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Press CoverageGoing Green - Redefining the Organic Movement - Johnson & Wales University NewsSONOMA INDEPENDENT May, 2000Eating For One ....Culinary educator Laurel Miller says that everyone should have good, home-cooked meals once in a while. "You might as well learn to cook and learn to enjoy it," says Miller, herself a busy single woman. "Life’s too short to eat Lean Cuisine every day. Much of what Miller teaches in her (Cooking for Singles) classes works for anybody, but a few strategies are essential for the smaller household. Make extra and freeze it, for example. Blanch large batches of vegetables and set them aside for the week’s stir-fry and side dishes. Plan ahead, using a written or mental menu. A well-stocked pantry is key, says Miller. "You have to have some things prepared ahead so that you can come home and just throw them together." The green olive tapenade she’ll prepare (with pan-seared swordfish) for her class at Ramekins is just one example of this well-prepared approach. It takes barely more time than a sandwich, and it make the difference between just plain fuel and really good food. Miller has a refreshingly relaxed attitude about cooking: she admits to sometimes eating cereal for dinner (current favorite: maple-pecan crunch from Trader Joe’s) and thinks that’s OK. "Give yourself permission to not cook dinner every night," she advises. "Don’t beat yourself up."
E LUXURY.COM June 29, 2000Cooking Schools: The Trends Kid’s Menu ....At The Sustainable Kitchen® in Berkeley, chef Laurel Miller teaches children ages 8 and up, and these aren’t lessons in PB & Js. For the Yucatan menu, Miller’s students make tortillas from scratch. She may adjust dishes to the spice-and skill-level of particularly young students, but Miller claims kids are often more adventurous about food than adults. BAY AREA BUSINESS WOMAN April, 2000Sustaining the Land, Sustaining Our
Lives Kids in the Kitchen ....Laurel Miller is (teaching) children and adults about organic farming. Her cooking school, The Sustainable Kitchen, is based in Berkeley, but she teaches all over the Bay Area. Her classroom is not only the kitchen but the farmer’s market, the organic farm, and the sustainable livestock ranches. She believes that the hands-on method, from milking a cow to examining soil, is the way the reach kids. "What I try to get across is that we only have one body and one planet. We need to take care of both," Miller explains. She had worked with different school districts, the organization Girls, Inc., and Draeger’s Culinary Center. She currently offers cooking classes for children and adults. One common complain about organic produce is the expense. Miller points out that what most people don’t realize is the "hidden costs" of conventional farming. We may not be paying at the check-out stand but since the farming industry is heavily subsidized by the government, we’re paying for it through taxes. "There are human and environmental costs- the chemical burns on the farm workers hands, genetic deformities in children from pesticides (DDT particularly) in Latin America- that need to be considered. We’ve been spoiled, to a degree, by the availability of out-of-season produce. Food for Thought.
CONTRA COSTA TIMES September, 1999Deborah Byrd, Food Editor School Lunch doesn’t have to be the pits ...I’ve just talked to a couple of women who specialize in cooking with kids, and it seems I’ve been looking at it (school lunches) all wrong, focusing on the limitations rather than the possibilities. "I think it’s just the general assumption- and food professionals make this assumption too," said Berkeley cooking teacher Laurel Miller. Kids are much less closed off to culinary exploration than we think, Miller believes. One secret she’s discovered: Get them involved. She’s taken students to a goat farm where they helped make cheese. And she participated in the Edible Schoolyard project at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley- where she sees 12-and 13-year-olds happily munching raw broccoli that they’d grown. In a Thai cooking class, (Miller’s students) learned about the country’s culture and climate- and topped it off by making and eating a green papaya salad. "It’s very rare I’ve ever had a kid flat-out refuse to eat something," Miller said. (For school lunches) Miller is a fan of pizza, even if it can’t be heated. "Cold pizza is pretty universal, it’s not something to shy away from," she says. "It can be really healthy if you’re not overdoing it on the cheese, not overdoing fatty processed meat like pepperoni." For a slightly different take, she suggests, try sending couscous with vegetables and feta cheese or olives, or cold pasta salads.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLEWEEKEND PREVIEW, Friday, September 24, 1999Peninsula Kids Can Go Organic With
Hands-on Program Laurel Miller teaches children, but you won’t find her lessons in traditional textbooks this fall. Berkeley-based Miller is spicing up Peninsula kids’ studies with classes in cooking and organic farming for children ages 8 and up at John Bentley’s restaurant (2991 Woodside Road, Woodside; 650-851-4988). Kids spend time in the kitchen and outdoors, with field trips to organic farms, dairies and farmers’ markets to help kids understand how food gets from the ground to the grocer. Kids experiment with hand-picked produce and spices like cardamom or a recado, a cooked chili paste from Mexico, to learn about foods of the world as well as nutrition. Nutrition is important in fighting juvenile obesity and malnutrition, Miller said. Students also learn not to waste food. "It’s vital we educate children where food comes from. As a nation, people have really lost touch with agriculture," Miller said. "It’s really one of the most important things there is. If we don’t have farms, we don’t have food." At a recent field trip to Harley Farms in Pescadero, where Sea Stars goat cheese is made, students toured the 130-goat dairy and milked a goat by hand. They made a 3-ounce round of Monet chevre, with edible flowers, and incorporated feta and chevre in roasted beet salad and a fig dessert. (Harley Farms won first place in the flavored cheese category in the American Cheese Society Competition in Vermont last month, said Dee Harley, owner of the farm. The farms products are available in gourmet grocery stores in the Bay Area. # # # |