I have had to turn off the cooking shows. I keep looking for one that does something other than season its desserts and sweets with vanilla flavoring and its savories with chicken stock.
Ever wonder why describing how dishes taste you always have to add – they taste a little like chicken, don’t know why, but I enjoyed the dish. Or, describing a sweet you can’t really define the vanilla taste, but it is present. That is probably because every dish made today that is not sweet is full of chicken stock and every dessert has vanilla flavor.
What is that about?
Well, the desserts are easy to fathom. We use white conventional flour, white over-processed sugar, low-fat milk which has been over processed and is roughly equivalent to sugar water. Debased – with the taste stripped out as well as the nutrition. So, you have to put in desserts something to restore the flavor. Thus comes the addition of vanilla. Try baking without vanilla. Let the ingredients win the day. Try a cake with real organic cherries in the batter for a flavor component. There is always raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, hazelnuts, and so many more.
Try baking, cooking, saucing your desserts with organic whole wheat or whole any grain or whole anything else. Organic eggs add incredible taste;, whole organic milk, organic butter, organic turbinado sugar, organic maple syrup or something equivalent and you will see an amazing difference. I very seldom use vanilla and get lots of compliments for the flavor of desserts. Don’t totally eliminate vanilla, but use it on purpose for the taste not to carry the entire dish. Why? Because flavor comes from all the ingredients and does not have to be restored by adding vanilla. That just dumbs down your taste buds. Once you get them back to rally tasting what you are eating you will really see how bored you can get with vanilla. That is a real shame because vanilla is an excellent and adds great flavor, but not to everything sweet.
That is difficult to do when using almonds since the FDA has decided there should not be organically grown raw almonds. Before you get the almonds, those dubbed ‘organic’ have been toyed with and those that are not organic or have no such descriptive label have really been trashed. Someone decided almonds must be, at the very least, pasteurized or they will deliver mold, etc. to your gut. Sound like the processed food industry looking for graft or profit where it would otherwise receive none?
Organically grown raw almonds are very good and not at all a threat to your health. That is very far from the truth. Whatever the economic benefit to those delivering such an edict to all of us won the day. Those raw almonds, not organically grown, have been chemicalized to avoid the mold. Whenever I see something like that I think “shelf life”. Don’t know if that is the case, but it is my fall back reason and it has been right in the past so I have no reason to doubt it today.
With everything savory using organic ingredients, that also makes a huge difference. Put aside the chicken stock and try water for a change. The dish you are cooking provides a unique flavor all its own without the use of a “cheater” ingredient. The chicken stock industry must have paid a pretty penny to get not that position. There are other stocks on the market, but chicken stock seems to be the one used in just about everything. Whoever came up with that must have made quite a load of money.
When cooking, you can taste the difference between grass-fed and hormoned/chemicalized meat. You can also taste huge differences between wild and farm raised fish. Wild fish tastes the way one would expect fish to taste. Farm raised fish has a strange texture and the taste leaves something to be desired so additions are necessary to make a decent dish, probably the addition of chicken stock – and on and on it goes. And you can bet any salmon with Atlantic in front of the name is farm raised.
Who is behind all of these changes to our food supply? They are coming fast and furious and a stop sign is needed for all our benefits.
Homes that are a part of Bettina Network Hedge Schools are either totally organic – like one in Harvard Square – or they are on their way to becoming organic in their toiletries, food, paper products, cleaning products used and more. Any way we can move the Network in the direction of using products that don’t destroy the environment or your body that is the direction in which we are headed.
Any suggestions to help that movement are welcome!
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Tags: bed & breakfast, Bettina Cookbook, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Hedge Schools, Recipe
