Food Year Resolutions | Australia Wildfires | Recipe: Really Good Granola
Issue No. 24
Welcome to the first Sunshine + Microbes of 2020🎉 In this week’s edition, Jackie vows to consume less dairy and promises to bake more cakes🍰and cookies🍪. We also praise beans, ache for Australia, and make really good granola.
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My resolution track record is shabby at best. After college, I force-fed myself yogurt every day until I learned to enjoy eating it (yogurt is good for you!). Last year, I started meditating regularly, and those daily(ish) ten minutes of mental exercise have transformed my emotional life. Six months ago, I started this newsletter. That counts, right?
The improvement that meditation has had on my brain has converted me into a true blue resolution believer. This year I’m going to run. I’m going to learn pottery. I’m only going to watch television if I’ve exercised that day. I know it won’t all stick, but I feel pumped about starting the year off on the right foot. I figure, the happier and healthier I am, the more bandwidth I’ll have to be good to others and to meaningfully contribute to the world around me.
So let’s make some Food Year Resolutions*. Matt and I are publicly sharing ours here so you can hold us accountable (and check for updates on Instagram).
Jackie’s Resolutions:
1. Become a better food communicator. In particular, I want to find ways of leaving my bubble and productively engaging with people that don’t already care about what they eat. Luckily, this newsletter provides ample space for trial and error. Please let me know when something you read here really clicks (or doesn’t), and reach out about any topics you’d like me to explore this year.
2. Consume less dairy. I am a cheese addict, and while there are certainly worse vices to have, I want to reduce my emotional dependency on dairy. I want cheese and butter and ice cream to become more of a treat and less of a staple. Partly, this is because I have chronically high cholesterol. But mostly, it’s because industrial dairy is one of the leading bad actors in the race to ruin the planet. With that in mind, I’m going to make the majority of my meals dairy-free.
3. Bake more cakes and cookies (with whole grains, obv). Resolutions shouldn’t all be about deprivation.
Matt’s Resolutions:
1. Cook for the people I care about. I swear I’m not a bad cook. I can make some mean fish tacos and even aced an amateur cacio e pepe when I had a crack at it last year. I’m just lazy. Over the holidays, I’ve enjoyed inspiring home-cooked dinners from friends. Chelsey’s West African peanut curry on New Year’s Eve was a standout as were Jackie’s delectable dinners when I dropped by the Rauschenberg Residency for a couple days in December. I should be cooking more for others too and enjoying more time together at the table.
2. Grow stuff. Pickle things. The balcony at my apartment in Colombia smells of pizza dough, which is nice. That’s because I live above a Domino’s, which is less ideal. I want to put that balcony to better use in 2020. I should be growing my own herb garden and pickling more of the vibrant veggies native to this part of the world. At least the next time I’m tempted by one of Domino’s cardboard pizzas, I’d have my own oregano and pickled red onions to add on.
3. Be a better eco-example. A sneaky benefit of contributing to this newsletter is I can write about a great, eco-friendly idea — and nobody checks to see if I’m partaking myself. To be fair, I eat a plant-based diet. I don’t buy a whole lot, so I can’t waste much. But damn, I should be more involved with what’s going on out there. Keeping up with calls-to-action. Using my new bamboo silverware kit that my friend Diana gifted me for Hanukkah. Maybe doing a third thing too!
Do you have your own food and environment resolutions? Share your goals with us at sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com.
Love,
Jackie and Matt
*Matt is responsible for that travesty of a pun
Here’s one more resolution for you. Forward this newsletter to a friend who would enjoy it:
EARTH IN PICTURES: Dire images from the bushfires in Australia and how to donate to help evacuees, firefighters and wildlife.
Fresh links
🌯Cool Beans | Eater
Beans, Beans, the magical fruit. The more you eat them, the more You realize…
From almost every conceivable angle — convenience, culinary, conservation — beans are the perfect food. They are cheap, and last for years when dried. Cooked with little more than salt, water, and time, they can offer sustenance for the whole week. They can be reliably cooked well, with just enough variance to satisfy tinkerers, and their uses are endless (Frijoles de olla! Rajma masala! Pizza!). Their abundant fiber nourishes the gut bacteria that research suggests help modulate everything from our immune system to our moods. Even at the plant level, they make soil healthier, by forming a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. When dried, multicolored heirloom beans are also very, very pretty.
Read this appreciation of the humble yet en vogue bean whose growing esteem is best witnessed in the super-exclusive Rancho Gordo Bean Club where delivery boxes arrive packed with heirloom bean varieties. Jackie is on the waiting list 😎
🍝Call it a Crime of Pasta | NY Times
The grandmothers of Bari, Italy are famous for their orecchiette pasta, and anyone can buy it straight from the adorable source in the city. The bustling trade has revitalized the historical center of town, kept many families from succumbing to Italy’s economic depression, and put Bari back on the cultural map, with tourists flocking to the city to buy a bag of pasta dalla nonna.
But the pasta can only be sold for home cooking — and a crackdown on the grandmothers — stemming from contraband orecchiette found in local restaurants has the whole community worried about their way of life.
^^^Pasta Grannies YouTube videos are must-watch TV
🐉Chinese Restaurants Are Closing. That’s a Good Thing, the Owners Say. | NY Times
The golden age of Chinese cooking in the United States shined a half-century ago. Decades later, the restaurants opened by immigrants serving Hunan and Cantonese foods (usually with tweaks that catered to U.S. tastes) are starting to shut down.
According to new data from the restaurant reviewing website Yelp, the share of Chinese restaurants in the top 20 metropolitan areas has been consistently falling. Five years ago, an average of 7.3 percent of all restaurants in these areas were Chinese, compared with 6.5 percent today. That reflects 1,200 fewer Chinese restaurants...
But this phenomenon — the end of your favorite decades-old Chinese haunt (Matt wrote about a Cantonese restaurant in Houston closing down after 60 years) — isn’t always a bad thing for their owners. Instead it’s a tribute to the impressive economic mobility of second generation immigrants from China.
While many Chinese immigrant families from the 1960s and 1970s worked in food service or at nail salons, their children have been able to join tech and consulting industries. The goal of these family-run, first-generation restaurants was never to stay open. Tom Sit, the owner of one Chinese-American restaurant, summed it up: “I hoped they have a better life than me. A good life. And they do.”
Really Good Granola
This is Really Good Granola. For real. We couldn’t make enough of it at Ground Floor Farm. Here at the residency, artists hoard it like...something that people hoard? The recipe is adapted from the 11 Madison Park cookbook, which is mostly too fancy to be practical. But this is a cinch and makes the dreamiest breakfast with some homemade yogurt and honey.
Ingredients
4 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 cups nuts (I like pistachios and almonds)
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup mixture of flax, hemp, and chia seeds
1 1/2 cups unsweetened coconut chips
1/2 tablespoons salt
1/2 tablespoon cardamom
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup honey
1 cup dried sour cherries (or other dried fruit)
Step-by-step
1. Preheat oven to 300°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Mix together oats, nuts, seeds, coconut, cardamom, and salt.
3. Combine brown sugar, olive oil, and honey in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir occasionally until sugar has dissolved. Pour over dry ingredients and mix.
4. Spread mixture into a thin layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake until lightly golden, about 40 minutes. Mix every 15 minutes or so. Remove from oven and add in dried cherries.
One more resolution for 2020: Take a French fry bath.
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Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is the current Chef-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a freelance reporter based in Colombia. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes other scraps to each issue.