A vegetarian since age 13, Ellen Kanner has written for Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Eating Well, Vegetarian Times and regional magazines nationwide including Pebble Beach and Palm Beach Illustrated. She shares meals in Miami with her meat-eating but otherwise adorable husband, and is at work on a book, Love in the Time of Broccoli: A Joyful Vegetarian's Path to a Beautiful Life.
Her website is www.ellen-ink.com.
Write to her at ekanner@miamiherald.com.
Thanksgiving, as any vegetarian can tell you, is not about turkey. It began in 1621 as a feast of thanks for an abundant harvest. Almost 400 years later, we're still grateful.
We're at that slack time in the growing season. Sweet summer tomatoes are history. Most supermarket tomatoes are flown in from afar and could double as baseballs. And South Florida's luscious winter crop is barely in the ground.
Halloween is Friday, and rice is ready. This ho-hum staple can masquerade as pasta, cheese, syrup, ice cream or milk. It easily slips into its noodle costume, but beware -- not all brands are treats like Tinkyada brown rice pasta ($2.99, 16 ounces). Mild-tasting, light-bodied and sturdy, not mushy, it's made with stone-ground brown rice and rice bran in a dedicated facility, so there's no cross-grain contamination -- a concern for Celiac sufferers. A 2-ounce serving (it comes in numerous shapes...
Back in first-century Rome, Juvenal lamented how easily people succumbed to panem et circenses -- bread and circuses. They'd rather be entertained than informed.
October is Vegetarian Awareness Month, a fact that might have escaped you here in South Florida, where the score is steakhouses, 66, vegetarian eateries, 17.
Miami police Lt. Lillie Harris has had a ringside seat on the evolution of the vegetarian dining scene in South Florida. Harris, 40, gave up meat for health reasons at 15 after watching her mother suffer with diabetes. It wasn't the most popular choice a Liberty City teen could make.
At last, encouraging financial news: Getting those FDA-recommended 48 grams of healthful whole grains daily can be cheap. Supermarket brands Barilla, Ronzoni and Mueuller's make whole-grain rotini that passes the test for taste, texture and nutrition, and they're well-priced, too.
Starting the day with a healthful bowl of fresh fruit and whole grain cereal isn't always an option during hurricane season. What you want are shelf-stable, storm-proof products that offer nutrition even when the power goes out.
What do we want? Whole grains. When do we want 'em? Now. It's Whole Grains Month, after all. But how are we supposed to eat the 48 grams per day recommended by the Whole Grains Council when these grainy goodies can take up to an hour to cook?
Granola has gone big-time. A dozen brands crowd the cereal shelf, each endeavoring to out-glam the others -- often, alas, by tarting themselves up with fat and sugar. This is health food?
Congratulations -- as a vegetarian, you automatically spend less on food than your carnivorous cohorts. Even so, there's sticker shock at the grocery store these days. Food costs have jumped higher this year than at any time in the past two decades.
Nothing says summer like sweet, succulent, sun-bright mangoes. But summer doesn't last forever, not even in South Florida. Chill, baby. You can keep the mango kicks coming all year with heat-beating mango sorbet.
Once upon a time, there were three tofu dogs -- The Good Dog ($3.99 per 12-ounce package), the Smart Dog ($4.29) and the Tofu Pup ($3.49).
Your gut is home to millions of microbes -- good bacteria that usually keep the bad guys at bay. Sometimes, though, they need reinforcements.
As we ap-proach the traditional meat-and-fire fest that is Father's Day, here's food for thought: The National Cancer Institute has linked red meat consumption to greater cancer risk. The United Nations says industrial animal production is among our biggest environmental threats. And Americans eat more meat per capita than citizens of any other country.
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