Dan Wooldridge, 79, walks the track at Mountain View Elementary School in Roanoke. Walking is one way Wooldridge controls his diabetes. Photo by Joel Hawksley | The Roanoke Times.

Dan Wooldridge has always been an athletic man.

The retired referee, former ODAC commissioner and supervisor of the Big East conference had spent much of his career running up and down basketball courts and football fields. So when he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes about five years ago, he was stunned.

“I had never been a sickly person,” said Wooldridge, 79. “ I was in shock when I was told ‘Hey, you’d better really change the way you’re doing things.’”

According to the 2011 National Diabetes Fact Sheet, the most recent comprehensive set of data about the disease, about 26 million Americans (more than 8 percent of the population) have diabetes and 79 million have pre-diabetes (see the infobox for definitions).

Martie Slaughter, a certified diabetes educator with Carilion Clinic’s Diabetes Management Program, said many newly diagnosed patients feel overwhelmed. She and her colleague, Kate Jones, work to help diabetics take control of their health so the disease does not control them.

To continue reading this column, please click here.

Click here to see recipes for Nancy Wooldridge’s cabbage casserole and Julie Manley’s light Key lime pie. This pie recipe can be adapted using any flavor of Jell-O for which you can find a complementary yogurt flavor, so that means you could also make it in orange, lemon, strawberry, etc. Check it out!

Do you have diabetes or has a loved one been diagnosed with the disease? If so, we’d love to hear your tips and recipes here on the blog.

The produce selection at the downtown Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op. Photo by Lindsey Nair | The Roanoke Times.

The Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op opened a second location in downtown Roanoke on May 10, one week ago today. I dropped in today to have a look around and take some pictures.

As you’ll see in the photo slideshow below*, they’ve packed a lot of good stuff into this location, but it doesn’t look cluttered at all. You can go in for bulk ingredients, grind-your-own coffee or peanut butter, snacks, cold drinks, ice cream, produce, cleaning supplies, and a lot more. The grab-and-go food section offers sandwiches, soup, salads and the like prepared at the Grandin Village location, which houses a deli.

I picked up a tube of quinoa polenta, two avocados to make some guacamole this weekend, and some rice crackers to snack on.

If you’ve been to the new co-op location or if you go soon, let me know what you thought of the selection, prices and such.

* To get the most out of this slideshow, click play, then click the box with arrows in the lower right corner to expand it to full screen, then click “show info” at the top right.

Poplar Forest. Courtesy photo.

Thomas Jefferson Craft Beer Tasting

April 13, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Poplar Forest, 1542 Bateman Bridge Road, Forest

This tasting will include six Virginia craft breweries: Apocalypse Ale Works, Blue Mountain Brewery, Devil’s Backbone Brewing Company, Parkway Brewing Company, Starr Hill Brewery and Wild Wolf Brewing Company.

Admission is $30 in advance, which includes 20 (5-oz.) beer tastings. Admission the day of the event is $25 for 10 tastings or $35 for 20. Non-tasting tickets, $10 in advance and at the door. The price of admission will also include a Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest beer glass (until they run out of them).

Event is rain or shine. No refunds. There will be no children’s activities available. Buy tickets online at www.tjcraftbeertasting.com until midnight April 12 or at the museum shop until 5 p.m. on April 12. For more information, call (434) 534-8120.

Southwest Virginia Gluten-Free Expo

April 13, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Tanglewood Mall (inside near A.C. Moore entrance)
This event will feature a variety of vendors offering tips, information and free samples to those interested in a gluten-free diet. The expo will also include raffles, prizes and games for kids.
Free admission.

Chef Behmoiras. Photo courtesy of The Bank.

Local Chef Recognized

From The Bank Food and Drink in Pearisburg: “Chef Michael Behmoiras, of The Bank Food and Drink restaurant, has been honored as one of the country’s top culinary talents in the inaugural edition of Best Chefs America. This is the first-ever peer review guide of U.S. chefs, who were chosen after extensive interviews between their fellow chefs and Best Chefs America analysts. Chef Michael is showcased in the informative and exquisitely produced 386-page coffee table book that was just released in March 2013.”

Congratulations, Chef Behmoiras!

iStock Photo.

This week is Brain Awareness Week, and the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute decided to observe it by creating an event called “Food for Thought.”

For “Food for Thought,” several local restaurants are offering special dishes made with ingredients that support brain health. The good news is that most of these ingredients are delicious foods we like to eat anyway!

Here, according to a document from the institute, are some of the brain’s best friends on the plate. Click “Read more” to see which local restaurants are offering special dishes and to read a description of the dishes.

Blueberries (and strawberries)
Wild salmon and other oily fish
Nuts
Seeds
Coffee
Tea
Chocolate
Avocados
Spinach
Broccoli
Carrots
Whole Grains
Pomegranates
Oysters
Olive Oil
Garlic
Eggs
Tomatoes

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When it comes to food kids hate, fish is probably right up there with liver and Brussels sprouts.

Most parents probably do not hold out hope that their tots will relish a whole, skin-on, head-on fish, but it would be nice to get them to eat fish in some form that isn’t breaded and shaped like a stick.

I don’t have kids, so I don’t claim to be any kind of expert on this. I do have a big kid at home who usually requests that I bread and pan-fry fish, then serve it with homemade tartar sauce. So I kind of see what parents are up against.

I’d love to be able to offer some ideas and recipes for parents, especially as we are in the Lenten season when fish is a popular choice for religious reasons. Even outside of Lent, fish is a light and healthy supper option.

Have you had success transforming a fish hater (child or adult) into a fish lover? If so, please consider sharing your advice and/or recipes!

Meanwhile, take this fun quiz and see how much you know about fish:

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Hey, gorgeous. Photo by Lindsey Nair l The Roanoke Times.

Do you ever get on a kick for a particular kind of food, and you’re not sure why? Like, you suddenly crave roasted Brussels sprouts or onion rings or can’t get enough BLT sandwiches?

That’s where I am with grapefruit these days. I’ve always liked grapefruit, but I sure have been in love with it lately. It started when I was getting over the flu, so maybe it’s because I was dehydrated and looking for something cool and juicy, or maybe my body needed vitamin C.

It could also have something to do with the time of year. Although grapefruit is in season somewhere in the country pretty much all year round, I often associate it with Christmas. When my sister and I still lived at home, my grandmother sometimes sent our family a case of Florida grapefruit. I can still picture those beauties nestled in layers of brown egg-crate packing. Now, we always have grapefruit for breakfast on Christmas morning with my in-laws.

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If you shop regularly at Kroger, you may have recently noticed some new products on store shelves. The clean packaging and circular green logo are part of the grocer’s new line of Simple Truth and Simple Truth Organic products, which are reportedly free of 101 artificial ingredients and preservatives that “some customers have said they do not want in their foods,” a press release stated.

Available products include Simple Truth soy milk, regular milk, chicken, sodas and chips. The company has recently been running some pretty good sales on the products, no doubt in an effort to invite customers to try them. And despite a recent Stanford University study that asserted organic foods are no more nutritious than nonorganic foods, when I see organic labels, I am personally more tempted to buy those brands IF the price is doable.

Before we come back to the Stanford study, which we talked about on this blog and which has been debated since its publication, let’s look more closely at Simple Truth. The brand’s website lists the artificial items that have been cut from the ingredient lists, and these items include artificial colors and flavors, bleached flour, antibiotics, high-fructose corn syrup and a whole host of unappetizing, chemically words that start with prefixes such as ethyl- and methyl- and propyl- and benzo-. You can see this list for yourself here.

According to Kroger, “Simple Truth and Simple Truth Organic brands will be rolled out in phases beginning this month with new food introductions, including cereals, frozen pizza, and vegetarian options, happening regularly. By January 2013, both brands will collectively expand to more than 40 product categories and appear in many aisles at Kroger’s Family of Stores.”

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On the Rise now offers pumpkin latte. iStock photo.

I’ve received a couple of emails lately from readers with questions. I also want to share some news about On the Rise bakery and Sarah’s Place, both in downtown Roanoke.

* First, Sarah’s Place. This is the cafe that took over the space in the Patrick Henry building that formerly housed Uptown Joe’s donut shop. The cafe has announced that it has started carrying FitFood meals made by a local food prep company that specializes in healthy fare. If you’d like to try before you buy, head over to Sarah’s Place on Thursday between 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. for a sample. Later that evening, Jeff Scot Philips of FitFood will conduct a free nutrition and weight-loss seminar at the cafe. He will discuss the basic principles of weight loss and answer nutrition questions. That starts at 7 p.m.

* On the Rise has extended its hours from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. Stop by and check out their new espresso machine. They’re now making and selling pumpkin lattes.

* A reader named Paula wrote to ask whether I know of any local businesses that sell fresh pepper-cured hams. She said she was introduced to pepper ham in Ohio but hasn’t been able to find it here. I gave her a couple of suggestions for places she could check, but I’ve never actually seen it. If you have any ideas, let us know.

* Finally, a reader named Beth wants to get rid of several years’ worth of Bon Appetit magazines from the 80s and 90s. She said they are bound in three-ring binders. She doesn’t have enough space for them anymore (and neither do I) but she’s willing to give them away to an interested party. I checked with Virginia Tech, which has a culinary history collection, but they did not need them. If you want them, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with Beth.

New kid on the yogurt block. Photo courtesy Muller Quaker Dairy.

Something very strange happened in our household recently. A carton of yogurt turned up in the refrigerator, and I did not buy it.

When I questioned my husband about this mysterious carton of vanilla yogurt, he said he’d read an article about how healthy it is to eat yogurt. So even though I’ve been eating yogurt since we met about 10 years ago, he wasn’t convinced to try it until he read it in one of his magazines.

Anyway, I was not about to give him a hard time about it (at least not until now). I was just happy to hear that he was willing to try yogurt, because I have always loved it. But then I looked at the carton more closely and saw that it was a regular blended generic brand.

“I’ve got bad news for you,” I said. “This yogurt probably contains artificial sweetener.” I knew this because I figured out a long time ago that an inordinate number of yogurt varieties contain artificial sweetener. And there it was, buried in the middle of the ingredients: sucralose. If it isn’t sucralose, it’s aspartame. If it isn’t sweetened artificially, a carton of yogurt can contain upwards of 29 grams of sugar, which is more than twice the amount of sugar we’re supposed to consume in one snack.

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Photo by Lindsey Nair l The Roanoke Times

My sister lives in South Carolina, so every summer (if I’m lucky) I get the absolute best peaches I’ve ever tasted. Yes, we have great peaches around here but the ones my sister gave me this weekend were the size of softballs, so sweet and so juicy.

Unfortunately, I have a stone fruit allergy so I cannot eat peaches raw. I had to cook them, but I didn’t want to adulterate them with a bunch of sugar and fat. My regular fruit cobbler recipe is delicious, but it calls for a stick of butter and more than a cup of sugar – it is by NO means “light.”

I found a recipe for a lighter cobbler on Food.com and decided to try it. It was plenty sweet enough because the fruit was naturally sweet. I rather liked the bit of tang that remained, too. The topping is kind of like light biscuits and only includes one tablespoon of sugar, which you could increase if you wanted a sweeter topping. But with a little light whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, it was just about perfect. If using really tart fruit, you’ll probably need to add more sugar to the fruit. I’ll share the recipe and its nutritional information below.

Another great discovery for me this weekend is one that a lot of people probably have already found. In case you have not, you might want to try this method that removes the need to shuck the corn the standard way:

1. Remove any brown or bedraggled bits of husk or silk from the corn with a pair of kitchen shears.

2. Place the corn, unshucked and uncovered, in the microwave. Microwave on high power for 4 minutes per ear.

3. Wearing oven mitts (it’ll be hot!) and using a sharp knife, slice off the butt end of each ear of corn about one row of kernels up from the stem. Squeeze the corn from the tip end out and the cob will slide right out of the husk without a single strand of silk. It’s quite amazing. Here is a link to the YouTube video my mom first saw (she’s the one who showed me this trick). Try it and see what you think.
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It is the pesky question that haunts millions of people every day before they go to work (or the night before, if they’re proactive people): “What am I going to eat for lunch tomorrow?”

Some folks buy lunch at a cafeteria or restaurant five days per week. They don’t cook, or they don’t have time to pack lunches, or they just aren’t concerned about the financial or nutritional affects of dining out that often. That’s cool, but that’s not me.

I like to eat lunch out about once per week — it gives me an opportunity to try new restaurants, which provides fodder for my blog and columns. On those other days, I’m standing in front of the refrigerator scratching my head just like a lot of other people. Lately, I’ve been pretty good about packing big lunch salads with leafy greens, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, any other vegetable I have on hand, kidney or garbanzo beans, and some cheese. Another great summer option is the good old tomato sandwich – I had one of those yesterday, washed down with some cucumber water.

But even those gorgeous salads will get a bit old if I try to force myself to eat one 4 days per week, and the fresh tomatoes will not last forever, alas. I imagine if I had to pack lunches for children every day, as well, and my head explodes.

I’ve been wandering around Pinterest and some other sites lately and I’ve seen a few ideas I thought I’d share:

* Easy Lunchboxes – This is a site designed primarily to sell you reusable, three-compartment lunch containers. But if you click on “Neat ideas” and then “Yummy lunch gallery,” you’ll find that there are some 150+ pictures of packed lunches submitted by users.

A couple of my favorites: Cold grilled chicken strips (finger-friendly!); egg salad wrapped in a lettuce leaf; a yogurt “sundae” topped with fresh or dried fruit; a few chocolate chips and a few mini-marshmallows; cold pasta salad; meatballs; and mini muffin quiche.

A great hint from this site: Use silicone muffin cups as reusable ramekins to corral stuff like goldfish crackers, cheese cubes or Jell-O.

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Strawberry spinach salad. Photo by Stephanie Klein-Davis l The Roanoke Times

When summer brings its grueling hot spells, the last thing we want to do is crank up the oven to 400 degrees or have multiple burners glowing on the stove.
It’s awfully tempting to nix the idea of cooking altogether and head out for dinner at an air-conditioned restaurant, but that’s not friendly to the wallet or the swimsuit physique. That’s why I’m always looking for simple, healthy ideas that don’t take a lot of energy — whether yours or the oven’s — to pull together.
Several Southwest Virginia registered dietitians were kind enough to send me their favorite summer recipes, which they promise will pack a lot of flavor and leave you feeling full. The most heat they require is one stove burner or an outdoor grill, and if you have a side burner on your grill, it might be worth firing that up to keep the kitchen cool.

Click here to continue reading this column.

You can find and print these recipes just by clicking the link:

Vegetable Frittata

Strawberry and Spinach Salad

Grilled White Fish with Apricot-Ginger Relish

Indian Spiced Grilled Baby Squash

Penne Pasta with Ricotta

Tangy Marinated Lentils

I was also sent some recipes I couldn’t fit in print today, but I’ve added them to the Plateup recipe database at plateup.roanoke.com. Here are the direct links:

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Al Hubbard. The Roanoke Times l File photo.

Al Hubbard, owner of Healthy Stuff Cakery and Cafe on Grandin Road in Roanoke, has completed his outdoor seating area, which can accommodate 22 customers. Because he never had an official grand opening at the current location (in the big house beside the post office), he’s going to have a celebration this weekend to break in the new deck.

Hubbard said the event will include live music, homemade ice cream, a baked goods giveaway and all of the usual delicious- yet-healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner items he carries on the menu. He has also recently added some new menu items, including a New York-style corned beef sandwich, salmon, barbecue, smoothies, freshly squeezed carrot juice and lemonade sweetened with agave instead of sugar.

There will also be metal art for sale made by Radford artist Ken Edwards. Check out Edwards’ website to see the kind of beautiful and whimsical creations he makes. The celebration will take place Saturday (June 16) from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday (June 17) from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Moving forward, Hubbard said, he’ll feature live music on the deck occasionally and will have a barbecue grill area there. He asked me to remind folks that they can park in the post office spaces next door when the post office is closed on the weekends.

Al Hubbard is one of the coolest and most interesting people I’ve met in the 5+ years I’ve been covering the food beat. Stop by and chat him up – if not this weekend, then sometime soon.

I’d like to congratulate the winner of my latest giveaway, who has won a copy of “The Kitchen Diva’s Diabetic Cookbook” by Angela Shelf Medearis. That winner is Jennifer. Here is what Jennifer had to say:

“I would love to have this cookbook on my shelf! My grandfather is a diabetic in complete renal failure (dialysis 3 times a week, insulin 3 times a day). We recently lost my grandmother, his wife, and so he had to make the move from his home in South Carolina, to Roanoke to live with my mother. We have a very hard time trying to feed him things that taste good, but are also good for him. It is a source of constant stress in my family and many fights between my grandfather and my mother. This cookbook may be a great source for recipes he will actually enjoy eating. Especially any desserts as he really deserves a treat every once in a while!”

Jennifer, for some reason when I read your comment I thought of my own grandfather. He didn’t have diabetes but he did struggle with illness and the one thing he always craved was a good chocolate dessert. It sounds as if your grandfather deserves a chocolate dessert such as the Fudge Pudding Cake (below). And it sounds like your mother could benefit from some new ideas in the kitchen – bless her for trying to take good care of your grand-daddy.

For the rest of you, I’ve transcribed two recipes from the book. One is for chicken with apples and lemon balsamic sauce, the other is for that cake. I hope you enjoy. If you’d like to purchase a copy of the book for yourself or someone else, here’s a link to one source.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

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Associated Press photo.

The Associated Press reported Monday that three of the four plants that manufacture lean, finely textured beef, which has taken on the repulsive nickname “pink slime,” have suspended operations indefinitely. These plants are located in Amarillo, Texas; Waterloo, Iowa; and Garden City, Kan.

According to the AP, the Amarillo plant produced 200,000 pounds per day while the other two plants produced about 350,000 pounds per day. The fourth plant, in Dakota Dunes, SD, continues to operate. For 60 days, workers at the shut-down plants will get full salary and benefits.

I feel sorry for those folks. They’re just trying to make money to support themselves and their families. The larger picture, however, shows what consumers can do when they bond together and firmly decry a product or practice they find unacceptable.

The closure is directly related to the public outcry over the use of the ammonia-treated substance in ground beef found in school cafeterias, restaurants and grocery store meat departments. Pink slime has been around for years, and it was outed in the documentary “Food, Inc.” which was released in 2008. I can remember the Beef Products, Inc. interview and the comment that 70 percent of the pre-formed hamburger patties made in America contain LFTB.

Apparently that revelation was not enough to cause the shock and disgust that recently launched a social media campaign and petition to rid school cafeteria beef of LFTB. The campaign (complete with some pretty nasty pictures) has spurred coverage from traditional media. All of this attention has caused companies to hurriedly pull LFTB ground beef from store shelves and reassure customers that they are listening.

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The Roanoke Times l File photo

Update: I found some stores in this area that carry powdered peanut butter. Please see my comment below for details. End update.

I’ve heard of powdered peanut butter before but I’ve never had an opportunity to try it. For March, which is National Peanut Month, I received an email with a gluten-free recipe (below) that called for this ingredient. My curiosity was piqued again, so I wrote to a company and asked for a sample. I’m eager to receive it and see what I think, because this is one of those things that just sounds too good to be true.

I say that because powdered peanut butter supposedly has 75 to 85 percent fewer fat calories than regular peanut butter. It sounds like a Frankenstein food, but I looked into how it is made and it sounds fairly simple: Roasted peanuts are pressed until all of the oils come out, leaving nothing but a floury substance behind. One of the companies that makes powdered peanut butter, Bell Plantation, saves the peanut oil and sells that separately.

Bell Plantation’s product, called PB2, contains (per 2 Tbsp. serving) 2.8 grams of fat, .55 grams saturated fat, 0 grams trans fat, 0 grams cholesterol, 94 mg sodium, 3.7 g carbs, 1 gram sugar, and 4.3 grams protein. The listed ingredients are peanuts, sugar and salt. Some – particularly raw foodies – may be turned off by the fact that the peanuts are roasted first.

Powdered peanut butter is reconstituted with water to form a paste that can be used just like regular peanut butter. From what I understand, you can add as much water as you like to achieve the consistency you like. According to Bell Plantation’s website, you can also mix it with jams or jellies or fruit juice or dip fruit straight in the powder as one might dip strawberries in sugar.
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Andrea Mattioni-Willis. Courtesy photo.

In tomorrow’s newspaper, we will debut a new feature called the “Veggie Chef,” which will offer a weekly recipe for vegetarians.

If the “Veggie Chef” sounds familiar to you, it may be because Andrea Mattioni-Willis has been doing this feature for three years on Roanoke’s local NPR station, WVTF (89.1 FM). Andrea is a vegetarian herself and she loves to cook. She frequently experiments with new recipes and will share her findings with all of you.

Andrea’s column will run every Tuesday in The Roanoke Times Extra section. I hear that tomorrow’s installment will feature a recipe for red pepper butter bean hummus. Sounds delicious!

If you would like to contact Andrea, she can be emailed at wvtfveggie@gmail.com. We hope you enjoy this tasty new offering.

Quick, somebody throw it over your shoulder! I'm superstitious.

Sarah Bruyn Jones, who covers healthcare here at the paper, recently forwarded me a press release from the Centers for Disease Control about sodium consumption in America. According to this report, 9 out of 10 adults consume too much sodium in their daily diets.

This news doesn’t surprise me. U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend that people consume no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day. If you are 51 or older, African American, or suffer from kidney disease, diabetes or high blood pressure, you are supposed to limit sodium intake to 1,500 milligrams or less per day.

These are the top sources of sodium in American diets:

1. Yeast breads (7.3%)
2. Chicken and chicken mixed dishes (6.8%)
3. Pizza (6.3%)
4. Pasta and pasta dishes (5.1%)
5. Cold cuts (4.5%)
6. Condiments (4.4%)
7. Tortillas, burritos, tacos (4.1%)
8. Sausage, franks, bacon, ribs (4.1%)
9. Regular cheese (3.5%)
10. Grain-based desserts (3.4%)

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Royalty free image collection/Flickr

BUENA VISTA – Bill Marler, the most prominent food-poisoning attorney in the country, had been scheduled to speak at Southern Virginia University in Buena Vista for some time.

It was a coincidence that his visit fell on Oct. 7, in the middle of the worst food-borne illness outbreak the United States has seen in 25 years. But if you’ll pardon my pessimism, I’d be surprised if the man could find an outbreak-free window at any time.

Lately, listeria-contaminated cantaloupe has sickened 116 people and killed 23 – mostly folks over the age of 60 who probably felt good about having fresh fruit in their diets. I mean, it isn’t as if they were eating an undercooked hamburger or raw cookie dough.

But lately, that doesn’t seem to matter. In the past 10 years, people have died or gotten sick after eating seemingly innocuous foods such as green onions, tomatoes, papayas, fresh spinach and nuts. The Food and Drug Administration has gone so far as to say it isn’t even worth the risk anymore to eat raw sprouts, which have caused outbreaks every year in the U.S. since at least 1995.

That, my friends, really is nuts.

Continue reading this column-slash-rant here.

How does the latest foodborne illness outbreak make you feel? Have these outbreaks changed the way YOU eat?

Stephanie Klein-Davis/The Roanoke Times

Today’s Roanoke Times offered two food-related stories on the front page. The first was a nice article by Duncan Adams about a program at Washington and Lee University, The Campus Kitchen, that helps to feed hungry people in the community by taking leftover food and using volunteers to distribute meals. Walmart is a sponsor. Hit the link above if you haven’t had a chance to read about The Campus Kitchen.

The other story on today’s A1 is about the proposed guidelines for companies that market food to children. The guidelines have been proposed by the Federal Trade Commission, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture at the direction of Congress. Read the full report by clicking the link in this paragraph.

The guidelines, which apply to kids ages 2 through 17, were summed up nicely by The Atlantic in an April blog entry. Here’s their summary:

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Churn, churn, churn

When I was growing up, there was always a tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter in our refrigerator. We slathered it on homemade biscuits and cornbread, smeared it on our weekend morning toast, slid globs of it across hot ears of corn and plopped big dollops of it in our mashed potatoes.

When we went to my grandparents’ house, there’d always be margarine in the refrigerator there, too. If I recall correctly, Grandma preferred to buy Country Crock, and she called it “oleo”, not margarine.

But whatever you call it, it ain’t butter. And while I am nowhere near as particular about the things I eat as most food writers, I decided years ago to use real butter about as often as I possibly could. Why? Because it just doesn’t seem natural to me to eat something that is PATENTED. Let’s take a moment to study the definitions of margarine and butter, as found in the food Bible, “Food Lover’s Companion.”

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I Chedid/Wikimedia Commons

June is Dairy Month, so the Southeast United Dairy Industry Association sent me some interesting statistics about dairy production in the state of Virginia.

It should be no surprise that Southwest and Central Virginia are home to the most dairy farms and account for the most milk production in the state. According to 2009 data:

* The top six ranking dairy counties according to the number of Grade A dairy farms were: Rockingham (241 farms), Franklin (62 farms), Augusta (50 farms), Fauquier (29 farms), Wythe (25 farms) and Bedford (17 farms).

* The top six ranking counties for milk production were: Rockingham (355 million pounds), Franklin (138 million pounds), Pittsylvania (122 milliion pounds), Augusta (103 million pounds), Wythe (47.3 million pounds) and Washington (45.8 million pounds).

Now, how could two counties be listed at the top in milk production but not in the number of dairy farms? I suppose because they may have fewer farms, but those are very large, high-producing farms. A few other facts:

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Unfortunately we ran out of room in today’s 7-Day Menu Planner for the nutritional info for the pineapple-black-bean enchiladas, but I’ve got the details here for anyone interested.

Per enchilada: 365 calories, 20 grams protein, 11 grams fat (26 percent calories from fat), 5.8 grams saturated fat, 49 grams carbohydrate, 30 milligrams cholesterol, 1,270 milligrams sodium, 7 grams fiber

Those of us who didn’t plant their lettuce and spinach under a faulty gutter, who have not come outside TWICE this year after bad storms only to find their baby greens flattened into the rocky, exposed soil of what was supposed to be a raised garden bed, are now enjoying the vegetables of their labor.

Some folks, including my friend Sarah, even have so much lettuce they are handing out bags of it to their friends. My own failure aside, this is great news. Because while we can buy lettuce at the store year-round, it’s been pretty puny and sad-looking for a while now. And nothing beats homegrown veggies! Nothing!

This time of year, I always start thinking about making my own salad dressings to go with fresh salads for supper. It’s something my father and I always used to do together when his garden was popping. Vinaigrettes are particularly easy, especially once you have a well-stocked pantry with several different oils and vinegars to choose from. Other basic ingredients that are always helpful for making salad dressings are honey, brown sugar, Dijon mustard, garlic, fresh herbs and lemon or lime juice.

Many vinaigrettes can be made easily in a cleaned, empty jelly jar. You can add all the ingredients, screw on the lid and shake vigorously. It’s easier and less messy than using a whisk and a bowl, and if you have leftover dressing, you can just store it in the fridge in your little jar. This is something fun to do with your little budding chefs. Let them dip a leaf into the dressing after shaking and ask them if it needs anything else. It’ll help them understand the balance of sweet, salty and sour.

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Do you ever read a recipe and wonder why it even needs to be written out so explicitly? I mean, some recipes look more like common sense than actual recipes.

I came across one recently while hunting for a new side dish to fix for an early Mother’s Day supper with my lovely mom. The recipe, called summer vegetable bake, came from a cookbook called “Vegetables on the Side” by Sallie Y. Williams (which I highly recommend).

It called for potatoes, zucchini, onions and tomatoes cut into chunks, tossed with olive oil, fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, salt and pepper and then roasted in the oven. I skipped the tomatoes because they aren’t in season and instead got a couple handfuls of fresh green beans. I chose red potatoes, picked some rosemary and thyme from my herb garden, and added a few cloves of garlic to the mix. Voila! It was a huge hit, and it was so easy it was almost ridiculous.

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File photo

My colleague Rebecca (who writes the Shoptimist blog) yesterday sent me an intriguing link to a recipe for red velvet cake made with beets. Beets! It may seem strange at first, but it made perfect sense to me when I stopped to think about it.

Store bought food dyes are approved by the Food & Drug Administration, but that doesn’t give me a whole lot of confidence. They are still basically synthetic, with names like FD&C Blue Nos. 1 and 2, FD&C Green No. 3, FD&C Red Nos. 3 and 40, FD&C Yellow Nos. 5 and 6, Orange B, Citrus Red No. 2. Yummmmmmm!

These days, we are seeing a return to old food ways. More people are gardening, more people are canning and otherwise preserving, and more people are interested in things like raw milk or fermented teas. So why shouldn’t we borrow a page from the Native Americans, who knew how to color fabrics and other items with natural ingredients such as flowers, vegetables and tree bark?

The beet cake is just the beginning. Beets can infuse all sorts of things with their lovely hot pink/red hue. And according to this recipe, the red velvet cake has no lingering beet flavor. Here are a few other clever ideas I found:

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This dish is fast and tasty.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I’ve got another healthy, delicious and quick meal idea in honor of National Nutrition Month. I decided to make this dish after purchasing a huge, gorgeous head of Chinese cabbage from Runner-bean.com. Chinese cabbage is otherwise known as napa cabbage, and it’s available at the grocery store, too.

This may not be a St. Patty’s Day dish, but it’s full of green! I love napa cabbage because it’s so tender and it cooks so quickly. It also reduces a LOT when you cook it – more than green cabbage, it always seems to me. So if you see a recipe call for an entire head, like this one, do not be alarmed.

I will credit my editor and friend Kathy Lu with helping me decide, just before quitting time on a weekday afternoon, what I could do with my cabbage that would be quick enough for that very night. She said she makes this dish all the time (just not low-sodium).

I ran by the grocery store and picked up a small pork tenderloin on my way home. The only other ingredients this requires are low-sodium soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, some garlic, a smidge of oil and a smidge of sugar. Oh, and the rice you wish to serve with the pork and cabbage. But you can feel free to doctor it up in any way you wish.

Here’s how I did it:

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Petite lasagna

March is National Nutrition Month, so when we aren’t scarfing corned beef and green-frosted cupcakes and quaffing Guinness, we might want to take a little bit of time to think about some of our favorite healthy recipes.

Healthy often feels like it is synonymous with “boring,” but it doesn’t have to be, especially for those of us who love our fruits and vegetables. I have always been glad my mother and father made me try a lot of different fruits and vegetables when I was growing up, because I can’t really think of very many I do not like.

I really feel for my friends with toddlers who are now going through those struggles. You know who you are!

I’d like to share an easy, healthy recipe I received yesterday from my friend Janelle Rucker, who covers Franklin County for The Roanoke Times. Janelle made these miniature lasagnas and said they were delish. The vegetables (tomato and onion) are pretty well-disguised, and the ground turkey makes these leaner. It strikes me that one could make 12 of these babies and freeze what’s left over for quick and easy meals throughout the work week.

For the rest of this month, I want to share at least one healthy recipe per week, and I would love it if you all would share your very favorite healthy recipe, too. I will enter them into the PlateUp database so we’ll have a good selection of recipes that your stomach AND your heart can love.

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Wikimedia Commons

My sister was born with an insatiable addiction to sweet potatoes. I think in a past life, she must have been a horse living on a sweet potato farm or something.

I, on the other hand, was never all that big on them – until one fateful day at my grandmother’s house in Clearwater, Florida. We were about to sit down for a dinner that involved baked sweet potatoes when I whined a little and my grandma’s friend, Larry, said: “Have you ever tried putting maple syrup on it?”

After that, I *loved* sweet potatoes. And every time my mother fixed them and I reached for the maple syrup bottle before sitting down at the table, she’d grumble a little bit about how she wished Larry had never said anything.

I’m an adult now, and I still prefer baked sweet potatoes with something sweet on top, whether that be a drizzle (okay, maybe more than a drizzle) of syrup, a sprinkling of brown sugar or a few dashes of cinnamon and sugar. Give me a little sugar and I’ll make the entire thing go down, skin and all.

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Al Hubbard waits on a customer at the Roanoke Farmers Market. (File photo)

Back in March, I wrote an article about Al Hubbard, who tucks healthy ingredients such as zucchini, butternut squash, berries, nuts, flax seed and pureed navy beans into his delicious baked goods and sells them on the Roanoke Farmers Market. Well, Healthy Stuff Cakery has been so successful that Hubbard decided to open a permanent business in the spot that formerly housed Local Roots Cafe at 1731 Grandin Road in Roanoke.

Healthy Stuff Cakery and Cafe, which had a soft opening Sunday, takes up the entire first floor of the house and seats up to 42 people. You’re probably wondering how Hubbard’s small line of baked goods could support such a large space, and Al has been doing a lot of thinking about that, too. He’s come up with a full breakfast and lunch menu while sticking to his mission to provide tasty treats that are good for you, too.

The cafe will offer breakfast and lunch Tuesday through Sunday, along with those popular cakes and fruit juices, coffee concoctions and herbal teas. Lunch will include soups, salads and sandwiches, while breakfast will offer some unique twists on Hubbard’s cake recipes.

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Congratulations to Cameron, who won the cookbook “Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter” from Monday’s giveaway.

The next cookbook we have to giveaway is “Bean Appetit: Hip and Healthy Ways to Have Fun With Food.”

The book is from the owners of cafes in Wisconsin, including one located in the children’s museum in Madison.

In this collection are recipes geared to appeal to kids and it includes games, fun facts and even tips for table manners.

If you have an aspiring chef in your family, post a comment about the favorite food your child likes to prepare.

Winner will be chosen randomly and will be announced tomorrow.

Justin Smith/Wikimedia Commons

I hate heartburn.

I never had heartburn – didn’t even know what it felt like – until after I turned 30. Now, for some reason, I’ve had chronic heartburn for the past several weeks. The doctor calls it “gastritis.” I call it a royal pain in the … well, chest region.

They’ve got all these prescription and over-the-counter drugs for heartburn, and I’ve been taking those, but my mom said what worked best for her was to force herself to go on a bland diet for 2 weeks to give her stomach a break. After that, she said, she felt “cured” other than the occasional flare-up when she eats something really spicy. So, while I know there isn’t much exciting about a blah-blah-bland diet, I also know that’s part of being a human and it technically falls under the food category.

I’m guessing some of you have had this problem before, so I want to share some ideas with you. I found a great list on one of the National Institutes of Health websites for what you can eat on a bland diet and what you should not (note that it does not mention alcohol, which definitely does not belong in a bland diet. And avoid meds with aspirin or ibuprophen, if possible). I will attach the food advice below, with my notes in italics. Have any of you found that this helps?

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After sharing my own garden pictures earlier this week, I asked readers to send pictures of their own gardening efforts. Two readers, Michelle and Kenn, came through with some images I want to show off here. In their own words…

Kenn: Just sent a pic of (most) of my garden, couldn’t get the potatoes or onions in the pic. So far have been harvesting squash, zucchini, new red potatoes, onions, and one cucumber, one green pepper, and one grape tomato.

Michelle: I live in a townhouse and we have a tiny backyard, so I have crammed everything I can in. The first picture has my tomatoes and Brussels sprouts. I keep my tomatoes pretty thin, otherwise they’ll take over the whole space. My Brussels are looking scraggily after an attack by some big fat green caterpillars, that I ended up picking off by hand. In the other picture is my strawberries (in the front on the ground), corn, and a rosemary bush. My garden is so small that I obviously don’t live off of it, but I like to learn things about different plants when I grow them. I have a reference book, “The New Self Sufficient Gardener” by John Seymour that I check about every five minutes in the summer.

Anyone else want to show off their garden? E-mail those pics to lindsey.nair@roanoke.com.

Kenn's garden

Michelle's tomatoes and Brussels sprouts

Michelle's corn, strawberries and rosemary

John Holst and his wife, Andrea Teague, cook a wheat-free dinner in their home kitchen. Photo by Rebecca Barnett l The Roanoke Times

Special thanks to blog reader John Holst (Other John) and his wife, Andrea Teague, for letting us into their lives for this story. If anyone out there is on a gluten-free diet, I would urge you to try the cookie recipe. John has tested it well!
- Lindsey

Elizabeth Good of Roanoke learned that her daughter, Ariel, has food allergies the hard way — by rushing her to the emergency room in a state of anaphylactic shock.

For John Holst of Fairlawn, the realization came in much less dramatic fashion. He felt crummy after eating sometimes, so he eliminated different foods from his diet until he figured out what worked.

Even though Ariel and John fall on opposite ends of the severity spectrum, they can both agree that food allergies are no fun at all.

In the three years I’ve been writing about food, it seems that readers have been calling with increasing frequency to talk about their food allergies. Meanwhile, publishing companies are cranking out cookbooks filled with wheat-free or gluten-free recipes.

Is the incidence of food allergies really on the rise? I looked to some experts to find out.

To continue reading this column, click here.

For a gluten-free flour substitute and a recipe for gluten-free cookies, click here.

The Institute of Medicine yesterday issued a report stating what many of us probably already knew: Americans are consuming way, way too much salt and it is killing us. According to the IOM, “Analysts estimate that population-wide reductions in sodium could prevent more than 100,000 deaths annually. While numerous stakeholders have initiated voluntary efforts to reduce sodium consumption in the United States during the past 40 years, they have not succeeded. Without major change, hypertension and cardiovascular disease rates will continue to rise, and consumers will pay the price for inaction.”

The IOM recommends new government standards for sodium content in foods. It sounds to me like they are saying the only way this is going to get any better is if the government requires food manufacturers and restaurants to cut the sodium content.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, “hypertension, or high blood pressure, affects one in three U.S. adults – nearly 75 million people aged 20 or older. An additional 50 million adults suffer from pre-hypertension.” The FDA says an average person should consume no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day unless you are African American, have high blood pressure, kidney disease or diabetes or are middle age or older, in which case you need to try and limit your daily intake to 1,500 mg.

Take a look at the labels on food you’re eating. A “healthy” frozen dinner, for example, may contain 600 mg of sodium or more. I find that processed foods tend to contain far more sodium than other foods. Restaurant meals are hard to gauge unless the restaurant offers nutritional information. But if you’ll recall, that KFC Double Down sandwich we talked about last week contains 1380/1430 mg for the fried/grilled versions. A sandwich like that will take up almost the entire daily allowance of sodium for one of those high-risk people I mentioned above.

I’m no doctor or nutritionist, but it seems to me the best way to limit sodium intake, beyond checking labels and keeping a tally, is to cook as much at home as possible. The FDA has some tips, but they are frankly pretty obvious (eat more fresh fruits and veggies, buy unsalted snacks). One that did catch my eye was the tip to consume more potassium, which apparently “blunts the effects of sodium on high blood pressure.”

Below, I will attach a bunch of other tips from the Mrs. Dash company and Robin Miller, author of “Robin Rescues Dinner: 52 Weeks of Quick-Fix Meals.” If you have been watching your salt consumption and have other good ideas, please share those with the group.

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