Recipe: Easier and Better than a box Brownies

BROWNIES

Time: 40 minutes

3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped into several pieces
8 tablespoons (1 stick) salted or unsalted butter, more for greasing pan
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
Pinch salt if you use unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, optional.

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine chocolate and butter in a small saucepan over very low heat, stirring occasionally. Alternatively, microwave on 1% power one or two minutes at a time until melted. When chocolate is just about melted, remove from heat, and continue to stir until mixture is smooth. Meanwhile, grease an 8-inch-square baking pan. If you like, also line it with waxed or parchment paper and grease that.

2. Stir in sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add flour (and salt and vanilla if you are using them), and stir to incorporate. Stop stirring when no traces of flour remain.

3. Pour into pan, and bake 20 to 30 minutes, or until set and barely firm in the middle. Cool on a rack before cutting.

Yield: About 1 dozen brownies.

3 local dishes

Yesterday after I got home for teaching, office hours, emails, research, etc., I made some soup with backyard carrots, local potatoes, and beef broth from local, grass-fed cows. We ate that with bread from the farmer's market.

While the soup was simmering I milled some wheat from the WIU Allison organic farm and added it to local milk to make overnight batter for waffles. The next morning I added local eggs to the batter and served the waffles with local honey.

Back to after dinner last night, we made brownies with butter, unsweetened chocolate, a little of the flour I had milled for the waffles, local eggs, and sugar. I can't get unsalted butter or chocolate locally, so only the eggs and flour were local. These treats are the essence of brownies--so much better and healthier than box brownies, and not any more difficult to make.

De-evolution of a species

The current diet of foods that do not involve cooking from scratch at home is causing the de-evolution of a nation: U.S. Americans are getting shorter, fatter, sicker, and are projected to live shorter lives. We are experiencing epidemics of diseases such as type 2 diabetes and these diseases are founder at younger ages that before. Because of our modern diet of packaged foods, we are the freaks of history.

Back to the Kitchen with the local foods movement: a Third Wave Feminist Perspective

We are now in an era of diet-caused epidemics that are starting to shorten the length and lower the quality of life. If feminist theory is to be relevant in an era of human health crisis, feminists must reconcile theory with the garden and kitchen. Current feminist theory is wrought with contradictions with regard to good food and human health. The solutions to these contradictions involve self-sufficiency, women’s history, nutrition science, and dreams for future generations of women.