kitchenmage

New Site for the New Year: Recipe Reality

Have you ever found yourself wishing that recipes on the Internet came with one of those Nutrition Facts labels? I know I do. Quite often, in fact.

Well, I can't wave my magic wand and make that happen to the entire Internet -- even my magic isn't that strong -- but I can help out just a little bit. About this much: Recipe Reality

The premise for the site is simple. I want to answer the question: What's going on in that recipe?

First answer: Nutrition Facts: Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls

I want to hit a collection of recipes that people will find useful, things that are popular, clever adaptations, and so on. If you would like to see a recipe put under the microscope, please leave a comment and suggest it. If you write about food and want to volunteer some of yours, drop me a note at therecipereality(at)gmail(dot)com with a few of your most popular posts.

Please come visit Recipe Reality. It's brand new right now but it's going to be a fun project. I'd love to have you come along for the ride.

Adequate food is a human right!

Today is the 60th birthday of one of my favorite documents: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN has a special anniversary page up where you can get the DHR in 360 languages to share with your friends.

As a food-writer, I want to point to article 25, which starts:

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (emphasis mine)

Simple stuff on paper, but the reality? Not so much.

Since  typing is still hard for me, I'd like you to create your own vision of hunger for me - and share it in comments if you wish. Close your eyes and remember a time when you were really hungry. Not 'nothing since lunch and it's 9pm hungry' but 'it's the 28th and no shopping for 5 days hungry.' What did it feel  like: physically, emotionally, socially? Many of us can remember the gnawing of a truly empty stomach; the horrible choice of feeding our kids or ourselves, but not both; or standing in a foodbank line for hours. (Sadly, I can pull all three of these scenarios from memory.)

Imagine that you live with that every day of your life. Hungry. Every. Day.

Now go to Feeding America (Second Harvest) and give generously. Or pack up a bag for your local foodbank. Or take an unemployed friend grocery shopping. Whatever you choose, please do something to help another person achieve the food security we all deserve.

Quick question for the vegetarians, vegans and the like...

I am in the middle of writing a cookbook and would like to include some tips for parents of children who have declared they will no longer eat food with faces. Whether it's nutrition, the meatless recipe that you cooked 3-4 times a week at first, or the delicate handling a child who seems to be rejecting your lovingly prepared meal, parents need help with this. So, two simple questions:

• If you could some advice to the parents of a newly vegetarian/vegan child, what would it be?
• What is the worst thing you can do if your child decides to eat a meatless diet? (Personal experiences from hell are welcome.)

Thanks for your contributions, everyone.

Excuse me, waiter, nobody here ordered diabetes.

Well, this should be interesting. One of us has to start following a diet suitable for someone with diabetes, while the other of us scoffs at what shows up on the meal plans for diabetics. Seriously, the day I count out 12 grapes for lunch is the day I quit eating grapes.

Add in conflicting and illogical data and you've got a headache...okay, I've got a headache. (tangent: Why isn't there a diet for migraines that works?) One site says eat a fair amount of carbs, listing things like wholemeal bread and brown rice as good things, while the next says wholemeal bread and brown rice have high glycemic indexes and thus should be eaten less. Then there are sentences like this:

The glycemic load measures the effect of the glycemic index of a food times its available carbohydrate content in grams in a standard serving.

                          source: David Mendoa's Glycemic Index info

To quote Chevy Chase, I understood there would be no math questions.

I wonder if Kalyn's Kitchen has crib sheets on how the whole glycemic index thing works...must go check...