Research Blog : food

Local Farmers Markets

SuDocQueen@evpl — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:39:00 GMT

Most of us know our local commercial farmers markets, the type that have an established retail location, the ones you can find in the yellow pages, but what about the ones that are gatherings of smaller sellers? The ones that bring their produce to town for sale one day a week? Those don't normally show up in the local yellow pages, so how do you find them?

The USDA has created a database to help people with that. http://apps.ams.usda.gov/FarmersMarkets/ First enter the zip code you want to search in and choose the radius you want to search, anywhere from 5 to 200 miles. You'll get a list that includes the name of the market, its city and state, and a link to its website if it has one. After the list comes up, you can narrow the results by the type of produce (click the file tab that says "Products Available") and/or the type of payment accepted. If you're interested in seeing more details on a particular market on the list, click on the little blue box to the left of the market's name. You will get a pop-up window with the location of the market, times of operation, products for sale, directions, and additional miscellaneous information. This is, of course, assuming that the market has supplied that information to the database.

All in all, I found this a very fun and easy database to use. I do wish it included the markets that have established retail centers, but maybe those aren't strictly farmers markets...?

World Vegetarian Day & Vegetarian Awareness Month

Shh_ImReading@evpl — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:06:00 GMT

A friend just let me know that TODAY is World Vegetarian Day! It turns out the whole month of October is Vegetarian Awareness Month! Have you ever considered going vegetarian or vegan? Maybe you could try it out this month. Why not try something new? Look for vegetarian options at the Fall Festival next week, for example. Yes, there really are vegetarian options at the Fall Festival! EVPL has lots of books on making the change to vegetarianism and many, many vegetarian cookbooks. There is a whole world of meat-free options out there; it's not all tofu! Then again, don't be scared of tofu. Remember, you have to try it to know you don't like it.

Ready, set, GO VEGETARIAN!

Are you a vegetarian or vegan? Tell us in the comments what resource(s) helped you make the transition, even it's just the title of your favorite cookbook!

Central's anniversary celebration SUNDAY features mini-golf, Book Cart Drill Team, & more!

professor.knowsitall@evpl — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:59:00 GMT

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Starting with a press conference on Thursday, September 17, we've been honoring Central Library's 5th anniversary with some special events. Our Film Festival wraps up this afternoon with a showing of Citizen Kane. On Saturday, we'll be hosting a Poetry Festival.

On Sunday, party with us at Central Library's Anniversary Celebration! There will be activities & entertainment for all ages to enjoy.

How many times have you had the urge to play mini-golf in the library? Satisfy that urge on Sunday, when we'll have 18 holes of mini-golf set up in Central's stacks (on the 1st & 2nd floors)! And don't worry...there won't be any water hazards. Get your golf game on from 1-5pm.

Enjoy some food & music in the café garden from 1-4:30pm. We'll be grilling hot dogs & hamburgers!

Over 20 cakes will be on display in the lobby from 1-3:30pm as part of our Cake Decorating Contest. Vote for your favorite! Winners will be announced shortly before 4pm, and the cakes (& punch) will be served from 4-5pm.

Nothing will prepare you for our Book Cart Drill Team's first public performance at 2:30pm in the lobby! With epic choreography & drama, the team will recreate a famous battle from literature (& a recent movie trilogy). With book carts.

We'll also have a scavenger hunt & appearances by literary actors (can you guess who they are?) throughout the celebration.

There will be something for everyone at Sunday's Anniversary Celebration. Hope to see you then!

Do you stand in front of your closet every morning wondering what will fit, not what do I want to wear?

SuDocQueen@evpl — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:55:00 GMT

Here's my dirty little secret; I've been doing that all summer. To look at me no one would say I have a weight problem, but thanks to sports injuries and other medical issues this summer, I've been sidelined from my normal active lifestyle. Sprawling on the chaise lounge and reading instead of chasing a fuzzy green ball across the tennis court and doing yard work has been a surprisingly enjoyable change. Unfortunately, I didn't change my eating habits along with my reduction in activity and the inches have been creeping on. Every morning when I reach for the elastic waist pants I tell myself 'this is it, gotta cut back', but each night I eat my healthy, delicious, home-grown cherry tomatoes, and still reach for the French Fried Onion rings (ever get one of those big bags from one of the warehouse stores?). Since even my "fat cloths" are getting tight, it's time to get serious.

Counting calories and making a point of skipping the junk food is the best way to do that, but that can be boring (yeah, like that's an excuse -- but what can I say). Doing the right thing can be easier when it's also fun, and I know just the place to go www.mypyramid.gov. Be prepared for a near information overload. Designed and run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the site's main page has so many links to useful information that you hardly know where to start. There are waaay too many of them for me to go through here, but I do want to tell you about my favorite, www.mypyramidtracker.gov.

You start out by telling the Tracker your age, weight, and height (why fudge? No one but the computer will know and if you don't tell the truth, later you won't get an accurate breakdown of what nutrition you need). Next you're asked to list all the foods you ate for the day, then the number of servings. After that the Tracker will analyze your intake for the day and shoot you to a page where you can choice to see if you met the 2005 Dietary Guidelines -- they use cute little emoticons as well as showing you the amount you actually ate and the amount that is recommended; you can see your nutrient breakdown for the day -- you get your total calories consumed along with a breakdown of your fats, proteins, and vitamins; you get "Pyramid stats" which show you graphically whether you got your recommended daily amount of milk, meat, veggies, grains, etc; and lastly you can view your "healthy eating history by day, month, up to a year -- this is assuming you've registered and have faithfully input your eating habits for a while.

Registration is free or you can use "check it out" daily without registering. I think the benefit of registering is that you can save your information for at least a year in order to track how well you're doing. Plus, you won't be able to access your "check it out" information from the whole day if you don't use the same computer all day -- no adding breakfast and lunch at your work computer then going home and adding dinner. You'd have to start from scratch adding your entire food intake for the whole day. Frankly, I think the benefits of seeing how your eating habits change over time is well worth the registration.

Plusses and minuses of the Tracker...well, today I couldn't find Velveeta sliced cheese, so I had to compensate with the next best thing (American/cheddar cheese, processed), but I could choose one slice as my serving size. Plus, I could add plain M&M's and select as few as 10 pieces as my serving size! The Tracker strives to offer a huge range of foods to choose from, from simple foods like bananas to restaurant food like McD's Big Mac. And they have very flexible serving sizes, from a whole apple (and you can even choose large or medium) to a slice as a serving size. My only real quibble is that they don't show you the calories for your individual foods. I like to know how many calories those 10 M&Ms are verses one (or two) Hershey's Kisses so I know which food choice will be cheaper calorie-wise when I'm limiting my sweets intake.

I won't bore you with the anal way I figure that out on my own, but I will tell you about a book that I absolutely love "The Calorie King Calorie Fat and Carbohydrate Counter" (613.23 CALOR 2009). I looked up M&Ms in the book, and it actually told me how many calories there were in one M&M! Okay, okay it only told me the calories for the plain M&M. It didn't go on and do the same for the peanut, almond, or peanut butter, but I was still impressed. Plus, it not only tells you the calories, it also gives the fat and carbohydrate counts. The book covers the normal basic foods -- like meat, breads, fruits veggies, etc -- and an amazing array of sweets (like M&Ms) as well as a huge section on restaurant foods. I found the Outback, O-Charley's, Sizzler, Red Lobster along with the usual suspects like McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell. Starbucks was even in there. Do you really want to know how many calories your favorite frappuccino are costing you?

If all our copies of Calorie King are checked out, there's always the Reference copy you can use here, or you can try any of these other calorie counting books.

I'd like to talk more about www.mypyramid.gov but if I do that, this'll become a novel rather than a blog -- it's already leaning in that direction -- so just check it out on your own. If you have any questions on using it, pipe up here or give us a call at Reference!

National Ice Cream Day or "Sundae Sunday" -- July 19th

Shh_ImReading@evpl — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:50:00 GMT

I have a lot of fond memories when it comes to ice cream. My brother and I used to help my grandpa make homemade vanilla ice cream every 4th of July. As a teenager, I worked in an ice cream shop, which never made me tired of ice cream, in fact it made me love it even more. So learning of a holiday for this delicious cold treat made me smile.

National Ice Cream Day is the the 3rd Sunday in July each year. Think of all the ways you could celebrate! You can keep it simple and enjoy a scoop or two of your favorite flavor. If you're going out for ice cream, get creative and order a milkshake with a flavor combination you haven't tried before. Have you ever had one made with chocolate ice cream and caramel syrup? How about coffee ice cream and chocolate syrup? Those are two of my personal favorites! You might gather your family, friends and some tasty toppings and have a sundae party! You can even make your own ice cream! There's a simple way to make ice cream at home with two coffee cans.

You can tell everyone about your favorite ice cream treat or your favorite ice cream memories in the comments below!

Ice Cream: 52 Recipes for Year-Round Frozen Treats by Sally Sampson; pictures by Alexandra Grablewski

Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts by Peggy Fallon

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Homemade Ice Cream by Dick Warren with Bobbi Dempsey

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book by Ben Cohen and Jerry with Nancy J. Stevens; design & illustration by Lyn Severance

Finding Recipes Fast

Shh_ImReading@evpl — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:41:00 GMT

Recently I was looking for a lemon recipe and nothing in my cookbooks seemed right. When I turned to a friend for advice, she recommended two easy-to-search websites, All Recipes and Recipe Zaar. My friend and I looked together and ended up choosing a lemon cream cupcake recipe with a 4.4 (out of 5) star rating from All Recipes a few minutes later.

Have you ever come to the library looking for a recipe for something in particular; maybe a good vegetable soup or simple chocolate cake? EVPL owns thousands of cookbooks but sometimes it can take a long time to browse them and find what you want. Next time you need a recipe fast, try one of these websites!

Greening your life

googler@evpl — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:20:00 GMT

You can tell I'm behind again in reading my RSS feeds -- I've caught up to Earth Day. But these are such interesting sites I have to share them.

Free Green offers free energy-efficient house plans, with full construction documentation and other related material. You can also join the community and ask questions about specific designs or green building in general.

Sierra Club Green Home is dedicated to helping you create a more sustainable home environment. The site is full of information about reducing emissions, saving on energy, recycling, and more. They have a discussion board for members, too.

Sustainable Table celebrates local sustainable food, educates consumers on food-related issues, and works to build community through food. They encourage the purchase of organic and local food, and their locator will show you markets, coops, and even restaurants within 20 miles your zip code that meet their criteria. They also have a section called "The Issues," which gives a huge amount of information about what they see as the problems with our food choices, from factory farms to additives to pollution caused by the agriculture industry.

The US Department of Energy has a website devoted to energy efficiency and renewable energy. There's information about designing and remodeling, appliances, landscaping, lighting, alternative energy sources like wind and solar, and much more.

Homepower magazine is a good source of information and inspiration about solar, wind, and other alternative energy systems.

The web makes it pretty easy to make every day Earth Day!