A "Typical" Day

My grandmother asked me this weekend to describe a typical day of my internship. This is a nearly impossible task, as I switch rotations often and locations even more frequently.

Today, however, I've excerpted a section from my foodservice management journal that represents a fairly typical day. I was at a long-term care facility for four weeks and one of my assignments was to describe each day's activities, challenges, etc. For this excerpt, I have changed names and certain details to protect privacy.

Day 6: Daily Activities

Caroline (foodservice director and my preceptor) and I attended the morning meeting, finally. It happens every morning at 9am, but Caroline had been too busy to attend last week. Odds and ends today:

• Read through “Food Service Director Responsibilities,” which cover HR, accounting, costing, production, education, communication, operations, purchasing, quality, and programs, and “Dietary Services Standards.”
• Observed Nicholas (dietary aide) and Grace (AM cook) serving brunch.
• Discussed garnishing and portion control with Caroline.
• Updated last month's inventory list in preparation for taking inventory at the end of the month.
• Reviewed QA forms with Sandy, the RD, and scheduled a time to go with her on an inspection (next Friday, hopefully).
• Nailed a poster about Employee Rights to the wall in the chemical room.

Challenges Observed

The staffing crisis continues: Tara, a cook, is in the hospital, and Chelsey, a dietary aide, is out to be with a family member (also an employee here), who is in the hospital as well. Caroline and I will work for Grace the next two mornings so that she can cover the weekend.

Interactions Had/Observed

As I walked away from observing brunch, I heard someone say, “Who was that lady?”

“No idea,” her companion replied. Some people thought I was from the state, even though I don't have a clipboard. It's about time I hit the floor and made my presence known! I was cooped up in the kitchen with catering all last week.

Progress Made

Made some progress on the in-service insofar as I read through the material with which Caroline furnished me on garnishing and controlling costs, and I pinned down more precisely what Caroline wants from the staff in in terms of garnishes and portion sizes. Observing brunch helped me understand the limitations on staff to garnish plates – Nicholas frequently had nursing assistants and volunteers waiting for him to dish up another plate, for instance. From Sandy, I learned that starches are most frequently over-portioned.

Spider sauce plating design by thehoneybunny.
Takes way too much time and product
when you're plating 90 desserts.

Revelation #6: The dietary aides do not have the time to make garnishes as elaborate as the ones Caroline showed me.

 

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Another product of cleaning out my in-box: a webinar hosted by the America Farmland Trust, an organization working to save farm and ranch land across the county.

farmland.org

This event was the second in a series entitled Planning for Food and Agriculture: Taking a Systems Approach that highlights success stories from which others can learn. The first webinar focused on the state and region level, and the one I attended looked at community and county activities.

The four speakers each presented a wealth of information specific to their communities (Sacremento, Iowa Corridor, King County in Washington, Multnomah County in Portland). A couple items stuck out to me, which reinforced how one size does not fit all when it comes to local food systems.

First, from Sacramento, the urban-rural edge. This is where farmland abuts city land. The "softer" the edge - that is, the more urban and rural land is mixed together - the more likely the farmland is to lay fallow. The likelihood increases because that field is closer to traffic, pets, invasive plants, and vandalism or theft. And the urbanites might not be too chuffed about the farm next door because of spraying, dust, noise, and odor. Furthermore, land near developments is ripe to be developed itself; so, farmers may find the land more valuable sold than farmed.

Ways to address these potential points of conflict include buffer zones, Right-to-Farm laws, and ag parks.

Wait - what parks?

The Sunol AgPark in San Fransisco

Ag parks! According to the Sacremento Region Rural-Urbans Connections Strategy, an ag park is "a combination of a working farm and a municipal park that is located at the urban edge;" Sunol Water Temple AgPark is the model. Given an ag park's modest acreage and proximity to the city, it can be a good option for small farmers looking for a bit of land.

So that was the first item that stuck out to me. The second was King County's drainage and floodplain issues. Did you know that the ditches draining agricultural areas are often swum by endangered salmon? Neither did I! Maintenance of these ditches is understandably highly regulated to protect the fish and the water quality.

Also, farms in Washington's floodplains are liable to, well, flood. Did you know that some farmers build "farm pads" or "critter pads" to elevate their livestock above Base Flood Elevation? Me neither! The pads require permitting to ensure negligible impact on the floodplain, and can also be used to elevate houses.

Always something new to learn.

Eating Alaska

As part of my independent study week, I watched the documentary Eating Alaska, by Ellen Frankenstein.

"What happens to a vegetarian who moves to Alaska and marries a commercial fisherman and deer hunter?" Frankentstein Productions

Ellen explores Alaskan modes of "extracting resources," from stalking caribou to diving for sea cucumbers to chasing mountain goats and getting stranded for four days. She never manages to pull the trigger, but is adept at cleaning, packing, and eating venison.

The movie features a varied cast of characters. The founder of an Alaskan vegetarian group who would give up meat before processed food believing there is a basic value in not exploiting animals and the earth. A teacher guiding sixth graders through a grocery store, comparing labels and reading ingredients list. A Yupik woman on St. Lawrence island, former site of a military base, describing the toxins embedded in her indigenous diet.

Eating Alaska drives home the point that one size does not fit all when it comes to eating "correctly." It depends on who you are, where you live, and how well you understand the complexities of that environment.

Minnesota Sunset Act

Catching up on email, I finally read the Minnesota Dietetic Association's educational document on licensure and learned about an intriguing act passed at the end of the the 2011 Legislative Session. But first...

What does licensure mean for dietitians?
Public safety. While the Commission on Dietetic Registration gives RDs that "R," it is not a legal authority and cannot restrict RDs who may harm the public. The Licensure Board does have legal authority and so can tell unlicensed practitioners to cease and desist, etc. In addition, being licensed conveys greater credibility to those insurers from whom we'd like reimbursement.


What is the Minnesota Sunset Act?

A MN sunset, courtesy of D. Bjorn

This act established an Advisory Commission to review the merits of departments, agencies, and other government entities to make sure they are

• efficient and effective,
• meeting their goals and objectives,
• complying with federal and state laws,
• addressing complaints in a timely manner, and
• not duplicating or overlapping with other agencies,

among other criteria. The law places agencies into six groups, each with a scheduled review date and possible expiration date.

Who's up first?
The first batch is set to expire June 30th, 2013:

• the Amateur Sports and Combative Sports Commissions
• Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board
• the Councils on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans, Black Minnesotans, Affairs of Chicano/Latino People, Indian Affairs, and Disabilities
• all health-related licensing boards
• all advisory groups associated with these agencies

You can see that the Minnesota Board of Dietetics and Nutrition Practice falls neatly under that fourth bullet point.

What does this all mean?
As far as I can tell, the Minnesota Sunset Act is a means to shrink government and save money.  Whether it will do so and how it will affect RDs remains to be seen.

Internship Update and Homegrown Minneapolis

Last Wednesday marked the midpoint of this UMN-TEP dietetic internship. I have passed the eight-week eating disorders rotation, visited half of the community sites, dabbled in school foodservice, and made it through four weeks of foodservice in a long-term care facility.

And now, right before a two-week vacation, I'm enjoying my Independent Study week. Besides sitting in on an intensive outpatient program at The Emily Program, I am taking advantage some local food events.

Homegrown Minneapolis is an initiative started in December 2008 geared toward strengthening the city's local food system. They've knocked off some impressive items off their to-do list, the most exciting of which to me are:

• Completed a community kitchen inventory of more than 50 commercial and noncommercial kitchens
• Established a food council beginning this January
• Made it possible to use Electronic Benefits Transfer at farmers markets, aka "circulating federal food support into the local economy"

Cleaning out my in-box, I found an email about the initiative's community meeting from Healthy Food, Healthy Lives listserv. Hey, that's tonight! I thought. It was a sign - that and the fact that I heard it mentioned on MPR on my way over.

After a program introduced by Mayor R.T. Rybak that outlined the efforts and successes of Homegrown, we settled in for hosted table conversations. Our hosts for the evening wanted to know what we thought was the most significant progress made thus far and what should be the focus of the food council as it moved forward.   

Homegrown Minneapolis

Our table agreed that connecting the dots between growers, processors, distributors, eaters, and composters signified the greatest progress. And in my opinion, the future focus should be on increasing food availability and access, which is to say, eliminating food deserts.

Also, they should get a facebook page, or something with their logo on it.

Die Artischocke

Not too long ago, I sat down to a lovely steamed artichoke with my family. As the resident dietitian-in-training, I faced questions about this edible bud and its distant relation, the Jerusalem artichoke. I gave superficial answers and resolved to dig  deeper later.

"Sunchoke bloom" by renoir_girl

First, the Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus), aka sunchoke, aka sunroot, aka earth apple.*

The sunchoke is in the same genus as the sunflower, which you could guess by the picture at right. Unlike sunflowers, however, sunchokes have an edible tuber packed with the carbohydrate inulin. Inulin is a fructan (polymer of fructose molecules) that resists digestion. The fructose means it can be a low calorie sweetener and its polymeric nature places it into the fiber family. Another source of inulin is chicory root, which you will find at the top of the ingredients list of Fiber One bars.

Second, the globe artichoke (Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus). Did you know it's a thistle?

"Artichoke plant" by Miran Rijavec

Both the sunchoke and artichoke are in the daisy family, (Asteraceae), but that's where the resemblance ends. We eat the scales of the artichoke bud, as well as the "heart," after removing the immature florets in the center (the "choke" or "beard"). Artichokes can be harvested from the spring all the way through mid-autumn. Most of the US's artichokes are grown in California, as they require fairly warm weather (hardiness zone 7 and above, in case you're wondering).

The artichoke's nutritional selling points include vitamin C, magnesium, and folate, as well as a healthy dose of fiber. Ocean Mist would love for you to believe artichokes are an antioxidant powerhouse. I had difficulty deciphering the USDA article they cited, but certainly believe eating an artichoke now and then is a delightful and healthful experience.

* 50 points for anyone who can tell me what a French "earth apple" is.

Dietetic Internship, Further Explained

The previous post looked at the dietetic internship (DI) as a supervised practice program. This post will examine who's doing the supervising. In my case, it's a joint effort between the University of Minnesota and The Emily Program (UMN-TEP).

Who runs a dietetic internship?

Health care facilities and universities are prime candidates for a DI. For example, in Minnesota, DIs are headquartered in the Minneapolis VA Health Care System, Concordia College, and Saint Mary's Hospital in Rochester. Every DI is coordinated by a full-time program director, who sets up the curriculum, schedules rotations, keeps in touch with the preceptors, and so much more.

I mentioned in the previous post that each DI has competencies in clinical, community, and food service. In addition, each DI has an emphasis. Emphases range from more of the same (Food Service or Community) to something different: Disease Prevention/Health Promotion, Information Technology, Sports Nutrition, and so on.

UMN-TEP is the first DI in the nation to have an Eating Disorders emphasis. Many DIs include eating disorders in their curriculum, whether on an inpatient basis or by sending interns to an outpatient facility like the Melrose Institute for a couple of weeks. In this DI, however, we interns get a full nine weeks in eating disorders by cycling through the adult and adolescent facilities and various outpatient programs at The Emily Program. I am currently three weeks into this rotation.

So there you have it, a rough sketch of what the dietetic internship is all about. Questions?

Dietetic Internship, Explained

I've come to realize that the name "dietetic internship" leads some people to think of summer-long affairs of tedious work. And when I mention The Emily Program, some think I'll be working there for the duration. So it's time to clear up what exactly I'm doing for the next eight months.

What is a dietetic internship?

A dietetic internship is a supervised practice program accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Dietetics Education (CADE) whose completion is required to write the national examination  administered by the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR), which, when passed, earns you the Registered Dietitian (RD) credential.

Without the alphabet soup:  internship → exam → credentials! 

This program must provide at least 1200 hours of supervised practice in Foundation Knowledge and Competencies, which cover cover all dietetics practice functions (clinical, community, foodservice). Competencies look like this:

DI 3.1 Perform the Nutrition Care Process and use standardized nutrition language for individuals, groups and populations of differing ages and health status, in a variety of settings

And this:

DI 4.2 Perform management functions related to safety, security and sanitation that affect employees, customers, patients, facilities and food
DI 4.4 Participate in public policy activities, including both legislative and regulatory initiatives

Mastering all these "upon completion of the DI, graduates are able tos" requires a good deal of observing RDs in their natural environments; i.e., hospitals, foodservice settings, nonprofits, WIC, and more. It also includes a healthy dose of projects, such as designing a themed meal, presenting on a nutrition topic to a group, charting, presenting case studies, pricing out a menu and completing nutrition care plans.

So there's the DI in a nutshell. Next up: What does The Emily Program have to do with it? (If you can't stand the suspense, click here.)

Meal for Mom

Calendar trumps weather. Once I folded the month of April on itself to reveal May, I traded soups and stews for summer fare. Disregarding the chill and rain of Mother's Day, I prepared one of my favorite warm-weather meals for Caren and Mark: Japanese soba noodles with as many trimmings as I can muster.

Soba noodles surrounded by bok choy and topped with nori strips. Homemade dipping sauce to the right. Zigzagging from right center, tofu with pickled ginger, more nori, pea shoots, green onion, and sardines.

This was my first attempt at plating food for each guest. I drew inspiration from Peter and Joan Martin's Japanese Cooking.

Green onions float in tsukejiru dipping sauce.

What meal says warm weather to you?

"Food and Nutrition Information You Can Trust"

I renewed my student membership to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (the Academy). I did not make this decision lightly.

I recently joined a group of "Progressive Nutritionists," started by members of the Hunger and Environmental Nutrition dietetic practice group. These RDs are fed up with the company the Academy keeps. Partners include the following:

• ARAMARK - a food services, facilities management, and uniform and career apparel company

• The Coca-Cola Company - no explanation needed
• Moderation Nation - a national consumer education campaign sponsored by the Hershey Center for Health and Nutrition
• National Dairy Council - providing science-based nutrition information to the public on behalf of dairy farmers

The Premier Sponsors line-up includes General Mills, Kellogg Company, Mars, Inc., SOYJOY, PepsiCo, Truvia, and Unilever (owner of such brands as Ben and Jerry's, Hellman's, Skippy, and SlimFast), as well as two companies that sell various nutritional products.

How credible does the nutrition advice from an organization that takes money from these companies seem to you?


Revised 8/4/12.

The Next Step

Two Mondays ago, I was biking to the Food Science and Nutrition building to report to the Didactic Program in Dietetics director about the results of Match Day.

The night before, I had nervously logged into D&D Digital, which takes the ranks of applicants and internship sites, and matches one to the other. With hardly an exclamation point, it stated that I'd been matched to the University of Minnesota-The Emily Program dietetic internship.

Be still my heart! This is the program of which I'd been dreaming - Eating Disorders emphasis, outstanding staff, and close to home. What a relief to have the next chunk of my life decided. At FScN, I told Corrie Marion the good news, then walked down the hall to DI director's office to accept the slot with enthusiasm.

So starting August 22nd, I will be one of fifteen interns at the UMN-TEP dietetic internship. We will have a week of orientation, and five rotations:

• Clinical (12 weeks)
• Community (5 weeks)
• Foodservice Systems Management (5 weeks)
• Individualized (1 week)
• Eating Disorders (9 weeks)

Sprinkled throughout the 35 weeks will be classes, workshops, and projects, enough to keep us busy forty hours a week. Until then, I'll be keeping busy cooking at Trotter's Cafe and Bakery.

Nutty Wordy Wednesday

I mentioned in a previous post that my plant-loving friend Amanda helps me think about how the function of a plant part affects its nutrient content. I also put quotes around "nut" in referring to peanut butter, sunflower butter, etc. I know tahini is from sesame seeds and peanuts are legumes, but what makes a nut a botanical nut?

Nuts 2 by Steffen Zahn

The Nut: a one-seeded hard-shelled fruit. Includes chestnuts and hazelnuts; excludes almonds and walnuts (drupes).

The Legume: the fruit of a plant in the Fabaceae family. Includes peanuts, soy, peas, and carob.

The Seed: a small embryonic plant: embryo, nutrient supply, and coat. Angiosperms are enclosed in fruit; gymnosperms are not. Includes cereals, legumes, and nuts.

Seeds are the botanical basket that contain plant protein and oil sources. True nuts are fewer and farther between than I'd imagined. And nutrient profiles are all over the map. For example, chestnuts have an ω-6:ω-3 ratio of 9; hazelnuts, 90. Another - kidney beans sit at 0.6; and garbanzo beans at 26. All the more reason to eat a variety of plant foods!

"Nut" Butters and You

I met Amanda when we both worked in Dr. Chery Smith's Community Nutrition Lab; she as a Ph.D. student, I as a research assistant. To pursue research more up her alley, she switched to the Plant Biological Science program, but we're still friends. In fact, her focus on plants helps me think about how the function of the plant affects its nutritional content. For example, root tubers store nutrients to survive one year to the next, so they will contain a lot of starch for energy.

At a decidedly nutrient-poor and calorie-dense brunch at Bonnie's Cafe this Sunday, Amanda inspired me to consider the relative benefits "nut" butters, specifically sunflower seed butter and peanut butter and their respective omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. We want a low ω-6:ω-3 ratio because ω-6 fatty acids are inflammatory, but Americans tend to consume diets with a high ratio due to low vegetable and fish intake and high seed oil intake.

Not content with a simple comparison of two food items, I pulled together data from six different butters and five parameters, using the USDA's nutrient database as found here. Most desirable numbers are in green, least in red.

Selected nutrient contents of selected "nut" butters

per oz (~1.5 tbsp)	Almond	Cashew	Sunflower	Sesame	Peanut	Soy*
Protein:	4.2g	4.9g	5.5g	4.8g	7.0g	5.3g
Fiber:	1.0g	0.6g	N/A	2.6g	1.7g	2.3g
Calcium:	75.6mg	12.0mg	34.2mg	119mg	12.0mg	~45mg
Iron:	1.0mg	1.4mg	1.4mg	2.5mg	0.5mg	~0.3mg
ω-6/ω-3 ratio:	28:1	48:1	476:1	57:1	181:1	7:1

* Estimated from I. M. Healthy SoyNut Butter's nutrition label.

This chart does not make sunflower butter look very good: negligible fiber, middling calcium, and an atrocious ω-6:ω-3 ratio. Peanut butter takes the lead in protein content, ties cashew butter for last in calcium, and has the second highest ω-6:ω-3 ratio. Sesame seed butter (tahini) does quite well with top scores in fiber, calcium, and iron - too bad it tastes so bitter. 

And the winner in the fatty acid category is... soy. Surprised? What "nut" butter(s) do you eat, and why? And why do I keep putting "nut" in quotes?

Floral Wordy Wednesday

Gut flora predominates this week, as prompted by an article in Diabetes Forecast. This article explored the connection between intestinal bacteria and obesity, Type 2, and Type 1. Let's get to know two phyla in particular. (Need a refresher on biological classification? I did.)

The Firmicutes: a phylum of bacteria, mostly Gram-positive. You might recognize such genera as Bacilli, order Lactobacillales (think yogurt); and Clostridia (think botulism). 

The Bacteriodetes: another phylum, comprising the classes Bacteroidetes, Sphingobacteria, and Flavobacteria, which are not as much fun as they sound.
What's the significance of these two broad groups? Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis leads the pack in showing that obese and lean animals and humans have different Firmicute/Bacteroidete ratios. Specifically, obese mice have more firmicutes and fewer bacteroidetes. Similarly, obesity in humans is associated with altered gut flora and decreased bacterial diversity.

The difference, according to the DF article, is because firmicutes more efficiently ferment indigestible polysaccharides to produce short-chain fatty acids. That is to say, the firmicutes can digest starches we can't and make energy for us to use better than bacteroidetes can. Better energy extraction leads to more fat storage leads to gaining weight more easily.

As if that weren't enough, gut microbiota changes after gastric bypass surgery, the latter of which has profound effects on Type 2 diabetes. "Profound" as in "goes into remission." Gut flora strikes again.

There's still more: in a small study published in Nature, children who went on to develop Type 1 diabetes saw a decline in firmicutes and an increase in bacteroidetes, while their case-controlled match saw the opposite trend. Furthermore, the healthy children had more abundant bacteria overall. This study is too small to draw firm conclusions about the hygiene and/or leaky gut hypotheses, but it's fascinating nonetheless. And props to Giongo et al. for quoting Tolstoy.

Gluten Freedom

As I mentioned last Monday, I decided to spend a week avoiding gluten so I could get a taste of what those diagnosed with Celiac's disease experience. 

Steering clear of wheat was entirely manageable for me. I am not wedded to traditional breakfast foods, so potato slices with curried tuna salad suited me just fine many mornings. I lunched on Trotter's granola with yogurt or chicken rice salad, and dined on soups and stir-fry. Cheese topped daikon or apple slices rather than crackers, peanut butter was consumed straight from the spoon, and cabbage made crunchy chips for dip. Chocolate safely satisfied my sweet tooth.  

this is the way we slice our daikon, by supertrixiecat.

While I didn't suffer much from lack of bread or cookies, partly because I knew I could have them again soon, I was surprised by smaller challenges.I decided from the start that I would follow the spirit of the gluten-free diet rather than the letter. I would avoid obvious manifestations of the protein and make some exceptions for when I was at work. This freed me to eat granola (oats are often contaminated with gluten), taste soups with roux, or test pasta for doneness. 

But after Wednesday's post, I realized that the spirit of the gluten-free diet is total abstention from gluten. I should choose the gluten-free granola. I should brush the bread crumbs off the cutting board before using it. I should check to make sure I'm using wheat-free tamari before I sprinkle it all over the stir-fry. Then I began to understand the full challenge of being really gluten-free.

This experiment has brought all sorts of questions to my attention. For example, my aunt mentioned that a possible hazard of the gluten-free diet is a decrease one's tolerance to gluten. I've found other reasons to think twice about a gluten-free diet, but they will have to wait for another post.

Glutinous Wordy Wednesday

gluten /’glōōtn/ ►n. a substance present in cereal grains, esp. wheat, that is responsible for the elastic texture of dough [16^th C.: via Fr. from L., lit. ‘glue.’]

More technically, gluten is a protein composed of a prolamin (high in the amino acid proline) and a glutelin. In wheat, these are gliadin and glutenin. In barley, the prolamin is hordein; in rye, secalin.

(a) gluten = (b) elastic glutenin + (c) viscous gliadin.
(From H. Charley and C. Weaver. Foods: A Scientific Approach, 3rd ed., 187. 1998.)

These specific peptides (sequences of amino acids that make up a protein) cause all the trouble for those with Celiac’s disease. According to Krause’s Food and Nutrition Therapy, these peptides resist gastrointestinal enzymes and are not completely digested. Thus they are free to set off an autoimmune inflammatory response in a susceptible person, leading to all sorts of ‘mals’: malabsortption, malnutrition, malignancy, not to mention villous atrophy.

I suspect a phrase in that last paragraph jumped out at some of you: “not completely digested.” You’ve been vaguely suspicious of gluten for a while now. Does it really skulk around in our GI tract, dodging digestion?

Apparently, yes. According to the UCSD Wm. K. Warren Medical Research Center for Celiac Disease, “Gluten is resistant to proteolytic [protein-cutting] digestion… This is because there is a relative lack of enzymes with prolyl endopeptidase activity in human small intestine [remember how gluten’s proline-rich?].” In fact, scientists are investigating bacterial endopeptidases that destroy the triggering amino acid sequence in gliadin with hopes of developing an oral supplement, similar to lactase pills.

Does this mean you should extirpate gluten from your diet? I wouldn't say so. However, I have no great love for grains. Whole has a nutrient edge over refined, of course, but a baked potato trumps even brown rice, spaghetti squash beats whole wheat spaghetti, and so on. In caloric terms, a PB&J will have more calories than my childhood favorite, peanut butter on a spoon, even if you dot it with raisins.


Bottom line: Eat more vegetables, substituting them for grains when probable.

Definition from The Oxford College Dictionary, 2nd ed., 2007.

Gluten Free for a Week

I met a nutrition and dietetics student a while ago who inspired me to try an experiment.

In order to gain perspective on those who follow a raw diet, she went raw for a month (January, specifically). This idea percolated in my mind for a few weeks, and after a particularly sandwich-heavy period, I decided  to take a stab at going gluten-free, a transition that a co-worker, a first-cousin-once-removed-in-law, and many, many others have made. I think it will be a valuable experience should I ever counsel patients with Celiac disease.

So beginning today, I will avoid all manifestations of wheat, barley, rye. My hypothesis, given my trial run of the past couple days, is that I will eat more vegetables, especially potatoes and sweet potatoes.

Tune in next Monday for full results.

Roux the Wednesday

Roux  /rōō/ n. (pl. same) Cooking a mixture of fat (esp. butter) and flour used in making sauces. [from Fr. (buerre) roux ‘browned (butter).’]

Roux and me. Me and roux. We used to be pro forma facebook friends. Now we spend hours together every week. Trotter’s Café and Bakery fomented our close relationship, demanding up to two roux soups a day. Dick Trotter gave me a quick training on the basics of roux-making, but, unsatisfied with vague phrases like “consistency of wet cement” and “cook the starch out,” I turned to my classic reference materials: Charley and Weaver’s Foods: A Scientific Approach (3^rd ed., ©1998) and Rombauer and Becker’s Joy of Cooking, ©1975.

Roux's goal at Trotter’s is to be a thickening agent for some of its soups: Beef Stew, Curry Cauliflower, Beer Cheese Soup, etc. The starch in flour does the heavy lifting, absorbing water and swelling proportionately. So why the butter?

According to Charley and Weaver, “When starch is used as a thickening agent, a uniformly thickened liquid without lumps is desired.” Important to a thickened yet lumpless liquid is separation of starch granules from one another. In roux, flour particles are separated with a coating of fat.

Roux must be equal parts flour and butter (by weight!) so that fat coats the flour particles evenly. The result is neither pourable (the dreaded slack roux) nor crumbly. That explains the “wet cement” consistency. And yes, the butter needs to be melted to coat the particles, but do I really have to cook it over low heat for ten more minutes, stirring constantly?

Absolutely, Rombauer and Becker declare, studding a relevant passage with arrows to emphasize the seriousness of the situation.

►Unless a roux is cooked long enough to dispel the raw taste of flour, this unpleasant flavor will dominate the strongest stocks and seasonings. And unless the flour and butter are stirred to distribute the heat and to allow the starch granules to swell evenly, they will later fail to absorb the liquid, and the sauce will be thin. ►This heated blending period is most important. Using excessive heat to try hurrying it will burn the flour, giving it a bitter taste; and it will shrink the starch, making it incapable of continuing to swell.

Forget lumps – the whole batch of Beef Stew could end up soupy as Beef Bourguignon and as bitter as tahini! Thank goodness I have not had disasters of that scale. 

AlbertCahalan's rendering of Beef Stew

Seed-Saving Wordy Wednesday

My Year of Meats. I snickered when I saw the title of Ruth L. Ozeki's debut novel. A colleague (can I call the assistant director of the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Institute that, now that I've graduated?) had mentioned Ozeki's work, which includes her second title, All Over Creation.

I read them both, one after the other, in a rush to find out if the infertile women get a baby in the end, if the public realizes what American meat/potato production is all about, if the minor character finds happiness, how the main character deals with her Japanese heritage.

And along the way, I ran across some unfamiliar words. The following are from All Over Creation, a novel that deals with Russet Burbank potato farming and seed-saving in Idaho.

Imagine you are a seed... And then imagine the triumphant moment when you crack the crumbly crust, poke your wan and wobbling plumule head through the surface and start to unfurl..." (3, 4)

A plumule is the rudimentary bud of an embryonic plant. The 3,000 acres of Lloyd Fuller's farm would look pretty vast to such a structure. Later, said Lloyd Fuller helps his wife, Momoko, pollinate her squash.

Momoko located one of the taped [male squash flowers] and plucked it, severing the stem several inches down the peduncle... Lloyd watched as the [untaped female] flower began to unfurl, a blooming in slow motion, but of course it wasn't slow at all. Just the opposite, because the wrinkled petals, once freed, spread far more eagerly and rapidly than was normal in nature and within minutes had billowed into a raggedy-edged corolla. Inside, revealed, were the plump quadrant lobes of the stigma, sticky and receptive. Lloyd was transfixed." (115-6)

A peduncle is a stem that supports flowers. Clear enough. And a corolla is, collectively, the petals of a flower. Corolla is Latin for "little crown" and was selected as the name for a line of Toyota's compact cars because of the tradition of using variations of "crown" for their primary models, according to Wikipedia.

This procedure was carried out before "Momoko's garden was nothing but spectral stumps and stalks and mounds of tumular snow, like the site of ancient burial" (81). Latin tumulus, meaning "mound." I see of lot of that in the Twin Cities right now.

red, white, and black
Originally uploaded by mosippy

Mineral-based Wordy Wednesday

Joseph and I attended my brother's art opening at Kopplin's Coffee this Monday. All of the exquisite photos depicted Nature - save one.


"Grrr" is a close up of a stone dog outside a Japanese shrine. I singled it out by saying that most of Brian's photography was of carbon-based objects, except the dog. Joseph doubted that stone wasn't carbon-based. A lively discussion ensued, concluding with me loudly declaring that I had a degree in science and ought to know what was and wasn't carbon-based.

Thus, I present you with several mineral-based examples, taken from Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino, translated from the Italian by William Weaver, and defined by Oxford Dictionaries Online.

I should now list the wares that can profitably be bought here: agate, onyx, chrysoprase, and other varieties of chalcedony. (12)

chrysoprase: an apple-green variety of chalcedony containing nickel, used as a gemstone.
chalcedony: a microcrystalline type of quartz occurring in several different forms, including onyx, agate, and jasper

...everything that moves in the sunlight is driven by the lapping wave enclosed beneath the rock's calcareous sky. (20)

calcareous: containing calcium carbonate; chalky.

I climbed the porphyry steps of the palace with the highest domes, I crossed six tiled courtyards with fountains." (47)

porphyry: a hard igneous rock containing crystals, usually of feldspar, in a fine-grained, typically reddish groundmass.

This city which cannot be expunged from the mind is like an armature, a honey-comb in whose cells each of us can place the things he wants to remember... (15)

armature: a metal framework on which a sculpture is molded with clay or a similar material.

Armature study: Boston Terrier
Originally uploaded by egenerica