Community Kitchen: Detox-Slaw and Black Bean Cocoa Chile

As I've mentioned a few times on this blog, I run a community kitchen at my work each week. The food we make is so awesome (and healthy!) that I've decided it's too much

of a shame not to share the recipes here, so I will try to consistently do so from now on.

Since I spent the weekend in Victoria eating decadent foods at some of the many terrific eateries there (that I will write about very soon), I felt, perhaps more so than usual, like making healthy and detoxifying foods for this week's CK.

So we threw together an awesome organic "slaw" consisting of a bevy of ingredients that detoxify the body and facilitate digestion. No mayo here! A simple, tasty combination of shredded beets, carrots, julienned apple and fennel, tossed with a dressing of alkalizing apple-cider vinegar, fresh squeezed OJ, and olive oil. Of course it doesn't hurt to throw in some immune boosting (and tasty) spices like  cayenne, ginger, cinnamon and turmeric, along with a ton of fresh garlic. Abundant fresh parsley tied it all together and added even more colour and antioxidant punch to the mix!

I wanted something tasty and grounding as well. Enter my dad's black bean chili. This is the one vegetarian dish in his repertoire so he makes it for me each time I visit, which might explain why my visits are becoming more frequent as of late ;) This dish consists of a combination of refreshing cilantro, crunchy red peppers and sweet black beans and is deceivingly simple as it harbours complex flavours that will rock your taste buds like nobody's business. On top of the cayenne, chili powder and a generous amount of of garlic,  I added cocoa to mine for extra depth of flavour (feel free to switch with raw cacao at the end for a nutritional boost), as well as smoked paprika for a bit of kick--though the traditional cumin alone is more than decent.

Black beans are magic as they naturally regulate blood sugar levels, making them appropriate for my diabetic participants ( and for a mega sweet-tooth like yours truly!) We served the chili on a bed of red rice, a nutty flavoured, whole grain that is as delicious as it is grounding. We topped the whole affair with shredded organic sharp cheddar, green onion and a dollop of natural Balkan yogurt.

This simple but explosive meal had even the most stubbornly carnivorous CK participant reaching for thirds.

Proportions for 8 people:

Detox Slaw: Ready in 15 minutes including prep (with a food processor)

In a large Bowl Combine:

3 large Beets- shredded

3 medium carrots-shredded

1 medium fennel bulb-julienned

2 apples of your choice-julienned

1 bunch of parsley -chopped

3 cloves of garlic-minced

Salt and pepper to taste

1 chunk of ginger root minced

Handful of unsulfured raisins (optional)

Handful of hemp or pumpkin seeds (optional)

In a separate Bowl whisk:

3 large oranges-juiced

1/4 cup of Olive Oil

1/4 cup of Apple Cider Vinegar

1 and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

1 teaspoon of Cayenne

1 teaspoon of turmeric

Toss everything together and voila!

Black Bean Cocoa Chile: ready in half and hour including prep/longer if you have time!

1 large sweet onion-diced

4 standard-sized cans of black beans-drained and rinsed (or use dry)

4 medium red peppers-diced

2 jars of organic strained tomatoes

5-6 cloves of garlic-minced

1/2 bunch of cilantro-finely chopped with some stems

1 lime-juiced

1 tablespoon of cocoa-levelled

Cayenne-to your taste

Chile Pepper-to your taste

1 jalapeno- sliced (optional)

Salt and pepper to taste

1 dash of coconut oil (or olive)

Directions:

In a pot, brown your onions in the coconut oil. Once these become translucent, add your peppers until they are softened. Add the strained tomatoes and all the spices except for the cocoa. Let simmer for 10 minutes or more to develop flavours, then add beans and 2/3rds of the cilantro as well as the garlic and jalapeno. Let simmer for a while remaining mindful of not letting the beans soften too much (dry will remain toothsome for much longer). Turn element off and stir in cocoa, the  rest of the cilantro, along with the lime juice. Let sit for 5 minutes and serve!

A Load of S--T!

If you read my prior two posts you  will see that I have been on an anti-meal replacement roll this last week. While I am getting a little tired of the topic today (though I plan on pursuing this cause vehemently even if I am foaming at the mouth),  this photo, provided to me by the awesome outreach worker who schlepped the shit around twice, is too absurd not to share...It also debunks one of the top justifications for maintaining this "industry standard:" Cost Effectiveness.

This is what 1200 dollars worth of Ensure looks like--thankfully this flat was on its way back to the Superstore warehouse and will not be given out to street-entrenched, HIV positive clients. The entire non-profit/medical industry in the DTES (and probably beyond) relies on this product as a "cheap" and convenient solution to the nutritional vulnerability of the populations we are meant to assist.

Clearly this is not an inexpensive product. It is expensive in terms of the physical repercussions of ingesting a synthetic and chemical cocktail, but also in terms of $$ amounts!

1200$ can buy a second hand fridge and enough ingredients to make and serve whole, nutritional smoothies several mornings a week, or to purchase less involved options such as bananas, hard boiled eggs, even natural energy bars (i.e Larabar).

Convenience a euphemism for lazy? In some cases yes, but  at best the industry is uninformed. My manager spoke to a whole class of future social service providers who were shocked that Ensure is not a healthy choice.

And if people would like to counter my stance, I urge them to do research on the first ingredients listed on the label and to demonstrate to me how these could benefit people in precarious health (or any one at all.)

Water, Corn Syrup, Maltodextrin Corn, Sodium And Calcium Caseinates, Sugar Sucrose, Canola Oil, Corn Oil, High-Oleic Safflower Oil, Soy Protein Isolate, Soy Lecithin, Natural And Artificial Flavors, Carrageenan, FD&C Red No. 3, FD&C Yellow No. 6, FD&C Blue No. 1.

Rest Ensured! (An update)

Kitchen beats the Lab!

A small victory! After a semi-arduous process that involved a screaming match with my manager, him mulling over my scathing (semi-psychotic) critiques, and the help of Peter, the practicum student who just happened to be a health nut summoned to research the facts (perhaps more convincing than my impassioned, militant, back alley uproar), the 1200 dollars of chemical sludge known as Ensure is on its way back to the Superstore!

I am elated not just because of the tangible benefit to our clients, but because on a broader level this success demonstrates that fighting for your values and for what you believe is the ethical choice can sometimes pay off.

The battle continues though. Ensure is after all the industry staple (along with Glucerma by the same company made special for diabetics). I found out from Peter that our organization has a whole warehouse full of that crap!

But the conversation has started. I plan to bludgeon management with as much info as I can possibly package in a readable format and my own boss is on board! While I know that  "the revolution cannot be funded," (Great book, check it out, especially if you are working in the social services field: http://www.incite-national.org/index.php?s=89), meaningful change can (albeit painstakingly at times) happen from within the NONPROFITINDUSTRIAL compound.

I now have 1200 dollars to spend on a new (non-patronizing, victim blaming, tasty, and natural, I'm thinking) nutritional program for people with HIV.

The wheels in my mind are a spinnin' spinnin' spinning!

My number 1 principle: don't serve anything you wouldn't eat

The Danger of Unprocessed Food

Today, my commitment to unprocessed, natural foods almost caused me serious harm. How? I nearly got hit by a car on my bicycle commute home from work! Why? Because I was so pissed off I wasn't paying attention. 

Moments before the end of my shift my manager pulled me and by coworker Jess aside to tell us that he had received an extra 1200 bucks from another site's HIV program. This got me momentarily excited as all the possibilities for the meal program flashed by in my imagination. I had visions of daily green smoothies, a weekly supply of eggs, a reserve of various whole grains to replace the bread and margarine we are trying to phase out, or at the very least caseloads of organic butter to replace that deadly margarine! 

But this excitement was very short lived. My manager decided to sink that money into caseloads of Ensure meal replacements since he only had an afternoon to figure it out before the long weekend (and the end of the fiscal year when all "surplus" money has to be spent so as not to piss off our funders). 

I am absolutely appalled and heartbroken. Ensure is one of the worst things we could serve our clients, particularly those with HIV whom this extra cash is meant to assist. These "meal replacement" drinks are ubiquitous in the DTES as they are routinely given out by agencies, doctors, and welfare workers here to those most sick and malnourished. Ensure interestingly has high resale value on the street, most likely because when one is sick and/or high it is hard to stomach much of anything at all and perhaps since Ensure is handed out by "experts," it is actually thought of as beneficial to dwindling health. Everyone needs a bit of ideology to feel better, even more so when your head is in the gutter. But in my opinion, these drinks are worse than a band aid solution, they actually make existing issues worse. 

1. Ensure is filled with chemicals, toxic substances and just a few synthetic nutrients, all of which push already weakened bodies to work even harder to try to assimilate the harmful substances that make up the drink's ingredient list. The combination of sugar, corn syrup, soy oil, corn oil, soy lecithin (these are just the first of over 40 unpronounceable) hardly constitutes a therapeutic substance. We may as well hand out  a few vitamins along with a bottle of coke!

2. As long as professionals hand out this crap nothing will get meaningfully better. Ensure is perhaps cheaper than a whole food alternative (and I would argue that this isn't necessarily the case) and more convenient (are we really that uncreative and lazy?), but these benefits far out weight the cost, and our justifications (i.e it's better than nothing--not true) only contribute to the false impression that at least something is being done. In the case of my agency it's even more blasphemous since we had some money (unadulterated by the industry discounts or stipulations that most likely also fuel Ensure's strong presence in the DTES) to spend on an alternative and there are people (me and jess!) who would take the time to maximize that 1200 dollars and create something healthful that would actually address our clients' nutritional needs.  

So yeah I am really pissed.