Food

Sauerkraut

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I just have to share two brands of sauerkraut that are so good that I eat them for taste, not just as food-medicine. Sauerkraut is a fabulous addition to daily diets because it has probiotics, fiber, and is easily digestible. It also happens to be low-calorie, filling, and a fantastic way to get a different variety of vitamins and minerals into your body instead of relying on the ones that are regularly in your routine. Variety matters when it comes to your best health. I started eating sauerkraut with gluten free crackers a few years ago, and back then it was solely to better my digestive health, but now I have really fallen for the taste, especially of the two brands below.  

Pangea Garlic Dill Sauerkraut 

This one is easily my favorite. I get it in the refrigerated section of my local food co-op, PCC, and it looks like it is in a variety of markets, at least here in Washington. It is made in Bellingham, WA, so the reach might be limited; I am not sure. I hope you can find it though wherever you are because it is so good it will change everything you ever thought you knew about sauerkraut.  

Pickled Planet I-Boost Herbal Krauts 

This Herbal Kraut is a close second in terms of taste. It was the first sauerkraut I had that I genuinely enjoyed the taste, and not only that, but it also has unique ingredients such as horseradish, nettle, and burdock that boost its health promoting qualities. (Hence its name, I-Boost Herbal Krauts.) I buy this one at Whole Foods and it looks like it can be found in quite a bit of the U.S, plus you can order it online. I do not have it in right now, so I will share the product photo from Pickled Planets’ page: 

How to Eat Kraut 

Obviously, eat it any way you like! But if you want to get the most health benefits from fermented foods, switch up the ones that you eat, if not daily or weekly, at least buy varied brands each time you restock. You can return to your favorites often, but eating a variety is truly what is best for your gut’s health. Since I was not a sauerkraut fan in the beginning, the only way I could eat it was with crackers. I would put a tablespoon or two of kraut in a bowl and scoop it up with gluten free crackers as a snack. Now, even though I have grown to truly like the taste of sauerkraut, I still enjoy the crunch of a cracker balancing it out. 

Fermented Foods

We have so many things working against our digestive systems, especially if we adhere to the modern Western diet, such as ultra-processed foods, glysophate, too much sugar and salt, and much much more. Adding fermented foods can help balance out diets and add health promoting probiotics back into our cores. Choosing a variety to eat is the best way to make the most of what fermented foods offer. Other fermented foods to consider include: kefir, kimchi, kombucha, miso, sourdough bread, tempeh, and yogurt.

What are your favorite fermented foods? I’d love to hear about them! Happy Eating!🥣

*I’m not affiliated with any of the products in this post.

Organic Matters

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Glyphosate residue free label

A few posts back I shared some information about pesticides being linked to the uptick in colon cancer among younger people, and how there is a particularly useful ‘dirty dozen‘ list of fruits and vegetables that are the most contaminated. Today I’d like to share more reasons to buy organic foods, and expand the list of foods to always, diligently, buy organic, especially here in America. That reason is: glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup. 

Where is it used? 

Unfortunately, it is ubiquitous all over the world. Countries which use the largest amounts of glyphosate are Brazil, the USA, Japan, Argentina, and China. If you do not see your country in that last, don’t get too comfortable because unless you live in Sri Lanka, Togo, or Vietnam, your country uses it too. There are partial bans in many parts of the world, such as in the EU, but those are only partial restrictions, with some countries having stricter bans than others, even within the EU. The crops it is most widely used on are soybeans, corn, wheat, barley, oats, tree nuts, sugar beets, cotton, and fruits.  

Why is it bad? 

Glyphosate has been associated with cancer risk, hormone disruption, neurological concerns, acute poisoning (when being sprayed), and physical irritation. It has long been suspected of being the reason so many people now have a problem digesting wheat (gluten), especially in the U.S. This is likely because glyphosate is antimicrobial, meaning that it kills the good microbes in the gut, just like a round of antibiotics kills the good little critters in the gut. Those microbes in our gut are essential to not only our digestive systems, but also form the backbone of our immune systems, and affect our moods and mental/emotional health, and more. 

Even Hippocrates has been attributed to the famous line, “All disease begins in the colon,” and whether or not he said that it’s true that traditional healing systems mostly operated under that principal. This MindbodyGreen article explains the antimicrobial news a bit more, and it is a great read, but I don’t think it goes quite far enough to connect all the dots.  

Common Food Allergens (connecting the dots) 

When we look at the crops that are most widely sprayed with glyphosate, we see that many of the most common food allergy/intolerance foods can be found on the list. The 9 most common food allergens are: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish, fish, wheat, soy, and sesame. Take a closer look, and notice that glyphosate can also contaminate dairy products and eggs because they often share farms with crops that are sprayed. Similarly, glyphosate can contaminate fish and shellfish due to the runoff in waterways, and it can also contaminate peanuts, and sesame seeds due to the soil absorption from the spray on nearby crops or on them directly. That covers the complete list of allergens!

When discussing foods that people tend to have intolerances to, meaning the foods irritate them but there isn’t a full allergic reaction, they are often the same foods as the top allergens, but corn is also a big one on that list, which is widely sprayed with glyphosate.  

What to do? 

The best way to avoid ingesting glyphosate residue is to buy organic foods, including all bread products, oatmeal, granola, oils, packaged foods, rice, eggs, and, well, just everything you eat. Support organic farmers by joining CSAs, going to farmers’ markets, and making sure everything you buy at grocery stores has at least an organic seal. (Summer is a wonderful time to visit local farms which often host community events.) There is a glyphosate free label that you can look for, but it is not used widely yet: 

Full Circle

One thing that the Slow Foods Movement emphasizes is that there shouldn’t be a separation between the agricultural industry and the food industry. We think of agricultural ‘crops’ and ‘products’ and governments pass laws and regulations concerning growth and profits. The food industry tends to be thought of in terms of grocery stores and restaurants with regulations around cleanliness and shelf life. The fact that those ‘crops’ and ‘products’ are actually the very same foods that we buy at stores and in restaurants somehow seems to get lost, not to even mention the fact that our health is intricately based, fundamentally, on that same food. We are what we eat, after all. While what we eat, foundationally, comes from farms.

It’s important to note that what is good for us as people is also good for the environment. Clearly spraying toxins on earth is polluting the soil, water, air, as well as the foods we eat. It’s creating food that is less alive and nutritious, and causing disruptions in long time ecosystems.

Other Resources

Another way to protect yourself is to buy a water filter, which is something I still need to research a bit more myself before deciding on which one to buy. In fact, I really need to do a lot more research on glyphosate in general! I just got a book from the library about it, but I wanted to share some info here before I get sucked into my summer quarter schedule since I rarely find time to write when I’m teaching a lot of hours. If you are interested in taking a deep dive into glyphosate (in a safe way!), these articles by EWG are a great place to start. This article also has some really interesting information, and calls out some specific brands/products to avoid. Food Tank is also full of amazing articles and they have a podcast too.

Stay Healthy and Curious🌿and have a Happy Summer☀️


Carlo Petrini: Slow Food Founder Leaves a Legacy for All

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Lilacs on a dinner table

Carlo Petrini, founder of the Slow Food Movement, passed away recently on May 21st. He led the global conversation regarding how to make food good, clean, and fair for all. He was one of the first to recognize that fast food culture was the antithesis of those values, and he worked to educate others of the problems inherent in the glorification of speed and the policies that support it, as well as elevate those that use sustainable and traditional practices. His work lives on in the Slow Foods Movement, Terra Madre, and the University of Gastronomic Sciences, and through all the lives touched by his clear, visionary mind and his heart for sharing his forward-thinking astuteness. 

With Bread

In speaking about Carlo Petrini, another Slow Foods and slow living advocate, Carl Honoré, praised him as a wonderful companion in a BBC interview. Honoré explained that the word ‘companion’ comes from the Latin words, com, meaning ‘with’, and panis, meaning bread, and originally referred to breaking bread with someone. Nothing delights me more than a satisfying etymology, and this one is my new favorite!

Freshly baked sourdough einkorn bread
Freshly baked sourdough einkorn bread

There’s a reason food is central to our gatherings and celebrations, sharing that moment with others creates a bond that is unlike any other and speaks to something deep within us. We have the choice to slow down with people in our lives every day and resist the culture of speed with its thin values. After all, where do we end up by speeding through life? Most of us are aiming for longevity, not brevity. 

Slow Values

Since the Slow Food Movement began, there have been many offshoots, some directly connected to the original movement, such as, slow wine, slow fish, slow food editore, and others that have arisen through inspiration, such as slow living, slow travel, and slow flowers. The word ‘slow’ implies depth, understanding, and authenticity, in a quickening world that relies on superficiality and illusions. The Slow Foods Movement is mourning its founder, but it’s stronger than ever and certainly more necessary. Where do you want more slowness in your life? I hope you find it and better yet, I hope you create it.

Australian shepherd walking along a path
Slow walk with my dog

There is no doubt, Carlo Petrini leaves a legacy with the Slow Food Movement that reaches far beyond food.

Bon appétit, lovely companions💜

Avoiding the Risks of Pesticides

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Bananas

Recent research has shown a link in pesticides and the rise of early onset colon cancer. This can serve us all as a reminder that pesticides have very real risks and damaging effects on our bodies and our lives. There are significant reasons to eat organic foods, and this seems like a good time to review EWG’s Dirty Dozen list for 2026, as well as their ‘Clean Fifteen’.

EWG

As a reminder, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which I have shared here before, tests fruits and vegetables each year to gauge how contaminated they are. The list of the most contaminated foods is called the Dirty Dozen and it changes slightly each year. These are the foods to prioritize buying only organic options because they have the most toxic residue on them when grown conventionally. The Clean Fifteen is the list of the produce with the least amount of toxic residue when grown conventionally. The lists on EWG’s website have more information, so I recommend checking that out, but for the TL; DR:

The 2026 Dirty Dozen

  • 1. Spinach
  • 2. Kale, Collard Greens, and Mustard Greens
  • 3. Strawberries
  • 4. Grapes
  • 5. Nectarines
  • 6. Peaches
  • 7. Cherries
  • 8. Apples
  • 9. Blackberries
  • 10. Pears
  • 11. Potatoes
  • 12. Blueberries

The 2026 Clean Fifteen

  • 1. Pineapples
  • 2. Sweet Corn (fresh and frozen)
  • 3. Avocados
  • 4. Papaya
  • 5. Onion
  • 6. Sweet Peas (frozen)
  • 7. Asparagus
  • 8. Cabbage
  • 9. Cauliflower
  • 10. Watermelon
  • 11. Mangoes
  • 12. Bananas
  • 13. Carrots
  • 14. Mushrooms
  • 15. Kiwi

Eat well and thrive, including strawberries, (as long as they are organic)🍓🌿✨.

Vanilla Pound Cake Muffins

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Vanilla Pound Cake Muffins

Yesterday morning I was craving something different, but I didn’t feel like going anywhere so I needed to work with what I already had in the kitchen. To be honest, I’ve been having a hard time enjoying the usual foods that I eat after returning from a trip to Europe. The food there is so much better in so many ways, plus I didn’t have to make any of it so I was constantly being gifted the experience of new ingredients put together in ways that I’d never have thought of, and these new concoctions thrilled me, even when they weren’t something I’d particularly want to recreate myself.

Cruise Camp

We were on a Rhine River cruise, and I had never before traveled on a ship. The closest experience that I can relate it to is going away to summer camp as a kid, which I loved but only did a small handful of times. In both instances you meet people from various places, eat and experience new things every day with them, go to bed tired and wake up too early to start the next day full of new experiences with these new friends, then you all go home your separate ways with some photos, memories, and promises to keep in touch.

Instead of nature hikes there are city center walks, and instead of crafts there are optional cheese and wine tastings, but it really made me think about how many fewer opportunities we have as we get older to be thrown together with new people for days on end and delight in our commonalities and discuss our differences and experience unusual things together. It’s special, and unique, and I can understand why people get hooked on cruises even though overall it would not be my choice of travel mode.

Strasbourg, France
Selfie in Germany
Cologne, Germany
Amsterdam

Back to Muffins

These vanilla muffins were basically the same as I’ve made before, except this time I didn’t reduce the sugar as much as I used to, and that is what gives these the pound cake effect rather than the other, plainer, version. (Those are also good, just different.) I also changed where I baked them by instead of using the middle rack, I moved the rack up a notch, so they were slightly closer to the top of the oven. Both tweaks made a difference where the complete outside of all the muffins had that pound cake topping encasing them which made these such a treat.

Just like with the original vanilla muffins I have posted here, the basic recipe I loosely follow is for blueberry muffins on the back of a Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Flour bag.

Vanilla Pound Cake Muffins

2 Cups Bob’s Red Mill GF 1-to-1 Baking Flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup regular or vegan butter

3/4 cup cane sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1+ tsp vanilla extract (here’s how to make your own!)

2 eggs or egg replacer

1/2 Vanilla Oat Milk

Start by preheating oven to 425 degrees and prep your muffin pan with either paper liners or spray oil. Add the dry ingredients (besides the sugar) together in a bowl and stir. Cream the sugar and softened butter together with a hand mixer. Add the vanilla and mix again. Add the eggs (or egg replacer) and mix, then add the dry ingredients a bit at a time while mixing, rotating with adding the half cup of oat milk. The batter looks like a cake batter. Scoop the batter into a prepared muffin pan for 12 normal sized muffins. Put the pan in the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 375 degrees. Bake for 30 minutes, then let them cool on a cooling rack for at least five minutes before digging in.

Vanilla Pound Cake Muffins

They taste delicious alone but really shine with strawberries, especially with a scoop of vanilla yogurt.

Happy middle of May. I hope you have some sweetness this week.

*This post includes affiliated links.

Solstice, the Holidays, and Beyond 2025

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Juanita Bay

I intended to write yesterday, on Solstice, but as is way too common during the holidays, I ended up fluttering around all day, attempting much and accomplishing little. The busyness and consumerism of this time of year gets to me every single holiday season, and I always envision quiet, simple Decembers full of crafting with evergreen branches and candles, exchanging simple gifts of food, plants, DIYs, and books, and allowing the false hubbub to simply flow around our quiet home while we contemplate firelight. I have yet to create this ideal December, but I intend to, one year, perhaps when I no longer check email daily or need to drive anywhere and fight the crowds heading to shopping centers.  

Simplicity, community, and authenticity call to me more than ever this time of year, maybe because the opposite is so militantly pervasive. I suppose one could argue that the holidays create more community time than other times of the year with people getting together to celebrate, but so much of the buildup to big days are isolating, and generally it’s women doing the majority of the labor. We can all choose at what level we want to participate in the bows and whistles of the season, to a certain extent, but we are community creatures, and it is hard to resist the priorities of those all around us and not mistake them for our own.  

Earlier this month I read Alice Water’s We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto, and every word resonated so deeply. The Slow Food Movement encompasses not just how we eat, but also how we think about our world and how we live in it. The book was a warm reminder that there are many of us who want to shape a different reality where the main value resides in quality instead of quantity. If you feel alone in trying to implement sustaining values in your life and in the world, I hope you know, you aren’t alone. The unsustainable drive to want more, at the cheapest prices, as quickly as possible, needs to be challenged.  

This all has me thinking about how we collectively move forward, because the only direction we have to go is toward the future, whether that creates feelings of excitement or dread. Humans have a story-line, and we each choose what to bring with us, what to learn from, and what needs to stay in the past. Things are moving so fast that I understand the need to look at the past and try to recreate it, but that has never worked, and it won’t now. Blindly trying to mimic the past means recreating the past mistakes. Instead, we can intentionally bring the best with us and adapt it to the present moment. Personally, my intention for next year is to craft and cook more, create more communities in my life and others’, and to get clearer on how to follow my own compass and resist the busyness and consumerism that would happily devour us all. 

By the way, it’s probably obvious, but these words are written solely by me, not AI. In fact, the built in WordPress AI has underlined words in this piece that it thinks are too complicated for readers, which is ridiculous and depressing because what if everyone starts following those suggestions and writing gets dumbed down and people lose their ability to read words like ‘forward’ and ‘present? Those are seriously two of the words that are underlined by AI. I do not know how to turn off the AI suggestions that are automatically on here now, so if anyone wants to give me a tech lesson, I would love to hear your expertise! (Expertise is now underlined too. 🙄) 

Happy Holidays! I wish for you peace, joy, health, and fulfillment in the final days of this year, and throughout 2026. See you there! 🌿✨

Thirty a Week and Ultra-processed Foods

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There are two trends in healthy eating right now that complement each other nicely. The first is Thirty a Week, with the focus on eating at least 30 different plant foods each week to enhance the microbiome.  

Why has this become a thing? 

Eating a variety of different plant foods means you are giving your microbiome plenty of prebiotics which are essential for helping the good bugs in the gut to prosper and win over the bad bugs, (or too few bugs).  

How to do it: 

Thirty means thirty different plant foods, which can include many categories of food besides the obvious fruits and vegetables. It includes herbs, whole grains, nuts, legumes, and even dark chocolate, coffee, and more. The main point to observe is that if you eat a certain food, such as a Honeycrisp apple, every day at lunch for 5 days in a row, that only counts as 1 of the 30. If instead you eat a different kind of fruit every day at lunch for 5 days straight, then you have 5 out of the 30. There are apps out there to track how many plant foods you eat, if that is your thing, but personally I already have more apps than I care to. For more ideas on how to achieve thirty a week, this linked article is a wonderful place to start.  

How it relates to minimizing ultra-processed foods: 

The Thirty a Week concept works well with trying to get away from ultra-processed foods because when focusing on getting real foods into our bodies, there are less opportunities to choose ultra-processed food. There is more awareness now that ultra-processed foods make up the majority of American diets, (55% is the latest number), and an even larger proportion of youths’ diets. Ultra-processed foods lack nutrition, contain questionable ingredients, are generally packed with excess sugar and salt, and are designed to make people crave foods and overeat. Ultra-processed foods are seen as one of the main reasons if not the number one reason that people are overweight, especially children, and yet unfortunately, they are everywhere.  

What exactly is an ultra-processed food? 

Knowing what is ultra-processed as opposed to simply processed can be tricky. To understand what makes a food ‘ultra-processed’, I am copying this simple explanation from Stanford Medicine’s News Center: 

  • Unprocessed or minimally processed foods: Examples are fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, eggs, meat, poultry, pasta, plain yogurt and coffee. 
  •  Processed culinary ingredients: These include sugar, honey, maple syrup, vegetable oils, butter and vinegar. 
  •  Processed foods: Examples are salted nuts, cured meat, canned fish, canned vegetables, most cheeses and freshly made bread (such as from a local bakery).  
  • Ultra-processed foods: Examples are commercially produced breads, most breakfast cereals, flavored yogurts, hot dogs, frozen meals, potato chips, soft drinks and candy bars. 

As you can see, unprocessed or minimally processed foods are mostly the foods that make up the Thirty a Week guideline.  

The upcoming change of seasons is as good a time as any to commit to healthier, smarter eating. Happy Equinox week! 🥣🌿 

EWG’s Dirty Dozen Updated

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Strawberry

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) puts out an updated list of the produce that contains the most toxins each year, as well as the produce that has the least. They test 47 types of produce and the ones that are contaminated with the most pesticides are called the ‘Dirty Dozen’ and the ones that are least contaminated are the ‘Clean Fifteen’.  

These lists are good references when making choices about when to spend more money on the organic version and when to save money by buying conventional produce when it is too expensive to buy all organic food.  

Dirty Dozen as of 2025:  

  1. Spinach 
  1. Strawberries 
  1. Kale, Collard, and Mustard Greens 
  1. Grapes 
  1. Peaches 
  1. Cherries 
  1. Nectarines 
  1. Pears 
  1. Apples 
  1. Blackberries 
  1. Blueberries 
  1. Potatoes 

Clean Fifteen as of 2025 

  1. Pineapples 
  1. Sweet Corn Fresh and Frozen 
  1. Avocados 
  1. Papaya 
  1. Onion 
  1. Sweet Peas (Frozen) 
  1. Asparagus 
  1. Cabbage 
  1. Watermelon 
  1. Cauliflower 
  1. Bananas 
  1. Mangoes 
  1. Carrots 
  1. Mushrooms 
  1. Kiwi 

I like knowing where it is most important to focus my organic-only dollars and appreciate that the EWG updates these lists yearly. It would be ideal if we did not need these lists at all, and maybe if you grow your own food, you don’t, but for the rest of us, the more we know, the better choices we can make.

Eat Well!🍓🍌🌿🍆✨

Celebrating Sustainability

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In a world that is increasingly focused on technology and AI, it’s such a treat to celebrate local foods and sustainable living in a county-wide, community setting. The county where I live, King County, named for Martin Luther King Jr. and home to Seattle as well as the surrounding area, hosts a free festival, Chomp!, every summer at a much-loved county park. All the vendors and booths that are there are focused on sustainability in one way or another, whether it’s a restaurant focused on fresh, local, seasonable foods or a booth for upcycled clothing, kids’ activities, twists on traditional fair attractions, and more, they all have the same base values. They also have live music throughout the day, and I was most excited about seeing Kim Deal, of Pixies and the Breeders fame and her band did not disappoint. Her new album partially reflects on her time as caregiver to her parents, one of whom had Alzheimer’s for twenty years, while still managing to transport listeners with her signature, ethereal voice and musical rhythms that play with quiet, voice on wind moments next to big, banging, all-out rocking beats. 

I loved the whole festival, but most of all I love that King County holds this every year. It reminded me that there are others who truly value sustainability and that all is not yet lost. Even Kim Deal, during her set, kept remarking how cool the festival was and how lucky we must all feel, and I had to heartily agree! I can’t say that I’m often praising the government these days nor feeling overly optimistic, but as far as King County goes, I’m extremely impressed with their priorities and values. I wanted to share this so other people can also be encouraged, as I was, that there are still people, communities, and even some leaders in charge who care about sustainability. 🌿 ️

Kim Deal performing on stage with her band.

Happy late summer ☀

Easy Roasted Artichoke Hearts Recipe

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Artichoke Hearts with Garlic Sauce

My friend and I like to go to a Spanish tapas restaurant and order their Artichoke Fritters with Serrano Aioli along with sangria. We always do this after a nice long walk, so the food tastes especially good. More than once we’ve finished our shared appetizer and ordered a repeat!

I really wanted to make something similar at home, so I started to search for frozen artichoke hearts, which are surprisinly hard to find. I eventually found some at Whole Foods, but they are not kept in stock all of the time, so when I see them, I grab several bags.

My attempt to replicate the artichoke fritters was a failure. The breading wasn’t the same without the frying technique that the restaurant uses. I decided to just roast the artichokes without breading, and instead just add olive oil, seasoning salts, and some fresh ground pepper, to see how they’d turn out. They turned out fabulously.

It’s so easy to do and artichokes go well with just about any protein you want to add to them. They work well on salad, in wraps, on pizza, or can just be dipped into an aioli or a tzatziki, garlic, or tahini sauce.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

Frozen artichoke hearts

Olive oil

Seasoning Salt

Ground Pepper

Whole garlic cloves (optional)

Preheat oven to 400. Pour olive oil on the still frozen artichoke hearts (and whole cloves of garlic if using) on a pan with parchment paper. Sprinkle seasoning salts and grind pepper on top. Cook for 20 minutes, then flip the hearts over. Cook for another 15-20 minutes.

Quick Video

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Since I am usually just cooking for myself, quick, easy recipes that are still healthy are my favorites right now. I hope you enjoy the idea and it sparks some creative cooking for you.

Happy almost Valentine’s Day!