On The Mark: Healthful cooking opens up a wide world

I enjoyed Holly Henry's Pine Knot News articles on Jan. 17 on healthful living. They were well-researched and had good tips for everything from what we eat to exercise. Here are some cooking tips to complement that eternal subject: we are what we eat.

Years ago, living in Berkeley, California, I learned about new, healthful initiatives at the Berkeley Co-op and Berkeley Bowl, featuring fresh fruits and vegetables. Both supermarkets offered classes on growing your own food and cooking it. A friend gave me a copy of Jane Brody's "Good Food Book," which is my constant kitchen companion to this day.

How things have changed. My grandfather's cooking bible was Fannie Merritt Farmer's "The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book," first published in 1896. His copy, dated 1924, is inscribed by Marjorie W. Lee, a great-aunt I knew and loved. The book was heavy on flour, meat, eggs, butter, milk and vegetables you grow and preserve, with many chapters devoted to sweets. I find the jelly-making chapters very helpful. My mother's go-to book, Irma Rombauer's "Joy of Cooking," first published in 1931, is oddly similar, but doesn't presume a near-to-the-farm location. I believe the Betty Crocker cookbook displaced Rombauer in Mom's kitchen in the 1950s.

Brody's 1985 book was a delightful wake-up call for me. The long-time personal health columnist for the New York Times benefitted from the newfound natural foods movement bubbling up across the country. Brody devotes the first 281 pages to nutrition, followed by almost 400 pages of "Recipes I have Known and Loved."

Following an intro chapter "Dietary Lessons from Human Evolution," she demonstrates with evidence from the youthful science of nutrition that the post-World War II American diet had too much protein, fat, sugar and salt. She goes on to explore the nutritional value of potatoes, but also their downside, especially as platforms for excessive butter or grease.

Brody's long chapter on grains is remarkably eye-opening. I'd never cooked barley or buckwheat groats. Now I do. The most dog-eared page in my book comes in her chapter, "Full o' Beans: You Bet!" In a single table, she gives us cooking times, minimum water and yields for 11 different types of beans and peas. A very frugal way to meet your protein requirements.

Of course, she has wonderful recipes to match. One of my favorites is her chili without carne, where she demonstrates that what makes chili great is not the meat but the spices: coriander, clove, allspice, oregano, cumin, chili powder and a tiny bit of brown sugar. I often make three batches and freeze two thirds of it for later.

I'm not much of a baker. I find most baked goods - however yummy - make me sluggish afterwards: too much white flour and sugar. Brody's whole wheat pancakes, however, are my Sunday morning breakfast staple, though I substitute buckwheat for whole wheat flour. Her Cranberry-Apple Crisp is my favorite "company" dessert, with just three tablespoons of butter, a half-cup of walnuts, a half-cup of sugar and two tablespoons of brown sugar. It's all about the fruit and cinnamon.

What things have I learned to avoid?

Fats, for one. Especially deep-fried foods. Brody counsels using just one tablespoon of butter or olive oil in creating a dinner for four. Instead, she lavishes, selectively, fresh or dried herbs like parsley, thyme, oregano, marjoram, savory, and rosemary for flavor. Most of these I grow and dry myself in a food dehydrator. And almost every stovetop meal I cook starts with some sautéed garlic and onion.

I do serve a lot of fruit. It's better for us than candy, bars, cakes, pies, and other sugar-laden concoctions. I love ice cream, but try to keep my purchases limited for special occasions.

You can find used copies of Jane Brody's Good Food Book on many sites like Thriftbooks, AbeBooks, Ebay for as little as $3.99. Go for the hardcover version, which replaced my very tattered paperback some years ago.

Counting calories is another way to go. I've done it when I needed to shed pounds. It works, especially if you do it with others, mainly because it teaches you just how costly, in waistline, a fat- and sugar-laden diet can be. After a couple of months, you can stop counting, because you've learned your lessons.

Ann Markusen is an economist and professor emerita at University of Minnesota. A Pine Knot board member, she lives in Red Clover Township north of Cromwell with her husband, Rod Walli.