Over the past four months, I’ve developed a new appreciation for pants with stretchy elastic bands. I’ve traded in cute shoes for kitchen clogs. And, I’ve certainly given up on manicures – I’ll consider it a win if my nails are simply clean and don’t smell like onions. Or fish.

I’ve been immersed life at the San Francisco Cooking School, and fat pants and fishy hands aside, I am loving every minute of it.

SF Cooking School came into my life somewhat fortuitously. I had been invited to cover the opening of the school for a preview story and the more I learned about the school, the more I fell in love with school’s philosophy, curriculum, and culture.

A small, intimate class. Hands-on, practical learning. And access to some of the best chefs and resources San Francisco has to offer. Sign me up! I pulled the trigger and so began my adventures in cooking school. It’s impossible to distill everything I’ve learned into a few short paragraphs, but here are a few of the big takeaways:

EFFICIENCY
Perhaps one of the biggest differences between cooking for pleasure at home and cooking with a purpose in a professional setting is the pace at which you are expected and required to work. At school, we are taught from day one to work with a sense of urgency. Whether it is a matter of using the right tool for the job, organizing your mise en place, or even walking with purpose, your goal is to work fast and work smart.

BATCH MOTIONS
Along the same lines of efficiency, you’ll work quickest if you batch together similar motions. For example, if you are forming meatballs, you wouldn’t portion out and roll each meatball one at a time. Instead, you would want to portion out the entire batch, then roll out the meatballs all at once. The work will go twice as fast. Trust me, I learned the hard way. At school, we are taught to pay attention to what are “wasted motions” or wasted effort. If you find that you have to put down and pick up your knife/utensil a lot, or if you find yourself in an awkward position, stop and reevaluate your work flow. Always arrange your work in a way that lets you complete your task with minimal effort.

ON BUTCHERY
One of the most memorable lessons we had was taking down a half hog with 4505 Meats. What a treat to be able to be able to learn about butchery from one of the leading butchers in town.

It’s amazing how similar most animals are structured. If you learn the basics of breaking down a chicken, for example, you can follow the same rules of thumb for breaking down a whole hog. Use your fingers and look for joints and natural breaking points. Follow the bone when you’re trying to remove meat from bone. Let gravity work for you.

Don’t waste anything. We used every bit of that beautiful hog. We made sausage and cured salumi, we used the leaf lard for pie dough, saved the bones for stock, made chicharrones with the skin, and even fried up the ears (PSA: pig ears splatter. A lot.)

TASTE. TASTE. TASTE.
This is probably a no brainer, but of course, one of the most important things about cooking is learning how to taste your food and then having both the know-how and ability to correct it. That second part is where it can get tricky. In order to know how to correct a flavor, you need to have some understanding about how tastes work together (how does salt balance bitterness for example), and what flavors complement one another. You need to develop your library of taste memories and then be able to draw on that information when the time comes.

Within the first week of school, we had a taste workshop with Barb Stuckey. We delved into the science of taste and learned a lot — You can smell through your mouth! Butter has no taste!! (what you perceive as the taste of butter is just aroma and texture) — ultimately, this workshop set the stage for what we were all there to learn: how do you make food taste good?

Over the past few months, we worked on tasting critically and building up our taste library. As we cooked, a tasting spoon was always at the ready. We learned to taste throughout different stages of a dish, and were even blind-tested on scent recognition of spices.

GEEK OUT
At SF Cooking School, we’re taught not just how to follow a recipe, but how to understand how and why it works so that we can fix it if something doesn’t go as planned. Understanding the whys involves a bit of science. What is happening on a molecular level when a mayonnaise breaks? Why does it then make sense to add a bit of warm water to fix it? You can go down a rabbit hole of information on any given topic when it comes to food. What I’ve come away with is to never stop seeking out the “why.”

IT’S NOT ALL SUNSHINE AND RAINBOWS
As lovely and romantic as it sounds, a career in professional cooking has its hard realities. Pep talks from SF Cooking School deans Craig Stoll and Daniel Patterson were half pep, half tell-it-as-it-really-is reality checks. Life in the kitchen is serious physical work. Hours are long. Pay is…sobering. Running a restaurant is a business and being a chef is as much about managing costs as it is about creating delicious food. And, as much as we love our local, organic, responsibly grown goods here, when breaking down a case of artichokes is one of a gazillion things on your prep list for the day, you are not being paid to fondle the produce. Which is not to say there isn’t the utmost respect for the product, there is…just, fondle on your own time.

CALIFORNIA CUISINE
It may not be all sunshine and rainbows, but we still have it pretty darn great here in San Francisco, and SF Cooking School will be the first ones to celebrate that. One of the big draws to the school for me was the focus on making use of the Bay Area as a learning ground. We hit the Monterey Fish Market on a 5 a.m. field trip and learned about sustainable fishing. We went foraging with local foraging legend, Hank Shaw. We pickled and fermented everything we could get our hands on with Courtney Burns from Bar Tartine.

SF Cooking School gave us a strong foundation of classic French techniques. We learned the mother sauces. We consumed more butter and cream in four months than we probably had cumulatively in life to date. We suffered through turning vegetables that were not meant to be perfect little six-sided footballs into perfect little six-sided footballs. But, we also embraced modern California cuisine. We cooked with the season. We feasted on local fruits and vegetables, knew the name of the farmer our hog came from, and made our own sourdough bread (Lil Spence, our starter, was a fantastic class pet).

Our time in the classroom culminated with Restaurant Week, when we transformed the school into a restaurant and served friends and family a menu we developed and prepared. Here’s a peek at what we made:

Over the next two months, I’ll be continuing my education at Locanda where I’m externing! I have no doubt that I will learn a ton from Chef Anthony Strong and his talented team. I have a feeling I will get pretty good at prepping artichokes by the end of my externship. Rest assured, they will remain unmolested on the job.

For your viewing pleasure, here are a few snapshots from a day in my life at San Francisco Cooking School:

Dextoxifying vegetables and fruit. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

As the weather warms and the days get longer our bodies naturally gear up for a long-awaited cleanse. Traditional cultures around the globe use spring and summer as a time to shed excess weight and eliminate toxins that have built up during the winter. This can happen naturally as hearty stews are exchanged for fresh salads and cozy days on the couch are replaced with outdoors activities. But this cleansing process can also be gently encouraged with food choices. By selecting foods that support the liver and kidneys, the primary detox organs, cleansing becomes part of a balanced and tasty diet.

Some people use extreme diets like fasting and juice cleanses. But these aren’t necessary for most people and may be dangerous without medical supervision. Take juice fasting as an example. The goal in this popular regime is to consume concentrated vitamins and minerals from fruit and vegetable juices and to supply the body with enough sugar to function without having to digest food. But the problem with consuming only juice for any extended length of time is that it lacks protein. All of the liver detox pathways require protein to function properly. In addition, fiber is necessary in order to adequately eliminate toxins from the gut. Liquid diets that eliminate fiber and protein may cause a lot of negative symptoms because toxins cannot be fully processed and excreted.

Below is a list of five foods that support the body while cleansing. Most of these foods have a direct benefit on the liver; chemicals need to be processed by the liver in order to be eliminated from the body. It is a huge job and it leaves the liver vulnerable to injury from numerous toxic substances. The good news is that there are many foods that protect the liver from harm. It is not necessary to consume these foods in excess to receive benefit. Normal consumption as part of a healthy diet is all that is needed.*

Garlic

The health benefits of garlic have been known for centuries and modern scientific studies support many of the traditional uses. Not only does garlic make food taste great is has the power to reduce fatty liver disease and improve the production of detox enzymes. In fact it is so protective to the liver that it can block the development of liver cancer even after exposure to cancer causing chemicals. The protective affects of garlic aren’t limited to the liver. It is such a potent antioxidant that it also protects the kidneys from the toxic effects of many drugs. Fortunately for people who are sensitive to the heat of raw garlic, most of its beneficial properties are also present in the cooked root.

Garlic. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Artichokes

Members of the thistle family (artichoke, blessed thistle, milk thistle, etc.) are traditionally used as liver tonics. But few of them are as tasty as the artichoke. Often thought of as a delicacy, artichokes are powerful medicine. They have the ability to protect the liver from injury even when exposed to chemicals known to cause liver cancer. Artichokes are often eaten with oily dips like melted butter or mayonnaise. It is a perfect combination because the artichokes help the body to break down the oil and use it appropriately. In fact artichoke extract was shown to work synergistically with omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil.

Artichokes. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Lemons

The tart refreshing juice of lemons is often used in cleansing protocols. However the bulk of research focuses on the benefits of citrus peels. The peels are extremely rich in flavinoid compounds, which reduce inflammation and help to repair damaged tissues. These flavinoids are also potent antioxidants and can protect the liver from oxidative stress. Damage from alcohol, toxic mold, and even excess exercise is blocked by the consumption of citrus peels. Citrus peels are often included in teas and candies, but the versatile zest adds a complex flavor to many dishes, both savory and sweet.

Meyer Lemons. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Beets

Table beets, beta vulgaris, have traditionally been used as both liver and gall bladder tonic and for good reason. Both the root and the leaves protect the liver from alcohol induced damage and extreme oxidative stress. They actually increase the major antioxidant enzymes of the liver glutathione and superoxide dismutase. Beets can be enjoyed in a variety of ways. They are delicious raw, roasted, steamed and marinated. They are naturally sweet so salty and sour flavors complement them.

Beets. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Radishes

Spicy crunchy radishes are packed with antioxidants. These phytochemicals are even more concentrated in the radish sprouts than the mature root and are found in virtually all varieties tested. The black radish is particularly well known for its benefits on the liver and gall bladder. It has been shown to increase the production of detoxification enzymes and prevent gall stones from forming. Be forewarned though, black radishes are much hotter than the standard red and white globes you may be used to. Radishes are usually eaten raw and they lose all of their heat when cooked. Their satisfying, crisp texture makes them a welcome addition to salads and pickles.

Radishes. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Recipe: Quick and Easy Radish and Beet Pickle

Prepare this simple pickle about 2 hours before you intend to serve it. Pickled radishes can develop a strong odor if they sit for too long.

Makes: 1 1/2 cups

Ingredients:
• 1/2 cup of radishes (any variety you like) washed well and sliced thinly. Note that certain types with a thick skin may need to be peeled before using them.
• 1/2 cup of cooked beets (steamed or roasted until tender) sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar or 3 tablespoons of lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon of lemon zest

Instructions:
Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl. Let the mixture stand at room temperature covered for approximately 2 hours, stir it every 30 minutes. Serve the pickle immediately or refrigerate it until it is ready to serve. This is a lovely accent to salads, poultry or meat.

* Note: None of the information in this article is intended to diagnose, or treat any disease or health condition.

This “pinkhouse” at Caliber Biotherapeutics in Bryan, Texas, grows 2.2 million plants under the glow of blue and red LEDs. Photo: Courtesy of Caliber Therapeutics

Post by Michaeleen Doucleff, The Salt at NPR Food (5/21/13)

The idea of vertical farming is all the rage right now. Architects and engineers have come up with spectacular concepts for lofty buildings that could function as urban food centers of the future.

An artist’s rendering of what a planned vertical farm in Linkoping, Sweden, will look like.
Photo: Courtesy of Plantagon

“The idea of taking a skyscraper and turning it into a vertical farming complex is absolutely ridiculous from an energy perspective,” says horticulturist Cary Mitchell of Purdue University, who’s been working on ways to grow plants in space for more than 20 years.

The future of vertical farming, Mitchell thinks, lies not in city skyscrapers, but rather in large warehouses located in the suburbs, where real estate and electricity are cheaper.

And oh, yeah, instead of being traditional greenhouses lit by fluorescent lamps, he says these plant factories will probably be “pinkhouses,” glowing magenta from the mix of blue and red LEDs.

Light is a major problem with vertical farming. When you stack plants on top of each other, the ones at the top shade the ones at the bottom. The only way to get around it is to add artificial light — which is expensive both financially and environmentally.

Vertical farmers can lower the energy bill, Mitchell says, by giving plants only the wavelengths of light they need the most: the blue and red.

“Twenty years ago, research showed that you could grow lettuce in just red light,” Mitchell says. “If you add a little bit of blue, it grows better.”

Plant’s photosynthesis machinery is tuned to absorb red and blue light most efficiently. They have a handful of other pigments in their leaves that catch other wavelengths, but the red and blue wavelengths are the big ones, supplying the majority of the light needed to grow.

Cary Mitchell and Celina Gomez, of Purdue University, harvest tomatoes grown next to a tower of blue and red LEDs. Photo: Courtesy of Purdue Agricultural Communication photo/Tom Campbell

And there’s another advantage to using LEDs in greenhouses and vertical farming, Mitchell says: Because these lights are cooler, you can place them close to the plants — even stacked plants — and lose even less energy.

Recently, Mitchell and his graduate student designed a 9-foot-tall tower of lights and grew tomato plants right up against it. “As the plants get taller, we turn on the [light] panels higher up,” he explains. “It takes about two months before all the panels are on.”

The towers cut energy consumption by about 75 percent, Mitchell and his team reported earlier this year.

Right now, experiments are using these specialized LEDs to supplement natural light, not replace it.

But as LEDs get more and more efficient, could growers forgo the natural light altogether and grow crops completely in enclosed rooms, where they’re protected from temperature changes or damaging pests?

That’s exactly what Barry Holtz, at Caliber Biotherapeutics, is already doing.

His farms have never seen the light of day.

Plants at Caliber Biotherapeutics grow under blue and red LEDs, with wavelengths of light that match those that get absorbed by the photosynthetic machinery. Photo: Courtesy of Caliber Biotherapeutics

“A photon is a terrible thing to waste,” Holtz tells The Salt. “So we developed these lights to correctly match the photosynthesis needs of our plants. We get almost 20 percent faster growth rate and save a lot energy.”

Holtz is growing a tobacco-like plant to make new drugs and vaccines. The indoor pinkhouse gives him tight control over the expensive crops, so his team can stop diseases and contamination.

Holtz says this type of indoor gardening isn’t going to replace traditional farms anytime soon. It’s still relatively expensive for growing food. “We couldn’t compete with iceberg lettuce farmers,” he says, “but for certain specialty crops, the economics wouldn’t be so bad.”

And, he says, the pinkhouse is actually quite efficient when it comes to water and electricity. “We’ve done some calculations, and we lose less water in one day than a KFC restaurant uses, because we recycle all of it.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Illustrations by Lila Volkas (click on any image to view larger versions and activate slideshow)

Last summer, as my daughter Lila unpacked on her return from another year of college in Canada and a stint WWOOFING on an organic farm, she plucked from her backpack a large Ziplock bag encasing a strange, slimy, dripping pancake and held it up to my face, declaring proudly, “Look at my baby!”

I admit I recoiled with a gasp, as I managed, “What is that thing?”

“Oh, Mom, “ sighed Lila, like it was so obvious, “That’s my Kombucha SCOBY!”

Since I was uninitiated to the delights of the fermented, fizzy drink with a long history and the recent surge in popularity, Lila was eager to share her discovery from the organic farm of how easy (and cheap) it is to make your own kombucha with only water, tea and sugar. As we searched our shelves for a suitable jar and a cotton cloth, she raved about the health benefits (still in dispute) and how drinking some kombucha every day made her feel so good.

After brewing a gallon of tea, adding a cup of sugar and letting it cool completely, I watched Lila pour the sweetened tea into our largest mason jar and gently place the slippery SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast) to float on top of the liquid. She covered the mouth of the jar with a cotton dishcloth and secured with a rubber band. “Now we just have to wait for seven days.” Decanting the bubbling golden brew a week later, I sipped the earthy tang of a zingy, apple cider. Maybe I’m suggestible, but after a small glass, I felt re-energized.

A few weeks later, as Lila was packing for her job as an art instructor at a summer camp in Yosemite, she broke the news, “You’re going to have to take care of my SCOBYs while I’m gone for two months and whatever you do, don’t let them die!” As I surveyed the brood of SCOBYs (which, like rabbits, had multiplied and now occupied all of our glass pitchers) I was suddenly flooded with memories of the traumatic summer when I was nine and volunteered to feed my neighbor’s fish, while they were on vacation. One morning, to my horror, I discovered dead fishies floating atop a tank of black water. I don’t think my neighbors spoke to me again.

Luckily, Lila left me with detailed drawings and instructions and all went well during her absence. Seems my maternal instincts are still intact.

When she returned home, however, I pointed out a few worrisome threads hanging off the bottom of a SCOBY, but Lila reassured me they were a normal part of the yeast and not mold.

Last September, as Lila packed to go back to school, she offered me my own SCOBY, but I declined, because of impending trips away from home. (I know now could have set up a SCOBY hotel)

Meanwhile back at UBC in Vancouver, Lila became active in Sprouts, their volunteer-run, organic café and gave kombucha making workshops to curious Canadians, including lists of do’s and don’ts (e.g., only clean your bottles with hot water, never use soap). She had intentionally expanded her SCOBY family in the intervening months so she could give each of the 30 attendees their own baby SCOBY to take home.

While she was away at school, I missed the bubbly, revitalizing beverage and tried store-bought kombucha but nothing hit the spot like Lila’s brew.

Lila is back for the summer now and our fridge is once more full of her concoctions, this time, flavored with ginger and lemon or blueberries and chia seeds. Soon she’ll be leaving for her summer camp job and I’ll be in charge of the little rascals again. This time, I’m ready. Instead of regarding the jellyfish-like blobs with distaste, I now welcome them as a part of the family who inhabits half our pantry. And I thank my daughter for her willingness to let me mother her “kids.”

Carbon isotope analysis: a scientific way to know just how much soda kids are drinking behind parents’ backs?
Photo: iStockphoto.com

The problem? We tend to underestimate, lie or forget what we’ve consumed.

And this is a challenge for researchers who study the links between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity.

A new study published in the Journal of Nutrition explains a technique that could help researchers get a good measurement of sugary beverage consumption — by analyzing a piece of hair or a blood sample.

Researcher Diane O’Brien of the University of Alaska and her colleagues have used carbon isotope analysis to develop their measuring tool. “We’re isolating the [carbon] isotope ratio in a specific molecule,” explains O’Brien. The molecule is an amino acid called alanine, which captures carbon from sugars.

It turns out that when you consume sweetened soda, slightly more of a particular kind of carbon called C-13 gets trapped in alanine and incorporated into proteins. And proteins hang around in the body much longer than sugar does. So the scientists say they can sample proteins to look for extra amounts of C-13 in alanine. People with a lot of C-13 are likely to be people who have consumed a lot of corn syrup and cane sugar.

Using this technique, O’Brien says, you can capture a longer-term picture of sugar consumption compared with urine samples — which only reveal how much sugar a person has consumed in the past day or so.

Carbon isotope analysis has helped scientists piece together ancient dietary patterns, explains Dale Schoeller of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in a commentary about the study: “The use of stable isotope signatures has even provided information about the diet of Otzi [aka The Iceman],the 5,000-year-old natural mummy found in the Alps in 1991.”

And he writes that he thinks the technique will be helpful for researchers studying the obesity epidemic.

“This should be a major step toward resolving the controversy over the role of
caloric sweetener intake in the development of obesity,” writes Schoeller.

Not everyone is convinced.

“This is an interesting, but preliminary, finding,” says Dr. David Ludwig of Boston Children’s Hospital and director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center, in an email to The Salt.

Barry Popkin of UNC-Chapel Hill, another obesity researcher, sounds the same note: “This might be useful,” Popkin writes in an email. But the big drawback, he says, is that such testing is expensive to carry out.

Still, as the mom of a teenage son who has been spotted more than once sneaking off on his bike to the corner store for a big old soft drink in the afternoon, it would be nifty to perform the r-u-drinking-soda? test.

So can O’Brien help?

“Sure, in theory we could run your son’s hair and find out if he’s quaffing on the sly,” O’Brien says.

Or maybe I should just check the bottles in the recycle bin. (‘Fess up, Luke, I’m on to you!)

Copyright 2013 NPR.

William von Schneidau, who owns the BB Ranch butcher shop at Pike Place Market in Seattle, has made prosciutto from pigs fed marijuana. Photo: Courtesy of BB Ranch

William von Schneidau, an intrepid butcher in Seattle, is giving a whole new meaning to “potbelly pig.” Lately, he’s been feeding marijuana refuse to the pigs he turns into prosciutto for BB Ranch, his butcher shop in the city’s famous Pike Place Market.

Pot-scented bacon? Well, not quite.

The stems, leaves and root bulbs von Schneidau recoups from Top Shelf Organic, a medical marijuana dispensary, don’t season the meat, he says. But the meat from the first few “pot pigs” he’s butchered has been “redder and more savory” than what he usually works with, he says.

It’s not clear whether the pigs feel anything from the weed in their feed, or how much, if any, THC — the psychoactive substance that gets humans high — ends up in the meat. Rather than an attempt to develop a new meaty treat for stoners, the “pot pig” experiment seems mostly to be an (effective) publicity stunt. Von Schneidau’s first Pot Pig Gig event — where he promoted the product, as well as other local foods — sold out quickly. And he says all the media attention he has gotten is generating lots of interest in the next event he’s planning.

Still, von Schneidau’s creative reuse of a local waste product is part of a larger trend of small farmers looking for new, free sources of livestock feed, especially since prices for corn and soy have been on the rise. In addition to the pot refuse, von Schneidau has linked up ranchers and farmers in the region with a vodka distillery and with vegetable vendors at Pike Place Market who have waste that would otherwise end up as compost or in the landfill.

As we’ve reported, high feed prices have led some farmers elsewhere to seek out food scraps and even bakery byproduct — bread, dough, pastries and cereal — for their pigs and cattle.

Pigs have stomachs pretty similar to humans and can eat just about anything we eat. But we couldn’t find any research on what happens when you feed them marijuana.

Scientists at the European Union Food Safety Authority looked into the safety of using hemp, a plant that’s a close relative of marijuana, in feed for dairy cows. When the cows were fed hemp plants, enough THC made its way into their milk that the scientists recommended prohibiting its use. (However, feeding the cows hemp seeds was just fine, they found.)

Von Schneidau says he’s all for finding out what his dietary supplement is doing for his pigs.

“If we had a vet that stepped up to the plate and wanted to check out their joints and mood, and what drugs make pigs happy, that would be great,” he says. “But me, I just get out there, and cut them up, and put them on a BBQ, and eat them.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Does ADHD affect eating and weight?
Photo: iStockphoto.com

The men who had ADHD weighed 19 pounds more at age 41 than otherwise similar men who hadn’t had ADHD as boys, the researchers found.

“It makes sense, because they’re self-medicating with carbohydrates,” says Dr. Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist in Sudbury, Mass., who has ADHD and treats adults with ADHD. “Carbs do the same thing that stimulant medications do — promote dopamine,” says Hallowell, who wasn’t involved in the latest study. “So you get the gallon of ice cream at midnight.”

Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder may affect up to 11 percent of American children, the majority of them boys.

Earlier studies had suggested that adults with ADHD may be more likely to gain weight.

That research doesn’t prove that the ADHD is causing the weight gain. And this new study doesn’t prove that, either. But it does provide better evidence for a potential link because it followed the same group of people over time. It looked at a group of 111 boys with ADHD at age 8. Then their weight was assessed at age 41. The men with ADHD were then compared to similar men who didn’t have ADHD as children.

The men who had had ADHD weighed an average of 213 pounds, and 41 percent of them were obese. By contrast, the men who hadn’t had ADHD weighed 194 pounds on average, and 22 percent were obese.

The study leaders realized that weight was becoming an an issue for their participants when some who came in for MRI scans were too fat to fit in the machine.

“In most studies you eliminate those people,” says F. Xavier Castellanos, a psychiatrist at the Child Study Center at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York and a co-author of the study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics. Instead, the researchers started collecting information on the participants’ weight and body mass, or BMI.

This study doesn’t figure out why boyhood ADHD might be causing weight problems in adulthood. The weight gain could be caused by psychological factors or neurobiology, Castellanos speculates. Differences in the pathways for dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain, have been found in both people who are obese and people with ADHD, he says.

Or it could be that the impulsiveness typical of ADHD makes it harder for people to say no to food. Children who take stimulant medications like Ritalin typically don’t have problems with weight gain because the medications suppress appetite. But eating issues may emerge later.

Hallowell says he often sees adult patients with ADHD who struggle with overeating. “Nutrition should be part of the treatment plan,” he says.

Parents of children with ADHD should take particular care to make sure their children develop lifelong good eating habits, Castellanos says. “The reality is that ADHD people can be at risk for being swayed by temptation.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

However, there are a LOT of cheeses out there and to address that issue there are plenty of books to help you gain a better understanding of them. Below are a few good places to start when it comes to getting your learn on.

The most innovative cheese catalogue you’ve ever read.

Di Bruno Bros. House of Cheese: A Guide to Wedges, Recipes, and Pairings

You may know Tenaya Darlington from her blog, Madame Fromage, where she looks at all things cheese. Darlington’s secret identity is that of a writing professor at Saint Joseph’s University and seasoned journalist. This highly literate skill set is demonstrated through Darlington’s eloquent and quirky descriptions of cheese that are as endearing as they are apropos.

Take Harbison, for example. It’s a cow’s milk cheese from Vermont made in a Brie-style and wrapped in tree bark. It’s extremely gooey inside and tastes like butter, vanilla, and perhaps a bit of pine. Darlington describe this cheese’s personality as, “A sexy librarian’s cheese — all horns rims and whispers.” Spanish Leonora, a fine goat cheese with a citrus tang, is considered as, “A head-turning blonde on a lemon cake bender.”

Imaginative to say the least, but she goes on to describe the history, culture, and flavor profiles of the cheeses with surprising breadth in brevity. She then offers various matches for a possible cheese plate that go far beyond jam and nuts to options like kiwis, boiled potatoes and cumin seeds, and biscotti.

The book is peppered with clever and engaging recipes that are easy to put together. Some recipes utilize the cheeses in the book such as the Swiss Fondue and the Grilled Peaches with Quadrello Di Bufala. Others are designed to be paired with cheeses like the sweet and sour rhubarb refrigerator jam. (Can I get a, “Hell, yes!” up in here?)

Each entry is wrapped up with various wine, beer, and spirit pairings that you should truly take to heart. They’re rather clever and sometimes unexpected, which leads to rather jaunty discoveries you’ll be eager to share with friends.

The book was written in tandem with the historical and celebrated Di Bruno Brothers, whose cheese selection is both glorious and varied.

Get in the kitchen and start cooking your cheese!

The Cheesemonger’s Kitchen: Celebrating Cheese in 90 Recipes

Chester Hastings’ book came out a year or two ago amid little fanfare or notice, which makes me sad. For any cheese enthusiast this book is a must have. Forget fondue and grilled cheese (though, fear not, there is an excellent Castelmagno and Hazelnut Fondue that doesn’t so much taste like sex, but tastes like great sex where you and your partner both orgasm simultaneously).

This book isn’t too in-depth with the cheese education, a few history or tasting lessons here and there but don’t expect a lot of help with your thesis. Instead, Hasting urges you to go out and topple the pillar that cheese so vaingloriously sits on as instructed by hardcore cheese purists. Cheese — great, artisanal cheese — can and should be used in the kitchen.

Recipes such as zucchini with goat Gouda fritters, golden eggplant with creamy feta and croutons, and lasagna with asparagus and burrata are just some of the awe-inspiring dishes that grace the pages. Salads, fruit, meat, fish, and dessert are all given a fair address in the pages to ensure you do not leave wanting.

Joseph De Leo provides the photography in the book. The images are macro and moody, and tell a country tale of cheeses and dinners both crafted with care. It makes for a rather romantic tale.

Archival photo of Alice Waters at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Photo courtesy of CUESA

On May 18, CUESA will be celebrating the 20th Birthday Bash of the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market, with special events throughout the Saturday morning market.

For $20 a ticket ($10 for children 10 and under), market goers can create their own seasonal fruit shortcakes at stations “curated” with market ingredients prepared by four top local pastry chefs: William Werner of Craftsman & Wolves, Francis Ang of Fifth Floor, Jen Musty of Batter Bakery, and Luis Villavelazquez of Les Elements Patisserie. There will also be coffee, tea, and a juice and mimosa bar filled with fresh-squeezed juices, fresh fruit and vegetable purees (don’t miss the surprisingly refreshing fennel-frond puree), sparkling water and Champagne. The market’s founders will do a presentation at 11am.

Preview of the mimosa bar

The first regular weekly markets, held in front of the Ferry Building, happened in 1993. Do you remember 1993? I do. The scars of 1989′s 6.8 Loma Prieta quake still criss-crossed the city. A post-earthquake, post-financial crash, pre-tech boom recession meant jobs were scarce but rents were cheap. But change was coming, mostly notably along the waterfront. Since 1958, the Embaracadero Freeway had sliced across the northeastern edge of the city, throwing the piers from the Bay Bridge northwards into concrete-shadowed gloom. Ferries still left from the Ferry Building, but to get to them, you scuttled as fast as possible through the building’s dimly lit, grubby passages, no more inviting than a New York City subway tunnel. Then, in 1991, the earthquake-damaged freeway was finally removed, and the City realized it had a civic jewel–the greatly underutilized Ferry Building, suddenly revealed in all its Market Street-anchoring glory–on its hands. It would take another seven years before renovations would begin that would return the Ferry Building to a modernized, food-glorying version of its original 1898 self–but in the bare stretches of concrete out front (remember, those pretty, palm-dotted, skateboard-ready plazas are still at least a decade away), a culinary revolution was getting underway, one head of oak-leaf lettuce at a time.

Aerial view of an early Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market across from the Ferry Building. Photo: Courtesy of CUESA

In 1992, a small group of San Franciscans including Sibella Kraus, then a forager and produce-finder for Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, writer, restaurant critic and Hayes Street Grill chef/owner Patricia Unterman, and local developer Tom Sargeant organized themselves into the San Francisco Public Market Collaborative, with the idea of reclaiming the waterfront for a public market that would connect farmers directly with chefs and home cooks–in fact, with any curious city eaters. After endless meetings with representatives from the City and the Port, they got grudging approval for a one-time-only open-air market in Ferry Plaza parking lot on Sept. 12, 1992. At the time, the Alemany Market, located near the freeways at the base of Bernal Heights, was the city’s only regular farmers’ market. If you were a chef, you relied on distributors and vendors from the wholesale produce market near Bayview. If you needed speciality items, you could swing through Chinatown, the Richmond, or the Mission, if you had time, but mostly, you talked to your delivery guys on the phone, and hoped they’d show up with something close to what you’d asked for.

The success of the one-day market took even the optimists of the collaborative by surprise. The group immediately began pressuring the city to give permission for a regular market, bringing farmers and urbanites together on a weekly basis. By 1993, there was already a few months of precedent: the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market had set up in Civic Center in early spring. Starting in May, the market slowly gained momentum, and word spread between interested cooks and farmers alike. Here was the place to come to get stuff fresh, straight from the ground. Farmers were learning, too, that these new customers were curious. They didn’t just want as many bunches for a dollar as they could get; they wanted to sniff and taste and know what it was they were seeing. By the time the summer was over, the farmers didn’t want to leave. They’d found a new outlet for their produce, one that required a lot of more hands-on time, but also could command a better price that wholesaling. And there were relationships forming, between up-at-3-am farmers from Watsonville and Guinda and city customers who were entranced at the idea of farm-fresh corn and just-picked melons showing up just down the hills from their Telegraph Hill doorsteps once a week. After yet more negotiating with the city, and the market became a year-round event.

Eatwell Farm stand in the early years–no crowds! Photo: Courtesy of Eatwell Farms

And from the beginning, the chefs came, too. In those first years, as I was learning my way around the city’s food scene as the weekly restaurant critic for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, every trip to the market was punctuated by running into a half-dozen other food writers, editors, cookbook authors, and chefs. It was a pretty small world, and for a few hours every Saturday morning, it really was a village. (Look, there’s Alice, sniffing the peaches!) The original core group of founders had reorganized into CUESA, the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture–none of which were the food-world buzzwords that they are today. From the beginning, the market’s organizers had a larger vision: to educate minds as well as palates, and to change the way people, both home cooks and chefs, thought about the process of getting food to their tables. Meeting farmers every week, hearing how the weather or gas prices or labor issues were affecting their crops, seeing how their produce was shaped not season by season but week by week, was a living education for everyone shopping at the market. And farmers learned, too: about what they could sell, what flew off the table and what, like puntarelle, minaret-shaped romesco broccoli, padron peppers, or fuzzy-sheathed green almonds, needed a little more nudging to get piled into the chefs’ carts and make it onto menus across the city.

David Winsburg of Happy Quail Farms, who helped create the craze for padron peppers. Photo: Courtesy of CUESA

As the renovations of the waterfront and the Ferry Building got underway, the market moved to accommodate the construction, from various parking lots around the building, then north to another parking lot off Green Street near the Embarcadero. It remained for several years, then moved back, now to wrap around the Ferry Building, filling the back parking lot and wrapping around the building. I can still remember one blustery December 31, a vendor calling out, “Free rutabaga with every purchase!” and the delicious rutabaga-potato mash I made on New Year’s Day. Or the blissfully sunny February days, the market stalls glowing with sunshine-colored citrus, everyone outside eating oysters, when I’d come back to visit from self-imposed exile in gray, slushy, freezing New York City and wonder why I’d ever left. (Three years away from San Francisco was all I could stand.)

Autumn market sign. Photo: Courtesy of CUESA

There was a brief, unsuccessful attempt at a Sunday morning market; much more popular were the two lunchtime markets for downtown workers and weekday visitors on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Innovations at the market–from the Waste Wise initiative, which brought large-scale composting and recycling to the market, to the ban on plastic shopping bags, later adopted by the city as a whole, has made a small but significant change for the better in the way we shop and eat. Hundreds of schoolchildren come through the market every year, learning where their food comes from, and how it gets from dirt to plate.

Info Booth at Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Photo: Courtesy of CUESA

Every day, says executive director David Stockdale, he talks with people from all over the world who are interested in learning from the market. Many of the vendors with brick-and-mortar shops inside the Ferry Building–Michael Recchiuti, Frog Hollow Farm, Prather Ranch, and soon Rancho Gordo and Humphrey Slocombe–started out as vendors in one of the three weekly markets. It’s become not just a market but an educational tool, a visitors’ destination, a fun place to go for breakfast or lunch, and a showcase for some of Northern and Central California’s best produce, week in and week out. Happy birthday, CUESA, and thank you for all you’ve done.

Do you have memories of the early days of the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market? Please share in the comments section, below.