I’ve been talking a lot about Mindful Eating lately. It’s a term that came to me out of the blue, and only weeks later did I realize that I picked up the word “mindful” in my many years of studying Buddhism and Hinduism. I studied these for so long that the vocabulary has become somewhat incorporated into my way of expressing myself and my subconscious. I am mindful; I live mindfully.

As a result, before publishing my own Mindful Eating Manifesto–a practical approach to my favorite subject of food–I only thought it fair to publish the somewhat more philosophical article by Buddhist thinker and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh.

Traditional Buddhist and Hindu teachings urge us to be mindful about every act, at every moment, every day of our lives. The word “mindful” is not a trademark. It is a way of being. Mindfulness gives meaning to every action, and creates a sharper awareness and a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of all living things.

What does mindfulness have to do with the way I eat?

This may not seem to have anything to do with how you eat, but indeed it does. It’s the current food trend in the developed world, and I feel confident that it will spread at a rapid pace. Eating is not just about filling your belly.

Mindful Eating is about love and care from A to Z in the eating process, from the ingredients you buy, and how they were grown and processed, and whether you prepare them with TLC, to filling your belly and providing your body with the nutrients they need. To eat mindfully, you have to be aware of every step in the process, which by definition connects you, either directly or indirectly, with everyone involved: the butcher, the baker, the farmer, the fertilizer manufacturer, the seed seller, the cook, the chocolate maker (I do live in Switzerland, after all), etc.

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This week’s foodie overview

I spend a lot of time reading, researching and tweeting about food and restaurants these days, so I thought I’d jot down my tweets from the last few days. These are from both The Rambling Epicure and Swiss Foodies and should give you an overview of what’s going on in the foodie world this week, in Switzerland and around the world.

These tweets are often focused on Switzerland, but also include a lot of links to Swiss, French, German, British, American, Canadian and other research on food.

Sometimes I couldn’t resist writing about the snow and skiing conditions, because that determines how a lot of us in Switzerland plan our weekends, and therefore what restaurants we go to or what recipes we cook up. And of course occasionally, watches and wine . . . and this week, the Vancouver Winter Olympics and those cute wooly pigs you see in the photo.

Remember, these are just tweets

Remember these are just tweets, so they are short and sweet. They are not particularly orderly; I just tweeted the information as I found it.

I suggest you skim over the headings, and if you’re interested, just click on any of the links that interest you in order to read the detailed article.

Who knows, this might even tempt you to start tweeting yourself!

The list is long, so I’ll list the main topics, which are marked by headings in bold: Restaurants, Recipes, Swiss news, International news, Food trends, Nutrition, health, healthy lifestyle, Chocolate, Wine, Miscellaneous food and related info, Skiing, snow, lifestyle, and Nice quotes.

This week’s tweet list

Restaurants

Taste the latest in the food world, the wooly pig, 23 & 24 Feb. at du Chalet-des-Enfants in Le Mont-sur-Lausanne.

Tired of roestis and pasta in Verbier? Good classic French at La Grange, no surprises.

The Rambling Epicure: check out our restaurant listings.

The Bernerhof hotel in Gstaad has a restaurant for everyone’s taste: pasta, Chinese, traditional.

Tired of roestis in Zermatt? Check out authentic Japanese cuisine and sushi at Myoko, Seiler Hotel.

The food at King’s restaurant Verbier is a delightful mix of English, French, and world influences.

The Walserhof in Klosters is a perfect place to celebrate special occasions, and the food is top notch.

Everything you need to know about eating in Zermatt.

Check out the divine rolled truffle pizza at Quirinale in Geneva.

The Cottage Café in Jardins de Brunswick in Geneva is a great place to meet for afternoon meeting.

Site that lists restaurants in Switzerland that do home delivery.

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Creative ways to use vinegar in cooking, in place of fats

I’m a vinegar collector. I have orange vinegar, walnut vinegar, grapefruit vinegar, a long list of Balsamic vinegars of various origins and ages, and lots of other more common ones.

In Switzerland and France, there is such an impressive variety of artisanal vinegars (a well as oils) that it is easy to build up quite a collection and use it in creative ways to liven up winter vegetables, bland grilled meats, or salads. The beauty of it is that you can often use vinegar to add flavor, and thereby avoid the more traditional use of butter or meat bases, which contain fat. It is a good way to reduce fat in your general cooking habits.

Photo courtesy of FivePrime.

A tasty, good quality vinegar is an easy way to add flavor to an otherwise unappetizing vegetable or meat. After cooking meat or fish, I often deglaze the frying pan  with a nice vinegar, then pour the glaze over the beast in question, along with a drizzle of good quality olive oil. It makes for a much healthier sauce than cream or butter and adds flare to the dish.

With magret de canard, or duck breast, which can have quite a fatty taste, I pour off most of the fat, and then deglaze the drippings with Balsamic or sherry vinegar. Raspberry also works well with duck, and you can add a few crushed raspberries to the sauce as well. The vinegar helps cut the fatty film you often feel in your mouth after eating. Raspberry vinegar is also a perfect compliment to calves’ liver.

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The 7 foods experts won’t eat is an enlightening article by Liz Vaccariello, Editor-in-Chief of Prevention magazine in the U.S.

It’s an article that will educate even those of us who consider they are in the know about what’s good to eat and what’s bad (for instance, me!). The opinions are from scientists and doctors in the field, so we have to take them seriously.

For example: “The resin linings of tin cans contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity.” We’ve somehow left behind what our mothers taught us. I remember my mother always saying you should never store acidic foods in metal. How did we manage to forget that in less than a generation?

Or that cattle are genetically wired to eat grass, not grains, so corn-fed beef has fewer nutrients. Common sense really. If we keep in in line with nature, there’s less likelihood that we’ll harm our health, and more likelihood that we’ll be eating in a healthy manner.

A good read, and an important one.

Invention through sloth: a recipe for lazy people who really would like to eat a healthy breakfast but can’t manage it

Cappuccino oats.

We don’t stop hearing about oats — they’re full of fiber so they’re good for your digestion and your bowels, they contain beta-glucans that help cut cholesterol and spread the rise in blood sugar over a long period of time, they make you feel full for longer so they encourage weight loss, they are anticarcinogenic thanks to their phytochemicals — and the list goes on.

Confession to my mother and request for forgiveness

I try and eat my oats every day, really I do. It has always been one of my mother’s Golden Rules of Healthy Eating. But Mom, I have to tell you: sometimes I just don’t, because I’m absolutely, unequivocally not a morning person and I just can’t get it together to cook the oats the good old-fashioned Scottish way we might all prefer.

So Mom, to relieve this deep guilt I have lived with my entire adult life, I found the solution, though I admit more by sloth than by wit. It was one of those days when no one was to speak to me before noon. I decided to pour some dry steel-cut oats into a bowl and eat them dry, in order to avoid the risk of pouring milk all over the stovetop instead of into the pan it was meant for, and then adding oats and other necessary ingredients into the milk that was already running down the front of the kitchen cabinets (I have already experienced this and it is not a good way to start the day). I was absolutely incapable of giving them the loving care they so deserve.

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Great info on everything to do with cooking: Cooking Up A Story

Tips on cooking up fresh pumpkin and how to choose just the right pumpkin. As Americans and Canadians probably already know from experience, the water content of European pumpkins is often quite different from that of the North American varieties, which becomes a real problem when you’re using North American recipes for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Photo courtesy of Michael Elliot.

Fortunately, farmers markets in the Lake Geneva region offer a wide variety of pumpkins, so you should be able to find the right variety so you can still make your family recipes. But I do forewarn you: pumpkin pie can be tricky, so it’s best to do a trial run before the Big Day.

And don’t forget to save the seeds. Larita’s pumpkin seed recipe is a bit too American, in that we tend to use more natural ingredients in Switzerland, but one could perhaps use Migros or Coop “Country Potatoes” seasoning and simply skip her American smoke flavouring. In this case, it would be best to leave out the other spices, since this seasoning is in fact a mixture of some of the same spices.

To launch the chasse or hunting season: Wild River Review – Wild Table

Warren Bobrow’s new blog is full of old-fashioned and traditional recipes with a modern edge, as well as tips on how to live the gentleman’s life in general. Try his pumpkin-filled pasta recipe.

For manifestos on the importance of buying local food, as well as traditional recipes and food ideas: The Slow Cook

Ed Bruske is really just a foodie who engages in the concerns of a hungry planet, so you will find a variety of food-related topics, as well as recipes. I particularly like his “I’m an Elitest” post, in which he addresses the “ravings of James McWilliams, the writer who argues that there’s something sinister about the local food movement,” because it gives you both sides of the story: Michael Pollan and Wendell Berry vs. James McWilliams.

For a homely English slant: Yummy Homely Food

Laure Moyle took a 3-month holiday, but has finally returned just in time for chocolate week. She creates original, yet somewhat traditional recipes, using traditional British ingredients. Since she grew up in France, they often have a touch of the French, and use the local ingredients she finds near her home in Sussex. Sometimes it’s nice to have simple, unpretentious, yet good quality, comfort food.

She puts a particular emphasis on getting Kids in the Kitchen.

MarketView is published every week or so so you can take a look at our list before you go to the market.  It should serve as a tool to help you make your grocery list and menus for the week before you go off to the market.

Amazingly, summer just left us a couple of days ago in the Lake Geneva region, so we still have an interesting mix of spring, summer, and fall fruit and vegetables. It is surprising what a variety of local fruit and vegetables are still available this late in the growing season.

Runner beans, squash, pumpkin, raspberries, mint, radishes and assorted herbs in mid-October!

Since we just skipped straight from summer to winter, we are still seeing a large variety of summer vegetables, so I’ve separated the list into categories.

Spring and summer fruit and vegetables

Aubergine/eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgette/zucchini, green beans, radishes, bell peppers of all colors.

Extra-sweet strawberries thanks to the long, hot summer.

Extra-sweet strawberries, corn, raspberries, blackberries (rarer than the other berries).

Rosemary, many varieties of basil, mint, dill, coriander, parsley, laurel, scallions.

Fall fruit and vegetables

Baby carrots, baby turnips, radishes of all types, new potatoes of all varieties, Swiss chard (blettes), Jerusalem artichokes (topinambur), parsnips (panais).

Jerusalem artichokes.

Rhubarb, grapes, apples, pears, plums, red peaches (pêches de vigne).

Wild greens of all types, mesclun (mixed wild salad greens), cabbage, beets, wild arugula rocket salad. Herbs of all types, but seeing the last of the mint.

Cepe mushrooms (bolets), truffles, and a wide variety of other wild mushrooms.

Leeks, pumpkin, squash of all types, cauliflower, broccoli.

Black truffles, or should I say "black gold"?

Flowers

Sunflowers in October in the Lake Geneva region!

October flowers in Lake Geneva region.

The award-winning Cobb Grill is on sale online at Eboutic until 18  October.

Photo courtesy of Eboutic.

These grills are unique in that they are compact, lightweight, come with their own tote bag, and emit practically no smoke. They are only 12in/30cm high, 12in/30cm wide, weigh 8.5lbs/4kg, and are tabletop.

Although they should not be used indoors, they can be used on the balcony.

Cobb Grills are multipurpose. It would be more appropriate to refer to them as a cooking system than a grill, because they can be used to grill meat, fish and vegetables, as well as to smoke, steam, stew, bake, roast, and stir-fry. It is possible to cook an entire meal for 4 or 5 people all in one grill. Various attachments are available, such as a cast-iron grill for better searing, a wok and a steamer. There is a special system, referred to as the “flavor well” or “moat”, for catching the natural juices that are drained off.

Unique charcoal briquettes, made of recycled, crushed, compressed coconut shells, are used for heating up to a temperature of nearly 600F/300C. Since they are recycled, they are ecological.

The cooking system comes with non-stick surface components and can be put in the dishwasher.

Photo courtesy of Cobb Grill America.

The Cobb Grill is a good and environmentally-friendly investment for any household, thanks to its versatility for cooking food in healthy, fat-free ways. It is specially designed to drain off as much fat and grease as possible, and is endorsed by the South African Heart Association.

Barbie’s secret to weight loss was “don’t eat”: Is that your teen’s philosophy?

The 1965 Slumber Party Barbie came with her very own “How to Lose Weight” book. The main message was “don’t eat.” Along with this book came a bathroom scale always set at 110 pounds/49.9 kilograms, says Teen Beauty Tips. According to Malisa Morsman, “Barbie is the plastic equivalent of a 5-foot, 9-inch (1.75 m) woman with a 36-inch (91.5 cm) bust, 33-inch (83.8 cm) hips, and an impossibly small 18-inch waist (45.7 cm).”

Photo courtesy of Mental Floss.

Ken, on the other hand, came with his own milk and cookies, and no scales.

Unhealthy message to teenage girls that has persisted

Unfortunately, women of all ages gradually started to perceive Barbie’s body as ideal, and teenagers often follow, even now, Barbie’s 1965 instructions on how to lose weight. Some purport that Barbie is even responsible for the increase in eating disorders.

In Europe, a correlation has also been made between women of all ages who smoke and have eating disorders. Smoking cuts the appetite, and is used as a way to keep from eating.

Ironically, the problem often becomes not only of a problem of getting your teenage girl to eat properly, but also a problem of eating at all.

As for the boys, is the message still that he can eat milk and cookies to his heart’s delight?

Now that Barbie is 50

Barbie's scales always set at 110 lbs, diet book.

Now that Barbie is 50, shouldn’t she be over her anorexia? In their article of 06 March 2009, France 24 says “Barbie has had more than 100 different careers, 50 nationalities, 300 Facebook pages, 1,000 YouTube clips and close to a billion different pieces of clothing. With all that, she still doesn’t appear to have changed her habit of not eating. So the message on how to diet lingers on.

Coping with eating disorders or weight problems

If your daughter (or child) basically refuses to eat, cognitive-behavior therapy is strongly advisable. Get informed by looking at sites like National Eating Disorders. Contact your doctor for that.

If your child or young adult is overweight, there are several options, depending on just how serious it is.

The first comprehensive, scientifically-based weight loss camp for teens and young adults opened recently in the UK, after the success of the Wellspring Camps in the US. These are run by Aspen Education Group, which operates “a range of therapeutic interventions, including boarding schools, residential treatment and wilderness therapy.” All these are based on lifestyle change, and include a low-fat, low-calorie-density diet combined with intensive sports and outdoor activities. Wellspring emphasizes behavioral changes, and therefore incorporates cognitive therapy as well as behavioral coaches, teaching participants to adopt “new, healthy coping skills, increase frustration tolerance, and work through underlying issues that might be contributing to weight gain.”

The aim is to get the message across that teenagers can eat healthy food that tastes good and still have plenty of energy to have fun, in hope that they will continue these good habits when they leave the program. Parents of course have to educate themselves about these methods so as to provide proper support after leaving camp.

Teaching your daughter (and the whole family) how to have a healthy approach to eating

Our articles A fun, interactive guide for teaching your children good eating habits of 9 May 2009 and Getting your kids into the kitchen: fresh fruit smoothies of 25 May 2009 are a good way of getting into the spirit.

Bircher Müesli, a Swiss favorite for breakfast. Photo courtesy of Kochtopf on Flickr.

Make sure everyone eats a healthy breakfast. Dieticians say it is the most important meal of the day, not only because we haven’t eaten since dinner, but also because it gets our metabolism up and going. Always keep plenty of healthy breakfast food that your child will actually eat in the house.

Do not buy snack food. You can be sure they’ll buy it when they’re out with their friends, so they won’t be deprived. Buy nice fruit bowls and always have fresh fruit on hand, carefully placing the bowls in strategic, high-traffic places in the house.

Do not buy soda. Encourage them to drink water with their meal, or failing this, fruit juices. Buy a juicer and make fresh fruit juices or use the blender to make fresh fruit smoothies. Make sure to always have the necessary ingredients on hand.

Paste a food pyramid on the front of the refrigerator. Use it to gradually educate them about how they should be eating. The Swiss food pyramid can be found online in pdf format, which you can print out. Talk about it from time to time, when the moment seems appropriate.

Dinner conversation can sometimes be focused on how tasty yet low-fat the meal is, or how on much fiber it contains, so that your teen gets in the habit of thinking about these aspects of eating.

If you can manage, try to get them to help do the food shopping or cooking. This also makes for an occasion to talk about how you have planned the meal so that it is well balanced, and that it is not just thrown together. Once again, you might make reference to the food pyramid.

Numerous sites offer excellent teen-friendly advice, ideas and approaches, such as Parenting Teens, the UK  Food Standards Agency, Keep Kids Healthy, and the International Food Information Council. And if you want the full scoop on Barbie’s 50 years of unending skinniness, you can get a full, chronological rundown on MentalFloss or YouBentMyWookie.

In a 6 October 2009 article, the Huffington Post says Americans have reason for their eternal, but ever-changing, plate fright. In the US, E. Coli, Salmonella, Norovirus and numerous other bacteria and viruses are found in food more often that we might think.

Peppery pourpier from the Lake Geneva region.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a non-profit, consumer advocacy group, often referred to as the “American food police”, says the leafy greens we are encouraged to eat every day can in fact be the most dangerous of all vegetables. Over the last 20 years, there has been some 363 outbreaks and 13,568 illnesses due to green leafy foods alone.

According to Dr. Steve Swanson of the US Centers for Disease Control, lettuce is only second to ground or minced beef in cases of E. Coli. Snopes gives a good explanation of how all this happens, and many suggest that we lay off pre-washed, bagged salads until more is know about exactly how greens are contaminated.

One thing is almost sure: one of the reasons salad is particularly more high risk than other vegetables is that we most often eat it raw. So wash your salad, and then wash it again. Don’t just spray it. Wash it in a basin or sink, and change the water several times.

The other high risk food is eggs, numbering 352 outbreaks in the US in the last 20 years, with 11,163 cases of illness reported.

If we want to make a “top ten” list, the other culprits, in order, are tuna, oysters, potatoes, cheese, ice cream, tomatoes, sprouts and berries.

The problem with leafy greens in particular is that they can be contaminated in the fields, before they ever hit the supermarket, so until there is an outbreak, it is not known that the food is contaminated. The origin of the vegetables is then traced, and the products are recalled, but this can take time, and until the epidemic becomes public, people continue eating what they’ve already bought.

Eggs are more likely to contain salmonella.

In Switzerland, the Federal Department of the Home Affairs, reports an average 50 to 70 cases of E. Coli infection per year, and in 2007, 1,800 cases of salmonella and 6,000 cases of campylobacter, another foodborne disease. There are regular outbreaks of Norovirus every winter, but statistics are not available. These outbreaks generally occur in institutions like resthomes and clinics.

They recommend taking preventive measures, especially with regard to meat. Always wash your hands after touching meat, and if you have touched meat, before touching salad in particular, since it is eaten raw. Salmonella is often found in raw eggs, so make sure to use only fresh eggs, keep your eggs as cold as possible, or else make sure and buy pasteurized eggs.

When traveling, follow the golden rule of “Cook it, peel it, or forget it” (sorry, no salad when traveling in exotic or underdeveloped countries) and above all, maintain personal hygiene. Wash your hands regularly: after going to the toilet, before meals, before you start cooking, after touching raw meat, and after contact with animals.

Norovirus is a bit apart in that it is difficult to eliminate with ordinary cleaning products. Stronger products such as bleach are required.

And always wash and rewash green leafy foods, even if they have been pre-washed. Bon appétit?