Oprah Inaugurates a Food Revolution in America!

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We made it a point to watch Oprah today (Friday). Why? Oprah interviewed Jamie Oliver and discussed his latest venture/obsession/mission: The Food Revolution!  (Cook more meals at home, buy fresh food, eat together as a family, get healthy as a result.

Jamie is so focused on this new venture that he has a new TV  show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. This  is  6, 1-hour shows filmed in Huntington, West Virginia (Airing on ABC Fridays).

Why this town? According to Jamie and the CDC (Center for Disease Control), this town is the most un-healthiest spot in the United States. From what we can piece together, Jamie arrives in the town to challenge them into breaking away from their usual meals and try to eat healthier. Many of the previews we watched this afternoon, focused on Jamie’s work at a school in the city (talking to the kids, working with the staff etc…)   Naturally, Jamie’s show contains some drama as the local DJ tries to “run him out of town” and is initially resistance to this British guy showing up to tell the locals what to do.

The show will debut tonight (Friday March 26, 2010) in the United States on your local ABC station. Here in Tucson, it will air from 7-9pm. Thank goodness we checked again, as we originally thought it would be on at 9pm tonight- eeks! THAT would have been disappointing!!

There were quite a few clips to view on Oprah, but there were two parts that really stood out for us.

1. Golden Brown Food

Oprah aired a clip of a home visit that Jamie makes to a family, and piles up a weeks worth of food on their kitchen table. The food mound is composed of pizza, French fries, corn dogs, chicken nuggets, burgers, nachos, you get the idea- everything was brown, bready and high in fat!

The comment is made that all the food that this family is eating is “golden brown” from the fryer! Eeks!  Most of it is breaded or fried, looked greasy and seemed soggy by the end of the shots.

It was sorta shocking to see that much “golden brown” food at one time. Yuck!

Truthfully we are sure that we have eaten such a meal in the past, but every day for a week? Wow that mound of food looked impressive, but in a negative way.

2. The Coffin for the obese

In another part, Jamie brings the radio DJ along to a local funeral home, and then we all get a view of what the “end of life options” are for the obese. This we will admit was shocking to us.

The coffin was as large as a full or queen sized bed!

The Morticians noted that a coffin of this size required many “un-dignified” adjustments in order to be moved and buried. These included tipping it up on it’s side (to get through a door), transportation in a pickup truck and/or by fork lift, and the injustice of having to pay for two plots at the cemetery. These huge coffins are also super heavy (reinforced steel side beams etc…) as they have to hold up with contents that weigh between 600-700 pounds.

The most shocking news of all? These huge coffin sales are on the rise in the United States. We sat shocked and silent at this news as the show went to a commercial break.

Wow, maybe Americans do need a Food Revolution after all??

Jamie and Oprah were able to lighten up the mood of the audience when the show returned by cooking.

As most of the clips and shots of the show focused on kids eating chicken nuggets, what does Jamie make? Breaded chicken strips, of course.

Only his chicken “nuggets” were homemade, cheaper and quicker than the kind in the box that everyone is used to. Jamie comments that his homemade chicken nuggets will cook up in the pan in 6 minutes and that those frozen nuggets take 12-15 minutes to cook up. Also his nuggets are cheaper and you know and can identify all the ingredients in them.

To round out the meal, He serves mashed potatoes and some steamed greens.

We are looking forward to watching the 2 hour special tonight to learn more about  Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and how it changed this small town.

Links:

  • Oprah’s website CLICK HERE
  • Oprah’s recipes from the show CLICK HERE
  • Jamie Oliver’s website to join Food Revolution  CLICK HERE (Goal is 6 million supporters!)

What do you think about the food revolution? What questions or help do you need to start a revolution in your home today??

We Shopped at Trader Joe’s Today!

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Trader Joe's Purchases

Trader Joe's Purchases

Today was a great day at Trader Joe’s!

We got some of our usual items and also some “new to us” items as well.

First the usual items:

Today we purchased bread (Ezekiel w/ sesame seeds), eggs, milk and some frozen veggies that we love. We also got some nuts (Trader Joe’s Ballpark Peanuts and toasted Pecans) and salad items as well. For our salads we like to mix up Trader Joe’s baby spinach with some other kind of lettuce and this week it was arugula salad- this is also called Rocket in some places and has a nice “peppery” or “spicy” flavor.

To go with the spinach and arugula, we bought little tiny cherry tomatoes, sweet Hawaiian onions, pre-sliced mushrooms (so convenient- thanks Trader Joe’s!) and some organic baby zucchini. All in all, the starting point for some great salads! With these items as our “salad base” we then add some extra items to give our salads some “jazz”. Sometimes we use leftovers from dinner (cold cooked vegetables or potatoes), but this week we actually bought some fun new items for our salads: Trader Joe’s Giant White Beans and Trader Joe’s Feta Cheese.

TIP: If you are standing in the produce section at Trader Joe’s and are having trouble deciding which of the ingredients will make the best salads, check out Chef Jamie Oliver’s new book and movement Jamie’s Food Revolution. One of the sections in the book is devoted to salads (Lovin’ Salads, p. 101).  In this section Jamie discusses making home-made salad dressing, and also the “Pick and Mix” style salad. This was just a wonderful concept and we both thought it was a great way to think about salads. He notes that great salads have an assortment of colors and textures and he lays out a variety of salad ingredients in a grid to help readers choose and create fantastic salads. (More good news: Trader Joe’s carries many of the items that are mentioned in this great cookbook)

OK back to the other food items we purchased:

  • A Ruby Red Papaya,
  • Trader Joe’ Way More Chocolate Chip Cookies (for gifts & sharing)
  • Trader Joe’s Roasted Poblano Peppers
  • Trader Joe’s Bunny Gummy Tummies

We are excited about trying these items, and will post a review about each one soon.

In addition to all the great food that we purchased, we also found a lovely plant. Our Trader Joe’s in Tucson always has wonderful flowers and plants on display inside and outside the store and today we could not resist! We even had a few complements and questions from other shoppers who noticed our plant while we were shopping. (OK truthfully, we had stopped to nibble on the daily samples of Orange Cranberry Tea Loaf and sip the coffee- Trader Joe’s Dark- BOTH were yummy!!)

What did you purchase at Trader Joe’s today??

5 Easy Ways to join the Food Revolution

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Are you interested in joining the Food Revolution but don’t know where to start?  Here are 5 easy ways to start to incorporate the ideas behind Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution in to your life and your kitchen. Remember the Food Revolution is designed to be easy and to help you cook more meals from scratch. This might seem hard in the beginning, yet after a few weeks, you will become more adventurous and ready to try new cooking challenges.

OK ready to start? Here you go:

1. Cook 1 meal from scratch this week.

Food Revolution time is here, what are you going to cook?  It is time to reach for the Food Revolution cook book, or your favorite cookbook or check out the Food Revolution Recipes on this website for some ideas on what to cook.  We recommend the Broccoli and Pesto Tagliatelle (pg. 46) because cooking pasta is a great easy meal for beginners and it only uses one pan so it is easy clean up too. We also like this recipe because you chop all the veggies up and cook them in the water that you are also cooking the past in. Then drain everything, and return it all to the same pan. Then add your sauce and mix it all up.  Yum!  AND you have cooked your first meal from scratch in your kitchen. Congratulations!

2. Taste 2 new spices

Do you have some spices that you don’t use regularly in your kitchen? Do you know what they even taste like? I know we have some spices that get pushed into the back of the cupboard and then are never used… Well it is time to take them out and check them out. OR maybe you need to purchase some new spices to jazz up your meals at home?

Either way when dealing with spices that you are unfamiliar with, we suggest the following to become “friends” with the spices: Taste ‘em. What we like to do is spoon out a small amount onto a plate, and then dip a little bit of food into the spice and then taste both the spice and the food. You can taste the spices by themselves, but we think that when you taste the spices with some food (like cheese or carrots or cucumbers or a bit of mayo) you will get a better sense of how the spice will taste when you are cooking.  (Hey you can get your family or friends involved with this taste test, and see which spices become favorites)

Some good dry spices to try this experiment on: cumin, curry powder, sweet paprika, smoked paprika, cinnamon, oregano, basil, any spice “mixture” like Old Bay or Mrs. Dash or Italian herbs. This list is based spices that we use regularly and love to cook with. Have some fun and enjoy trying a bunch of new tastes!  (If you have a Health Food Store near you, check and see if they have bulk spices. Many stores allow you to purchase a small amount of dry spices so you can give them a try before spending a lot of $$)

Also, don’t forget about all the spices that you can try out at Trader Joe’s. These are two that we use on a regular basis to season up/flavor all kinds of foods from vegetables to fish and chicken and shrimps. Remember too that if you don’t like one of the items that you bought, Trader Joe’s will gladly refund your $$ so there is never really a risk to trying anything.

Trader Joe's seasoning

Trader Joe's seasoning

3. Tell 3 friends

Tell some friends what you are up to. Maybe some of your friends can help? OR maybe they will be interested in joining you on your cooking adventures? Maybe you can get together on a random Tuesday night and cook together?  What about a Saturday afternoon potluck where everyone brings a dish and the recipe? An important part of the Food Revolution is for you to Pass It On – all these great skills that you are developing in the kitchen. Start thinking about your group now… You never know who will be interested until you ask.

4. Spend 4 minutes cleaning

This part is the scariest…. In order to cook dinner on a regular basis, you really must know what you have to work with. This means everything from plates and cups to pots, pans, spoons and spices. This also means that you need to set aside some cupboard space for a small pantry of items that will ready to help you cook any night of the week. Basic pantry items might be beans, rice, dry pasta, canned tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. More adventurous items could include pesto, coconut milk and curry paste.

But for now just spend a few minutes cleaning out old stuff, checking out what you have and getting all these things organized. We love it when the cupboard with all the plastic containers is organized and no longer falls out when we open the door. Too bad that *#$$* area just can’t stay organized, right?

5. Take 5 to plan

This is perhaps the most important part for success in any project, but especially the Food Revolution. Plan out what you are going to eat when you cook at home.  We suggest starting with only one or two meals at a time.  Maybe one meal you will make from fresh ingredients, and the second, you purchase frozen stuff, so that you will have it in “reserve” just in case you plans change- or maybe you want to purchase a couple of meals to have ready to cook at home to help you with that last minute urge to go out?

We timed it once, and we could have pasta on the table in the time it took to drive to our favorite restaurant, let alone park, stand in the line and finally get table.  OR even worse, drive to our favorite fast food restaurant, order food then inch around the drive through, pay, and then pick up the food and drive home. Frequently in the fast food scenario, the food would be cold by the time we returned to the house. YUCK!

So we urge you to plan ahead for a few minutes and have an easy meal ready in your mind, the next time that fast food is calling. You might find that you enjoy eating at home a lot better! We hope that these easy 5 will get you motivated to try the Food Revolution this week and see how easy it can be to cook from scratch at home.

Join the Food Revolution

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Jamie's Food Revolution

Jamie's Food Revolution

What do we mean by the Food Revolution?

We are talking about the latest book by Chef Jamie Oliver (the Food Network’s Naked Chef ) called Jamie’s Food Revolution: Rediscover how to cook simple, delicious, affordable meals that is at the heart of the Food Revolution.  This time instead of a cookbook that focuses on simply great food, this cookbook has a goal: To reduce high obesity rates and general poor health by cooking from scratch at home. Jamie plans to tackle this goal with a two part plan:

1. First Part: Get cooking!

It is Jamie’s quest to get folks back into their kitchens and cooking on a regular basis. He is serious about changing everyone’s health for the better. He notes that less than 1/3 of Americans cook their dinners from scratch anymore– this book is here to help change that number.

Now we just love this message. I know we are all busy and have to go in about a million places each day, but the idea of taking five minutes to plan, and actually spending time cooking at home and then relaxing at the dinner table and being able to re-connect as a family, to us is just wonderful.

We understand that many readers may not be gourmet chefs, or even confident cooks in the kitchen. Don’t worry…we all had to start from someplace, right?

This book, Food Revolution, is going to help you learn to cook.  Unlike most other cookbooks that just jump right in to each section, this book is different. Food Revolution takes the time to explain kitchen equipment that you will need as well as makes suggestions on items to purchase to stock the cupboard (or panty). Jamie writes that with a well stocked pantry when you purchase a nice piece of fish or chicken for example, you can “take it to Spain, Italy, Morocco or China just by using certain herbs or spices from your cupboards. That’s what’s so exciting about cooking”.  We agree 100% with Jamie. The fact that you can totally change the flavor of a meal from your first thought: “Italian chicken and tomatoes” to a second thought: “Spanish chicken and tomatoes” by switching up the herbs and spices or rice and chickpeas to us is as close to magic as you can get at 5:30pm on a Tuesday night.

2. The second part: Share!

The second goal of this book is just as awesome as the first: To help each other learn to cook better at home. Yep, that’s right, Jamie wants us to share our favorite recipes with one another (once we get a few that is ). He calls this part “Pass It On”.

The Pass It On Pledge

OK so the Pass it on pledge is that everyone has to get involved with changing all of our eating habits and for the better of everyone (Eeks! For the Greater Good?) Anyway, Jamie wants everyone to pledge to learn one recipe from each chapter in this book. Next “Master” the recipe by making it at home a couple of times, and then Pass It On! This happens when you teach the recipe to at least 2 (hopefully 4) friends by having a cooking party. Then hopefully your friends will teach two more and so on, and so on….

It is Jamie’s goal to really start a Food Revolution with people cooking and teaching others to cook on a regular basis.  Now don’t get all overwhelmed and think that you just can’t do this. Jamie is not asking you to cook huge complicated menus for twenty five people on your first night cooking or ever, really. This book is here to help you with nice, clear pictures and simple recipes to help everyone start to cook more at home.

One statistic that was included in the introduction to this cookbook was the fact that Americans spent more on fast food in 2007 than they did on education.  Eeks! We are not sure how to take this, but think this could be a wake-up call to notice how much fast food we are eating and make the effort to include a few more homemade meals into the mix each week. Soon we will be eating more and more meals at home and becoming healthier as a nation as a result. So what do you say? Lets turn our fast food into brain food!

We are going to pledge to help Jamie and his Food Revolution any way we can. We pledge to include more step-by-step recipes here on Living Trader Joe’s.com to help all our readers learn to cook, or learn some new easy recipes.

Please let us know what cooking help you would like us to share, so that we can Pass It On here! You can email us, or leave a comment below. THANKS!