Policy Point Wednesday - Wal-Mart in the Food Desert

The City of Chicago's Zoning Committee recently approved a new Wal-Mart in the Pullman neighborhood - one of the largest underserved areas of the food desert in Chicago.  Wal-Mart, famous for bringing its stores to underserved rural areas, has been trying to enter the urban food desert in Chicago for the past six years, but has been stymied by labor organizers trying to ensure a living wage for Chicago employees.

Wal-Mart has specifically expressed a commitment to removing food deserts from American cities, but it remains a controversial business.  It has been accused of unfair labor practices, unfair competition, of creating a monopsony, and of using foreign product sources with questionable labor policies and products.


That being said, this store presents an unprecedented opportunity for residents of Chicago's largest food desert.  Wal-Mart not only carries a full line of groceries and produce, but offers organics as well.  Mari Gallagher, a food desert researcher, discussed the possible impact of the first Wal-Mart supercenter in the Chatham neighborhood on the south side of Chicago:  grocery stores and retailers tend to agglomerate, or cluster together, around a stable, central hub.  Currently, the food desert in Chicago is experiencing negative agglomeration - food stores are leaving the area.  In her opinion, a Wal-Mart supercenter may reverse this trend, and provide a productive environment for a wide variety of retail grocers to return to the food desert.


Although Chatham itself is outside the areas on the food desert map (though it is surrounded by a food desert,) the Wal-Mart currently under consideration would place a grocery store directly inside one of the largest food desert areas: Pullman is surrounded by South Deering, Roseland, Burnside and Riverdale, all communities within the boundaries of the food desert.  Bringing a grocer to this area has been a priority for some time.  However, Wal-Mart does not plan to stop at Pullman, but has identified 21 additional sites where it will build stores, many of them in other underserved areas.

Sundays with Sparky - Pie in the Sky for the Fourth of July

Remember when I said we had an obsession with all things hand-pie?  Well, this project, which honestly I'm posting from last year, was what ignited that passion into an obsession, and was the grandfather of our peaches-and-lavender-cream pie.  It's a terrific seasonal pie - both in theme and ingredients.

So, the Fourth was kind of a bust: it had been drizzly and rainy all day, Dad was on shift but not in the parade, and Sparky and I were stuck home like the two kids in the Cat in the Hat.  I figured the best way around "nothing to do, too wet to play" syndrome was to fire up the 'ol oven and show Sparky's baking chops to Grammy and Grandad who happened by almost as suddenly as a certain feline.  We planned on having a picnic at the beach during the fireworks, as we do every year, and I wanted a dessert that was somewhat patriotic, could hold up to travel, and be eaten with sandy fingers...and suddenly thought "hand pies!"

Fortunately for us, I'd hit the farmers' market that week, and we had a quart of sour cherries and a pint of blueberries, so I knew we were halfway there.  I set Sparky to pitting the cherries with a very specialized tool:  an unbent paper clip (that I now find is not a cool Alton Brown trick, but a Martha Stewart one)  An eight-year-old and his Mom can pit a quart of cherries with this very specialized piece of equipment (insert, twist, pull) in just under half an hour.  Some of the cherries are lovely and whole, and some of them got squished, but in pie, as in life, nothing is perfect, but instead is sweet and sour and sticky all at once.

We then made the pastry recipe that I would marry if I could.  Yes.  I love this pastry recipe and plan to use it until all the butter in the universe runs out, thank you Smitten Kitchen.  At the time, I didn't know that I loved it when I started, but I thought I'd challenge Sparky's math skills and doubled it - and doubling, perhaps tripling will be SOP for this recipe from now on.  So the recipe went something like this:

"What's two times 2 1/2 cups of flour?"  "Um, four?  Um, three?  Um..."  "Well, what's two times two?"  "Four!"  "And what's two halves?"  "One! Oh, Five!"  And then the child measured out five cups of flour into the bowl without being asked, carefully scraping the top of the measure with a knife three or four times so that not one iota more than five cups went in.

"Two times 1/2 teaspoon of salt?"  (eye roll) "One teaspoon, Mom."  in it went.

"Two times sixteen tablespoons of butter?"  (mumbled to the tune of "inchworm") "Two and two are four, four and four are eight, eight and eight are sixteen, sixteen and sixteen are THIRTY-TWO!"  "And if that's two sticks of butter, how many sticks do we need"

(Pause. BIG eye roll, since I just made him do twice the math for no reason) "Four, Mom!"

"And twice 1/2 cup of sour cream?"  "One cup!"

"Four teaspoons of lemon juice?"  "Eight!" "And if there's three teaspoons in a tablespoon?" (groan)  "Um...one, two, three - that's one; four, five, six, that's two, seven, eight...there's not enough for another one?"  "Right, so two tablespoons and two teaspoons, right?"

"What-ever."

"Last is 1/2 cup of ice water...so that's 1 cup, right?"

So I set Sparky to grating the four sticks of butter in the food processor, which he did with minimal help from me, and then he dumped them into the carefully measured dry ingredients and stirred them around with a spatula until the lumps of butter were evenly distributed.  I then mixed all the wet ingredients and Sparky folded them in slowly until we had a slightly sticky dough - we wound up using all the wet, but YMMV.  Then we stuck the dough in the fridge while we worked on the filling, based on this recipe.  Sparky's head was about to explode from all the thinking, so I mixed it up on my own:

1 (8 oz) pkg cream cheese, at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
1 egg
2 tablespoons sugar
1 pint fresh blueberries
1/2 quart pitted cherries in about 1/3 cup of sugar)
1 tbsp flour
1 egg for egg wash

So, the first 4 ingredients went into the mixer and got whipped into a liquid.  You may want to freeze this until scoopable to make it easier to manage (this isn't what is pictured - we've since learned to put the three things into the pies separately so you get a nice red-white-blue thing going, and it's also easier to use a solid filling if you don't have turnover molds: our first set of pies were turnovers that leaked everywhere.)  Note: chilling this dough is vital to the success of the recipe - put your scraps in the freezer before you roll them out again.


So we rolled out the dough 1/8" thick, cut it slightly larger than the mold, and put the resulting circle of dough on top of the mold.  The edges were painted with a mixture of flour and water, and then we added just enough filling to fill the well.  (This took quite a bit of practice, and we've learned a lot since I first wrote this -  if you go back to the peach pie post, you'll see that a firm, separate filling is much easier)


Make sure you close the mold firmly (you may want to re-crimp the edges even more firmly with a fork, or the filling will leak - this is inevitable to some degree, but you want to keep it inside as much as possible) and then, with your remaining egg beaten with a bit of water, egg wash the outside and sprinkle with sugar (I didn't have sanding sugar, regular worked just fine)  Poke a few vent holes in the top. Place on a parchment-covered baking sheet and bake in a 350 degree oven until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

The resultant golden-brown pie will have puffed so much that your crimp will be almost invisible. If you're lucky, you will have a red, white and purpley-blue filling, depending on how stained your cream cheese mixture became.  Another lucky find: you can prep these hand-pies right up to the point they go in the oven, and then freeze them on a baking sheet and toss them in a ziploc, to be baked at your leisure at 450 for about 15 minutes.  Enjoy!

Did I mention I would marry this pastry dough if I could?

The Food Desert Project - Karadut Receli - Mulberry Jam

Who's to say what grows in a Food Desert? I say Karadut Receli, that's what! So, heading out to a secret spot known only to Sparky and myself (well, and about two hundred other children) we hit up our favorite local mulberry tree. Mulberries, related to figs and jackfruit, are propagated by birds, making them viable forage even in the food desert. Using the specialized equipment pictured below, (that's fingers and a used grocery bag) we wound up with about two quarts of berries (had we brought even more specialized equipment - say, a sheet and a long pole we could shake the branches with, this would have been an even easier proposition)

I also picked a number of white, pink and red mulberries, following the direction from this recipe...and then found all kinds of warnings online that the unripe berries are poisonous, so I spent quite a bit of time picking them all out (none of the warnings seemed particularly scientific - I sent a query to the extension office, but in the meantime, who needs to find out the hard way?) I figured that pectin wasn't all that necessary for this recipe, anyway - I'd be happy with a thick preserve.

They were beautiful, though.

(Quick - see if you can think about Pyramus and Thisbe without also thinking about donkey heads! -extra points if you got the reference without clicking through!)

 

After picking, I used yet another piece of specialized equipment for de-stemming: that's right, I pinched the stems between two fingernails.

When I finally had about two cups of berries, I carefully washed them and tossed them in a pot with about 1/2 cup of sugar and a shot of lime juice (bottled lime juice is fine in this recipe; I found it greatly enhances the flavor which is otherwise just sweet - somehow, lemon juice doesn't work.) I boiled and lightly mashed the berries until I had a thick, syrupy preserve.  I poured it into 4 oz jelly jars and processed it in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes (this step is only necessary if you plan to save the jelly for later, otherwise you can keep it in the refrigerator)  The resultant preserve was sweet, thick, and had a lovely nutty crunch remeniscent of poppy seeds - similar to grape jelly, but with a nice floral accent from the lime.  Nutritional Information.

Sparky opted for his own traditional use for preserves, where it performed admirably:











I opted to try the traditional Turkish use for this jelly: atop some bread covered in feta cheese (sometimes you can get feta crumbles in the food desert, but if not, use cottage or cream cheese.) The sour saltiness of the cheese was a lovely counterpoint to the sweetness of the preserves.

Policy Point Wednesday - A Word About Serving Sizes

KFC's Double Down sandwich has opened up a whole conversation on appropriate eating: what started out as mostly an advertising gimmick has now found its way to the regular menu.  It's also made us look a little more closely at what we consider "disgusting."  For instance, NPR's article on KFC's creation pointed out that it really isn't that different from the McDonald's fried chicken club sandwich in terms of nutritional content.  While we all stand back and gape in horror at someone eating two chicken breasts with bacon and cheese - a double-bacon-cheeseburger (again, about the same in fat, salt, and calories) is a standard order in many places.

It's interesting to note what it takes to create such a media stir - another recent article pointed out 40 popular desserts at chain restaurants whose calorie counts are between 1,600 and 700 - so, just one Chocolate Chip Cookie Sundae has about three times the calories of a double down, and about twice the fat.  These kinds of over-the-top desserts and meals are not new - anybody remember the Vermonster and its cousins?  Competitive eating has been around, well, since before the current obesity epedemic - the famous Nathan's hot dog eating contest was kicked off in 1916.  Between then and now, though, something about overeating has changed radically.

In 1950, for instance, daily desserts and meat-and-potatoes meals on which we now look askance were the standard - yet at that time, only 10% of the population was considered obese or overweight, as compared to over half our current population.   There have been many suggestions as to why things have changed - media, pace of lifestyle, access to food, ingredients - but it's clear that there has been a radical shift in our relationship to what we eat and what our bodies do with those calories.

Sundays with Sparky - Father's Day: Peach Hand Pies with Lavender Cream

As you will find out soon enough, I am enamored of hand pies.  We love empanadas, we love oggies, we love turnovers.  The Most Ravenous Head of Household was on shift for Father's Day - and I thought hand pies would be a perfect dessert for sharing at work.

I was kind of itching to invent something new, though, and I'd been lucky enough to score some beautiful white peaches this week.  Peach handpies have been done - that's where I got my beloved pastry recipe from in the first place, and, indeed, peach-bourbon would have been butch enough for my purposes, but it's been done.  Besides, for the first year ever, we've got lavender blooming in the back 40 (inches)...a perfect match for peaches...then I just happened to find a tub of marscapone in the fridge - and this recipe was born.  Sadly, peaches and cream flavored with flowers is just not butch - but I suppose a basket of warm pies ease the sting. (My poor hubby got called Jenn-Wahz for a week after he accidentally accurately identified a sponge cake in front of his co-workers.  Living with me comes at a price.)

So I sent Sparky out into the garden with instructions to snip the tops off the lavender flowers - and, with a murderous gleam in his eye, he immediately complied.  We then went inside and got to work.

Using frozen butter and a cheese grater, Sparky grated the butter into a bowl of salted flour.  After we carefully mixed the grated butter and flour together (having everything well chilled is crucial to the success of this recipe) we made a well in the middle of it, and added half our wet ingredients.  We incorporated them quickly, with a spatula, then hands, adding more liquid as necessary to get a rough-textured dough that immediately went into the freezer.  The idea here is to keep the butter as solid as possible, as that's what gives you beautiful, flaky pastry.


We then turned our attention to the filling:

• 4  peaches, peeled and diced
• 2 tbsp flour, separated
• 1 tbsp demerara or brown sugar (or to taste; it really depends on your peaches)
• 8 oz mascarpone
• 1/4 cup confectioner's sugar
• 2 tsp fresh lavender flowers
• 2 eggs

We diced the peaches, sprinkled them with a tablespoon or so of demerara sugar and a tablespoon of flour and set them aside.  Then we whipped the tub of mascarpone with the sugar, two teaspoons of snipped lavender flowers, a tablespoon of flour, and two egg - and poured it into a flat container which we immediately stuck in the freezer and left for 20 minutes to help it set up (don't start assembling until this mixture is firm enough to scoop.)




We rolled out the pastry about 1/4" thick and cut it into circles (at this point, we've invested in hand-pie forms.  You don't need them, but the little hollow in the middle does make runny fillings much easier.)  We  layered a spoonful of peaches and a scoop of lavendar mascarpone, and then painted the outside edge with water and a little flour, and squished the two sides together (getting a good seal is really important, or your filling will leak out as they cook.)  Place the hand-pies on a parchment-lined cookie sheet, cut a slit in the top side to vent the steam, and stick them in the freezer for 10 minutes (or longer - once they are frozen solid, you can wrap them well and save them for a pie emergency.  They happen.)

When you're ready to bake, brush the tops with a bit of egg wash (1 egg yolk and 2 tbsp water beaten together - or you could just use cream) and sprinkle with some demerara sugar.  We baked our treasures in a 300 degree oven for about 20 minutes, then turn up the heat to 400 until they were a beautiful golden brown (if your pies are frozen solid, add 5 minutes to the first step.)  Then we packed them up, and drove off to meet Dad!

Happy Father's Day, All!

(edited to add candid photos!)

Policy Point Wednesday - How Can Parents Say No?

In a recent book, Anthony Bourdain describes his personal anti-campaign against Ronald McDonald: "Ronald smells bad," I say every time he shows up on television or [on a sign] out of the car window. "Kind of like... poo!" He goes on to discuss how McDonalds and other mass-media marketing works because it plays on a child's biggest fear: the fear of being an outsider, fair game for teasing or being picked on.

Corporate Accountability International has also mounted a campaign against Ronald McDonald, stating that “Today we’re clowning around to call attention to the need for McDonald’s to stop clowning with kids’ health,” said Deborah Lapidus, senior organizer with Corporate Accountability International. “Whether it’s the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity or individual middle-America moms, there is a growing conviction that retiring Ronald – and the wide range of predatory marketing his success has spawned – is an essential part of the public health solution to today’s crisis.”

Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood discusses the pervasive new technique known as ad creep: cross-marketing, where several branded products are presented simultaneously, and how new types of marketing are bringing the fight directly to kids' homes and schools.  For instance, The Girls Intelligence Agency enlists girls as “Secret Agents” who invite their friends to branded slumber parties, using peer pressure to engage 8-29 year-old-girls in marketing products.  In the game Everquest II, players can order delivery of a real-world Pizza Hut pizza by inputting a command code while they are playing.  A Florida school district had contracted with McDonalds to offer incentive ads on childrens' report cards (which they later withdrew) and is piloting a radio program for their school bus system, which offers a mix of advertising, music, and PSAs.

I have already previously discussed the link between marketing and obesity, and how parents can educate their children on how marketing works - but how do we teach parents to say no?  While I can only assume Mr. Bourdain's quote above is hyperbole, simply saying no to children is not easy; the social ramifications they face are quite real.  When Parents Say No: Resisting Children’s Consumer Desires, a study by Dr. Allen Pugh, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, looked at outlier parents who seemed able to resist the pull of marketing.  Dr. Pugh studied two sets of parents: one group whose children attended expensive private schools, and another group whose children were in an afterschool program for low-income families. 

Dr. Pugh found that affluent families who were able to resist commercialism had "...a sense of themselves and their families as outsiders, with superior customs and practices – so that the family’s difference was not only different, it was better...Second, parents who resist must have a competing cultural idea, or frame, that enables them to withstand their child’s potential social ostracism or other repercussions by suggesting something else is more important."  The low-income family also used their differences to resist marketing: as immigrants, their culture positioned parents as the only family decision-makers, and they simply did not respond to their child's pleas for toys or games.  They cited their cultural difference as a reason not to participate in consumerism.

In both situations, parents who promote their family's unique values and philosophy as more important than their child's acceptance in a social circle tended to have more success in resisting advertising and marketing.  This is a particularly difficult stance to take as a parent: no one wants their child to be a social outcast.  Unfortunately, Dr. Pugh's study does not further discuss the ramifications of losing social dignity beyond childhood, nor does it discuss how children manage to cope with being "different."  However, it is clear that, unless outside forces reduce the marketing onslaught, to withstand it means you must be willing to cause your child some distress.

The Food Desert Project - Polenta e Fagioli

Beans, canned or dried, are one of the unsung heroes of the food desert.  While dried offer more bang for the buck and fewer additives, canned beans are still an excellent resource - and a University of Tennesee study shows that the simple act of rinsing canned beans can reduce the sodium content by more than a third.  In this recipe, we combine nutrition-packed beans with fiber-packed cornmeal for a delicious, crispy side dish. Nutritional Information.*

4 cups of chicken broth

2 tsp dried parsley

½ cup of rehydrated onions (1/4 cup of dried onions soaked in an equal amount of white wine overnight)

1 cup of yellow cornmeal

1 tsp salt

EVOO

1 can of kidney beans, drained and rinsed

3 slices of bacon, chopped

1 tsp canned garlic

½ tsp dried basil

½ cup canned crushed tomatoes

Salt and pepper to taste

Make polenta: in a small amount of oil, fry ¼ cup of the onions until translucent and they brown slightly. Add chicken broth, 1 tsp salt and parsley flakes and bring to a boil. ½ cup at a time, add the cornmeal in a thin stream, whisking thoroughly as you add to prevent lumps. Cook on low heat, whisking constantly, until thickened.

Fry chopped bacon until crisp and well-rendered. Add remaining onion, garlic, and beans and fry in bacon fat until fragrant. Add basil and tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the bean mixture to the polenta and stir until lightly incorporated. You can serve this soft polenta for one meal, and continue the recipe with the leftovers as follows:

Pour the mixture into a wide, shallow dish or cookie sheet and cool in the refrigerator, at least 2 hours until firm. Cut into cubes.

Fry cubes in a small amount of oil in a very hot skillet, turning until golden brown and delicious.  Six generous servings.

* Note: Nutritional information is offered for beans as packaged - not drained, rinsed beans as directed in the recipe.

Sundays with Sparky - French Toast

Few foods are as simple as French toast.  It's just custard-soaked bread, seared in a skillet.  However, custard is one of those magical, transformative techniques that opens a world of possibilities to you: for instance, if you layer French toast in a baking dish and bake it - voilà! Bread pudding!  Omit the sugar and add savory ingredients - voilà!  Strata!  Omit the bread, bake in a bain-marie, top with sugar and broil - voilà! Crème brûlée!  The best hands-on understanding of this delicate web of proteins and liquid comes from making French toast - so Sparky and I set to work.

So, first, we make the custard - and I taught Sparky my cooking-by-the-seat-of-my-pants method: we cracked three eggs into a deep, wide dish, sloshed in some cream, whisked in some milk, and a quick glug of vanilla extract (sometimes I add a bit of sugar, this time we didn't. I would guess we used about 1/3 cup of cream and 1/2 cup of milk, and maybe a teaspoon of vanilla)

Then we layered some bread into the dish: some ordinary whole wheat sandwich bread, and for contrast some lovely, hearty, Italian-style country bread.  Then we put another slice of bread on top of each slice and pushed down until the bottom piece was soaked with custard.  We then flipped both pieces over, so the bottom slice drained into the top slice.  We topped with a third slice and repeated the entire process until all the custard had been soaked into our bread.

Then our bread was ready for our preheated, extremely well-greased cast-iron griddle (you can cook yours on a nonstick skillet, it works just fine.)  Each piece was plopped onto the griddle and left for about two minutes, then checked to make sure the bottom was golden brown before flipping to cook the other side.

We dusted our treasure carefully with some confectioner's sugar and served it with syrup.  Sparky preferred the texture of the whole-wheat sandwich bread: the custard crisped up the outside, but left the middle of the bread gooey and squishy.  I like the Italian bread: the custard soaked into all the little nooks and crannies, but the chewy texture of the bread remained.

Policy Point Wednesday - Why Chefs Should Move...

Michelle Obama and the USDA recently announced a new initiative, Chefs Move to Schools.  This program, complete with map, pairs chef volunteers with participating schools, where they can help with the school's nutrition and feeding programs, as well as education.

This raises the question: what is a chef, and what is a school nutritionist?  How can this be a mutually beneficial relationship?  I have always thought that schools would benefit greatly from hiring chefs to run their feeding programs, since a chef's background is really about logistics more than food - and feeding hundreds upon hundreds of children is a logistical nightmare.  There is precedence that having a chef behind the wheel benefits school nutrition.

According to the American Culinary Federation, a"Certified Executive Chef," or CEC, "displays leadership and excels in managing and motivating employees. A CEC is a skilled, professional chef who manages the kitchen and has demonstrated the knowledge necessary to ensure a safe and pleasurable dining experience by preparing food that is delicious, nutritious and safe to eat. The ACF CEC follows proven business practices ensuring a financially successful operation."  A Chef is trained to run a business in a problem-solving manner- but at the outset, culinary schools focus on a Chef's kitchen and food skills.  Typically, a chef's education begins directly in the industry as a short-order cook or kitchen worker, and over time they gain the skills and education to move to the executive position - the ACF requires a minimum of 3 years of supervisory kitchen experience to accredit an Executive Chef, although there are also time requirements for the feeder positions for Chef.  While we tend to think of Chefs as menu and recipe-makers, that is only a small part of their job - they are essentially the CEO of their restaurant.

According to the School Nutrition Association,  a level 3 certified school nutritionist must complete a minimum of  150 hours of classroom training, and continuing education is required to maintain their certification.  Required study ranges from food safety to nutrition to operations to marketing.  A school nutritionist may also be a registered dietician, with a BA or advanced degree in pediatric nutrition.  According to the American Dietetic Association, "Individuals with the RD credential have fulfilled specific requirements, including having earned at least a bachelor’s degree (about half of RDs hold advanced degrees), completed a supervised practice program and passed a registration examination—in addition to maintaining continuing education requirements for recertification."

I can see where both these perspectives offer a vital piece of the puzzle when it comes to feeding our nation's students:  nutritionists and dieticians maintaining the wellness and health perspective, and chefs bringing their creative resources to finding healthy, good food and organizing the schools to get that food to the children in the most efficient, cost-effective and palatable way possible.  I think this progam has real merit: if you are a chef or a school administrator, I urge you to sign up for the program right away!

Sundays with Sparky - Bagel of Mercy

My philosophy on life is "when there is trouble, put the kettle on."  When someone close to us has a baby, goes through a serious illness, or is otherwise in a crisis - or just plain happens to live next door, we make and deliver some comforting meals they can eat or freeze as needed - and Sparky, my little bagel, um, angel, of mercy, is glad to be able to help.

Not too long ago, we discovered this excellent recipe for homemade bagels.  Why make bagels at home?  Well, if you grew up without a Jewish community nearby, I can see where bagels might not seem like anything special, just another form of white bread.  I, on the other hand, was fortunate enough to grow up on the outskirts of Cincinnati's Roselawn neighborhood, which at the time boasted the one and only "Hot Bagels" factory, and its unequaled bagels (at least until I made my own.)  Their bagels were perfect:  a smooth, al dente crust which bent inwards when you tried to slice it with their impotent plastic knives, hearty and pleasantly chewy on the inside.  Hot Bagels was an innocuous-looking storefront in a somewhat worse-for-wear strip mall; they offered etherial bagels of all shapes and flavors.  And huge blocks of cream cheese.  Nothing else.  We lined up on Sundays after church with a throng of people of all shapes and flavors, all hoping to get one from the batch of bagels just leaving the oven.

With that pleasant memory driving me, fresh bagels are often on the top of my list to make for friends, for celebratory breakfasts, and whenever we want an excellent vehicle for lox and trimmings.  I mostly stick to the dough recipe as written (so I won't copy it here, just follow the link) but this time I successfully subbed 1 cup of the flour with 1 tbsp wheat gluten and 1 cup of whole-grain chapati flour (my new whole-wheat flour crush.)  I don't bother with the egg wash or toppings, these bagels don't really need them.

3 1/2 - 4 cups bread flour [or substitute AP flour + 2 tbsp vital wheat gluten, or sub half the flour for whole-wheat + 2 tbsp wheat gluten]
2 packages dry yeast
3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt
1 1/2 cups hot water (120-130 degrees)
3 quarts water
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
cornmeal for sprinkling on the baking sheet
So, Sparky and I started making the bagel dough - a fairly simple affair, really.  First, he measured out the dry ingredients, using 3 cups of flour and reserving the remainder, into the bowl of our mixer.  We put it into the machine with the dough hook and added the hot water and allowed it to knead for a bit.  I've always found the dough to be sticky, so we gradually added the extra flour until the dough became smooth, elastic, and beautiful.  Then, we just walked away from the whole thing for about 45 minutes.  (This is usually where I start the coffee; if you plan to do this for breakfast, measure your dry ingredients the night before - then you can let it knead as you fix your coffee, and sit down to morning news or the paper during the rise.  Can you tell I've done this once or twice?)  Once your time is up, bring a wide, deep pot of water to a boil and add the sugar.  Your dough should have doubled in volume by the time the water is ready.

My only other alteration to the recipe - I make mini-bagels, so my dough gets divided into a much more easily divisible 16.  You'll wind up with little blobs like this:

Then, you pull the outside of the dough over the top and pinch it together on the bottom a few times so that you wind up with a smooth ball.





Next, you simply poke a hole through the pinched-together part and then widen it by rolling your fingers through it.  By the time you've done all 16, the first 4 have risen enough to go into the water bath.  Don't worry if they are lumpy and misshapen - rising will hide many flaws, and besides, you can tell people they look 'rustic.'


Drop the bagels into the simmering pot of sugared water, about 4 at a time, for approximately 30 seconds on a side - mini bagels will not sink and rise again, so you'll have to turn them over: I often use chopsticks for this job.  The bagels are ready to turn over or be removed when they get puffy and don't feel raw when poked with a chopstick.



Put your boiled bagels on a greased (this is very important; the watery bagel runoff is like cement) cookie sheet sprinkled with cornmeal and into a 400 degree oven for about 15-20 minutes.  I don't mind my bagels being a little dome-shaped, so I don't turn them during baking, you may want to flip yours halfway through.  Bagels are done when they smell terrific and turn a deep, rich golden-brown.  Have mercy!

Policy Point Wednesday - What is an added sugar?

Healthy Americans try to keep track of how much sugar has been added to the products they eat. Unfortunately, this isn't as simple as just reading the nutrition label.  Many simple carbs and sugars occur naturally in healthy foods - for instance, lactose, the natural sugar in milk, is counted under "sugars" in the nutrition label, along with other simple-carb sweeteners - so it's very difficult to tell from the nutrition label just how much added sugar your child takes in from the chocolate milk at school*

Here's an comparison that's easy to make - most people think of yogurt as a healthy food - and it is: it's low in fat, a good source of protein, calcium and other vital nutrients and contains beneficial microorganisms that aid digestion.  Since yogurt is a concentrated form of milk, the lactose in yogurt is concentrated - so the label on plain yogurt might make you think it's been sweetened. A cup of plain nonfat yogurt has about 19 grams of lactose - but it's listed under sugars. For us label-reading sugar-watchers, 19 grams seems like a lot: it would be about 4 teaspoons of table sugar - but though the milk sugars are concentrated in yogurt, so are all the beneficial ingredients.  Those calories are far from empty.

A cup of fruit-flavored yogurt contains an average of 47 grams of sugar – which means that, after you subtract the 19 grams we know occur naturally,  about 7 teaspoons of sugar have been added as flavoring.  For comparison, a cup of pudding has almost 40 grams of sugar – but since the milk sugars aren’t concentrated the way they are in yogurt, (I can’t do the exact math here without making a lot of pudding to figure out the ratio of milk to pudding, but a cup of milk has about 12 grams of sugar) the added sugar is approximately the same in both pudding and yogurt, even though the total sugar listed on the yogurt nutrition label is higher.  The line between yogurt and pudding does begin to get a bit blurry. 

One of the issues we’re facing in trying to reduce the sugars in school lunch is that we don’t know where the sugars are coming from: the school nutritionists call all sugars a “carb” and roll them in together with all the naturally-occurring sugars, fiber, and other carbohydrates to meet the USDA requirement. We aren't protected by the nutrition label because it’s impossible to tell the difference between, say, the sugars added to the canned fruit and the sugars in the fruit itself - and food manufacturers assert that it is equally impossible for them to account for the differences.

Added simple carbs are insidious, too – they’re often in the forms that might sound healthier, like refined fruit juices, brown rice syrup or agave nectar; or they're buried on the ingredients list, hidden by a chemical name ending in -ose.  These might escape the notice of even a label-reading parent who diligently avoids foods with high fructose corn syrup and table sugar. Another tactic is to hide several different simple-carb sweeteners across the ingredients list to make it seem as though the product is lower in sugar than it is, since ingredients are listed in the order of their relative weight in the product- for instance, can you spot at least 6 added sugars in this organic toaster pastry?  Let's face it - table sugar could be accurately described on a label as refined sugar cane juice or even beet juice, but it's still sugar! 

In 1999, the CSPI petitioned the USDA to require better labeling for sugars in foods.  In the petition report, they show that there are a number of ways to analyze and differentiate between naturally occurring sugars and added sugars.   Added sweeteners need to be differentiated clearly on the label, which means we need language to define what constitutes “added” and what constitutes a "sweetener" and what does not.  For example, most no-sugar-added jams are sweetened with concentrated refined fruit juice and, although they have less sugar than their regular counterparts, they are still very sugary - but more importantly, they don't offer any of the nutrition or benefits of fruit in a regular sized serving.  While I still recommend using the nutritional label as a guide, it's important to understand how the system can be manipulated to produce foods we might feel better about eating, but that aren't necessarily any better for us.

*According to the "Dairy Spot for Schools," a website of the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association, 8 oz of chocolate milk contains an added 4 teaspoons (that's 1 tablespoon plus a teaspoon) of sugar.  By their own data, it contains more carbs than the same amount of orange juice.  While it is important to note that milk has more nutrition than juice, keep in mind that overconsumption of 100% fruit juice, largely because of the easily-ingested simple carbs, is a real concern for the American Academy of Pediatrics.