage the next big Roundup cancer trial in Monsanto’s old home town, St. Louis, Missouri, where they hope juries will think of Bayer as a big part of the local economy rather than a foreign corporation that, if it cares whether Americans live or die, probably prefers Americans dead. We have about another month to show the “Show Me State” that we actually want Bayer to be kept alive, and profitable—under new management that will steer Bayer back to forms of “weed control” that are ethically acceptable, such as building hand-held and highway- and railroad-adapted devices that spray steam on target plants. 

Book Review: Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cookbook

Title: Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Cookbook

Author: Amy Vanderbilt

Date: 1961

Publisher: Doubleday

ISBN: none

Length: 765 pages plus 42-page index

Illustrations: drawings by “Andrew Warhol”

Quote: “Many people have said, since the publication of Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette in 1952, that it should be followed by a complete cookbook. For, of course, I can cook.”

Modest wasn’t she? Dutch-American, super-rich, European-educated, and the sort of stickler for usage who insisted that it was Miss Vanderbilt although she was also Mrs. Knopf, Amy Vanderbilt was probably more fun to know than her reputation would suggest.

It would be hard to collect this many recipes and not include something that will appeal to everyone. Vanderbilt wasn’t aware of special diets but she was brought up with that obsession with “balanced meals” that, when followed, guaranteed everyone that almost every meal would include something they could eat. None of the menu plans is vegan but each includes enough vegetarian dishes to leave a vegan guest feeling well fed.

Vanderbilt and her friends had also lived through The War, when shortages created demands for sugar-free, egg-free, wheat-free, meat-free, and similar kinds of recipes. Some people hated the ersatz or “war” recipes. “War Cakes,” which tended to be heavy, egg-free, and sweetened mainly by preserved fruits, gave some Americans a guilt-soothing sense that at least they were suffering along with bombed-out London and the boys in the trenches. Yet War Cakes could be palatable, if they were done right, and became some families’ favorites. My mother taught her children to recognize and bake War Cakes; Vanderbilt’s collection of fancy baked deserts includes a few. The idea of rationing eggs so farmers could kill one another disgusts me, but it did generate recipes suitable for people who are allergic to eggs.

But of course in 1961 the war was over and the Waste Age’s economic bubble was near its fragile height. The appeal of cookbooks like this one was that not only the super-rich, but almost everyone who had a kitchen, could revel in waffles mixed in a blender and baked in an electric waffle iron, in things that had to be refrigerated or frozen to reach the right consistency, in all kinds of dishes that called for special pudding molds and rice cookers and seafood steamers. It was not considered a disgrace for young women who’d quit work to stay home with young children to figure out that rice can be cooked in an ordinary saucepan and cake batter can be whipped up in one bowl with one spoon, but if she didn’t imagine that the mixers and blenders and whisks would make cooking better, and more fun, she might be coming down with beatnik tendencies. And it seemed so, oh, American that Vanderbilt enjoyed canned soup and packaged baking mixes as well as long-simmered stocks and hand-rolled pastries.

So her cookbook is a period piece. Exhaustive though it was, it does not include recipes for several things we cook now. Vanderbilt mentioned arugula at the very end, as “rugola,” in a short list of garden herbs that (surprise!) were edible. She’d heard of pizza, and observed that my generation (then “the teenagers”) liked it, but she made it on a base of baking-powder biscuit dough. Yes. On the other hand, you might agree that her black walnut bread, gingerbread men, turtle candies, eclairs, and ribbon sandwiches deserve to survive.

The copy I physically owned sold in its third hour on display, but you can still buy copies online for $5 per book, $5 per package, $1 per online payment. This is a thick book; only one more of the same size would fit into one package, or two standard-size books would.

Happy Post: I.G.A. Roasted & Salted Pumpkin Seeds

This web site has not featured a happy product review, books apart, for a long time. Well, here is one.

Yesterday I went to the Independent Grocers Association store, all the way down the state line, because that was the closest store running a good sale on small bottles of Coca-Cola products. I wanted to sell cold drinks in the Friday Market this morning.

As local lurkers may have noticed, the owner of the cooler didn't show up again. She's not old, but has been ill. Pray for her. So once again what I had for sale were warm drinks. Last week I found a sale on Pepsi products, stayed with them until they actually started to feel warm, and took them home and drank them before they could deteriorate from the heat. Today I found a sale on Coke products, and people snapped them up before the chilly fog even lifted.

Anyway, while in the I.G.A. store, I dillydallied about waiting for a relative to load up a cart, in hopes of getting a lift home--which I did--and I found a whole rack of off-brand snacks, including ridiculously overpriced nuts, standard-priced candies, and a really good price on roasted and salted pepitas.

I've not seen roasted and salted pepitas in a U.S. supermarket before. They've not really achieved mainstream snack status in the Eastern States. I've seen Badia brand raw, green, unsalted pepitas--which are scrumptious, having a flavor of their own that's different from nuts or sunflower seeds, and good all by itself without any salt or other additives--and David brand pumpkin seeds in the big white outer shells, which I've never risked trying. I don't like peanuts "salted in the shells" and don't imagine I'd care for pumpkin seeds prepared that way either.

Recently, GBP having finally run out of pumpkinseed meal for my cats, I'd shared a pack of pepitas with them. They did figure out how to chew them properly, but the litter box showed that they swallowed an awful lot of those expensive, tasty snacks whole. I don't own a blender or grinder, or want one, and was not exactly looking forward to grinding my own pumpkinseed meal for the cats.

Much as the cats have learned to like pumpkinseed meal on their canned cat treats. Much as all outdoor cats need occasional pumpkinseed meal treats. Cats can benefit from the same proteins and minerals humans get from pumpkin seeds, but a lot of the internal parasites cats pick up from rodents don't tolerate pumpkin seeds.

Anyway, I bought a package of roasted and salted pepitas. Well, I'm human, with teeth designed for grinding, and I'm used to eating pepitas raw. But what I noticed right away was that being roasted in oil had softened the seeds even further. It gave them a gratifying crunch, but it made them easier to chew.

I said, "Heather! Kitty-kitty-kitty! Have I ever found a treat for you!" I ran a handful of pepitas under water to get the salt level down where a cat could stand it.

Heather agreed that they were a treat. Cats' teeth aren't designed for grinding things that are naturally thin and flat, like pepitas, but the softer, oilier shells of the roasted kind crunched just right for a cat.

I'm not going to post a picture, or even a description, of the contents of the litter box this morning. Let's just say they were gratifying.

For myself...the price is about the same, Badia being a name brand and the I.G.A. special being unadvertised, and I'd probably pick the raw pepitas next time.

Since I'll probably continue buying pepitas to share with the cats, any time I'm in (or passing by) the I.G.A. store, I'll probably pick the roasted, salted pepitas every time I have a chance.

I'll probably have to give the cats their treat first in order to get the package inside and eat any pepitas for myself, and since the cats don't enjoy taking worm medicine and do enjoy eating pumpkin seeds, that's a clear gain. (They'll still get worm medicine occasionally, but less often.)

This post was mainly about I.G.A. Can it have an Amazon book link? Well, if we count Kindle "books" as books, here's one some readers may enjoy:

Book Review: Deliciously Light

Title: Bon Appétit: Deliciously Light

Amazon is behaving oddly

Author: Bon Appetit magazine staff

Date: 2001

Publisher: Condé Nast

ISBN: none

Length: 80 pages

Illustrations: a few black-and-white drawings

Quote: “For many people, serving soup and salad together captures the essence of light, delicious dining.”

What you’ll love (or regret) about this cookbook is that it is, even more than the recipes it contains, “deliciously light.” This is not a big glossy coffee-table cookbook, nor is it a Complete Collection for Complete Beginners. It’s aimed at people with some cooking experience, quite a lot of money, and an interest in trendy, yuppie-friendly, relatively “light” recipes.

+Sandy KS recently complained that some people are down-rating all food blogs because it’s hard to tell whether people have tested the recipes they post. Well…in some cases that’s true. The number of combinations of foods that people will try to put onto the same plate is probably finite. After reading and testing a certain number of recipes for cucumber-and-yogurt dip you can say that (a) the tzatziki recipe on page 6 is likely to appeal to those who like that sort of thing, and (b) it’s a long way from being the “lightest” tzatziki recipe in any extensive collection since it does add sour cream to the yogurt, and (c) if you’re not really wild about the taste of yogurt and/or sour cream, plain old cucumber slices with a sprinkle of salt and/or lemon would be a great deal lighter than a cucumber-flavored cream dip scooped up on wheat pita chips, and would also be vegan and gluten-free, and (d) but then again, if you do like yogurt and/or want to use unsugared yogurt as a probiotic supplement, you’ll probably like tzatziki with or without sour cream. 

Then again there are combinations—I think of a recipe from a popular children's "encyclopedia" of my youth, a party dessert that was basically whole juicy oranges slurped up through mint-flavored Life Savers—that may look better on a page, or even on a plate, than they actually taste: I’ve never met anybody who remembered ever enjoying any combination of mint and orange flavors as much as they enjoyed either flavor by itself.

If enough people fund my web site to bring this “bookstore” to real life, one thing we may do is test recipes.

I’ve not tested most of these recipes and don’t plan to, but I can encourage less adventurous readers to try some of them for yourselves. There’s a walnut-garlic dip that still contains more oil than I’d care to dip my raw veg into, but that gets its thick consistency and creamy color from boiled potato rather than whipped oil, egg, or cream (it’s a vegan recipe). There’s a naturally pink “Watermelon Lemonade” that’s rich in trace minerals and guaranteed to be yummy with or without alcoholic additions. There are trendy, yet tasty, baby spinach and fruit salads (several of them). There are lots of recipes that are “free” from whatever you’re trying to avoid.

There are some recipes I personally wouldn’t care to bother with. Why, if people want to eat “light,” would they want to add lots of butter to rice and pack it into ramekins rather than just, y’know, boiling it? Cooking rice in chicken broth adds more than enough calories from saturated fat without adding butter! And why would anyone interested in eating “light” even consider breading their chicken not only with flour and breadcrumbs, but with cheese? And, given that most of us are accustomed to eating green beans either steamed, or stir-fried in just enough oil to film the wok, how can a “light” cookbook even mention boiling the beans in saltwater and then tossing them in six tablespoons of olive oil? Obviously the magazine editor was “lightening up” a recipe that must have called for melting a whole stick of butter into those beans, but…yuck! How overripe did “green” beans have to be to give anyone the idea of adding fat to them in the first place?

However, if you can get good fresh fruit and veg, I’d imagine that any of these recipes would be delicious, because fresh fruit and veg are delicious. The trend for light,  plant-based food is far from over, and the “trend” to push people into places where they can’t raise their own veg if they tried should keep anything that involves fresh local produce a status symbol for years to come. If you enjoy cultivating a reputation as a gourmet cook, you'll probably enjoy this book.

Magazine offices are not living authors so this is not a Fair Trade Book. It is, however, small and light enough to fit into a package with several Fair Trade Books, so you're encouraged to scroll down and find some. To buy it here, send $5 per book + $5 per package by postal money order to P.O. Box 322 (addresses at the very bottom of the screen, or send that amount + $1 per online payment to the e-mail address Salolianigodagewi will send you.