The Big Fat Surprise – Book Review

Fat. Healthy or unhealthy? Saturated vs unsaturated, trans fat. Fat science, fat politics. Diets: low fat, Mediterranean, paleo, low carb.  Dean Ornish vs Robert Atkins. Gary Taubes. These are covered in The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, by Nina Teicholz. I was fascinated as I read about how the book turns conventional dogma about fat upside down. Teicholz, a writer and apparently not a doctor or nutritionist, spent ten years on this book and gives us about a hundred pages of documentation, including notes and bibliography, for her assertions that the last sixty years’ advice on fats have been wrong.

To quote the author, “The more I probed, the greater was my realization that all our dietary recommendations about fat—the ingredient about which our health authorities have obsessed most during the pat sixty years—appeared to be not just slightly offtrack but completely wrong. Almost nothing that we commonly believe today about fats generally and saturated fat in particular appears, upon close examination, to be accurate. “(p. 2).

Teicholz points out that once the low fat, low cholesterol hypothesis was in place, it was very difficult to write or talk against it. She goes through the history of America’s advice and experiments about dietary fats. According to Teicholz, studies that contradicted accepted belief were often not given credibility or not published; researchers were unable to get funding for further studies. Even prominent experts in the field were not believed. Meanwhile, Americans found themselves with growing epidemics of chronic disease related to diet.

Much of the book examines the story of nutrition science regarding dietary fats as its advice went from bad to worse. In the 1950s medical experts looked for ways to reduce heart disease and came up with the idea that saturated fat, or primarily animal fat, caused heart disease. Ancel Keys developed what various writers have called the cholesterol hypothesis, which said that high cholesterol caused heart disease. From that came the low fat diet, and advice to replace fats with carbohydrates. Teicholz takes us from that to saturated fat to polyunsaturated fat conclusions, bolstered by President Eisenhower’s heart attack. Lots of science, both good and bad, appears here. Bad or flawed science comes from studies which were designed with a particular conclusion in mind, or studies with data points that support the hypotheses but not the ones that do not, and other flaws of design, participation or follow-up. Teicholz read and reported on a great many studies.

Sugar never got much study, according to this book. Teicholz suggests that studies have shown that sugar causes heart disease, not saturated fat. And so Americans went from the saturated fat veto to the low fat diet, to trans fats and manufactured fats to the Mediterranean diet to high fat low carb. At the end the Atkins diet wins after being scorned by doctors and nutrition people for many years. The Atkins diet is characterized by high fat meat and low carb vegetables. Teicholz reports the studies, large and small. She credits nationally known food journalist Gary Taubes with breaking through the accepted story because he is outside the system, not a doctor or nutritionist. She also says she was able to write the book for the same reason.

Food manufacturers are not vilified in this book, but the part they played in creating foods for these diets is told, as is the politics of food that gave us the food pyramid. The USDA continues to say stay the course and avoid saturated fats. Teicholz says that death from heart disease has declined but the actual occurrence of it has not appeared to decline, possibly because medical treatment has improved. She points out that Americans “have experienced skyrocketing epidemics obesity and diabetes.” (p. 327). She says that recent studies have showed the absence of negative effect of saturated fat on heart disease, obesity or diabetes. She concludes that “bias and habit present powerful, if not impenetrable, barriers to change.” (p. 326).

Teicholz does not address the effect of her conclusions on the environmental consequences of trying to feed animals to millions of people beyond saying that she recognizes it but environmental impact is not within the scope of her book. She also does not advocate for or against vegetarian diets but shows that they come up in studies of fats.

This book is one more addition to my library of ideas on how to eat well as a way to stay healthy. I read other well qualified writers and understand that not all agree with her dietary conclusions.

Black Raspberry Cobbler for 2

Black raspberries are ripe again. I have invaded the berry patches nearby and found enough to make dessert. Well, maybe desserts.  Unfortunately, sugar plays big parts in desserts with berries, so I don’t promise that today’s dessert will improve your health. Your outlook maybe, but not your health. Old fashioned raspberry cobbler is delicious. And berry scavenging is fun in spite of the thorns on the bushes. It’s worth the scratches. On the other hand, scavenging at the farmers’ market probably is easier in the long run.

I learned to do roadside gathering from my father. We spent the warm seasons gathering wild asparagus, grapes, apples and maybe some other goodies during my childhood in Door County. We brought home grapes and apples and he insisted that Mother make jelly. I remember him filling his pockets with apples and Mother lamenting, “Oh, no, do I have to make jelly?” Her jelly was very good. I don’t think she ever made cobbler, but no one is perfect, not even my mother who was famous for her recipe show on radio.

I found my recipe for blackberry cobbler (see my blog post of August 6, 2010) and tried it with black raspberries. While it was a good adaptation, I decided that blackberries must be sweeter than black raspberries, so I increased the amount of sugar after my trial run. It isn’t extremely sweet because it came from a 1941 cookbook, the Prairie Farmer WLS Cook Book, written before excessive sugar got its big hold on the American palate. In that book it is cherry cobbler, so it has changed a bit. Once again I reduced it to a quantity appropriate for two people.

Black Raspberry Cobbler for 2

1 ½ cups fresh black raspberries (approximately) (frozen ones might work)

½ cup water

½ cup sugar

1 ½ tablespoons all purpose flour

½ cup all purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 ½ tablespoons butter

1 ½ tablespoons milk (approximately)

Find a baking dish that is 7x7 inches or 6x8 inches. It should hold about 1 to 1 ½ quarts. The cobbler won’t come up to the top of the dish after it is baked.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Put berries and water in the baking dish.  Combine the ½ cup  sugar and 1 ½ tablespoons flour, and sprinkle it over the top. Put it in the oven and stir occasionally until the mixture is heated, about as long as it takes to mix the dough that goes on top.  Mix together the ½ cup flour, baking powder, 1 tablespoon sugar and salt. Cut in butter until it is in small pieces and resembles pie crust dough. You never made pie crust? Just guess. It really is a biscuit.  Add milk and stir until soft dough is formed. Stir as little as possible. Roll the dough about 1/3 inch thick and place it on the hot berry mixture in the baking dish to cover most of the top. If the dough is too wet to roll, add more flour.

Bake it at 425 degrees for about 30 minutes. Serve it plain or topped with whipped cream or ice cream.

My Father, Ed Allen

Fathers’ Day is a time to remember fathers, mine especially. He was the greatest. In his 82 years of life, spanning most of the twentieth century, he worked in radio and television in Chicago, Green Bay, and Sturgeon Bay, started and succeeded with two radio stations, and did a lot more. Much of what he accomplished was in collaboration with my mother, brothers and me. We were a family enterprise.

Edward Allen, jr., was born in Chicago in 1910, the only child of his Swedish father and German mother. People who drive to Chicago on the Interstate highway can still see Brentano School, which he attended. It even has a large sign on it. Apparently their Logan Square neighborhood was somewhat unsavory, so sometime during his childhood, the little family moved to Oak Park, where he graduated from Oak Park High School in 1929. Their Lutheran faith was very important to them, and Father attended the Moody Sunday School, part of the Moody Church, as a child. Later he joined the Episcopal Church.

After graduation, he became a radio announcer, first at WAAF, then WGN, then WMAQ, the NBC station, and then the NBC television station in Chicago.  He discovered my mother and married her in 1938.

Father was proud of being on the WMAQ staff and had his own program, The Early Bird Show. This show showed off the wonderful Ed Allen creativity. When I was born, he had a contest for his listeners to name me. It was Valentine’s Day, and some proposed names were Valentine, Heart, and Love. Fortunately, my mother won the contest with the name Kathleen. Father also had listeners send quilt squares to his show, with the early bird theme. He gave them to Grandma to sew together and make into a quilt. I still have the Early Bird quilt.  If that isn’t enough, he took our St. Bernard to work on the dog’s six-month birthday, where presumably the dog spoke on cue. Father also took me to work and I sang a song, Pumpkin Pie, on the Early Bird Show. I was about five years old. I got my first fan letter as a result of that. He brought my mother, the writer, into the show, with a regular segment called The Allens at Home, complete with goofy sound effects.

While the Early Bird Show was a creative outlet, before that Father also did live commercials. He used to say that my brother David’s birth was financed by doing live commercials for “Whiz, Best Nickel Candy There Is!” Recording tape wasn’t around then, since it was the 1940s, so he went from radio station to radio station and did each spot as it happened.  Father was the radio voice of big band broadcasts in Chicago also.

Life was good then for our family. In 1951 Father started a radio station in Sturgeon Bay with backing from some local people, which is still on the air as WDOR am and fm. We were newly situated in Door County. He also did announcing on the first television station in Green Bay, WBAY-TV, for a while, and with a partner started a radio station in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, which (I think) still exists as WCUB, although the partners sold the station not long after starting it. In Sturgeon Bay, my mother, my two brothers and I all worked at WDOR. My husband Rick also worked there for two years after we got married. It was a family operation. Now my brother Eddy and his son Danny keep it going along with other staff people.

Father never slowed down. He gave Sturgeon Bay The Movie Channel by subscription before cable was there. He and another man started the Cherry Train, a tour train that still operates on Washington Island, although they sold the Cherry Train many years ago. He and my mother started the Key to the Door Peninsula tourist guidebook in the 1950s. He sold advertising for it and she put it together. Mother was the eighty percent owner of that partnership. They sold that company in their old age. Father was Republican Chairman of Door County for eight years. He promoted Door County as a tourist destination through the Door County Chamber of Commerce. He served on the board of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association and is in its Hall of Fame. He was a member of the National Association of Broadcasters and the Sturgeon Bay Rotary Club.

Finally, cancer and congestive heart failure took their toll. Somewhere along the line Father retired but went to work every day anyway while my brother Eddy took over the management. One morning while he was getting ready to go to work, he died suddenly. It was 1992. And that was the end of a life filled with activity and service.

My Mother Dolores Allen

This Mothers’ Day I think about my mother, who was different from any other mother I knew. When I was growing up, other mothers spent a lot of time at home as housewives. Not my mother. She filled her life with creativity and activity. She married the right man (my father) and the two shared creativity and innovation for many years. Mother and Father didn’t compete; they collaborated and encouraged each other and their children (us). Yes, they nurtured three children also.

 My father started two radio stations, and my mother helped him. She was a writer of fiction and radio drama, and they acted in her dramas. She created and published a long lasting guidebook for tourists visiting Door County, of which she was the principal owner and which continues today in altered form; he sold advertising for it and distributed it. She created the well-known House and Garden Walk fundraiser for the Hospital Auxiliary in Sturgeon Bay, which still exists as an annual event and for which she was given two life memberships in the auxiliary.  Mother had what was said to be the longest running recipe program in the history of Wisconsin radio, lasting from 1951 until shortly before she died in 2005.  She wrote a cookbook, Door County Recipes and a Little Local Lore, in 1989, which sold well in the Door County area. It contained many recipes that were given on her recipe show on radio. Her interest in local history was in the cookbook in the form of little vignettes about Door County places. Mother also played golf and was in a bridge club for many years. Father was president of the Door County Chamber of Commerce; that was fine with her. He was chairman of the Door County Republican Party; she supported him in that. The Governor of Wisconsin came to dinner; she was there making it happen.

One thing deserves special recognition. It is nothing much in the eyes of the world, but I see it as a sacrifice on her part. Mother had become a successful writer of short stories, and had sold some, when the plan to build a radio station in Door County solidified. She gave up fiction to give her heart and her time to getting that radio station going. She had various office duties, including scheduling and monthly billing, which involved us kids. Our job was to put those bills into envelopes and get them ready for mailing. Father was the manager and the on air person. He also did everything else that no one else there did.

That’s pretty good accomplishment for a child of a single mother who grew up in Minnesota. Mother was born in 1913 and graduated from high school in 1929 at age 16. She was chosen Miss Winona sometime after her graduation. She attended the College of St. Teresa in Winona and received a degree with a double major in English and French. I have no idea how she financed that college education. Her mother worked but never had extra money for education. Mother was a teacher in small town schools and then moved to Chicago and was a model for a while. During that time she wrote stories. She also met my father in Chicago. He was a radio announcer who worked at several stations until landing at the NBC affiliate there, WMAQ. Three children and a bunch of years later, in 1951 we all moved to Sturgeon Bay, where creativity and opportunity joined together as described above.

My brothers and I were part of their ongoing enterprises. Both brothers became radio announcers in Sturgeon Bay as teenagers and it was just something our parents expected of us. I worked in the office during several summers until I got married. I was doing radio commercials in fifth grade for Scofield’s Hardware Store. I illustrated Mother’s tourist guidebook when she wasn’t using clip art.

At home my mother, who was famous for her recipe show, had little time to cook old fashioned meals for us. I have repeatedly said she bought the first of many conveniences that are taken for granted today. She came home with the first convenience food called the TV dinner. She bought the first automatic washer and dryer. She owned a car when many women didn’t drive. She always had a cleaning lady. Father supported these decisions, and said that she was more interesting when she did the things she liked to do. She tried to instill in me an interest in wearing fashionable clothes, but I wasn’t interested, except when prom time came.

I would say that parenting was not Mother’s primary interest. She was a very modern woman and had many interests while loving us. Her attitude that we can succeed as she did was a gift she gave us. She lived ninety-two years and I think she loved most of her time on this earth. Happy Mothers’ Day to my mother, Dolores Allen.

Lefse - Making and Disputing

Everyone in our family likes lefse. We also seem to like to disagree about it. You may ask how anyone can disagree about something so good, bland and Norwegian. The disagreements have been about what to put on it.

I think every ethnic group has its breads. The Norwegian Americans have lefse. It’s a soft flat bread made from mashed potatoes and flour. In my experience, which is limited to Wisconsin, people spread butter on it, or butter and sugar, and roll it up. I have been told that people fill it with other things, especially in a legendary restaurant in Osseo, Wisconsin. I also learned that commercially produced lefse has been marketed as something to eat like a tortilla. Well, other than its shape, it’s nothing like a tortilla. I have never seen tortillas marketed as lefse.

The argument started right after our wedding. I had always eaten lefse with butter spread on it and rolled up. Rick was amazed that anyone would eat it that way. He insisted that it had to have sugar sprinkled over the butter. That’s the way his mother served it. And so the argument began and remained in the family for about half a century. As life went on, Rick was louder than I was, so the kids voted for sugar along with him.  And I continued to protest that butter without sugar was best. It remained a friendly argument.

Sometime early in the marriage, I learned to make lefse. It was one of those foods that one didn’t find in most grocery stores, so if we wanted to eat it, I had to make it. Cookbooks don’t often dwell on it, although some country church cookbooks tell how to make it. I didn’t have country cookbooks then. So I decided that lefse would be easy to make.

To begin with, I didn’t have the equipment, namely a lefse rolling pin, which is die cut and a requirement. I substituted a quart fruit jar. Big mistake. Instead of lefse, I had created crackers. As it happens, the first try at lefse making is likely to make crackers even with the correct rolling pin. Lefse is all about technique. In my favor, I had a ten-inch cast iron frying pan, and it worked. Originally, I was told, the cook needed the top of an old fashioned wood stove. My mother-in-law used her wood stove. It made big pieces of lefse that would not begin to fit into my frying pan.

I bought the first lefse rolling pin that I could find, and the rest is history. With a few modifications, including size of the pieces, I learned to make tolerable lefse. It seemed to please the family and gave us all something to argue about. Eventually two of my daughters tried to make lefse when they were teenagers, and they had the same crackers result that I had had. They hid the disaster and didn’t tell me about it until much later.  Then when Rick’s aunt died, I inherited her electric lefse griddle. I didn’t know they existed, and I still prefer the frying pan. Now my daughters help me and sometimes we make it together when they visit me.

Recipes for lefse are hard to find because the manufacture of it is hard to describe. Exact measurements don’t seem to work well. Some people, including commercial lefse makers, make it with dehydrated potatoes. I think lefse tastes much better and less like cardboard when we make it with natural unprocessed potatoes. I also think that it is easier to make a batch with about two potatoes in order to figure out the technique.

One of my recipes from a church cookbook says to begin with forty pounds of potatoes and twenty pounds of flour. That would make a lot of lefse for a smorgasbord, but would send me right out of the kitchen promising never to try to make lefse again. Another book says to use six cups of mashed potatoes and two cups of flour. The proportions of potatoes and flour seem to be the same. It’s all a question of how much of the stuff you want to make. Flexibility is needed.

Here is a general idea for how to make lefse for a few people. You will need a lefse rolling pin, a cast iron pan or griddle, and a spatula to turn the pieces.

Lefse

Cook a few potatoes and mash them as you would for dinner, with milk, butter and salt. Go easy with the butter and the shaker because lefse is not supposed to taste salty. Like much Norwegian food, it is bland. Mash them or use the electric mixer to get out the lumps.

Mix the potatoes with all-purpose flour, about half as much as potato. You will need enough to make the resulting dough not sticky, but holding together. Use as little flour as possible, and handle the dough quickly and lightly. Shape the dough into little balls, and then roll them into flat circles with a lefse rolling pin. The circles must be as thin as possible, and more flour may be needed for rolling. The size of the circles will be determined by the pan you use. My ten-inch cast iron pan holds circles of dough that are six to eight inches in diameter. My (unused) lefse griddle makes circles that are twice that size.  An old fashioned wood stove top makes even bigger ones.

Heat the pan or griddle until it is hot. The temperature should be about hot enough to cook pancakes. You may need to adjust the heat as you go along, if the pieces burn quickly or take too long to cook. This is the intuitive part. This is where you will end with lefse or crackers. Do not grease the pan; the pieces are baking, not frying. Place circles of dough on the griddle, one at a time. Turn them with your spatula when they barely begin to brown, a couple of minutes into the process, and cook on the other side a short time until the dough is cooked but not crisp. My mother-in-law used a long thin stick from a window shade as a turning spatula, as did Rick’s aunt. I use long pancake turners.

Stack the pieces on a plate to cool. Large pieces are cut into quarters. My smaller ones are eaten without being cut. When you are ready to eat, spread the pieces with butter. If you are so inclined, sprinkle them with sugar. Then roll them up. As I said above, I am in the no-sugar faction.

I have tried commercially made lefse and think it is inferior to the home made kind. One brand was critiqued by my daughter Mary several years ago, when she changed (in her mind) the brand name from Aunt Julia’s to Aunt Julio’s. It isn’t very good. I found another brand, called something like Jolly Troll that rises a little above mediocrity. It really is worth it to make lefse yourself.

Easter and Faith Stories

Once again, the season of Lent is with us. It is about to culminate in Good Friday and Easter. It’s the faith story of Jesus, the big foundational faith story for Christianity. Are we thinking about it as a people?  When many of us think about Jesus, we think about him being born, dying and rising. Some of us think about the life he lived between birth and death, as recorded in the New Testament. A lot of other people don’t think much about him at all. I suggest that his faith story might remind us of our own faith stories.

Last week at a gathering at church, I was assigned to tell my faith story. I thought about it a lot and concluded that it is easier to tell someone else’s faith story than my own. My father’s story is much more interesting than mine, as is my brother David’s. I am proud of both of them.  They both taught me that a faith story is not just that person’s story, but rather the story of their communities of faith. They both wrestled with God a bit. My father joined the Episcopal Church in suburban Chicago and then moved to Sturgeon Bay, where he found a more high church manifestation. He complained about it and took the Bishop to lunch to try to resolve the dilemma of how to make the church match his image of it. My brother left the Episcopal Church when he disagreed with it, and he became a pastor in the Assemblies of God. Both were and are faithful people of God, in death and life. Things fall apart and come together, all in the tent of God.

My story was hard to tell, partly because it involved unhappiness and partly because it was hard to tell without telling the story of us, Rick and me. My story is our story. My father’s story involved my mother, and my brother’s story involved his wife. My story was about realizing in the middle of the night that God was real, my husband and I could straighten out the mess we had created, and our stories were intertwined. We don’t live faith alone. In all three stories in my family, the church has been there to support, assist and shape us. The church has its own sinful story, but it still shows us the God who holds us in his hands.

We all live with the challenges of the world around us. We come together at Easter with many faith stories, some happy and some not so happy. Stories of lost or no faith come, too. Easter has a big umbrella. It’s an umbrella that covers us and still lets the sun shine in.

Some people prefer an Easter that is about a rabbit that gives away colored eggs. That’s a different story.

Bread Making

I raised my family on home made bread. It all started when Rick said to me shortly after our wedding, “Will you make bread like my mother’s bread?” Fortunately, I had enjoyed his mother’s bread several times on visits to the Whitt farm before she died in 1962, and it was outstanding. In a world of Wonder Bread, her bread was firm with just a bit more salt than commercial breads of the day. As the kids were growing up we referred to commercial breads as phony plastic bread.

I had never made breads other than biscuits and muffins, and those accomplishments were due to my home economics teacher when I was in junior high school. Thanks again, Mrs. Robertson. My mother wasn’t a bread maker and I don’t think my grandmothers were, either. So I did the next best thing. I opened the tried and true cookbook given to me by my mother, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, by Fannie Merritt Farmer, 8^th ed., 1948.

I had no photos like the ones in today’s cookbooks, no DVD, no internet baking experts, no real knowledge about bread making. After all, it was the 1960s. What I had were the texture and the taste in my memory as a guide. I had tried to make rye bread once before with disastrous results due to not understanding that yeast requires warmth to do its magic. So I tossed out that failure and started anew.

My bread was a success because my cookbook was a success (also, I could read). The bread chapter presented a tutorial on flours and leavening, liquids and flavors. The recipe for white bread went on for a page and a half. How could I fail? Best of all, it looked and tasted a lot like my mother-in-law’s bread.

My bread was simple, in contrast to the excellent bread that my daughter, Mary, makes and has described in her culinary blog, Mary’s Food Journal. Mary uses more ingredients including powdered buttermilk, which I think had not yet been invented when my cookbook entered the world. Mary’s rising process (the bread rising, not Mary rising) requires a lot of time. She is truly a woman for today. I noticed on her blog that the hands of the person pictured kneading that bread are those of her husband and not Mary, so it is a team effort. Our bread making experiences say a lot about the way we approach food. Our daily bread is our daily life.

Bread making is about process. People who want results without process can buy bread.  My daughter-in-law Sherry uses a bread machine, and that's okay. Results can come in various ways. I think that there is something like this in the Bible. Remember Moses? When the Hebrews were out in the wilderness on their forty year journey away from Egypt, they ate manna, a food that came to them from heaven. Was it bread? Maybe. It was about results, not the process of making the food. And did they complain about it? Did they want pizza? Moses was the complaint department, I think. It’s no wonder he retreated up onto a mountain, where he got the Ten Commandments.  So if we complain about our results-driven diet today, we can think about those Hebrews who were lost in the wilderness and benefiting from the celestial supermarket product of manna.

Here is the wonderful process-driven bread that I made for a lot of years, shortened from the aforementioned page and a half. Today I rarely eat bread, but it is part of the family story. The nutrition part of bread is not part of this essay. You can read about that somewhere else.

White Bread

1 cup scalded milk                              2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup hot water                                   1 package dry yeast

2 tablespoons butter and/or oil              ¼ cup lukewarm water

2 ½ teaspoons salt                              6 cups all purpose flour (approx.)

Mix together milk, hot water, sugar, butter and salt. Cool to lukewarm. Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water and add to liquid mixture. Stir in 3 cups flour and mix thoroughly. Add remaining flour gradually, using just enough to prevent stickiness. Knead it on a floured surface until it is smooth and elastic, about ten minutes. Put the dough into a lightly greased bowl and cover it with a dish towel or some other loose cover. Set it in a warm place to rise until it is double in bulk, about an hour. When it is doubled, punch it down, turning it over and over. Don’t skimp on this or you might cause a yeasty or sour taste.

Divide the dough into parts to equal two or more loaves, depending on desired size. For me this makes two standard size loaves. Knead the pieces and shape them into loaves. I flatten the dough a bit, roll it up and tuck the ends under so that the seams don’t show. Place them into two greased loaf pans (about 9x5 inches). If you are making round or oblong loaves, place them on a greased cookie sheet. Cover them with a dish towel and let them rise again until double in bulk, about an hour. Bake the loaves at 375 degrees 40 to 60 minutes until they are brown and make a thumping noise when you rap on them. Turn them out of the pans immediately.

That’s my bread, without the dissertation about what happens if the dough rises too long or not long enough, the rising temperature is too high or too low, or the oven is too hot. Bread making is an experiment.