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Black eyed peas

I couldn’t resist picking up a pound of black eyed peas at the farmers market the other day. Only problem was that I didn’t have a clue what to do with them.

Black eyed peas with garlic
Black eyed peas with garlic

I emailed a girlfriend who had once made a delicious black eyed pea New Year’s dish from a recipe she had found in one of

Mollie Katzen’s cookbooks, Sundays At Moosewood, I think. But, I didn’t hear back from her and my peas were begging to be used. So I decided to wing it and make something up with what I had on hand.

I started by sauteeing chopped garlic in olive oil. Then I put in the shelled peas, a can of diced tomatoes, and a can of chopped mild green chiles. A little sea salt while it simmered for ten minutes or so, and when the peas were softer I spooned it over quinoa and served it with grilled chicken coated in barbecue sauce.

It wasn’t quite like Mollie Katzen’s black eyed pea recipe I remembered, but the whole family loved it. A variation on this will likely show up somewhere as a Glorious One-Pot Meal, since you could easily replicate this wholesome and balanced meal with the GOPM method. Alas, it’s too late to make it into the next book, Glorious One-Pot Meals: A RevolutionaryNew Quick and Healthy Approach to Dutch-Oven Cooking (due out January 6th!), but it’s going into my files for sure.


Fresh herbed butter

Whether from a garden, the farmer’s market, or the local grocery, fresh herbs are a good buy as the summer herb harvest comes in.

Grilled corn with herbed butter
Grilled corn with herbed butter

My neighbor gave me a sheaf of 3-foot-tall dill stems yesterday. The first thing I did was mince some and blend it into softened butter for a tangy twist on grilled corn cobs. I made some extra to freeze in half-stick quantities for later fish dinners or one-pot meals.

The rest I may mince and freeze in ice cube trays topped off with water. Once frozen, I’ll drop them into a zip-top freezer bag for easy access to fresh dill all winter long!

Who needs the flu vaccine?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just announced new guidelines for flu vaccinations this season and for the first time are recommending that ALL children 6 months – 18 years receive flu vaccinations. This recommendation used to be only for children under 5.

This means about 30 million more children could be getting vaccinated this year. A record number.

Why is the CDC expanding the recommendation? Not because it has any hopes that this season’s vaccine will be more effective than last season’s, when two of the three strains were not good matches, and the vaccine was only 44 percent effective overall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But do flu vaccinations really work? Some studies show that when it comes to the elderly at least, the answer is “not really.” And many of the vaccines may still contain the preservative thimerosal, a form of mercury, which may cause developmental delays and early onset of dementia, among other ills.

Every year for almost a decade I have reluctantly bowed to the pressure of my parents in the medical community and dutifully lined up to receive my flu shot. Because viral infections are thought to trigger MS attacks, it was considered prudent for me to get the vaccine. And I pushed my husband and kids to do it, too. Now, I’m not so sure.

The naturopathic community doesn’t believe in vaccinating at all, but as a world traveler I have depended on vaccinations to emerge from countries unscathed from undesirable ailments like yellow fever and tetnus.

Growing up I knew a friend of my parents who had survived polio as a child, and I realize that the polio vaccine is what made stories like his obsolete. So I do value the contributions of the vaccination movement.

Then again, I go ahead and vaccinate my children against chicken pox, yet they get them anyway.

I guess I don’t know what I’m going to do about the flu vaccine this year. I’m going to have to give it more thought before I rush in to march in lock-step toward the vaccination clinics.

Pasta Salad

Pasta salad
Pasta salad

I was looking for a quick and easy recipe to throw together for dinner and remembered my old standby, cold pasta salad.

Truthfully, cold pasta salad would never have occurred to me had I not spent a year in Italy living with two Italian-American cousins. They knew things about pasta that I had never conceived, and this was one of them.

This evening, I prepared a package of whole wheat rotitini in boiling water, then drained and rinsed with cold water until the noodles were cold. I added fresh spinach leaves, tomatoes and fresh basil from my garden, black olives, feta cheese crumbles, and a can of drained chick peas. Then I tossed the whole thing with an Italian salad dressing (I like Annie’s Naturals, as always!).

Dinner couldn’t have been easier or more delicious out on the patio after a 90+ degree day. And you know how I love the one-dish dinner concept! This is a great contribution to a potluck, too.

Lead in Lipstick? Yes, indeedy.

One of the readers of this blog, who also happens to be one of the smartest men I know, was kind enough to question the assertion I made in a previous post about there being lead in certain colors of lipstick. He pointed me to the Snopes page that addresses the urban legend about being able to test for lead in lipstick with a gold ring.

First, I want to say Thanks, not only for reading this blog but for calling me out and questioning something I said! I am by nature an academic, and if I am misinformed, I want to know!

However, on this point, the Snopes page debunked the myth about being able to test for lead with a gold ring (which wasn’t part of my post) but confirmed the fact that, indeed, some lipsticks, particularly red ones, contain lead. Snopes accepts the FDA’s assurances that these are very low levels of lead and don’t pose a health threat.

Unfortunately, the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act addressed “tolerances for certain poisonous substances…”, and does not take into account variations of the human body and the tolerance levels of individuals, which are certainly not universal.

Last year, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics ran its own tests verifying the presence of lead in lipsticks and noting that, although the levels of lead in lipsticks are around what’s considered a safe level (by the FDA) of lead in candy (what? there’s a safe level of lead in candy? Why is there lead in candy at all? Is there anyone truly watching and protecting our health and the health of our kids? More and more, I fear the answer is “no.”), since lead is bio-accumulative, no levels of lead are safe to continually introduce into our bodies.

Personally, I would rather not play roullette with my health and only purchase products that I’m certain do not contain any lead. Which leads me back to my original excitement about the mineral lipstick. 🙂