One of our favorites, a dish that exemplifies the good flavors of Balkan cuisine: tangy feta cheese, nutty bulghur, and herbed zucchini.  Leftover brown rice can be substituted for the bulghur and water in this recipe. We add a few flavors foreign to the Balkans, too: soy sauce and cheddar cheese.

Colorful, tasty, and full of vitamins and minerals from sweet potatoes, greens, and tofu, these burgers are both low-fat and high-fiber. What more could you want? Serve on a bun and add some optional smoked Cheddar cheese, tomato and onion slices, and pickles. Accompany with Alabama Hot Slaw and top the burgers with your favorite barbeque sauce, or Caramelized Onion Gravy.

At Moosewood, we love creating recipes that bring a whole new perspective to time-honored customs. Nothing is more traditionally American than mashed potatoes with gravy—songs have even been written about it—but unlike most gravies, this one, made with caramelized onions and vegetarian broth, is healthful, vegan, and versatile. Try it on dishes such as tofu burgers, grilled portabello mushrooms, or omelets, too.

Moosewood’s Laura Branca 2012 Martin Luther King, Jr. Peacemaker Award Recipient

“For their years of tireless service in race relations…and for the way they rise again and again to do whatever is in their power to make Ithaca a better place to live for all of us”, Moosewood’s Laura Branca and her partner at Training for Change Associates (TFC), Kirby Edmonds, are the 2012 recipients of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peacemaker Award.

 This award, celebrating the life and work of Dr. King, is given to individuals or organizations who work non-violently for change, who bring people together to resolve differences and/or promote social justice, and whose work benefits the Tompkins County, New York community.

 The award was presented at the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Community Breakfast on January 14 in Ithaca, where Laura was also the keynote speaker. Laura spoke about Dr. King’s vision of beloved community and about directions his thoughts were going during the last years of his life.  She also celebrated forty years of the Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC) for the wonderful resource to our community that it is. Her talk was thought-provoking and moving.

 We at Moosewood are proud of Laura, not only for all she has done to so richly deserve this award, but also for her eloquence and thoughtfulness. And her cooking isn’t bad, either!

 Laura Branca and Kirby Edmonds are managing partners of TFC, founded in 1982. Together and individually they lead interactive trainings and retreats on organizational change, planning, leadership development, communication, decision-making, handling conflict, diversity inclusion, and building culturally competent organizations and coalitions.  They are both trained mediators with over 25 year’s experience.

 In 2006, Laura and Kirby answered a call from the Multi-Cultural Resource Center to develop Talking Circles that brought diverse segments of the community together to engage in the emotionally difficult conversations around race and racism. They have trained and mentored a total of thirty-five volunteer facilitators to lead additional Circles.

Paula Wright, Interim Executive Director of the Community Dispute Resolution Center, which along with GIAC bestows the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peacemaker Award, said, “It is an honor to recognize Laura Branca and Kirby Edmonds, who both live those principles embodied by Dr. King, and who have done so much to realize Dr. King’s dream.”

 Submitted by Nancy Lazarus

The first thing I do is to make a list of what I need. That involves going through my supply of older seeds to check out the ones that should still be viable. The following list is an average life expectancy for seeds kept dry and cool, providing a minimum 50% germination:

Arugula- 3 years

Asian Greens [Chinese cabbage, Mizuna, Pak choi, Tat tsoi, and others]-  5 years

Basil- 7 years

Beans [bush, pole, soy, lima]- 4 years

Beets- 5 years

Brassicas [Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Cauliflower,  Collards, Kale]- 4 years

Carrots- 3 years

Chard- 4 years

Chicory, Endive, Escarole- 8 years

Corn- 4 years

Eggplant- 6 years

Lettuce- 6 years

Melons- 5 years

Onions- buy new every year, except for leeks and scallions- 1 year

Parsley- 3 years

Parsnip- 1 year

Peas- 3 years

Peppers- 3 years

Spinach- 5 years

Squashes- 6 years

Tomatoes- 4 years

Turnips- 5 years

What are your favorite things to eat right from the garden? That’s the best way to choose what to grow. I hardly plant Italian basil any more, it doesn’t excite my palate the way Thai basil does, and it’s not as hard to find if I want it. Some home grown produce eaten right from the garden has dramatically tastier flavor or sweetness compared to store bought:  asparagus, corn, green peas and tomatoes top that list. Other planning factors like how much space is available, and the time you have to devote to maintaining a garden are important too.  I like to try something I haven’t grown before each year, either a new variety of something familiar, or a new vegetable or herb. This year the former will be purple Romano beans, the latter Celeriac. Connecting with other gardeners where you live is a great way to learn what the possibilities are in terms of when and what to plant.

Seed catalogs online, or mailed to your home, can offer big selection, sometimes with advice that’s useful; such as regional appropriateness or timing for starting seeds. Companies I like that all have organically grown seeds:  www.johnnyseeds.com, www.seedsofchange.com, www.fedcoseeds.com, and www.territorialseed.com.  Live in a place with no room to garden? Check out www.rooftopfarms.org and see the nifty ideas for maximizing space on a Brooklyn rooftop!

Need to learn about growing a garden of edibles, from designing it to cooking the food? Whether it’s a few pots or an acre or two? Check out The Moosewood Restaurant Kitchen Garden, but of course!  

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution is inspirational for me. He went right to the source of why our schools serve unhealthy food by questioning the bad ingredients and revealing the resistance to change from folks who are trained to always look for the cheapest alternative. And please do not even get me started about how the food industry and bureaucratic policies mostly limit ingredient options to institutional food products loaded with sodium, nasty additives, hidden sugar and high fructose corn syrup. There seems to be tremendous institutional inertia that prohibits changing what we are willing to feed our children.

Given the opportunity to help make a change from my experience as a Moosewood chef, I joined a great group of women who are improving Ithaca’s school district menus, one recipe at a time. We call ourselves Cool School Food and the work has given me a chance to experience the real world challenges for schools. Our focus has been on developing more plant-based menu items using locally grown organic beans, and finding out what is doable for the already stressed production kitchen. I also, just like Jamie, had to win over the main cook who does not eat beans – ever!

 Not all the recipes that we have created were hits, and we had to go back to the kitchen a few times and try again. We offer tasting days when the children are given the opportunity to vote on a newly developed recipe with ballots that give the option to circle a smiley or frowny face, so that even the kindergarteners can vote. We also set up a table with ingredients that students can touch and smell, as well as theme music, balloons, stickers and recipes to take home.

Last year, we developed a recipe for a contest that was initiated by Michelle Obama encouraging chefs, schools, and school children to work together to create a healthful recipe. We were thrilled that our Mexican Lasagna recipe that we developed for the contest has been chosen to be included in a newly released, nationally distributed USDA cookbook that offers healthy recipes for schools and families. www.recipesforkidschallenge.com/…/1009-fiesta-mexican-lasagna

Our most popular recipes with the kids so far are a very flavorful, lemony Hummus (served with carrot sticks and whole wheat pretzels) and “Pasta Fazool” (the colloquial name for Pasta e Fagioli). The sauce for the pasta is loaded with chopped veggies, white beans and iron-rich kale. I was beaming the other day during the tasting at Belle Sherman elementary school when over 200 children were asked to raise their hand if they wanted this pasta dish on their school menu. Every child and adult  hand in the room went up. Wow!

Moosewood Restaurant is proud to partner with Cool School Food, the signature program of New York Coalition for Healthy School Food (NYCHSF), a statewide non-profit, with programs in Ithaca and New York City. In Ithaca, the partners are NYCHSF, the Ithaca City School District Child Nutrition Department, Moosewood Restaurant, and Cayuga Pure Organics (growers of local organic beans and grains). The Poster Pasta Fazool was created by NYCHSF’s volunteer graphic designer, Michelle Bando.

This is the vegetarian split pea soup for those of us who remember with longing those bowls of thick, ham bone-flavored soup that our grandmothers used to make. Here, mushrooms add texture and the miso gives a rich flavor, yet the soup’s virtually fat-free!

We’ve made this soup with several types of dried mushrooms. Chanterelles have a particularly nice flavor, texture, and color with split peas. Dried portabellas also have a good flavor and are usually reasonably priced. We’ve even made split pea soup with shiitake. A mix is nice, too. Split pea soup tastes great left over, but reheat it gently—miso should never be heated to boiling.

YIELDS 13 CUPS

Bursting with a multitude of naturally sweet root vegetables and bolstered by red and/or white beans, this hefty soup makes a meal for  6 to 8 people —and you may have leftovers. It is, as with many soups, thicker and even more delicious the second day. Add 1/2 to 1 cup of water before reheating, if you want a brothier soup.

Yields 12 CUPS