Back when I was studying, and thinking of pursuing as a career, urban planning, I became smitten with the concept of resilience, which I now can't help but automatically apply to all systems that I care to think about--the human body, one's diet, my kitchen. My favorite definition of resilience is having the ability to return to an original functional state after a challenge has thrown the system out of balance. Here's an easy example: if you've got a fun group of friends and two of them who were together decide to break up, will your group of friends be able to eventually return back to normal again? Or will there be a rift making it impossible to ever hang out like you used to? If things can get completely back to normal then we could say your group of friends is pretty resilient. Maybe you could see how understanding the resilience of cities, businesses or biological systems could get really applicable and interesting, especially for us nerdy folk.

Two of my favorite nerds, Brian Walker and David Salt spell it all out in Resilience Thinking, which helps the lay person grasp some pretty powerful concepts. One that has stuck with me is the concept of redundancy, which basically means that in a resilient system, there are more than one way to do any single thing, like a kitchen with a flat cheese grater, a standing cheese grater, a cheese grater that you crank and a planer. It flies in the face of efficiency and optimization, but I can see how it makes sense.

I bring this all up now because, in the spirit of redundancy, I want to share a recipe for a little thing that acts a lot like a bacon bit, but I don't care to force it into a "replace your bacon bits" place--I wouldn't dare, dears, especially in this almost overpoweringly pro-bacon climate.

But seriously, these little peppery crunchy things are great, whether or not bacon exists in the world. My sweetheart is now obsessed with their salty crunch. We eat them on salads, breakfast potatoes, casseroles, avocados and any place a little bacon wouldn't be argued with. You can make this recipe in the oven but I recommend using a dehydrator.

Nut Crunchies

1 cup almonds (soaked in saltwater and then dehydrated is best, but any almonds will do)
3 tablespoons amino acids
1 teaspoon coarse ground pepper

Pulse the almonds in a food processor until the largest pieces are a little bigger than the size of a bacon bit. Combine all ingredients and spread flat on a dehydrator sheet. Dehydrate for a day or two until the nuts are completely dry. They will form flat sheets which can be used like bacon strips if you're careful, or break them up and store in an airtight container.

If you don't have a dehydrator, spread the combined ingredients flat on a baking sheet (lining the sheet with parchment paper will make a tidier experience) and bake at the lowest temperature your oven is capable of, checking occasionally to make sure the almonds aren't browning. If they do start to brown turn off the oven, keeping the oven door closed. After the oven has cooled check the bits to see if they have lost all their moisture. Repeat with another round of oven heat if necessary, checking again to make sure the nuts don't brown. Store in an airtight container.

Also, let's try this:

There's a restaurant a short walk from campus that specializes in sandwiches, unfrilly coffee and dusty kitch. It's a cute little neighborhood joint, that doesn't pay much mind to us natural medicine students, except for the pile of gluten free pastries leaning against the cash register, and informal post-finals ceremonies of corking bottles of red wine for groups of exhausted and relieved students.

On one such post-finals let-down, I came across a sexy little sammie that they called an avocado melt: avocado, swiss, mayo and peach chutney--three delicious sources of fat and a single source of sweet, sour and spice. A winner! Once again, after its important role in the American taco, chutney proved itself a game changer.

So I went on a little chutney bender over spring break. But it was the best kind of bender; I made three recipes supplied by one of my new favorite cookbooks: Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning. I take it as a guide for resource management in a post-oil economy, but it could also just be a charming collection of traditional recipes from real French people. The authors are "The Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivante", Terre Vivante being a southeastern France-based research and education center focused around eco-farming, -gardening and -building. American hippies are great but I imagine French hippies have older recipes.

Turns out chutney doesn't have to be preserved. Back in its homeland, it's actually made fresh for each meal, but us busy city folks might like to put up a bunch of it at once, either to give us a self-righteous sense that we are industrious homesteaders, or to save on future dishwashing at the very least. Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning shares recipes for--of all things--how to can chutney, but unlike most canning recipes these don't require a 15 minute water bath, so maybe that's why the Terre Vivante editors don't count these as canning. Healthfully, the recipes are also intentionally relatively low sugar and vinegar compared with most chutney recipes.

Of the three varieties I tried--Apple, Mango and Onion--my favorite was the recipe I used for mango, because it's flexible and you can use any fruit and spices you want. I include my fruit and spice choices below, mostly just for you recipe followers out there. The rest of you, adapt away, but be careful with the volumes of the important things like fruit, vinegar and sugar which I assume are important to the chutney actually being preserved.

Fruit Chutney

2 lbs fruit and/or vegetables (I used mangoes and an onion)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 cup vinegar
herbs and spices (I used 3 tablespoons ginger, 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes, and 1/3 cup raisins)

several canning jars with lids
clean towel
baking soda for washing
wide mouth funnel (very handy, but not necessary)

Wash and chop the fruit and cook along with the spices over medium heat until soft and reduced. Add the sugar and vinegar and continue to cook until you're happy with the consistency. While the chutney is cooking down, boil the lids (at least 5 minutes) wash the jars with boiling water and baking soda and set upside down on a clean towel. Fill each jar, one at a time, with very hot chutney, make sure the rim is clean, and cap. Twist the lids down tight and set aside to cool. If you've never undertaken a canning project, consult a grandma with a good canning track record, or a more traditional canning cookbook for tips and tricks.

Maybe you read my last post about lactose intolerance, where I basically told everyone that we're gonna be alright--we can eat our share of delicious cheese, but it's a nice gesture to our guts and friends to ease off on the high dairy meals. The missing piece to that topic is calcium, because calcium supplementation is recommended for folks who are lactose intolerant.1,2 For myself, I don't like the idea of capsule popping for the rest of my life, so I've been looking for other calcium sources and here's an example of one delicious solution:

Um. Yum.

Which brings me to sardines! They're the new perfect food: tasty, hip, sustainable and nutritious.

Have you eaten a sardine lately? I hadn't since my squeamish childhood days when my exposure to the fish was only through cartoons ripping on their flavor. But as an adult I find them delicious, more interesting and flavorful than a can of albacore, but with a similar angle on what it means to be a fish. Sardines are charmingly rustic with their edible, delicate bones and tender scales, reminding us of the days when normal people wouldn't flinch at the sight of non-flesh animal products. You know, back in the time of waxed canvas, brass buckles and hardwood furniture. Like these things, sardines are hot again. A piece in Edible San Francisco gives testimonial to the fish's popularity among the city's chefs and supplies us with some hardcore recipes for fresh sardines. (Fresh sardines!?)

As a bonus, sardines are sustainable. And they're healthy. First, because they are lower on the food chain than tuna and salmon, they accumulate less mercury and other toxins. Second, sardines are full of stuff that science has proven is good for us, (thanks, Science!) like phosphorus, omega-3 fatty acids, and calcium! Let's eat up!

Don't worry, I'm not suggesting that we replace our dairy intake with sardines. It's just one excellent food to incorporate for a well-rounded diet. When it comes down to it, lactose intolerant folks don't really get an easy-out with our calcium sourcing if we want to do it naturally, but the natural approach urges us ever-further in the direction of eating a wide variety of high nutrient foods like vegetables, fish, nuts, seeds and high-quality fats.

Sources:
1. Medscape for iPad app
2. The Merck Manual - Professional Addition app

It occurred to me after my (arrogant or precocious, you decide which) effort to remove the lactose from a beautifully elegant French recipe for glissade that I realized that you, my lovely reader, may not care if lactose is in your food or not. I'll give you a couple quick reasons to take at least a little interest:
            • reducing lactose in your diet may help you feel a million times better, and
            • being able to serve lactose free meals is a classy gesture for guests or family members who may be lactose intolerant.

Here's the deal with lactose. Babies are born with the ability to digest lactose, a major component of milk, but many adults lose this ability as we age. When adults who cannot process lactose eat or drink dairy products they get all kinds of gut discomfort, including possibly gas, bloating, abdominal pain, nausea and watery diarrhea.1,2 The best long term treatment is avoiding dairy in the diet.2

The most interesting thing about lactose intolerance as a pathology is that its not a pathology. It's actually the norm worldwide; about 75% of the world's adults don't produce the enzyme necessary to break down milk. It is also more common among people of Asian, Hispanic and African descent, as well as Native Americans, (which makes it a bit of a structural racism issue that the USDA--not to mention the standard American diet--still recommends three cups of milk per day for all adults...but I digress).1,2

A more accurate description of the situation is to use the term lactase persistent for the lucky, rare adults who still produce this lactose-busting enzyme and can go to town on a glass of milk without incurring digestive trouble.

But this post is really about cheese. Why? Because although we all react differently to lactose, most people who are lactose intolerant can handle about the equivalent of a cup of milk per day without symptoms. But, there is a lot of variability in how much lactose remains in diary products so the trick is to choose our cheeses wisely.1,2

Personally, I like to create and eat lactose free recipes because it actually helps keep food interesting (otherwise, I might use the cheese crutch and throw it in everything). But if I'm going to eat cheese here's the strategy I use:

1. Know what sources generally have less lactose.
Generally, the more aged, the more cultured and the higher the fat content in a dairy food, the less lactose it will contain. So fresh cheeses will contain more lactose than aged cheeses. Yogurt, which is cultured, will contain less lactose than milk. My favorite outcome of this general rule is that higher fat cheeses and yogurts contain less lactose. Did you notice that? Higher fat--more delicious--cheeses contain less lactose. Total score! Also, Butter has very little lactose, and lastly, goat cheese is usually better tolerated as well.

2. Buy high quality products.
You never know about the practices of manufacturers; some manufacturers may add milk back into cheeses, which defeats the whole purpose of choosing cheese to avoid high amounts of lactose. I like to buy high quality, locally produced cheeses from cheesemakers that produce on a small scale. After some trial and error, I've developed some trust in a a few brands.

3) Savor these glorious cheeses, and enjoy them in smaller quantities.
Because cheese is a condensed form of milk, it's still possible to OD on lactose by eating too much of it. Eating less cheese doesn't have to feel depriving though. For example, instead of high-cheese meals like pizza or macaroni and cheese, I usually go for something higher in vegetables, topped with an ounce or less of very nice cheese. Helps me feel normal on the insides, but allows me to go for the glorious cheese too.

Sources:
1. Medscape for iPad app
2. The Merck Manual - Professional Addition app

Easter brunch can be a tough one sometimes. Like Thanksgiving, I always walk away from the table lamenting all of my decisions for the past 30 minutes. It's a lovely problem to have too much food, but the type of food that us brunchers adore is the other half of the challenge.

After a lopsided over-sugary potluck brunch a few years ago (potlucks can be unlucky sometimes), I've vowed to bring only savory dishes to the Easter gathering. This year, I also happened to have six pounds of blue hubbard squash to use, so I ended up with a savory pumpkin butter that I called Curried Squash Mash with Feta Cheese and Spiced Pepitas. It's delicious, filling, and even though it's savory, the spices in the garam masala really bridge well with sweets, so it's a great side for brunch.

The fun part for me was inventing a new take on the deviled egg. I mean, if you have pounds of curried squash mash and a dozen decorated hard boiled eggs it's only a matter of time before something awesome happens. Right?

Curried Blue Hubbard Squash Mash

This is a great way to process the mountains of roasted squash guaranteed if you have at least one blue hubbard. Freeze what you can't eat in a week and consider a few of your future lunches already half-made. The mash is gluten free, lactose free and vegan, but, of course, topping it with cheese or substituting cream for nut butter changes a couple of those credentials. Topping this mash with fresh squeezed lemon and pepitas would make a delicious vegan version.

6 lbs roasted seeded and peeled blue hubbard squash
3 teaspoons salt
1 yellow onion, diced
3 tablespoons cooking oil
1 tablespoon garam masala
1 tablespoon curry powder
1/4 cup walnut or almond butter (or cream, if you're into that)
up to 1 tablespoon sugar
up to 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

Heat the squash over medium heat and then mash with a potato masher until smooth. It may help to alternate mashing and cooking a few times, so this process may take a half hour. While the squash is becoming ever softer, smoother and more reduced, saute the onion in oil and salt until the onions are clear, then add the garam masala and curry powder and heat until the spices are fragrant, 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat and add this mixture, and the nut butter to the squash after you're happy with the squash consistency and confident that you wont want to mash it some more. Continue to reduce the squash until it is flavorful enough and sturdy enough to be a self-respecting side dish (How would it feel on a plate next to mashed potatoes?). Add a teaspoon of sugar and/or a tablespoon of vinegar at a time until the sugar balances the salt and the sharpness of the vinegar balances the mellowness of the squash. The final amount of vinegar and sugar will depend on the volume, flavor and moisture content of the squash. This can be served as a side dish and is super classy with crumbled feta cheese or fresh squeezed lemon and spiced pepitas.

Spiced Pepitas

Pepitas is synonymous with pumpkin seeds only it sounds sexier. These guys are great on pretty much anything, but yogurt, soup and curries are the first to jump to mind.

1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
pinch salt
1 teaspoon fresh ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

Combine the sugar, salt, nutmeg and lemon zest in a small bowl and set it, along with a plate or parchment paper, within arms reach of your heat source. Heat the pumkin seeds in a dry pan over medium heat, stirring constantly. When all of the pumpkin seeds are puffed up and many of them have turned brown, add the sugar mixture and continue to stir until the sugar is melted. If the sugar doesn't start to melt within a few seconds, turn up the heat, continuing to stir constantly. Once the sugar has melted, immediately pour the seeds onto the plate or parchment paper and spread them out to cool.

Curried Squash Deviled Eggs with Crumbled Feta and Spiced Pepitas

Hard boiled eggs
Curried Squash Mash (see above)
Spiced Pepitas (see above)
Feta cheese, crumbled

Peel and halve the hard boiled eggs. Place the yolks in a bowl and set the halves aside. To the bowl add an amount of squash mash that is twice the volume of the yolks--it's ok to eyeball it. Incorporate the yolks into the mash, taste it and add more mash if you wish. Place a generous amount of mash into each egg half and sprinkle the eggs with crumbled feta and spiced pepitas.