Bader Beth - The Cleaner Plate Club

For our daughters,
with thanks to those who encouraged and inspired us:
our spouses, dear friends, and the farmers who grow our food.

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Margaret Sutherland, Nancy Ringer, and Sarah Guare
Art direction, photography, and illustrations by Dan O. Williams
Text production by Jennifer Jepson Smith and Dan O. Williams
Indexed by Christine R. Lindemer, Boston Road Communications

ebook designed and composed by Dan O. Williams

2010 by Elizabeth Bader and Alison Wade Benjamin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other without written permission from the publisher.

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EISBN 978-1-60342-744-9

Chapter 1
Getting Started:
Bringing a Family Together with Food

Chapter 2
Shopping Strategies:
Stocking Up Without Breaking Down

Chapter 3
Meet Your Vegetables:
How to Fall in Love with Whats Good for You

Chapter 4
Mealtime:
Recipes to Make It Work

Chapter 5
Snacks and Sweets:
Taking the Fight Out of Kids Favorite Foods

Pull up a chair.
Take a taste.
Come join us.
Life is so
endlessly delicious.

Ruth Reichl, Teach Your Children Well,
Gourmet, March 2007.

In a way, this book began with a box of chicken nuggets.

Ali can still remember the box; it was bright red, accented with yellow and blue, its brand name displayed in a rippling banner across the top. The name made it sound like the food insidefrozen, breaded hunks of processed meatwas a feast fit for royalty.

Alis older daughter was a toddler at the time, still relatively new to eating but already demonstrating a remarkable resistance to any food that didnt come out of a box. Although Ali had mastered a handful of recipes in collegecarrot-ginger soup from her Moosewood cookbook, a spinach pie from the Greek mother of a roommate, one-bowl brownies from the back of the Bakers chocolate boxher daughter was willing to eat just one of these options: the brownies, of course.

On that afternoon, Ali popped the nuggets into the toaster oven, and then looked at the fine print on the packaging. Thats when she noticed that the brand was owned by a huge agribusiness corporation notorious for food recalls and unethical practices. Just months before, this company had been implicated in what was at the time the second largest meat recall in history. She looked at her daughter, watching curiously from her high chair just steps away, and sighed. I have to do better than this, she thought.

In another way, this book started on a Missouri farm in the 1970s. Thats where Beth grew up. In Beths childhood, eggs came from under the neighbors ill-tempered chickens (probably explaining Beths lifelong fear of chickens). Beef came from a great-uncles pasture. She picked strawberries in June and dragged five-gallon buckets of tomatoes up the hill from the garden in July. August and September brought trips to the local orchard for peaches and apples. Her parents worked long hours, and Beth was helping to cook family dinners by the age of ten. Fast food? It took longer to drive to a fast-food restaurant than to cook a four-course meal.

As an adult, Beth became passionate aboutokay, obsessed withfood. She signed up for culinary classes, working by day, cooking by night. She began reading nonstop about food politics, production systems, and the environmental and social issues of industrial-scale agriculture. Beth saw the small-scale family agriculture of her youth under constant siege from agribusiness. When her own daughter was born, all these issues became galvanized around her childs health and wellness.

A few years later, the two of us met online. We met over a kale recipethe recipe that eventually became the Salt and Vinegar Kale Chips on page 241. Since that fateful encounter with the red-boxed nuggets in her kitchen, Ali had begun cooking more, learning about industrial food production, meeting her nearby growers, working with fresh-from-the-farm ingredients, and constantly striving to find new ways of preparing vegetables that her familyher older daughter was now school-age, and a second daughter was in the mixwould enjoy. She wasnt always successfulin the beginning she had tried at least nine green bean recipes before making something edible from them (hint: When picking beans yourself, choose ones that are thin and tender, not fat and stringy). We recognized right away all that we had in common: a commitment to sustainability, a desire to opt out of our hyperprocessed food system, a hope of passing on a healthier world to our kids, a love of a good glass of wine while cooking, and an exasperation with airplane games and other shenanigans to encourage kids to eat dinner.

We also recognized that we had much to learn from one another. From Beth, Ali learned things that made her a better cook: that garlic turns bitter when burnt, the value of a really good roux, and that sweating onions does not mean placing them in your sports bra while jogging. At the same time, Ali was able to share what its like to shift a childs diet midstream from nuggets to nutritious, her perspective on the help that a new cook really needs, and a sneak preview of life with a school-age kids newfound food independence and on-the-go schedule.

Eventually, we realized that we had the makings of a really good book, one that could help real families eat well without the battle and within the budget.

Cooking real food isnt difficult the truth is, when youre working with quality ingredients, simpler is usually better. But it does take a little know-how. That knowledge goes beyond a book full of recipes. Particularly if youre eating locally, you dont necessarily know in advance what youll be bringing home. You might go to the farmers market armed with an asparagus recipe only to find that the asparagus harvest has ended, and youre now staring down a heap of baby spinach. Or you discover a delicious recipe for string beans and find yourself wondering, Can I make the same thing with zucchini?