Meet Zak and Little Duck Organics

From time to time I post about entrepreneurs I met while researching Julia's Child. Meet Zak Normandin, "dadpreneur" of Little Duck Organics.

Normandin started his company, as many do, because in the baby and toddler aisle of the grocery store “there wasn’t anything appealing to me.” His premier product, Tiny Fruits, are just what the name describes: dehydrated fruit, with nothing added, cut small enough for babies and toddlers. 

He didn’t like the ingredient lists he saw on a lot of products. “I saw added cane sugar as the second ingredient on a lot of these products. Why does a six to eight month old need sweeteners?” Tiny fruits are verified to be non-GMO, and they’re completely organic, and gluten free. The package says “100% Fruit” because that’s all that’s in there.

“I started everything in my basement,” Normandin recalls. Like many other entrepreneurs, his funding was bootstrapped, too. “I leveraged every credit card that I had.”

The gamble paid off, and now Little Duck has gone national at Whole Foods stores. It is also available at Market Basket and Big Y.

Normandin makes starting a company look fun. He had never run a food company before, but had always been interested in branding, and it shows. This is my favorite tagline:

 

“I’ve always liked products with a story, something to root for,” he says. Well, Zak, I’m rooting for yours!

Children's Menu from Hell

I write about food, and children, and food for children all the time. Whenever I have a slack moment, perhaps questioning what more there might be to say on the topic, some horrible gem usually announces itself to remind me why there is still more to do.

My friend Jackie received this children's menu when she stopped mid car trip with her young toddler at a roadside Perkins Restaurant. This image has the same effect on me as one of those Highlights Magazine puzzles has on my children. Can you spot at least ten things wrong with this picture?

When Jackie posted it on her facebook page, someone immediately picked up on the menu's tagline: Breakfast is Just the Beginning... "of a lifetime fighting obesity & diabetes," a friend quipped. They're not even pretending (a la McDonalds oatmeal) to address the health needs of their most vulnerable guests.

File this under: laugh and cry. 

Dear Dentist: What's in those Sealants?

My children were handed this pamphlet at the dentist last week. It's a basic tri-fold number discussing the merits of dental sealants. It attempts to cover the basics: What are sealants? When should children get sealants? How are sealants applied?

Although this might have passed muster ten years ago, doc, you've omitted a critical piece of information. Nowhere in this pamphlet is the question addressed: of what are the sealants made?

From the post-WWII period up through the blythe '90s, we were a society that felt pretty good trusting science, technology and innovation. But poor regulation of big chemical companies and a toothless* FDA has me feeling like a paranoid crank. 

In Julia's Child I make the joke that the days of secret ingredients are over.

"But remember when it was perfectly acceptable to advertise a secret sauce? Remember that?"

"That was before the finger-in-the-chili days, wasn't it?"

Secret sauces and mysterious dental fixitives are over for me. Many dental sealants are made with BPA. I know more than one parent who has rearranged the kitchen to eliminate BPA lined cans and water bottles only to find the same ingredient in the dentist's office. How long will it take before the publishers of chipper dental pamphlets understand that things have changed? A page has been turned. If you want my interest in your product, it's no longer sufficient to show me smiling children with healthy teeth. I'm going to need a little more information.

*I crack myself up.

Veal as a "Conscious" Food

I did not eat veal for the first 37 years of my life. I've always eaten meat, but since childhood I've avoided what I'll call the "Disney Platter." In other words, I didn't eat foods that used to be really cute. Venison, lamb, rabbit or veal were just off the menu.

I'm not saying these choices stand up to logic. They're just the way I looked at life, especially prior to learning a lot about where food comes from.

In the last five years I've gone from knowing almost nothing about my food's origins to knowing an exquisite amount about it. (Note: moving to rural VT/NH makes acquiring this knowledge very easy. So does reading a lot of Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver.) Obviously my will-eat / won't-eat food logic was overdue for a reassessment.

I never thought about veal until I met farmer Lisa Kaiman of the Jersey Girls dairy in Chester, VT. Lisa is a dairy farmer. On her farm she sells raw milk (some of it to award winning cheesemakers) and in her store she sells a variety of other farm products, including veal. This is where I received my quick education.

Every glass of milk or crumb of cheese in the world produces some veal. That's because dairy farmers, by definition, have a fresh crop of calves on the farm each spring. Obviously the female calves can grow up to be milkers like their moms. The little boys, unfortunately, cannot. And since cattle breeds are specialized--milkers like Holsteins and Jerseys are not the sort that are grown for beef--often they're sold for veal. A dairy farmer can expect to be paid only $2 to $10 for her veal calves. 

Farmer Lisa didn't like selling them off, so now she goes to the trouble of raising them herself. They enjoy fresh milk and solid food in her roomy veal barn, and then spend some time outdoors too. When local families stop by the farm to buy milk, they often seek out the little fellows for a quick little pat on the head.

I buy and cook Lisa's veal, because if I were a bull calf, I'd want to live my early days there. The animals don't live a long life, but it is a happy one.

In Which I am Bested by the Sugar Sprite

Last year my children collected an unreasonably large amount of Halloween candy. (When you move to a new town, it takes a while to learn the lay of the land.) Another mom at school told me that the sugar sprite would take care of that problem. "We give her all our Halloween candy, and she leaves us a little something. Like a crystal, or a bit of knitting wool."

Somehow, I was able to withhold my laughter. It wasn't that I thought her idea was stupid. It's just that I couldn't imagine that could ever work for us. My kids, who aren't allowed to have much corn syrup or artificial colors, except on October 31st? They'll never go for it.

And then, the deluge. Apparently the homes in our new town are very generous. I was liberal on Halloween night, looking away as they overindulged. But as they sorted it all out over the next few evenings, trading and speculating like a pair of future oil barons, I started to hear the sugar sprite calling my name.

So I mentioned it casually. "You know, fellas, Serena's mom tells me that they leave their candy out for the sugar sprite. You see, it's healthy for her and her little sugar sprite children. The sprite, out of gratitude, leaves behind a little gift."

To my surprise, they were immediately interested. "I'll do it," said my then-7 year-old. "Do I have to leave it all?" his little brother wanted to know.

Good question, kid. "All but two pieces," I said. 

"Done," was his reply.

The sugar sprite was not actually ready for this immediate adoption, however. But that night, she almost guiltily removed the candy that had been left for her outside bedroom doors, and replaced it with some trinket she'd been hoarding--some lego stocking stuffer that hadn't quite made it into the stockings last year.

The boys were intrigued, but not exactly overjoyed with their decision. And I really thought that would mark the end of our relationship with the sugar sprite.

Fast forward one year. I have learned to skip that house, the one that doubled last year's candy haul. The kids pull in a more reasonably sized batch of what passes for candy these days. There are lollipops with awful sticky gum inside. There are "Halloween Kit-Kat" bars, which are truly frightening. Those aren't even trying to be chocolate. Instead of the chocolate, they are coated with an orange waxy substance of unknown origins. Was it always this bad? I eat a couple of pieces, and find them so sweet that all other flavors are masked. (Confession: except for Milk Duds. I love those. If you've never poured them over hot buttered popcorn, you haven't lived.)

Where was I? Right. The sugar sprite--she came unbeckoned. After a two days of this bounty, my younger son announced he was leaving his box of candy for the sugar sprite. 

"Really?" I asked. I was on my way to the kindergarten parent meeting.

"Yup. Don't kiss me when you come home. You might scare away the sugar sprite."

The sugar sprite did not come that night, because we live in a rural area where there are no stores. Also, she forgot about it until a similar moment the next night. "Maybe she doesn't want to come in my room," the little man said, peering into his box. "I'll put it outside."

"Me too," said my savvy third grader, with a challenge in his eye. Since last year, he'd clobbered onto the fact that all Saints and fairies purporting to leave things for him in the night were heavily subsidized by mom and dad. "Come on," he said to his little brother, and the two of them deposited their bounty on the front porch, where I worried it would become a potential feast for a passing Raccoon or black bear.

I was really stuck then. The only bribe I had in the house were two Lego advent calendars I'd bought on impulse. And I was starting to regret the whole thing. Giving up candy for... plastic? Erf. Where do I get these ideas? The lesson here is that parenting out of mere half conviction will always lead you astray.

The lucky result: sheer joy. Those lego advent calendars which seemed like such a scam after I bought them are a garden of delights. If you can overlook the outrageous price, it's worth noting that the entire contents of the package would likely fit into a 1 cup measurer. And parsing out the tiny projects over 24 days has created a new kind of drooling anticipation. (The sugar sprite left a note, in pink ball-point, advising them to only open one little door per day. No cheating.)

They don't even miss the candy (although I noticed that my 6yo had squirreled away a single peanut butter cup for insurance.) 

I, however, have to stay away from a certain bag in my closet, until I find some unwitting recipient. What's good for the kids is good for me too. I'm going to keep repeating that until it's out of the house.

Tomatoes Please. Hold the BPA.

It's officially chili season, people. And another year has gone by wherein there are no better BPA-free canned tomato products on the market. I've been ramping up my gardening, but I'm nowhere near canning all of our own tomatoes yet.

So what's a chili-loving girl to do?

There are some companies, notably Eden Organics, who can beans and other vegetables in BPA free cans. When I'm not using dried beans, I always turn to Eden.

But the acidity of tomatoes means that even Eden can't make a BPA free canned tomato product. Scanning high and low, I've come up with a scant three BPA free products. First there's Pomi, in a tetra-pak. The container is not recyclable or compostable, but it is BPA free. In glass jars, I've found BioNaturae and a brand called Cirio. 

BioNaturae is found in many East Coast shops, and their pasta is--hands down--my favorite organic brand. The tomatoes are the priciest choice and only come in a very well pureed texture. Pomi's "chopped" product is a more traditional chili texture. 

The Cirio brand has a texture in between the other two. Problem: these are not sold in my town. It is an Italian import which I found at Fairway in New York City, a store full of quirky European brands that aren't widely available.

Why aren't there more glass containers? A BPA discussion over at Groovy Green Livin' brought up this question, with a less than satisfying answer from a representative of Annie's products--that glass is heavy and difficult to transport.

True. But it's also oh so recyclable. I argue that it's more efficient to can tomatoes in 24 ounce jars than it ever will be to put baby food in 3 ounce jars. And I don't hear any companies suggesting that baby food should soon appear in BPA lined cans.

Dear Muir Glen (owned by giant General Mills) I'm talking to you! Your pasta sauces reach my store in glass jars. Please, please consider putting those tomato products in glass, too. 

Enough, already.

Never Make Just One Lasagna

A Lasagna's Eye View of My Kitchen

Almost 20 years ago, my smart friend (and Ski House Cookbook co-author) Tina taught me this valuable life lesson: never make just one lasagna.

See, lasagna is no small effort. I'm sure we could point our browsers to several dozen fabulous food blogs right now where even more artful foods are prepared, styled and photographed twice a day. (The 8-layer faux asparagus cake springs to mind.) But at 1.5 hours in the kitchen, lasagna is about as labor intensive as I can fathom on a weeknight. That's why I always make two: one for tonight, and one for the freezer.

Now, isn't that good advice? One night, this month or next, I'll use my get-out-of-jail free card, which will be waiting in the freezer. And that will feel great.

The following recipe is large enough to make two lasagnas, each one will serve 4-6. 

(I don't have two identical pans, so one of them goes in a 9x13 glass pyrex dish and the other in a square pan with higher sides. Feel free to improvise.)

Here's my straight up meat-and-red-sauce recipe:

Ingredients

cooking oil
1 large onion, diced
2 lbs (humanely raised grass fed organic Vermont) ground beef
2 large or 4 small garlic cloves
1 32oz tub of ricotta cheese
2 eggs, slightly beaten
3/4 cup parmesan cheese
12 oz. no-boil lasagna noodles (or regular noodles, cooked)
1 and a half 32 ounce jars of marinara sauce
8 ounces shredded mozzerella

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350. Heat the oil in a skillet and saute the onion until beginning to brown. Add the beef and garlic. Crumble and cook until no longer pink.

Meanwhile, combine the ricotta, eggs and 1/2 cup of the parmesan. Set aside.

Spoon just enough sauce into both baking dishes to barely cover the bottom. Cover with noodles. Then spread 1/4 of the ricotta mixture over the noodles first in one dish and then the other. Set aside the other half of the cheese mixture. Cover cheese mixture with another layer of noodles.

Spread the cooked meat evenly over the noodles in both pans, serving all of it out. Next apply about 1/3 of the total amount of sauce. Cover with another layer of noodles. Spread the remaining ricotta next. Add another layer of noodles. Cover with a generous layer of sauce, and then sprinkle with shredded mozzerella.

Cover one lasagna with foil and bake 30 minutes covered and 30 minutes uncovered. Serve hot, with the remaining parmesan cheese.

The other lasagna: cover with foil and freeze. When frozen, wrap tightly in plastic wrap or a plastic bag and replace in the freezer. Cook as above, but for 50 minutes covered and perhaps 30-45 uncovered. Lasagna is cooked when a knife inserted into the middle comes out hot.

Birds Eye's Wonder of Vegetables Campaign

This image was part of the Birdseye email. But I've never seen anything like this in a frozen package...One of the fun things about being a food writer is receiving PR product pitches in my inbox. Today's gem comes from the Birds Eye company, the national maker of frozen vegetables.  PR pitches are nothing if not gushy, and this one is no exception.

"Birds Eye®, a portfolio brand of Pinnacle Foods Group, is on a mission to help America “Discover the Wonder of Vegetables™” and announced today the launch of its new campaign with a kick-off event in New York City’s Union Square, featuring an unexpected vegetable farm in the snow."

For people like me, who have angsty thoughts about nutrition every five minutes, this email is torture to read. There's so much about it that's so right, and yet it manages to miss its mark in several painful ways.

I commend Birds Eye for (further down the page) making a donation of "up to" 250,000 pounds of vegetables to Share our Strength's No Kid Hungry campaign. ("Up to?") And more importantly, I understand the temptation to resort to elaborate marketing gimmicks.  In my novel, the main character struggles mightily with the difficulty of marketing plain old vegetables. When you don't believe in magical nutritional additives, the ads are harder to write, aren't they? Julia bewails it like this:

"Because fresh broccoli is never new and improved, never reformulated." 

But when I take a closer look at Birds Eye and its parent Pinnacle Food Group, my sympathy evaporates. Pinnacle is the home of products like Armour Canned Meats (the cheapest kind of factory meat, with loads of salt for shelf stability) and Log Cabin Sugar Free Syrup (Water, sorbitol, maltitol, nutrasweet, cellulose gum, natural & artifical flavors, salt, sodium hexmetaphosphate, sodium benzoate, sorbic acid, sucralose... YUM!)  

Even the Birds Eye vegetable brand itself has some explaining to do. Birds Eye Voila Cheesy Ranch Chicken, a pasta dish, has 760 mg of sodium in a cup-and-a-half serving.  Yet they claim they're "on a mission to help America 'Discover the Wonder of Vegetables.™'" Really?

Beware of smoke and mirrors. And faux snowy vegetable farms in Union Square.