True Cajun - hold the tomatoes

As many of you know, my mom, rest her soul, was Cajun through and through. But when she was growing up in the early part of the 20th century, it wasn't anything to be proud of - in fact, she and her brother and sisters did all they could to speak without an accent and learn to cook American. She told me she was the first child in her family who went to school speaking English; she would talk to her parents in English and they would answer her in French. She didn't become truly bilingual until she moved back to Louisiana after my dad retired.

But there were ways to "cook French" in her culture, and one of tenets was that jambalaya, étouffée and gumbo never, EVER, had okra or tomatoes in them. I'm not sure why, but I think it had to do with the breakdown of vegetables during the long cooking times. Vegetables, including tomatoes and okra, were often served separately at dinner.

In recent years, Cajun food has taken on the trappings of many ethnic cuisines: specialized spices, hard-to-acquire meats and seafoods, and esoteric, complicated instructions. I'm here to say that only the spices are required, along with the "holy Trinity" of onion, bell pepper and celery. The cuisine was developed to feed large numbers of people with whatever was on hand. So go with what you have. Just don't add tomatoes.

Lori K's generic jambalaya

Serves 6

4 small bay leaves

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon gumbo filé (ground sassafras leaves, optional)

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground thyme

1/2 teaspoon white pepper

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons oil

1 cup of diced smoked sausage (andouille, kielbasa or similar) or smokey ham

1 cup raw chicken, pork or seafood

1 onion (about a cup)

1 cup finely diced celery

1 cup diced bell pepper

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 cups uncooked rice (long grain or converted)

4 cups chicken, seafood or vegetable stock

Thoroughly combine the spices (all the ingredients before the oil) in a small bowl and set aside.

Heat the oil in a cast-iron skillet over high heat and add the meats (if using seafood, add it with the rice). Cook for 5 minutes, then add the vegetables and the spice mix. Cook until everything is browned, about 10 minutes. Scrape the bottom of the pan well, and add the rice. Cook another 5 minutes, then add the broth. Bring to a boil, cover and cook over low heat for 20 minutes, or until most of the liquid is absorbed. Stir well, remove the bay leaves, and serve. 

Photograph c. 1938 of a Cajun woman hulling rice in Crowley, LA

Green tea, cancer drug don't mix

Contrary to popular assumptions about the health benefits of green tea, I see in a newsletter that I get from the National Science Foundation  that the widely used supplement renders Velcade, a cancer drug used to treat multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma, completely ineffective in treating cancer. This finding by researchers at the University of Southern California highlights why it's important to consider the properties of EVERYTHING that goes into oneself, not just pharmaceuticals, especially when fighting disease.

Food safety, from the top

Part of the problem with catching tainted food that makes its way into our food system is that the agency that is responsible for most of the inspections of our food, the FDA, uses most of its budget to deal with the safety of the D (drug) in its name, and the other agency who does inspections, a part of the Department of Agriculture, isn't funded nearly as well. It's been suggested that the inspection process be taken out of each agency and combined into a separate agency. (A more in-depth discussion of this problem can be found at Science Progress [click here].)

"I think that the (Food and Drug Administration) has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch," Obama said in an interview aired Monday on NBC's "Today" show. "And so we're gonna be doing a complete review of FDA operations."

One of the changes that already has happened:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced Friday final approval of a project to test a results and competency-linked pay-for-performance system that will change the way employees are compensated, rewarded, and recognized.

FSIS is a public health regulatory agency that continually invests in human capital. In order to continue agency success in performing a range of food safety, food defense, and public health regulatory missions over the next decade, FSIS requires an innovative human resources system. The demonstration project will enable FSIS to take a proactive role in finding solutions to all of these challenges in order to attract a diverse and well-qualified applicant pool, and to retain and motivate its current workforce. The final Federal Register notice is available at: http://www.opm.gov/cfr/fedregis/#E9-1641

The Public Health Human Resources System (PHHRS) is a pay-for-performance project that will include approximately 2,800 FSIS employees.

A sweeter option

Worried about the reports of mercury in high-fructose corn syrup, which seems to be in many processed foods? First, cut down on your consumption of processed foods. If there is an ingredient listed that you can't pronounce or your grandmother didn't use in her baking, skip it. If you are still craving a sweet, carbonated drink, look for CocaCola made in Mexico (some Mexican groceries carry it), or if you like fruity flavors, try Jarritos or Hansen's brand soft drinks. Or buy seltzer water and add your own flavored sugar syrups, or Torani Italian syrups, to your taste.

The bacon explosion

I can't compete with the Bacon Explosion, featured in the New York Times today.  But suffice to say, with 5,000 calories and 500 grams of fat, just one of those logs could go a long way in food security for whole village.

Moral of the video below: Maybe you shouldn't be putting something that can catch fire like that into your body. Or if you insist, use a smoker, not a grill.

A billion hungry people

Soaring commodity prices pushed the number of people without enough food close to 1 billion last year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Prices have been falling since July, partly because of a drop in fuel costs, but they are still a third higher than they were in 2005 and 61 percent higher than in 2000, the Food and Agriculture Organization says.

At a two-day food security conference in Madrid sponsored by the United Nations that ended yesterday, delegates from 95 countries met to discuss the food crisis that has stoked social unrest in many parts of the developing world and is threatening to push millions more people into hunger

Food security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food secure when its occupants do not live in hunger.

Alex Wijeratna, a food rights campaigner for Action Aid, an anti-poverty agency based in London, told the International Herald Tribune that the most important message to emerge from the meeting was the need to include smallholder farmers in new agricultural strategies.

"If you're going to tackle hunger, you have to be talking to the people who are growing food all over the world," Wijeratna said.

The Global Call to Action Against Poverty, an alliance of civil society movements, contrasted the slow pace of initiatives to defeat poverty with governments' relatively nimble response to the banking crisis.

"The fat cats of the financial world got huge governmental support within months," the group said in a statement. "Not so the starving street cats."

Breakfast on the go

If you need to be somewhere in a hurry, but still want a hot breakfast, a fried egg sandwich is the way to go. Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat. When hot, put down four slices of bread and heat until toasted. Remove from skillet. If you'd like, add a tablespoon of oil. Crack two eggs into it. Season to taste. After 30 seconds, break the yolk and the white that surrounds it. Cook until the egg is set up, then flip. Add slices of sun-dried tomatoes (or slices of fresh ones with seeds removed) or canned Ortega peppers, cut in half with the seeds removed and top with a slice of cheese. Cook until the cheese melts, put on the toast and serve.