Eat Simply, Eat Well

Healthy recipes & tips to help you live the good life. by Ann Plough

Just Eat It: Za’atar Eggplant Crisps with Yogurt

May 5, 2015 by aplough

This recipe is a classic case of planning one thing and ending up with something much, much better.

It all started with small video clip that I can’t get out of my mind: a man standing behind a giant pile of beautiful, yellow bananas, all perfectly edible, with a big note saying “rejected” on them – rejected because they are the wrong shape or size per supermarket regulations. What led us to this place where perfectly good food gets tossed away because it’s not cosmetically perfect?

This led me down a new trail to researching food waste.  I had been perusing food news as I often do – winding down just before bed.  I came across something I had somehow missed until just now: a trailer for a documentary that aired on April 22nd for Earth Day by a Canadian couple Jen Rustemayer and Grant Baldwin. The film, Just Eat It covers a year in the life of the couple as they spend the year eating only food that would otherwise be thrown away and researching the why, how and where of the incredible amount of edible food that is simply thrown away every day. The statistics shared in the short clips I saw made me want to get my hands on the entire documentary so that I can watch and learn a whole lot more. Take a look:

Here are a few highlights from the clips that made me think again about the value I place on food and ideas we all have about what constitutes good food vs. less appealing or inedible:

  • 40% of the food grown in America gets thrown away (btw: in the UK the number is estimated to be 50%)
  • 30% of the food grown in America gets thrown away at the farm – for cosmetic reasons: too large; wrong shape; minor defect (i.e. slightly different color on skin or growing mark)
  • the average American family throws away 25% of the food they purchase – a fact brought home with a clip of a woman leaving a grocery store with 4 grocery bags, dropping one from her hand, and continuing to walk on…
  • food wasted in grocery stores and restaurants mostly doesn’t get composted – it ends up on the landfill, where it proceeds to release methane gas into the atmosphere
  • 15 million American families struggle to get enough food every month

All this combined with things we may already be aware of: the world has a water crisis; climate change heavily impacts the ability to grow and store food in many parts of the world; the world’s major health problems are mostly diet-related – caused in many cases by eating food that is highly processed with a shelf life of “nearly forever” – implying that some of the food being wasted could be used to replaced the unhealthy stuff in people’s homes so that they could make better choices.

eggplant slices ready for the oven

eggplant slices ready for the oven

So I turned on the oven and went about making eggplant into something I thought I’d add to dinner, later. But as ‘way leads on to way’ (Robert Frost), I turned a corner when I pulled out the Za’atar and serendipitously created a snack I’ll be coming back to again and again.

Eggplant slices after roasting

Eggplant slices after roasting

So pull out a knife and your small, ripe eggplants, and get cooking. These are amazing and eggplants are really good for you. The eggplants are cooked to the point where they just begin to dry out but are still pliable.  The savory combination of salt, olive oil and Za’atar coupled with the smooth, tart yogurt is simply perfection. And you don’t need to wait until your eggplants are on their way out, either: just choose the smaller, younger eggplants so they aren’t bitter, and get cooking!

 If you’re interested in learning more about Food Waste, solutions being implemented, and what you can do, here are some resources:
  • Jonathan Bloom’s website Wasted Food
  • Jen and Grant, creators of the Just Eat It film, have a blog: Clean Bin Project
  • Kudos to the city of Seattle: it’s now against the law to throw food in the trash
  • Food Rescue in DC is using food that would be wasted to feed those who need it
  • France gets rid of “best by” label on dry food goods and has appointed a committee to reduce food waste nation-wide
  • in the UK: WRAP is working on providing information, programs and influencing policies that impact food waste
Ready for dipping

Ready for dipping

Za’atar Eggplant Crisps with Yogurt

3-4 small eggplants, ends removed and sliced to 1/2″ or 1 cm

1 tablespoon Za’atar*

salt to sprinkle

olive oil to drizzle

1/2 cup Turkish or Greek yogurt (low-fat works great too)

Preheat your oven to 200°C/400°F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper

Lay the eggplant slices out on the baking sheet and sprinkle lightly with salt.  Drizzle olive oil over the slices, and then sprinkle each slice generously with Za’atar.  Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, cool slightly, and serve warm with yogurt that’s been sprinkled with additional Za’atar, if desired.

Serves 4 as an appetizer

 *Note: you can buy Za’atar from spice shops and grocery stores, or you can make your own. Try this recipe or this one.
 Looking for other eggplant recipes? Try these:
  • Baked Eggplant with Tomato, Red Lentil and Herb Sauce
  • Roasted Eggplant filled with Savory Vegetable Medley
  • Grilled Zucchini and Eggplant with Lemon Mint Yogurt Dip

Did you like this post? What are your thoughts on food waste or how to make better use of the food you buy? We’d love to here from you! Go ahead and leave a comment below and share this with your friends.

Filed Under: Appetizers, Sides, Snack Tagged With: meatless, vegetarian

Why Meatless Monday Matters & Stuffed Roasted Red Peppers

April 27, 2015 by aplough

Stuffed & Roasted Red Peppers

Stuffed & Roasted Red Peppers

More and more every day: I believe food matters. I believe food is medicine. As Hippocrates said so many years ago: “let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food.”

The wisdom of this short instruction rings truer than ever, now.

I have found that as I have shifted my own diet to shun junk food and processed food and “food-like substances” (a Michael Pollan phrase) and moved down a path toward cooking with and eating whole foods and real foods, something very interesting has happened.  I don’t crave candy, at all.  I find myself reducing the quantity of sugar called for in recipes because overly sweet stuff simply doesn’t taste good anymore. As I incorporate more and more plant-based recipes in my diet, too much meat makes me feel full and sluggish. I crave vegetables. A morning that doesn’t start with a big green smoothie (or a smoothie containing a lot of vegetables + some fruit, but not green) is a morning that feels a bit off.  My body is more in tune than ever with what good food is, and I’ve never felt better in my life. I indulge sometimes: dark chocolate, cookies and cakes that use healthy ingredient alternatives are still part of my diet, and I’m happy to keep it that way…

Read More »

Filed Under: Main Course, Meatless Monday Tagged With: meatless, Red Peppers, vegetarian

Tomato, Avocado and Cucumber Salad in a White Balsamic Vinaigrette

April 24, 2015 by aplough

I love Spring for many reasons, but top of the list is that fact that all of a sudden, seemingly overnight, my local grocery starts offering produce that looks good, tastes great, and has a good chance of having been grown this year.  After the citrus and pomegranates fade away, there is this dead zone that is filled only by the piles of red and green cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and all the root vegetables you can think of from carrots & onion to by-now-very-tired-looking kohlrabi. Now I love all of those vegetables and have happily been eating them all winter long. But at this point, it feels like I have been eating them all. winter. long.

But Spring is here again, and now I’m picking up spring onions and radishes, cucumbers and tomatoes.  I know that here in Finland, most of the stuff is imported from our friendly neighbors in the south (Thank you Italy and Spain) and those which aren’t are green-house grown this time of year. But I’ll take it. And I’ll chop it.  And layer it right into the salads my body seems to be craving.

Tomatoes in particular have been catching my eye, which is funny, because I steered completely clear of this during my entire childhood, unless they were cooked into a sauce of sorts. Seems those watered down, somewhat mealy, tasteless beefsteak tomatoes of my childhood were not really representative of what a tomato could be, and now their place in my faded memory has been usurped by a smaller, flavorful red orb that is the cherry tomato and occasionally by tomatoes of different colors: orange, yellow, purple, black.  I remember seeing a cover photo on a Martha Stewart Living magazine, where a giant baguette had been cut in half and made into a giant bruschetta topped with a rainbow of tomato slices. It was so beautiful. And so far from the types of tomatoes I’d seen.

I then tried to grow tomatoes here in Finland.  I bought 6 packs of seeds with different, colorful varieties. I started them indoors and nursed them through the chilly months of late winter and early spring; repotted them as the weather got warmer, and planted them with high hopes in my garden.  Oh, I got tomatoes, but none that ripened on the vine. And while the virtues of green tomatoes have been touted over and over again, I’d rather have mine turn the color advertised on the seed pack.

Now I buy them, though I still have dreams of succeeding at growing my own, much as my sister-in-law S- did last summer: she planted them against her garage wall where the sun beat down all day in an unusually hot Finnish summer, and we ate them all Summer long and into Fall when she finally had to harvest what was left as the cold rains began.

I picked up a huge pile of tomatoes in the grocery store, and have been snacking on them and popping them into salads all week long. Pablo Neruda would understand. In his Ode to Tomatoes the Chilean poet and ambassador closes the poem this way:

….

it’s time!

let’s go!

and upon

the table,

belted by summer,

tomatoes,

stars of the earth,

stars multiplied

and fertile

show off

their convolutions,

canals

and plenitudes

and the abundance

boneless,

without husk,

or scale or thorn,

grant us

the festival

of ardent colour

and all-embracing freshness.

excerpt from Pablo Neruda Selected Poems, edited by Nathanial Tarn, (c) 1970

And so the tomato season begins.  Here’s a salad to help you celebrate.

Tomato, Avocado & Cucumber Salad with White Balsamic Vinaigrette

Tomato, Avocado & Cucumber Salad with White Balsamic Vinaigrette

Tomato, Avocado and Cucumber Salad with a White Balsamic Vinaigrette

2 avocados, peeled and cubed

2 cups cherry tomatoes, rinsed and cut in half

1 large English cucumber, rinsed and cut into large dice

2 spring onions, sliced thinly

2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon honey

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Combine the vegetables in a mixing bowl.  In a small bowl or cup, whisk together the vinegar, honey, salt and pepper until the honey dissolves.  Add the olive oil and whisk vigorously to create an emulsion.  Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss well.  Allow the salad to sit for 15-20 minutes to let the flavors meld.

Serves 4 as a side dish

Did you like this recipe?  Please let me know in the comments below – I’d love to hear from you!

 

Filed Under: Salad Tagged With: leafy greens, vegetarian

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