WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley This is the Cali crustily show. We're talking to food writer Peter Kaminsky about an occupational hazard of an ever expanding waistline. A long time chef food critic and lover of great food. KAMINSKI doctor told him that he was facing obesity and diabetes. KAMINSKI had to make a choice move weight or suffer the consequences. In his new book Color Mary intelligence he writes about how he lost 35 pounds and kept them off by thinking more not less about food. If we cut out processed foods and maximize flavor per calorie. KAMINSKI says eating can be good for you and gratifying. From there we meet two locals who've written a cookbook based on Game of Thrones the medieval fantasy show on HBO eels and pigeon are some of the foods coming out of their 15th century Test Kitchen. Up next food for thought. From in like muck to the Dark Ages. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Jim Howard. The discovery of 13 bound bodies in

eastern Syria is adding to international criticism of Bashar al-Assad's government. A U.N. team says the victims appear to have been shot execution style with their hands tied behind their backs. The discovery comes as two more countries are expelling Syrian diplomats. Japan and Turkey are joining more than half a dozen countries and telling top Syrian diplomats to leave the UN's human rights body will address Syrian violence in a special session this Friday. The government of Iran is acknowledging that its oil industry has been disrupted by the powerful computer virus known as flame the highly sophisticated virus was apparently engineered to gather a wide variety of data from the computers in a fax. NPR's Tom Gjelten says Iran appears to have been targeted by the cyber attack. The Flame virus was developed several years ago but long went undetected. Iranian security officials were the first to notice it. One top official told Iranian radio that the virus briefly affected the country's oil industry which accounts for about 80 percent of Iran's export revenue. The Iranian official says cyber security experts in that country

developed an anti-virus program to combat flame and he says the damage from the virus was contained. Suspicion immediately fell on Israel which has made no secret of its desire to undermine the Iranian government. One Israeli official said yesterday that whoever sees the Iranian threat as significant is likely to take various steps including these to hobble it. Tom Gjelten NPR News Washington. A report out today is critical of colleges and universities in the U.S. for urging students to use debit cards to pay their college costs. NPR's David Mattingly says the report cites hefty fees adding to student debt. The report comes from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Higher Education Fund. It's critical of the fees attached to the student payment cards sometimes 10 to $50 a pop. Typically the fees apply when students overdraw the recount need a replacement card or stop using the one they have. Up to 900 colleges and universities offer the debit cards in turn the colleges are making money. Sometimes the report says through deals that violate

federal law. One company higher one says it has agreements with more than 500 college campuses and more than four million students enrolled. Dave Mattingly NPR News Washington. Advocates in Illinois are hoping a series of lawsuits will end the state's ban on same sex marriage more than two dozen gay and lesbian couples have filed suits challenging the constitutionality of a state law denying them the right to marry. Just one day after investors appeared to be encouraged by news that China was going to rev up its economy stocks have opened sharply lower on news that China may take a more cautious approach to economic growth. On Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 150 points at twelve thousand four hundred thirty. The Nasdaq composite index is down 37 points at two thousand five hundred thirty three. This is NPR News in Washington. Good afternoon from the WGBH radio newsroom in Boston I'm Christina Quinn with some local stories we're following. Ridership on the MTA is up for the 15th consecutive month. The transit agency announced today that it had a weekday average of one point 3 7 1 million passenger

trips in April. That's a 4.4 percent increase over the same month in 2011. The jump was largely fueled by bus ridership acting MBT general manager Jonathan Davis credits the boost in bus ridership to real time data available via smartphone apps. The financially struggling TV also had a 12 percent jump in commuter boat ridership state education officials are unveiling a turnaround plan for Lawrence's struggling public schools a model that could be used to improve other underperforming school systems. The plan will be officially unveiled at the South Lawrence East Elementary School today. The turnaround plan expected to take five to seven years includes more instruction time expanding arts an intramural sports programs and an overhaul of programs for students not proficient in English. The Lawrence district has about 13000 students in less than half graduate high school in four years. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is stepping up pressure on for profit colleges that officials say aggressively target military veterans and leave too many students deeply in debt and without jobs. Coakley is expected today to discuss concerns and offer advice to

consumers when she testifies today at a Boston City Council hearing. Federal financial aid for students accounts for up to 90 percent for for profit colleges revenue. Coakley office says students at for profit colleges take on more debt than those at nonprofit and public universities in a default more on student loans. Meanwhile in New Hampshire tuition at the state seven community colleges won't increase in the next academic year. This is the third year since 2006 that the colleges have not increased tuition. The decision comes despite last year's cut in state funding of nearly 20 percent. Support for NPR comes from LifeLock committed to protecting its members against identity theft. Details at LifeLock dot com slash public radio at 1 0 6 it's Seventy three degrees in Boston and you're listening to WGBH. Good afternoon I'm Kelly Crossley. My guest is veteran food writer Peter Kaminsky. He joins us to talk about how we can eat food that is both good for you and gratifying. That's the subject of his new book Mary

intelligence the art of eating healthy and really well Peter Kaminsky thank you for joining us. Oh thank you for having me. I have to start this way. Most people who are talking about having food that is good for you and gratifying are kind of skinny bean pole people that you know eat celery as a snack and you know talk about how great it is. And I just need for people to understand the context in which you work. If they're not familiar with your work as a food writer you are surrounded always by fabulous food. Tell us about it. Well if you're a food you know I'm getting kind of echo in my cans here I can't. I keep hearing an echo so I know if we can deal with that or should I just keep talking keep talking and they'll work on it. Now that you tell. Okay great. You might take your headphones off while you're talking and then just try to listen for me yelling through them after you're finished. OK that's an idea. So the question was I'm surrounded by food all the time and

how do I deal with it. Yeah well also I want people to understand how you're surrounded by food like you know because it's what you're like become of. When I became a food writer I first thing I did I was writing the underground gourmet for New York magazine and that required me doing reviews. And New York is a great place to write about our cornucopia of ethnic food I think is the best dining city in the world. But New Yorkers tend to think a lot about their city and their kind of way. So I used to eat in restaurants you know three four times a week trying to write reviews. And then I sort of got into the I got the I cornered the market on 8000 word. Stories about the making of big grand restaurants. So Danielle analysts fear and per se and. I don't know what all the Island of Kos would write about these really great fine dining restaurants. It was a blast I got to eat the best food on earth and I

also put on about five inches on my waist in about you know 40 pounds on the scale. So there was an upside and a downside or two upside the upside was enjoyment. The other upside was weight and I had to do something about that. Were you yourself concerned about it or you just thought well you know I'll deal with it at some point. So I think like most people who have a potential problem I said I'll deal with it at some point. You know I was having too good time. But then it came time for me to get my life insurance renewed and. They said Boy you've got a problem here. Your blood sugar is way high you are pre-diabetic and maybe you can deal with this by taking off some weight which I did. We could talk about how I did that but I didn't get the life insurance and I'm not diabetic. So I want to get the contrast. What size you were before you had this personal health crisis and now where you are

before we get into how you did it. All right. I was I topped out at 2 0 5. My waist you know as people tend to do when they have thirty eight inch way are larger than 30 inch eight inch waist. I convinced myself it was 38 but it was bigger. You know my neck size was 17 and a half. So I was a chunky boy and now it's now 15 and a half on the neck. 34 that's mean generation maybe a little bit less on the waist and on one hundred and sixty six pounds. All right. Now before we go on are you still hearing the echo. I am not I'm just hearing your wonderful voice. OK thank you. What you have put together in terms of your philosophy and methodology if you will about how to get that weight off the pill or as you say have colored Mary intelligence is really

talking about flavor. And that's where you say people have gone wrong. And as a person like you who is around food all the time that your whole life I mean you know about flavor. So tell us about what your flavor methodology is all about and why you know based on what's happening with you that it works. OK well I call it flavor per calorie. I mean when and really what it what it boils down to is I think a couple of things. You know on the minus side get rid of processed ingredients because A they're going to put on weight very quickly they turn to sugar in your bloodstream be stored as fat and often you're going to have to compensate for the lack of flavor in those ingredients I'm talking about white sugar white flour often potatoes sodas often you'll compensate with you know

a lot of sugar a lot of salt a lot of fat a lot of fruity sauces a lot of creamy stuff a lot of melted cheese. And yes you'll get flavor but you're also going to get fat. My approach is. Buy the best ingredients you can afford and that ain't all fog. You know that's whatever's cheap in the farmer's market because it's in season this week it's things like beans and lentils that you know pumped up with some great flavor like from anchovies or even a little bit of bacon or some capers or some grated parmesan cheese. These things have very intense flavor and things with a very intense flavor will tend to satisfy you satisfy you more quickly and therefore you'll need less. I mean this is a scientific fact. Mine is not a science book full of footnotes but I have talked to all the top nutritionists in America from Yale from Harvard from NYU and it's just a fact you can satisfy

yourself quicker with better ingredients. You also have to prepare them well. So I guess another pillar of cool unerring intelligence is cook or live with someone who does because then you can make it taste good. And. Great as restaurants are and I love restaurants and I've learned so much from the restaurant chefs I've worked with their written books with. If you eat out every night and you just order the thing that sounds most yummy on the menu whether it's you know a hamburger joint or you know pretty pricey restaurant. You're not to lose weight. It's just not going to happen. So best ingredients you can afford preparing well you're going to lose weight. Here's a quote from your book eating fruits and vegetables because they are said to be good for you in quotes won't do the trick. Eating them because they taste good will but it's a hard shift I think if you become. And people do become addicted really to the sugar that you talk about that is so dangerous.

Well the thing with especially with fruits. Animals and I think I include most of us in that category. We like sugar because sugar is quick energy. If you just eat sugar like in fruit juice or in a candy bar straight your blood stream you know spikes the blood sugar pumps out insulin you start to store it as fat sugar in fruit has got fiber and fiber slows down the absorption of sugar into your bloodstream. You produce less insulin you store less of that excess sugar as fat. So I'm all for fruit and I'm all for great fruit great not great fruit or I like great food. But you know people who think they're getting the benefits of fruit out of fruit juice are kidding themselves because largely it's sugar. Well a couple of nutrients thrown in for sure but no fiber. So you know in terms of

what it's doing to your blood sugar you could be you know a juice fast and a root beer fest are you know not not that different. And the effect on your weight. Now you're not the first person who's you know said listen you need to stop eating white foods like the white sugar the flour and the potatoes though. You've written about it quite entertaining Lee in your book about why it's necessary. Here's the thing that I thought was a really bold statement in your book you said fat was really not the issue as much as sugar is. I talk about that if you will. Well fat became a bogeyman you know 20 30 years ago and carbs became the you know the cure or the cure all. Well turns out simple carbs turn to sugar almost quicker than sugar sometimes because the sugar in your bloodstream. So that was you know as shooing fat and going for carbs that corresponds precisely

when an epidemic of obesity obesity took off like crazy in America. You human beings need fat. If we didn't have fat you know our cells wouldn't work beyond that fat is tremendously important for the proper functioning of the nervous system and the brain. And if humans didn't evolve to eat fat which they do because they have those teeth that took a million years to get right to be eating meat and the fat that it contains. We don't have the brains of chimps plain and simple. It is good for you now. There are certain kinds of fads that are better and certain kind of fats that are worse you don't want. You know a lot of saturated fats. You don't want hydrogenated fats but well raised animals have a high proportion of and saturated fat. In fact the pigs that they eat in the west of Spain where they make the greatest ham on earth

they eat grasses and acorns a lot. They're nearly 70 percent unsaturated fat so it is not going to do the tremendous damage to you. That said fats per gram have twice the amount of calories as carbohydrates in protein. So you are ingesting more calories when you eat fat so you have to balance like everything else you have to balance your diet. There's no but magic bullet bullet here if you cut out fat you're cutting out a vital vital vital nutrient for human beings. But if he eat all fat and no complex carbohydrates like you find in whole vegetables and no proteins you will not be eating a balanced diet that you're going to have cravings in and then going to work out. All right so what do you have to have in your pantry or it what is in your pantry to make everything tastes good and to keep that weight off and you've kept it off.

And why is this working better than maybe what's been out there on the marketplace before we'll talk about it. We're talking about food about eating and how to create healthy eating habits without doing away with the fun and pleasure that comes with food. My guest is Peter Kaminsky. His new book is Canary intelligence the art of eating healthy and really well the conversation continues on eighty nine point seven WGBH Boston Public Radio. Funding for our programs comes from you. And Skinner auctioneers and appraisers presenting their auction of science technology and clocks. Saturday June 2nd at their Marlborough Gallery featuring an English fossil collection and prominent watch and clock collections. Skinner dot com. And the English Channel on WGBH forty four Wednesdays

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Brighton. It's a day handbag with ice cream and goodness. Mix it up with PBS Kids characters swirl and some rides games music and more. It's enough to make you melt. And that's a sure bet. So don't waffle. Get the whole scoop at WGBH dot org slash funfest while you still comb. Sorry mits 100k entrepreneurship competition has generated billions in profit in its 23 year history. Hear what ideas this year's competitors came up with on innovation have Saturday morning at 7:00 here on WGBH radio. Welcome back to the Calla Crossley Show. If you're just tuning in my guest is food writer Peter Kaminsky one of his occupational hazards was putting on weight once the weight started to take a toll on his health. He devised a way to lose weight and keep it off without giving up the fun of food. It's the subject of his new book called unary intelligence the art of eating healthy and really well. So Peter Kaminsky I mean anybody

listening now and I certainly have had this experience and I'm you must have had it you start trying to go down the path of eating better and those cravings overtake you because as you've very pointedly written in your book that sugar is really quite addictive and hard to sort of get out of everything that you eat unless you pay close close attention and even when you pay close close attention you're still trying to deal with the cravings. I want to know how long did it take for you to get rid of those cravings once you had determined to make a change. It wasn't all that hard but it's not magic it's not a magic switch. For example I had one thing I had to get out of my diet or cut way way back on. I'm a writer. I sit home I type all morning. I live in Brooklyn. These are two important facts to bear in mind. I sit home and type all morning you know come whatever 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 o'clock. I'm so hungry I can't stand it anymore. So for years I would just go out

have a million pizza shops in my neighborhood not to go out for a slice of pizza. Well one slice of pizza is not what you end up getting when you go out for a slice of pizza you always eat two at least and eventually my brother who's a doctor did the math for me. And on that diet of pizza pretty much every you know working day of the week and two slices of it I was consuming enough extra calories that every seven days I was eating what's required for eight and a half days. That's going to put on the weight so I cut out the pizza all now I eat it occasionally because I love it. It's one of the life's great choice but I got rid of it as my every day thing. Other people have other things maybe it's ice cream every day you know. Member after dinner is as a reward for being a good eater or a good person or good whatever. So we all have a target of

opportunity that we have to give up. I won't say you don't miss it but I'll also say you can control it or I could and I think many people can it takes a little willpower. But then if you're substituting it with really wonderful food it's not as hard. For example I and darts are Dr. Arthur Agatston who wrote the South Beach Diet. We both eat a little bit of dark chocolate every day sort of a topper offer. It is full of things that satisfy you. It's got what they call umami. It's got a little bit of sugar. It's got a little bit of fat but the flavor is so intense. And your and your your tastebuds and your and your Tommy knows it. It really goes a long way to satisfy you so if you take those few squares of chocolate and eat them you'd be surprised how little you want after that. So that kind of works for me. But I do want to.

You mention me mommy and I want you to go back and talk about that because that's not what a lot of people call the fifth sense. Explain that if you would. OK well I had no idea what the heck it was I've read about it everywhere and there is a great chef in New York named Dan Barber he also raises a lot of his food up at Stone Barns for agriculture in New York he's a real hero of. Of sustainable farming and just great simple but delicious cooking. Anyway one day I'd eaten a great chicken and I called up Dan and I said you know your sauces are different other people's sauces is always complex layered layering of flavors. It's chicken. I don't know what makes it but chicken chicken chicken. And I said How do you do it he said well we make a stock and we break it three times and I said I have no idea what the heck you're talking about. So it's a come on into my restaurant one morning and my daughter and I went there and he was roasting these chicken carcasses and

boiling chicken whole chickens. And then he would take that stuff and he'd put it in and he would really high heat he roast off very high heat the chicken drum mats and it put some of that liquid in and let it reduce down till And that's where the breaking part comes in it came to the breaking point which means that it got so thick if you took your fork and try to move the chicken pieces away from the side of the pan you get those little strings like you do with pizza. That's the breaking point. Let it go further than that. It all falls apart. Put more. Liquidate two or three times a day reduce it every time. It tasted more and more and more and more chicken E.. And finally when it was done you know what like when you laugh really hard you get that feeling on a society or temples like from just your smile muscles are overworked. That's what it felt like and I woke up in the middle of the night. You know I had no idea what the taste was and I said that must be mommy. It's that sense of

great satisfaction and well-being that I later later learned. We pick up as one protein which is a very important nutrient is really read and readily accessible to us. And cooking it well that that makes that protein accessible to us. So I invited one of the great scientist Charles Zucker from Columbia who discovered the taste for taste receptor. For me down to eat with me and we didn't eat the chicken but I said Would you guys bring me some chicken sauce. And I said Charles what is the taste here and he said oh mommy. So that's what that's how I know that's who mommy but oh mommy is in anchovies. Well it's in meat. Believe it or not is in tomatoes. And there's a an interesting evolutionary story there and you may well be means things taste more delicious. In fact it's a Japanese word that means yummy and tomatoes get mommy just when they're ripe. Two days before they don't

have it when they're ripe they taste so delicious. And that's why animals eat them and eventually you know poop out their seed somewhere else and there's more tomato plants so it's a great thing for the tomatoes to do for their for their future. Parmesan cheese has a lot of mommy. Sausages have bacon has your body. Bacon is in my diet but not a lot of it. As you point out that's the point. If you know you get to the end of the winter you eat in you want to eat fresh fresh was read a lot of kale you know by then you know Brussels sprouts you need something to give it some. And the salt and the mommy and the protein and the funk and a geneticist and a little bit of bacon as really going to pump up the flavor and everything so they can when it's used as an ingredient to enhance other ingredients. I just think is one of life's treasures.

Bacon you know a lot a lot of bacon and a glob of cheese to rescue you know dries bones chicken breast and I'm going to help your diet and then I'm going to help your weight and you know that's that's not the right way to use this jewel of cuisine. So if all the flavors are at their peak rate you increase look toward the flavor calorie profile as you say and look for those foods that have that umami then you're naturally fuller faster with less. That is true. I can prove to you I may have done this experiment many many times if I give you a great aged ribeye steak or I give you you know sort of a pound and a half steak of you know feedlot normal not aged just gravy you know B-flat steak strip steak three slices that rib eye you're going to really feel satisfied. You're going to eat

at whole other steak. You're going to feel full but you haven't gotten your full steak knives out of it. And I mean try yourself you'll see what I'm saying. And one of the tricks with steaks in fact all meats is what's called the my yard reaction and that's simply the way the proteins break down on a steak or on a piece of meat when it's exposed to high heat and they formed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of flavor compounds in the crust and that just makes it so delicious and so satisfying whereas ill cooked meat or uncooked meat you know I could give you uncooked pork lamb beef you know veal. If it were wrong scientists tell me and I've verified it myself. You're probably not be able to tell which is which. You might though. There are a little bit different but when you cook them and when you put that beautiful cross that they my yard reaction creates

the flavors get so complex that you're really satisfied and in a hundred different ways so that's that's where the cooking side of the good ingredients comes into it. I wanted to note that you took time to list some of the common ingredients that you ought to have always on hand. You did allow that people could you know make some adjustments to it but but these are the things that will keep you from going over the edge and toward the sugar and eventually will probably just block out all your craving for the sugar. So here they are onions and shell these sardines herring good chicken and beef stocks plain yogurt bacon Italian sausage butter butter will have talk about that eggs capers roasted sweet red peppers a hunk of parmesan cheese as you mentioned olive oil crushed red pepper flakes flaky sea salt beans lentils chickpeas whole grain cous cous and Ferro hard drums pass stuff Ferrel pasta good tasting whole grain bread really whole grain you're very you give us a whole lot about that in the

book. Whole grain crackers thick crunchy Wassa bread or thin or equally crunchy love. Cap'n Green's apples blueberries dried cranberries dried prunes figs cherries roasted Aman's roasted peanuts peanuts cashews becomes And of course the aforementioned dark chocolate. Now your point in listing this is that if you have this in your own hand then you're less likely to run to something else and you can always make some combination of these foods into something that tastes really good thereby achieving the flavor calorie profile. Well yeah all of them will help pump up clever per calorie. And if you have them around your house. I mean look let's face it you boil some lentils. I mean it sounds like you know a Woody Allen you know put down of California health food I mean it probably does taste like mass she said like he said in any hole. But with some roasted tomato is a bit of

parmesan capers. You know a bit of bacon a little red wine vinegar. It's a great dish. You know and then you then you have some greens maybe you know they've been sitting there for a traitor for you know four days or so. You saute those you mix it all together. That's a great meal. So I think if you have those kinds of things on hand you have the building blocks you know to deal with you know ever so many ingredients. Also you roast a chicken say on Sunday. Well I never roast a chicken I roast two chickens because it takes about as long. And they're both equally delicious and you've got leftovers all week. Well these things in my larder help me to prepare other dishes with chicken I can make a farro risotto with it. I could sauté it with some onions and you know have it had to have it with some pasta. Then there are a few things just like sardines in the crackers you know the sweet peppers

you know you don't know what the heck to do for lunch. And you're sitting there. Those are great. You have to do a darn thing to them. But open them and eat them together and you've got a meal that's even faster than you know a Big Mac to prepare or go get. So you know these are all important things you asked about. But I want to come back to that. I love butter butter. Yeah. Just just all butter all the time like all anything all the time isn't going to do you a lot of good. But for example sometimes you know I like breakfast once or twice a week I used to like bagels and lox a lot. The bagels are all white you know flour basically and you know that's that's going to become sugar right away. Let me just say I and again sugar. I'm just against pure sugar or things that become sugar right away in your bloodstream. So you know Danny Meyer the great restaurant

tour owns Union Square Cafe in grammar City Tavern and so on. He was telling me he used to have you know those bagels every day and you know he cut them out and he really brought his weight together well. I still like my something in locks so I get really good dark bread like you know the Scandinavians do. You know and I can find really great I buy some whole wheat bread in the supermarket and I just toast it put a little bit of butter on it you know that gives it a bit of oil to make it you know kind of wet and moist but it's not like slathered on and then a slice of smoked salmon. Daryn that's a good breakfast. It's Or it sounds like it. My guest is food writer Peter Kaminsky. Now you've got a couple of advantages on the rest of us who are would be totally interested in your book and I can say having read it it's really entertaining and I've read a lot of books about food and how to lose weight and how to do this and then it believe me. But this one is really quite well done. Of course it would be you did it.

So you cook and you have a flexible lifestyle and you know at one point in your book you talked about you know going from this point to this point in your neighborhood picking up you know the the fresh meat and the fresh greens and you know you don't do that every day but you could do it because you have a because of your lifestyle. I kept comparing and contrasting that with me and many people I know we at home and you know whatever time we get home we're exhausted we're evil we're tired. And the last thing I'm trying to do is find something in there that has the correct thing for me to eat I just want to shove something in my mouth. This is not correct I know you've told me all in a whole book but. How do you know it's hard. Well here's what I think is that like I was saying with the the two chickens when you make something make a lot of it because then you can get two three meals out of it and it doesn't require and Sunday is a great day for doing that. It doesn't require a whole lot of of you know

cooking every day tossing a gather together a salad and putting some sliced steak on it. You've made a few days before. That's not what's going to take you know all that cooking time you know. You don't need to cook a Martha Stewart or Julia Child you know soup to nuts dinner every night to eat well. Couple of great festivals a slice of whole grain bread and some protein that you really made well pasta ain't bad. You know we all like to make pasta. It's just in America we've come to eat pasta like people think nothing of eating a half pound of pasta with a little bit of sauce on it. My solution is make a four ounce serving of theirs to make a half a pound. Make sure you have equal by volume vegetables to pasta. So four ounces of pasta four ounces of vegetables that you sauteed that you crumble some bacon in that you threw some loaves in that you grated some parmesan cheese

over. I'm pretty sure because I became this way with me that's going to do it for me. Not a big meal to make. Again it's of you know not it's less than a 20 minute meal. And you should have that now that listen if you need to come in turn on the TV put your feet up and then graze all night and finish it with ice cream. You have a you have a problem. And if that means giving up something you have to give up 20 minutes to eat a little bit better. I make a thing called the frittata which is like you know a big big old baked omelet you know and I'll put. Oh some you know crisp dungeons in it or maybe I got some asparagus you know when I bought asparagus on the green market instead of buying one bunch I bought two. Stuck some olive oil some salt put in the oven for 15 minutes. They're roasted they're at their peak of flavor so come on Wednesday I don't know what to make I got some spare ribs left

over. I dice it up I throw it in my first tada I put some Parmesan cheese on top again. That takes about five minutes to do. You put it in the oven and you've got a for top of the last you a couple days worth of meals. So yeah it requires a little bit of an attitude adjustment but it doesn't mean you're going to be like a farm housewife from 18 to 24 you know digging out your turnips and then cooking all day you know over a kettle over a fire. You can you can do it quickly if you do it smart. And I should mention there 14 recipes in the back of the book and they look delicious and they're not complicated which is wonderful. Be remiss if I didn't didn't say that you mentioned earlier that these are ingredients one can get at you know any common market though. You know you have access in Brooklyn to everything that one would want if you were making a fantasy meal. But you know it was one of the issues that with this obesity and then this the byproduct of that diabetes is that so many people who are low

incomes are struggling around this because what's around them of course is is the easy stuff the sugar stuff that we've discussed and it's harder to find even the simple ingredients that you just named here. What kind of comment can you make about that Peter Kaminsky. Well I have a few. Listen we're all surrounded by this commercial culture that you know you turn on I mean I watch a lot of football. I once did a calorie count. The stuff that was being you know offered on the commercials. I think I could have done twenty three thousand calories if I ate everything that was on a typical NFL game. So you know we're being bombarded at all sides you know from childhood to you know to toothless ness of you know with this culture that says Buy me eat me. It's easy it's fun it's rock n roll I'm going to date girls or boys whatever with it. So yes you have to dial out so some of that

marketing noise. That's it. I know all listen there were forty five hundred green markets in America when I started writing this book there's nearly 8000 now and that's a course of three years. So we're seeing seeing we're seeing more of those and I know in New York City we're seeing more and more and more of them there's like so-called food deserts in the Bronx that now have these green carts that once you offer it to people they're buying it. They're tremendously successful. All that said you know sometimes you just go look in shop. We were in Rockford Illinois and my wife is from one Thanksgiving and someone forgot to bring the vegetables which happens at family Thanksgivings you know across a lot of communication. And so I went down to the part of town where you know a lot of Latinos live because like most of farmland America you know most of what you know picked on our farms is this you know wonderful influx

influx of these you know magnificent people from south of the border who keep our table stocked and they have their own little grocery stores and these ethnic grocery stores have you know they have beans they have you know their vegetables that they like they have you cook they have Hickam. So you can find it in other words you can go you can you can find stuff. OK it's not as simple as the supermarket but it's there. I think that's called using a little color Mary intelligence and that would be the name of your book. Thank you so much for talking to me Peter Kaminski and the book is called Mary intelligence the art of eating healthy and really well it's a great book. And thanks so much. You're the best thank you. Coming up we continue the conversation with the authors of the official game of thrones cookbook and the cuisine that was cooked up in the dark ages. You're listening to eighty nine point seven WGBH Boston Public Radio. We love our contributors. That means you. And Greenberg Traurig an international

law firm with offices in Boston and more than 30 other cities worldwide addressing the complex legal needs of businesses from startups to public companies global reach local resources dot com. And SNH construction SNH construction uses all the WGBH multimedia form. Doug Hanna partner we feel that it's really important to get our name out to WGBH radio listeners. And I feel that it's going to have a cumulative effect of just name recognition and some work to learn more visit WGBH dot org slash sponsorship to big environmental no nos food scraps dumped in landfills and methane gas emissions coming from dairy farms. One Massachusetts farm is turning those two negatives into a big pot. We have enough gas out of the system to run a 300 kilowatt Andrew which is basically producing electricity for the farmer as well as about 300 houses. I'm Tony Waterman. The story of food to fuel later today on

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. For forty seven years now WGBH spring action has been your chance to pick up some amazing. Welcome welcome at last ladies and gentlemen welcome to the fan as you walk this year. You can bid on a brand new Toyota Prius donated by your New England Toyota dealers. Bigger and better than ever. Every winning bid supports WGBH radio and television. If you have stamina and strong eyesight stay with those big high they'd often put her in the spring auction ends May 30 first place your bids now and auctioned on WGBH dot org. Welcome back to the Calla Crossley Show we're talking about food and cooking today. Joining me to talk about dining for the Dark Ages are Chelsea Monroe castle and sorry Aunt Sarah and

Larry. They are the authors of the new Lehrer get their rights there and Lehrer they are the authors of the new cookbook a feast of Ice and Fire. The official game of thrones companion cookbook Chelsea and Sarah welcome. Hi. Thanks for having us. Every time I mention this cookbook to people I just really didn't even think I knew what was going on. They were so excited. So that's the power of Game of Thrones and what you're doing is so wonderful for those fans let me just tell people who don't know about it that it's a cable television series on HBO. It follows multiple story lines of A Song of Ice and Fire series and the author was George R. R. Martin. It's set in the seven kingdoms of stero us. Restaurant OK. And it chronicles the violent domestic struggles among the kingdom's noble families for control of the Iron Throne. OK so now we know what the series is about and what you did was write the cookbook. Looking at the foods that author Martin put in his

books and now are part of the cable series. You got to say were you just sitting around we're just big fans of Game of Thrones and decided hey let's let's write up the recipes. That's actually exactly what happened. We were trying to decide what to have for dinner one night. And I don't remember what we actually decided on for dinner but we decided that we had to have lemon cakes for dessert. So we looked around and couldn't really find anything that seemed to fit. But. Tried out a few recipes and really had a lot of fun researching and trying new things in quest of the ultimate lemon cake and the lemon cakes are tied to a character so many let you talk about that they are either tied to Sansa Stark and throughout George's books he uses food as a literary device to build his characters in the settings and the sweetness of a lemon cake really describes stencil very well up until a certain point and after that point where she kind of loses her innocence and everything goes down the drain really. We don't really see you eat

any lemon cakes anymore. Yeah I think it speaks to her naivete she's a little bit naive early on. She is yes. We should mention that this series is a little bit violent and you know got a lot of swords going on and people dying right and left so that's about the moment the last moment of her innocence as you said now. So you go from making the Limon cakes writing this and putting together a fabulous blog that became so popular tell us about that. Sure. Our blog is at the crossroads dot com. And it just sort of snowballed out of control as we like to say. We never really expected it to be this big. We never expected to get a cookbook deal out of it. We really were just doing it because we're big fans and we really enjoyed the books and the descriptions of food were to mouth watering to not try to make. And we've gotten great fan feedback. We've developed our own mini fan fandom I guess a fictional food

and so it's really it's great. It's not quite as easy as just whipping up any old cookbook because there's research involved in some other stuff and some testing. I want to make it clear to everybody you just didn't make up some recipes. These are tested in your Alston kitchen. And not only are they tested but most of them are based off of age old recipes from the Middle Ages. Or it was to be thin in England or Victorian England or ancient Rome. And so there was of obviously been cooked since ancient Rome up until now most of the dishes we have we have two recipes one is for well suited for the modern palate so it's something that we developed on our own. And the other one is a historical recipe that we've tweaked a little bit to make it possible to cook in a modern kitchen kind of put in the measurements in the temperatures that are there pretty apps and historical recipes. That's what makes the book so beautiful I mean you have some great pictures in here but I was drawn to the modern versus the medieval. What's the difference between the recipes.

For a number of them they're almost completely different dishes. The medieval palate was so different from what we expect in terms of taste profile that you could serve them and nobody would know that they're the same thing. So for example it's just you know I just keep thinking about a big old leg of meat or something that's what comes to mind I think medieval. Right right right. For those particular dishes Those are pretty much cooked the same way now as they were back then. So not the greatest example but if you take the pork pie which is a pretty sizable hunk of meat in a pot the medieval pork pie is a lot sweeter and uses spices that are like nutmeg and cinnamon and currents. So to our to our palate it's it's more of like an appetizer or dessert kind of taste than the modern one in which we have cheese and barbecue sauce in apples so that it really does fit the modern thing here's a here's what I love about the book and fans will too that you do the cuisine by the region because there are these seven families and the people are moving all around

that you have really matched the recipes to even some of the not only the characters but the area that the characters come from. That was something that was really important to us because that's how we organize the blog. And we felt that it would really be neat to make the cookbook sort of like a kohen airy tour of Westernesse. And so if you want to eat something from. King's Landing You can just flip to the appropriate color in the cook book on the edge of the page and pick either dessert or an appetizer soup. You know what have you. And I think that it's also really great as you said to be able to read the excerpt from the books and see which character ate that meal and when and it sort of strengthens that connection to the books. I'm going to play a little clip from the HBO series and this is just a short one. One of the characters describing who he is and you can tell me about his region and what you have in the book that

matches where he came from so here we go. I don't know how to. Order more than a bit no sense in your. All right so there we go get the stark something something something something somebody did. Lord of Winterfell Tell me about his cuisine. Sure. I think that the Starks and the cuisine of the north including the wall sometimes. Is some of the best in the books. It's better suited to winter obviously. Winter is coming. But that's only because it's a lot of meat pies roasts things like that. But they do have a fair number of desserts as well and some quirky tasty salads. But among the you can help me remember here we've got like pork pies beef and bacon pies turnips women in butter.

This picture of breakfast looks pretty good to me. Yes you expect strips of bacon you know OK sounds pretty good. Yeah. Absolutely. All right so people need to know since you're testing these recipes and we've said it's medieval cuisine that you know sometimes you have a pit in your apartment. It did happen yes yes it did. Yeah. We're looking to having ours butcher provided us with a pig's head and I went to town on it and made some nice head cheese. Wow. How I obviously you've expanded your palette since since doing this cookbook right. Vasily Yeah right. OK so what would you have even before now you're getting about probably a pig's head. We have a rule that one of us if not both of us has to try everything that we put on the blog. And so you know we don't just make it and say you know we made it hands off good luck we say we tried it. It was a little weird. This is what it's like. You know if you'd like to try

it here's the recipe. Crickets I think never would have occurred to me before. We definitely did that. They were bad they were bad. Well some of those people on Survivor have eaten a few crickets So you know you're in good company there. I don't think of you two and let me just say you're Chelsea Monroe castle in Syria and Lehrer and the authors of the new cookbook a feast of Ice and Fire the official game of thrones companion cookbook I think of you as sort of the medieval duty. Julie Powell. How do you feel about that. It's terrific. It's sort of a similar story arc I think but unexpectedly blogged a cookbook to quirky me fame I don't know. There you go. So I've mentioned this is the official cookbook with George R. R. Martin forward in here. There is floating about out there don't be confused people and an official book without his approval. Tell me how you got to him and therefore ended up writing this

cookbook. We actually e-mailed George Martin and just to let him know that we had started this blog I think we did last May send me e-mail and he was very gracious. I wrote us back and praised the work we've done so far at that point we just had maybe a few months into the blog but we had been really going great guns at cooking as much as we could fit into our schedules. And he cautioned us away from some of the weirder things like SIEGEL But good. Where were you. If we could get it we could get some people in different places you know of the world say well why don't you cook this you know we have this every Saturday and we can't get that here. Sorry but you do guest post and George Martin actually brought us to the attention of his publishers. And so we owe him a great debt of gratitude to not for not only writing the books and giving us

such great descriptions of food but also for snagging as a cookbook to your family farmer today. So what's been the most fun. It's tough to narrow it down. The whole thing has just been amazing. I mean we can ask like we live with each other. You know we have five roommates in the house and we it's been amazing. I mean for the whole house it's been amazing meeting George was incredible. Yeah. All right. The most odd thing that's happened while you've been preparing these interesting responses. We got a marriage proposal. Oh really. That was from one of the fictional Lords in the seven dynasties are going to be great. Well will you at some point get a chance to meet the cast I love Peter Dinklage you know come on. That's my fav. We're hoping to be at Comic-Con in San Diego in July and we're hoping that we'll be able to meet some important people out there aren't well is there going to be a book to a feast in fire of Ice and Fire too.

You know we would definitely write it if there is interest enough that this one does well. We probably have to wait for George to write another book. We probably only have enough recipes for half of another book but we'd love to explore other fictional cookbooks all kinds of things you know. The sky's the limit at this point. I hear that the other fictional cookbook you want to explore is Harry Potter. Also it's I think it's really surprising that there isn't an official Harry Potter cookbook because food is so integral to that as well. I mean who hasn't wanted butter beer. Who's read the books. I want butter beer right now. I know. Well the whole time I think somebody is going to come up with some recipe for one of the you know the the the universal I don't know which one is Universal Studios or Disney who's the official Harry Potter Land. Come up with a butter beer recipe which they will not share with anybody but the rest of the foods like the invisible beans and stuff it's all open to you. Ok that might give us a little trouble.

OK well I think it's fabulous I love it that you're from here and that you were innovative enough to come up with this. The book is fabulous looking and a lot of information in it so congratulations to you. Thanks so much. All right I've been speaking with Chelsea Monroe castle and Sara and there are they are the authors of the new cookbook a feast of Ice and Fire. The official game of thrones companion cookbook on June 9th they'll be doing a book signing and cooking demonstration in North Hampton to learn more you can find a link to their food log in at the crossroads on our website WGBH dot dot org slash Calla Crossley. You can follow us on Twitter become a fan of the Calla Crossley Show on Facebook today show was engineered by Jane pic produced by Chelsea nurse will Rose live at Abbey Ruzicka the Calla Crossley Show is a production of WGBH radio.