Grilled Cheese Stuffed Jalapenos Tweetcipe

Jalapenos are often used to flavor other dishes such as salsa, cornbread and nachos. I’d like to show some respect to this rather unappreciated vegetable with a recipe that features the spicy green pepper. You may have tried a variation of this appetizer that sometimes goes by the name of Jalapenos Kisses, but homemade and grilled can’t be beat! Warning: these warm little appetizers are not for the tender-mouthed!

GRILLED CHEESE STUFFED JALAPENOS

Makes 40 stuffed jalapenos

20 large mild jalapenos, cut in half lengthwise and seeded (use gloves to protect your fingers)
1 – 8 oz package cream cheese
1 t milk
Pinch of salt
1 t powdered chipotle or chili powder
20 pieces of bacon, thin sliced and cut in half

Place 40 toothpicks in water to soak. Mix cream cheese, milk, salt and spice in a medium bowl until smooth.

Fill each jalapeno with some of the cream cheese mixture. Wrap each in a piece of bacon and secure with a toothpick.

Place jalapenos on a grill plate (a metal plate with holes in it) and grill over medium heat until peppers are roasted and bacon is cooked. Do not flip or turn. If the peppers are burning or the bacon fat is causing flare-ups, place a sheet of foil on the grill and move the jalapenos onto the foil until done. Serve immediately.

Eat the Rainbow

When you’re busy and on the run it’s tough to eat healthy, isn’t it? Trying to remember how many servings of this or that makes me feel like reaching for a bag of potato chips and calling it a day. But, eating healthy is something I do try to do, and one way to make it a little easier is to eat the rainbow – and sorry, I am not referring to Skittles!

“Eating the rainbow” is all about adding more color to your diet. The idea is that as long as those colors are fresh fruits and veggies, you’ll be able to eat healthier without putting a lot of thought or effort into worrying about servings per day. Filling in the rainbow might not be an easy task, but I try to get as close as possible every day (while avoiding those tempting rainbow Twizzlers).

To fulfill your “red” requirements, go for tomatoes and beets. Cooked tomatoes especially provide excellent nutritional value. Foods like carrots fulfill the orange requirement, as do, well, oranges. There are some food items that come in more than one color such as squash, which can be either yellow or orange. As far as I know there are no real differences in the nutritional value in the varied colors of the same vegetable, with the exception of red bell peppers. Setting aside the outrageous cost of red bell peppers for the moment, they contain as much as four times the Vitamins A and C than their green counterparts.

Green might not get special emphasis when you’re looking for a pot of gold, but it’s obviously the most important section of the food rainbow and one of the healthiest colors to add to your plate. You can’t go wrong with a half-green plate at dinner. I cook some sort of green leafy vegetable almost every day and all that I have noticed is that each green takes a different amount of cooking time. For most palettes, cooked greens just need a little water or vegetable broth added along with a dash of salt and pepper. But to vary your green experience I suggest adding ingredients like sliced pieces of garlic or shiitake mushroom for additional flavor.

When thinking about eating the rainbow, don’t limit yourself to the basics. There are a ton of tasty choices that will give you the balanced diet you are looking for and help improve your health. This list is only a start to the many options that are available to you in helping you achieve that balanced diet:

• Red: tomatoes, grapefruit, watermelon, guava, red bell pepper
• Green: spinach, collards, kale, broccoli, Swiss Chard, avocado, asparagus
• Orange: sweet potatoes, mangos, carrots, apricots, papaya
• Yellow: pineapple, yellow bell pepper, banana, squash
• Blue/Purple: blueberries, plums, eggplant, blackberries

While white isn’t technically a color in the rainbow, it’s a good idea to include garlic, chives, onions, scallions, and leeks, both for flavor and for the health benefits they offer.

It’s ok to mix things up and experiment with the different varieties of food that are out there. Do not limit yourself or your cooking to the items that first come to mind. Spinach and other low fat, nutrient-rich produce get a bad rap from the Tastebud Police, but there are many healthy foods out there that, with the right flavoring or recipe (like my Gazpacho Soup), can make your list of favorites.

Until next time, eat well!

People’s Diets Before & After the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution, which historians say first started in the U.K. around 1760, was less a revolution and more of a gradual but profound metamorphosis of Europe and, close on its heels, North America. And by gradual, I mean about 150 years of invention, improvement and industrial application. Authors like Thomas Hobbs described 17^th Century farmers’ lives as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

Then the Industrial Revolution brought mechanization and technological advancements. Farming on a small scale was all about maintaining the delicate health of the soil through fallowing, cover crops and crop rotation. With the Industrial Revolution, it became a large-scale process where nature could be managed and exploited, though not always controlled. Control came later, after the harsh lessons of the Dust Bowl years were indelibly printed on farmers who took advantage of new automation machines, farmed ever more acreage but did not heed the appropriate steps to renew and protect the soil as their forefathers had.

Meat and dairy were expensive and rare commodities in pre-industrial Europe. Most livestock was slaughtered in the autumn since grazing areas were scarce in the harsh winters, lending to huge autumn feasts, followed by a bland, meager, almost vegetarian diet through the winter. Then science taught ranchers the finer points of effective husbandry, and grains became more readily available to get livestock through the cold months. Within a century, meat was available to the masses year round, and dairy was more easily produced with the larger stocks of breeding animals each spring. Peasants began to eat like aristocrats.

Exploration and early forms of genetic modification (in the form of selective breeding) brought new peppers, corn, and chocolate from the Americas to Europe, inspiring cooks with bold, new flavors. The chocolate was dark, mostly served as a beverage, and far less sweet than most of today’s impulse buys, but thank goodness for those brave sailors who brought it back and those chefs that made it a part of our Valentine’s Day traditions!

Scientific discoveries and studies enabled farmers to breed and cultivate plants for consistency, quantity, and flavor. Small family farms were replaced with vast fields of genetically similar crops that were easy to grow, but homogeneous and more prone to large outbreaks of disease and pest infestation (meaning stronger systemic fertilizers and pesticides had to be formulated and applied.).

While birth rates were flat during the Industrial Revolution, improved medical care, diet, and sanitation sharply reduced death rates. A growing population needed to be fed, and since most of that population now lived an urban lifestyle, food had to be brought into the cities. Trains sped things up, the invention of canned goods, fillers and additives made the food go further and last longer on the shelf.

Today we can enjoy asparagus in December and mangoes in the Midwestern United States. However, in an effort to feed our exponentially growing population the abundance of fruits and vegetables we now expect year round, we may have taken the industrialization of our food supply too far, stripping our dinner of genetic diversity, flavor and adequate nutrition. Perhaps the pendulum will now swing successfully back to center with a balance of small, local, organic farms and the large homogeneous farms to make the best of all that our ancestors and our great scientific minds have to offer.