Mollie Katzen comes to Madison

Renowned chef and cookbook author brings her vegetable love to Madison’s Food For Thought Festival
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach

In ANEW Magazine, September 2006
Column: Around the Table

Recipe: Apple-glazed Acorn Squash Rings
Recipe: A Sparkling Sweet Potato

Ah, food, glorious food. The flavor! The aroma! The justice!

Justice? What’s that got to do with food?

A lot, in a world teeming with side-by-side surplus and famine, where a few agribusinesses boom while thousands of family farms go under, where most of what we spend on food goes not to farmers but to middlemen and merchandisers, and the average morsel travels thousands of miles from farm to plate, even in this day of soaring petrol prices. How extreme can the situation be? Recently several Florida produce growers were convicted of forcing hundreds of workers into “involuntary servitude” – slavery.

So if you like to eat and care at least a whit about the thousands of humans (and other beings) who help you do it, the eighth annual Food For Thought Festival off the Capitol Square, held during the Farmers’ Market Saturday morning, Sept. 16 (plus panel discussion the night before – details at reapfoodgroup.org), is for you.

This year’s theme is “Just Cooking," with the double meaning intentional. “It’s a way of looking at food that considers the health and wholeness of all the people and systems who produce and consume it,” says Miriam Grunes, executive director of REAP, the group organizing the event. “It also means making healthy, local ingredients available so everyone has access to foods that are fresh, minimally processed, locally and/or sustainably produced, flavorful and nutritious.”

Of the two world-class keynoters slated to speak, give free cooking classes and sign books, one is Anna Lappé, whose most recent book, Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, encourages readers to “joyfully and deliciously embrace our responsibilities as world citizens,” says Grunes.

The other is veggie cookery superstar Mollie Katzen, one of the best-selling cookbook authors of all time. Mollie’s first book was 1977’s instant classic Moosewood Cookbook, followed by The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and many more cookbooks. Her achievements include a long-running cooking show on public television, awards for illustration and design, a seat at the Harvard School of Public Health’s Nutrition Roundtable and a place in the Natural Health Hall of Fame.

In advance of her upcoming first trip to Wisconsin, Mollie spoke with us from the Berkeley, Calif. home where she’s lived for 21 years.

VVK: You helped put vegetarian cookery on the map. But you’re not a vegetarian yourself?

MK: If you go through my books, I never made an argument for vegetarianism. I said, if you want to eat less meat, here’s what you can cook.

I love low-on-the-food-chain food – nut butters, grains, beans, fruits, lots of vegetables. But being a vegetarian? To me it’s completely a nonissue. I don’t agree or disagree; it’s a very personal choice. But it’s irrelevant to your health. It doesn’t answer the question, what are you nourishing yourself with?

I think the early health foods movement was a lot about not eating this or that. People would say, “I’ve stopped eating meat.” And their friends would say, “Oh, good, you’re healthy now!” And that would be the end of the sentence. You’d wake up healthy the next day. It was a culture of denial. I don’t want to eat remorse food. I want fresh, delicious food. Food that’s about, “How can I make this as delicious as possible?” It doesn’t have to be fancy.

I’ve witnessed many vegetarians who are simply non-meat-eaters, without a single vegetable or fruit in their day – who subsist on high processed-carb diets with very little or no protein and very little or no fiber or fruit. And some meat-eaters are incredibly fit and healthy. It depends on what is actually eaten – not on what is not eaten.

VVK: What about the ethics: can meat to fit in with a just way of life? Can there ever be a regular place for bacon and burgers on the ethically aware table?

MK: Absolutely. There is sustainably raised meat. Humans have been omnivores all the way back in time.

VVK: Natural foods has become a big-money industry, but much of is in processed foods supporting the American lifestyle of prepackaged meals and quick-access snacks, not fresh ingredients that people take home to prepare lovingly.

MK: It's the result of people's perceived time-crunch issues. Nobody says, I don’t have time to watch my favorite TV shows, or surf the Internet. They just do it. Some people spend more time watching the Food Network than actually preparing food. I don’t know what that blockage is about. But a lot of that goes away when you fall in love with cooking.

VVK: Fall in love?

MK: I don’t want to make it sound like I’m talking about some mystical thing. I mean making a commitment, devoting time to your relationship with food. Love is manifest by making time for someone or something, make space for that in your life. That’s almost a working definition of love. When you love someone, what do you do? It’s the same as with any hobby, or a love for literature.

That’s really the key to dealing with a lot of our issues around food. Get closer to it, learn the craft. People who come to my classes, it’s the main barrier that keeps them from cooking more vegetables. They don’t have a comfortable relationship with a knife. I tell people, make friends with the knife. Keep it sharp. Practice.

Look on this as a craft, a really fun craft. Walk away from your kitchen. Then make it into a place that’s pleasant for you to be in and reconstitute that relationship in your life. Get a couple of really good tools. Find a knife that you really bond with – that you can have fun with.

Unfortunately, time to cook and focus on healthy and organic cooking has become a luxury. If you’re a harried mother, broke, with three children under age 5, and you pass McDonald’s with a chicken sandwich under a dollar, I’m not going to lecture that person. Although the irony is that for many people there’s a huge savings cooking at home.

VVK: Your cookbooks for children are so helpfully written and laid out, and the food is real eating, not kiddie novelty stuff. I think they’re ideal for anyone, any age, who wants to learn to cook. But if you’re an adult trying to cook with kids – how do you stay patient?

MK: Cook with children for fun, not for a meal or for a goal. "Process over product," is my motto for cooking with young kids. Children become more interested in fruits and vegetables when they get a chance to encounter them pre-plate, as in the garden – ideal! – or the farmers' market. Children also are attracted to things they get to prepare themselves, so let them make a tasty sauce to dip vegetables in, and you'll be amazed how their relationship to the vegetable will improve.

VVK: Do you have any words of encouragement or support or inspiration for moving to a more fully engaged relationship with food?

MK: Go to the farmer’s market and get things that look beautiful to you, whatever it is, and just bring it all home. Then put it all out. Get your tomatoes and strawberries and arrange it all in little bowls. Just stare at it. And just eat it. Plain. Cut up some tomatoes and maybe tear up some basil leaves on them. Do as little as possible. And that’s cooking.

Recipes
Thirty years ago, when Mollie Katzen published her first, groundbreaking, cookbook, meatless meals tended towards “big, heavy entrees” with “thick sauces that would bury or mask” the veggies, she recalls. Today there’s “more flavor, less fuss, more subtlety.”

“The produce is better,” says Mollie. “Cooking knowledge is more sophisticated. People are into drizzling a little of this or that rather than concocting something. You can get high-quality toasted nut oils, rice vinegar, balsamic vinegar, Meyer lemons, fresh herbs.” Simple preparations can be dazzling and delicious, especially when they’re made with top quality ingredients: just choose a veg and roast, grill or braise it. Then finish simply – drizzle, glaze, make a reduction from the cooking liquid or sprinkle on some coarse salt.


How easy can it be to create a fresh and fabulous dish this way? Check out these recipes (edited for space) from Mollie’s latest, Eat, Drink and Weigh Less (Hyperion, 2006), co-written with Walter Willett, M.D. of the Harvard School of Public Health. Then get down to the farmers’ market on the Square on Sept. 16, and pick up these autumn ingredients in peak season on your way to the Food For Thought Festival. [See top of this article for links to the recipes.]

Apple-glazed Acorn Squash Rings

Related article: Mollie Katzen Comes to Madison

“Simple and sweet” – Mollie Katzen

1 acorn squash
3 Tablespoons (or more) apple juice or defrosted concentrate

Slice one (unpeeled) acorn squash into 1/2" rings. Remove seeds. Arrange on a foil-lined, lightly sprayed, baking sheet. Bake at 375° on oven center rack. After 15 minutes (or when squash is fork-tender), remove from oven and drizzle or brush with apple. Heat broiler to 500° and move oven rack to highest position. Broil just a minute or two, until squash tops begin to brown. (Watch carefully – they can burn quickly.) Remove from oven. If desired, glaze with a touch more apple. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.

A Sparkling Sweet Potato

Related article: Mollie Katzen comes to Madison

“Utterly divine” – Mollie Katzen

A Sparkling Sweet Potato

1 sweet potato (about 6 oz.)
1–2 Tablespoons fresh lime juice (or to taste)

Microwave sweet potato 3 minutes on high. Turn over and repeat. Insert fork into center to check for doneness. Cook more if needed. (Or oven-roast at 375° until fork-tender, about 1 hour.) Remove and let cool. Peel. Transfer to a bowl and mash with a fork. Mash in 1 tablespoon of the lime juice and taste. Add more lime juice as needed. Serve warm or at room temperature – or reheat in microwave and serve hot.

Floors that say “I love this planet!”

Walk lightly upon the earth with environmentally friendly flooring
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Anew Magazine, September 2006

Whether you're building a home or remodeling, your choices of what to walk on are better than ever, and better for the Big Blue Marble, too. Today it's easier than ever to choose from a wide range of environmentally sound flooring materials that look great, feel good underfoot and are easy to clean – not to mention that they don't bring formaldehyde and other nasties into your household. Several flooring sources in the Madison area offer a wide selection of “green” flooring, and the trend is only going to increase, according to national industry sources. How to decide which material to use where? What's the right look and feel for you? Here's an overview.


Cork
Grind up the leavings from bottle stopper production, press them together into flooring tiles or planks, and you have the ultimate sustainable floor: a good-looking, durable surface made from the bark of the cork oak. That's right, bark: no trees were harmed in the production of the hippest flooring in kitchens today. It's soft and springy to walk on, watertight (it can be sealed with polyurethane or wax, or used “unfinished”), and a natural sound insulator. All this makes it a nice choice for living rooms, dining rooms, and basements too. It's friendly to folks with allergies, as well as insect-resistant, antimicrobial, and even fire-resistant. Not so practical in very wet areas, say a kid's bathroom. Cork can be stained dozens of shades ranging from blond to dark brown. Cost: about $2.75–5/square foot.

Bamboo
You want a traditional wood look, and also to be nice to Ma Nature? Do the math. It takes hardwood 40 years to mature for flooring harvest. Bamboo? Five. And then it grows back. Hey, it is grass, after all. Tougher than oak, more stable than maple, bamboo flooring comes in wide planks, ideal for glueless floating floors (less glue = less toxins). The most popular green choice these days, it's water-resistant, long-lasting, easy to keep clean and just plain lovely. Available in several colors and grain patterns, bamboo can play to an Asian decor style, a parquet look, or many other styles that favor clean lines. Cost: about $4–5/square foot.

Coconut palm
One of the newest sustainable flooring options is made from the trunk of 80-year-old coconut palm trees that have stopped producing nuts in their Southeast Asia orchards. Though these were customarily thrown away, it turns out they make ideal flooring: the color is rich and dark like cherry, but with a dramatic, unusual grain pattern. It's as hard as maple and stands up to five sandings. Cost: about $10/square foot.

Teak
Say what? Doesn't getting teak involve ripping off the rainforest? Not if it's plantation-grown harvest from a reputable source. In good conscience, then, enjoy the beauty and benefits of this luxuriously dark, oil-rich wood, so resistant to water that sailing ships were once built with it, so durable that teak park benches 150 years old are still in use, and looking good. Cost: about $4–6/square foot.


Linoleum
Not that newfangled vinyl would-be stuff! Linoleum, in use since the 1800s, is a natural brew, made by mixing together linseed oil (hence the “lin”) with pine rosin, limestone, pigments and powdered wood and cork. This mixture forms granules that are then pressed into sheets against a webbing of jute yarn and hung to cure into a tough, flexible product that nowadays is available in a rainbow of dozens of bright colors and muted tones, too. Tougher than cork – or vinyl, for that matter – true lino stands up to stresses like chair wheels and is great for the hard use that a home office or rec room gets. Cost: about $5/square foot.

Natural stone tiles
You can't get much more back to nature than by bringing stone tiles into your living space. Each square reveals the history of millions of years through its unique patterns. Shadings range from subtle to spectacular, with fine grains or wild whorls of vanilla, gold, rose, charcoal, peach and more. Limestone, slate and and sandstone are fast gaining popularity in mudrooms, foyers and even bathrooms, where slip-resistant finishes make them more practical than you might guess – and no, they're not icy to the toesies! And with its heat-retaining properties, it's a natural choice for sub-floor radiant heat. Easy-cleaning and durable, slate is a growing trend in kitchen flooring. Another good stone site: around the hearth. Caution: some stones are tough to clean. Cost: about $6–7/square foot.

Reclaimed wood
Follow the footsteps of history – install flooring once used in old Wisconsin barns and warehouses and re-milled into tounge-and-groove planks, available from Eco-Friendly Flooring on Madison's West side. Douglas fir, yellow-heart pine and maple are the most commonly available, but you never know what unique treasure might turn up. Cost: $4.50–15/square foot.

Recycled glass or aluminum tile
Glass tiles add shimmer and style to tile floors, as well as backsplashes, walls, bar fronts and more, and are available in over 100 patterns and colors. Cost: $22–100/square foot, but you can also purchase them by the piece. Aluminum's sheen is attractive and oh-so-moderne on fireplace surrounds and kitchen and bath fixtures and backsplashes. Lacquered aluminum tile makes a dramatic choice for a bathroom floor as well, coming in smooth and nubbly finishes. It's durable and low-maintenance, but lining the you-know-what with, well, old cans, is probably the priciest pun you'll ever play. Recycled brass, bronze and copper tiles are available, too. Cost: $25–60/square foot.

The Bee Charmer of Brooklyn

Mary Celley, the bee charmer of Brooklyn, explains the sweet nature of this misunderstood insect
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach

In ANEW Magazine, August 2006
Column: Around the Table

Scared of bees? Not Mary Celley. She’s got close to half a million of them, and she’s got the honey to prove it.

A full-time beekeeper who sells her wares at the Dane County Farmers Market, under her “Bee Charmer” label and runs a stinging-insect pest control business on the side, Celley, 50, is a lifelong booster of the gentle, widely misunderstood, and, unfortunately, increasingly threatened honeybee. She lovingly tends 100 hives on her farm in Brooklyn’s verdant countryside just east of Madison, where she lives with her life partner, Sue Williams – who, by the way, she says is “absolutely terrified of the bees.”

After earning a degree in entomology from the UW-Madison, Celley worked at the USDA Bee Research Unit on campus, then went into beekeeping when the program moved to Arizona in the mid 1980s. The university became pivotal in the development of the honey industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, after a revolutionary invention, the removable-comb hive, made it possible to harvest honey without destroying the hive and killing a lot of bees in the process. A new, nonviolent chapter in human honey consumption began; production soared; beekeeping as a hobby and a commercial enterprise flourished, not least in Wisconsin.

Today, environmental pollutants and hardy, pesticide-resistant mites and parasites are decimating bee populations across the nation. Most Wisconsin beekeepers must purchase bees from out of state each spring to replenish their stock.

Far more than just honey is at risk: commercial crops and wild flora alike depend on the honeybee for pollination. “The bee is fighting for survival,” says Celley. “We all need to help.”

VVK: What do you like about bees?
MC: I’m in awe over their level of organization. Their ability to commune with 80,000 other individuals in peace and harmony. Their instincts for survival.
What the bees have taught me is what life, death and rebirth are all about. How to commune with one another, how to live in a close-knit society. They work for the existence of the hive, to keep it healthy, strong, vibrant. Their sole being is for the queens’s life. They’re taking care of her children – they watch them, nurture them. I don’t think there would be too many wars if we were like that.

VVK: Tell us some common misperceptions about bees.
MC: People think everything that stings is a bee. This is one of my pet peeves. The honeybee gets a bad rap for the more aggressive type of hornets, or yellow jackets, as some people call them, in late summer and fall. Honeybees never go after your beer or brat. They are strictly nectar feeders – not scavengers.

Also, many people think honey is “bee poop.” But it comes strictly from their mouth parts and nowhere else. Honey is nectar that has been processed by the bees in an incredible fashion, and with precision.

VVK: How do your neighbors feel, living next door to a half a million bees?
MC: My bees have made their crops more productive, through pollination. My neighbors only seem to mind when, in the early spring, my bees visit their bird feeders. They mistake the millet for pollen. They pack it onto their legs and carry it away to the hive. They can carry away a lot of millet! But then they can’t do anything with it once they get it there.

VVK: What varieties of honey do your bees produce, and how do you – and the bees – keep from getting them mixed up?
MC: Certain flowers only bloom at certain times, so that is how you know what you are getting. Plus, honeys have different colors and flavors. Black Locust tree honey is a beautiful, white, sweet honey. I also get the different clovers: White, Yellow, Alsike, and White Dutch. I also get a fall honey that comes from the different wildflowers. Any specialty honey is popular. People are willing to try new things, especially if you have it packaged and displayed right. I also sell beeswax candles.

VVK: How much honey do bees make, and how long does it take them?
MC: Usually they bring in 15 to 20 pounds a day. If there is a good honey flow on, I’ve seen a hive fill with 50 pounds of honey in a day. Every hive is different. Some hives are lazy, just like some people. Or, you could have bad genetics going on, or the queen is getting old and not laying a good brood pattern.
When they run out of space, the hive might swarm [fly away en masse in search of a new home]. You lose half your hive and honey – it really sets a hive back.

VVK: What’s your favorite thing about beekeeping?
MC: My favorite thing to do is to just watch and listen to the bees. The hum they make during the honey flow is like music being played by no instrument you can name. The smell of sweet clover opens the senses to joy and happiness. It’s aromatherapy at its best.
It’s all about joy and how grateful I am to know what I am here to do and why. I couldn’t be more fortunate in my life.

RECIPE

The best ways to eat honey are “pretty plain and simple,” says Celley. For delicately flavored honeys, like the pale concoction made from her briefly flowering black locust trees, just drizzle over toast and enjoy. More robust honeys are perfect for basting chicken during broiling, or in barbecue and slow-roast sauces. “Honey seems to act as a tenderizer,” she says, thanks to its powerful enzymes that break down tough tissue.

The sauce that makes these spareribs so sweet and savory is also great for outdoor barbecue cookery, perfect for summer entertaining.

Honey-Baked Spareribs

4 pounds spareribs
2 teaspoons salt

Sauce:
1 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic
1 1/2 cups catsup
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 teaspoon prepared mustard
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Cut spareribs into serving-size portions. Simmer with salt in enough water to cover. In a saucepan, combine sauce ingredients and cook over low heat about 7 minutes. Drain ribs. Place in baking pan. Pour sauce over ribs. Bake at 400º F for 45 minutes or until tender, basting every 10 minutes with the sauce.

Home Cooking On the Trail

Cuda Café’s Beth Mueller
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach

In ANEW Magazine, July 2006
Column: Around the Table

After 16 years at home raising five children, 43-year-old Watertown native Beth Mueller took on out-of-the-house work in a big way. Last October she plunged into the job of “manager and chief cook and bottle washer” (her words) at Cuda Café, an earthy haven for home cooking and live acoustic music off Deerfield’s Main Street and just a few feet from the scenic, easy-pedaling bike route that is the Glacial Drumlin State Trail.

Mueller’s husband, Randy, along with two partners, were finishing up a year-and-a-half renovation of a tobacco warehouse once used for storing local crops to load onto passing trains. Re-christened it “The T’Baccey Barn,” it’s home to tenants including e-Cove Market, featuring antiques and works by local artists, and a recording studio.

Mueller was drawn to the historic structure with its exposed woodwork and old farmland charm. “When Randy was working on the building and I would come in to say ‘Hi,’ the building even then had a great feel to it,” she recalls. “It’s not something I can actually put into words. It just felt comfortable. Then, when they came up with the café idea, I volunteered to take on the managing of it. I thought it was a great idea!”

VVK: Tell me about your culinary point of view.
BM: I choose fresh ingredients over pre-packaged items and try as much as possible to make things ourselves. We try to promote Wisconsin with our milk, meats, cheeses and homemade wieners from Kraemer’s Dairy and Glenn’s Meat Market in Watertown, Wisconsin microbrewery beers and wines, Ancora Coffee, Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream, and Wisconsin musicians.

My hope is that I’ve created a place where, when people walk in, they feel welcome and are able to relax for a little while. I’ve created a menu of healthy foods in satisfying serving sizes. Ninety percent of the food we serve we’ve made ourselves. So we know what’s in it and that it’s as fresh and wholesome as we can make it.


VVK: What are some of your favorite dishes?
BM: The Cuda Cheese Steak is very popular: Sourdough bread with mayo, sautéed onion, mozzarella cheese and top-round roast beef, all grilled. Heather DeHart, my food angel, created our grilled Turkey Cilantro Wrap, with a cilantro-mayo spread that we make, muenster cheese, oven-baked turkey breast, and sautéed onions, red peppers, and green peppers. Then there’s Garden Meets Grill, focaccia bread with provolone cheese. We sauté zucchini, mushrooms, red peppers and onions in olive oil. Then we put on our orange soy sauce spread and grill the whole thing!

VVK: What’s your background in cuisine?
BM: I first fell in love with dough watching Chef Brockett on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” I also had a wonderful grandma who was very patient with me and taught me how to make sweet rolls, and a babysitter who made homemade bread and gave me dough to play with and make my own little loaves. I waitressed for about 15 years off and on in my life. I was the lunch director at my children’s elementary school for four years and fed 100 kids every lunch day. That was really fun!

VVK: What’s your favorite type of cooking?
BM: My favorite thing is baking! I make all of my cookies: chocolate chip, oatmeal raising, peanut butter, ginger crinkles, Cuda Chip – oatmeal, chocolate chip, and sweet ground chocolate. The muffins, coffee cake, apple pie, fudge brownies, dessert bars, biscotti. I get my breads from a supplier in Madison, Elegant Foods, that I really love – marble rye, sourdough, eight-grain – which are organic, and grill so nicely. I also get my croissants, cinnamon rolls, pastries, and Door County Cherry Pie, and Key Lime Pie from them.

VVK: What does “Cuda Café” mean?
BM: It’s short for “barracuda.” We have a barracuda mounted over the downstairs bar. He (or she) is biting our first dollar of profit! The fish was actually caught by [another partner] Dalton Schreiber’s mom. Go, Mom! Bob Griggas [the third partner] also owns a red Barracuda car.

I find it humorous that we’re named after a fish but don’t feature a fish fry on our menu. And that the building was originally a tobacco warehouse for loading tobacco on the railroad but we’re a nonsmoking establishment.

VVK: How do music and food interact at Cuda?

BM: On Friday and Saturday evenings you get all of your senses stimulated: taste and smell, sight and hearing. Add to that the company of others and the atmosphere of the building itself. It makes for a great experience. We maintain a wide variety of music. Original singer-songwriters, blues, jazz, bluegrass, rock, alternative country.

Old Dogs New Tricks is a band with roots in the Deerfield area. The dance floor is packed when they play. The Twang Dragons’ alternative country rock gets the dance floor humming, too. The Gomers have a songbook of over 2000 songs and you can be the singing star with them. Loads of fun. We’ve had [jazz guitarists] Kirk Tatnall and Jack Grassal, who are amazing musicians.

VVK: What do you like most about running the café?
BM: Making an apple pie from scratch, serving a warm piece to a customer and seeing how much they enjoy it. Moments like that. Success to me is a café full of contented customers, not the profit margin at the end of the day. This probably sounds idealistic and I know it drives my husband and the other two owners crazy – but that’s me!

RECIPE

“Oooo!” says Mueller, “I’m going to give you the recipe for my tomato soup. We had a HUGE garden this past summer and the whole thing was tomatoes. I made gallons and gallons.”
File under “happy accidents” this simple, scrumptious use for summer’s bounty. “One time I made a rather huge batch of spaghetti sauce for canning,” Mueller explains. “You have to let the mixture boil down, and it was getting late at night and I was getting impatient. So I started skimming off the top. Well, we tasted it, and it was so good I decided to can it.”

Beth’s Fresh Tomato Soup
3 medium onions, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup water
Half bunch celery(about 6 ribs) trimmed and chopped
6 pounds fresh tomatoes, quartered
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon granulated garlic or 1 heaping tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon dried basil or 1/4 cup fresh chopped basil

Place onions and water in a large, heavy pot over medium heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cover. Cook 10 minutes. Add all other ingredients. Stir, raise heat to medium. Cook, covered until the tomatoes are tender (about 1 hour) . Add 1–2 tablespoons sugar to smooth out the flavor. Cook another five minutes. Cool and strain. Discard solids.

Yield: 1 gallon. Cream of tomato fans can add milk at the table, as Mueller’s son Steven does. Extra tip: Freeze in quart-size bags. “I lay them out on a cookie tray and put them in the freezer. Then when they’re frozen, I stack them up.”

Cuda Cafe, 12 S. Industrial Park Road, Deerfield. Phone: (608) 764-2736. Check www.cuda-cafe.com for music listings.

“I Do” Cakes By Betty Arp

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach

in ANEW Magazine, June 2006
Column: Around the Table

“I love wedding cakes over any other type of cake because of its grandness and what it stands for,” says Betty Arp, proprietor of “I Do” Cakes by Betty, providing custom, cutting-edge cakes from scratch in her licensed home kitchen. “Maybe I'm a romantic, but I still think love can last forever.”

We’ve all experienced wedding cakes that were just tasteless towers of cloying confection – and that just is not acceptable to the 46-year-old Missouri native. “A cake not only needs to look beautiful but taste fantastic,” she insists. “Wedding cakes have had a bad reputation for years of being dry and flavorless. All too often clients say that not everyone eats cake at a reception. My response is that people will eat the cake if it’s a good one. Word spreads at the reception when it’s good.”

Along with traditional white cake, Arp’s varieties include raspberry mudslide, lemon poppy seed, hazelnut and turtle. Strawberry mousse is a favorite filling of late. Unconventional choices don’t scare her a bit. “Couples are going for all-chocolate wedding cakes,” she says. “Why not? Who doesn't love chocolate?”

A wife of 25 years and mother of three, Arp is passionate about flavor, and that includes her approach to what she calls the most exciting trend in wedding cakes: “Fondant, fondant, fondant! It’s the most creative medium for confectionery artists. Trends and tools are growing. Colors, textures, faux looks. It's endless,” she says. “Don't believe the things you read about it as far as taste. As with buttercreams, there are good recipes and there are bad recipes. Clients come to me saying that they love the look but not the taste. After a tasting with me, they’ve booked fondant cakes.”

So what is fondant? Imagine edible Play-doh made chiefly of boiled sugar syrup that can be rolled out like pie crust, draped over cakes and shaped, yielding a sophisticated, satiny finish. It’s a smooth, constructed look that you just can’t get with traditional buttercream frosting.

Also important is gum paste, which is a supremely workable medium and, despite its odd name, capable of great beauty. Dating from medieval times, this pliable, sturdy clay made from boiled sugar and natural plant gums is increasingly edging out the more fragile choices for sculpted flowers and other decorations.

VVK: How did your business get started?
BA: I made many birthday cakes and party cakes for family and friends over the years. The opportunity came to put a licensed kitchen in my home in 1993 and I jumped at it. My first wedding cake was done for someone in my church that I just called and said, “Would you give me a chance?” It was the best call I could have made. Within the next year this bride had two sisters get married. I have since done another brother and sister in the family. Now I’m doing cakes for their children's events.

VVK: How does a wedding cake order work?
BA: I usually receive either a call or e-mail from couples who want to set up an appointment for a tasting and get more information. I meet with clients at the dining table since my bakery kitchen is not that large, so the family just clears out for a while.

I don't freeze my cakes and I want to make sure the customer is tasting what they actually will be getting for their event. I appreciate the fact that people want to taste the product before purchasing, but I can't have too many different flavors to taste at one time without a lot of waste. It can be a challenge because I don't have a storefront to sell extra cake if someone doesn't show up for an appointment.

VVK: What’s your culinary background?
BA: I learned strictly at my grandmother’s and mother’s skirts. I started cooking around the age of 9. I come from a background of cooking with no recipe. A little of this and a pinch of that is how you make something. I do follow a recipe with the cakes so that I have a consistent product, but I’m not afraid to try new flavors.

That's how I developed my popular "Champagne Cake." This cake has a very distinct flavor that’s not at first noticeable, but then you get this little zing. [Once] I was describing it to a bride. She had not had a chance to taste it yet, but said that she had always found that champagne was dry and wouldn't that make the cake dry?

VVK: Tell me about your passion. Why cakes?
BA: I got interested in decorating cakes watching a very special aunt who did wedding cakes for family. I was so amazed at the frosting roses she would make. She told me someday she would teach me how to make them. She died suddenly before I got that opportunity.

Many years later, I received a beginner’s cake decorating kit and I was hooked. I took classes in a local store that sold supplies. Since that time I’ve taken many classes, even traveling to Toronto to take a rolled fondant class. I also attend conventions of years of the International Cake Exploration Societé (ICES) to stay updated on the new trends, techniques and tools. I was the state representative for ICES several years ago.

VVK: What was the most unusual wedding cake request you ever got?
BA: The bride wanted to surprise the groom with a three-dimensional deer with an arrow in it. The groom was an avid archery hunter. I made a red velvet cake deer with an arrow, but I refused [the bride’s request] to make the deer appear to be bleeding. The bride loved it, but the groom was afraid to cut it for fear of it exploding or something.

VVK: What was your favorite cake?
My daughter's wedding cake. It was an ecru fondant cake with white cutout lace pieces joined by fine string work. It gave the cake the appearance of being covered with a lace cloth. The top and bottom tiers had edible satin ribbon around them, with the bottom tier having a large bow with tails and the top tier ribbon overlapping and appearing to be secured by an antique brooch. We used fresh flowers from my own flower garden to accent. It was a joy to make.

VVK: What’s in and out of style in wedding cakes?
Stacked cakes with no pillars are in. Anything plastic is out. The bridges and fountains of the ’70s and ’80s have pretty much faded.

VVK: Any advice for our readers ?
Don't worry about what everyone else wants. This is your day. Get a cake style that reflects your taste. If you want whimsical, do it. If you like elegant, do it.

Oh, and white is white is white. The lighting at your reception is going to change whatever color white you have to another color white. It's okay.

RECIPE
When newly married, Arp made angel food cake from (gasp) a mix. “It just didn’t cut it with my husband,” she says. “It was not like his mom’s.” One mother-in-law’s cake recipe later, Arp had “the favorite of my entire family” and a popular birthday request.

So get out your sifters and mixers – air, air, air is the key to this feather-light treat, lovely either plain or topped with berries.


PEGGY’S ANGEL FOOD CAKE
1 2/3 cups (about 13) egg whites
1 cup + 2 tablespoons cake flour, sifter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 additional cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon cream of tarter
1 teaspoon each vanilla and almond extract

Sift flour and first sugar and set aside. Combine egg whites, cream of tarter, salt and extracts. Beat on high speed two minutes till whites hold a medium to stiff peak. Reduce speed to medium and slowly sprinkle in the cup of sugar.
Reduce speed to low and add flour-sugar mixture evenly and gently, over the course of about a minute and half.
Put batter in an ungreased angel food tube pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.
Invert pan onto a tall bottle to cool.

Thea Miller brings it all together as product manager of Brennan's Market

Bringing it all together: Thea Miller, Product Manager of Brennan’s Market
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
in ANEW Magazine, May 2006
Column: Around the Table

Related recipe: Red Sangria

Remember that 1976 cooking show, “In the Kitchen With Thea”? Of course you don’t. It was never televised.

“I would stand at the counter in our kitchen that overlooked our living room and host a show to an imaginary audience,” recalls 34-year-old Milwaukee native Thea Miller. “I have a few pictures, but this was before video cameras so I have no idea what I said – though I must have thought it was important. I have always loved food.”

Today, Miller is the product manager for Brennan’s Farm Markets, southern Wisconsin’s highly regarded purveyors of specialty produce, wines, cheeses and beers purchased directly from farmers and artisans around the world. Owner Skip Brennan does most of the globe-trotting and deal-making involved with acquiring new products, but it’s Miller who brings it all together. Some of her duties: doing the research that leads to new finds, helping small producers learn the intricacies of international export, handling PR and educating each employee about new products, so they can pass on the Brennan’s enthusiasm to the customer.

For someone whose passion for spreading the good word about good eats is literally lifelong, it’s the perfect occupation.

Miller started at Brennan’s while a history major at Mount Mary College. Her mother, a fan of the grocery with the old-timey feel and distinctive selection, talked her into taking a summer job at the nearby Brookfield store. “I planned to leave at the end of the summer,” says Miller. “Labor Day weekend came and went, and I’m still working at Brennan’s.”


VVK: What do you enjoy most about your job?
TM: I get to work with my favorite things: wine and food. I’ve been lucky enough to travel all over the world meeting with our winemakers and producers, learning firsthand what they do.

Last April, I traveled to New Zealand and worked at Daniel Schuster’s winery during harvest. He is the producer of Kiwi Gold [Brennan’s first private label wine], a fantastic wine. I got to pick Pinot Noir grapes and run them through the destemmer. And learn about winemaking from a pioneer of New Zealand wine and an international wine consultant.

It was fun and very educational, but a lot of hard work. I was covered in grapes by the end of each day and exhausted. I might have snuck a few to eat, too. I can’t wait to get that vintage in!

VVK: Tell me about your involvement with the private label wines.

We started the program about six years ago. For a number of years, Brennan’s has carried exclusive wines, meaning that if you can buy it at Brennan’s, you cannot buy it anywhere else. The private label program goes further. In 2005, we launched five new lines from all over the world, including New Zealand, Australia, Chile and California. Each line includes several varieties.

We like to work with small family-owned wineries. These little guys don’t have the production to supply big importers, so they normally wouldn’t make it to the U.S. Once a winery gets the stamp of approval from Skip, the task of getting the wine here goes to me. This involves building and maintaining a relationship with the supplier, making sure labels meet government requirements, educating our staff, making signs and tasting notes and coordinating visits from suppliers.

I brainstorm ideas for label names, work with our designer, write back labels, provide support materials for each lineup – like brochures and tasting notes – and work with staff at each store to launch and promote new wine. It’s a great feeling to know that words I wrote are on thousands of labels out there in people’s homes.

VVK: What’s been your biggest challenge?
TM: Keeping balance with all of our producers, projecting, promoting and selling to meet everyone’s needs. When you have things coming in from around the world, you can’t order and have something show up the next day.

VVK: What are some foods that Brennan’s has led the way in introducing?
TM: Skip found Island Grove Olives at a farmers’ market in Tasmania. Wendy, the owner, was selling her vacuum-packed olives there. Skip drove back to her grove and convinced her to sell her olives to us. Now she sells them all around the world.

VVK: Any flops that should have been a sure thing?
TM: We carried a sparkling juice called “Uva Uva” around 1998. The company was founded by gentleman and his daughters, and they bottled it champagne style. It was hands down the best product on the market. At that time, our exclusive grocery program was very small and the owner of the company was trying to compete with lower price rather than separating from the pack. He started selling to the big wholesale stores. Unfortunately, he went out business. Today, with the strength of our sampling program, I know it would be a great seller for us and wish we could find a product like it.

VVK: How do you compete with the mega-warehouse grocery stores?
TM: People are looking for great service and great food. The big key is having both and differentiating yourself from the pack. We sell products that the big guys don’t. We seek out the best from the little guys like us. We have a story behind every product we sell, whether it’s an orange, a pistachio or a bottle of wine.

Red Sangria

Related article: Thea Miller of Brennan's Market

“Just because I’m a wine buyer, don’t think that I sit around and drink expensive bottles of wine every night,” says Miller, who adapted this robust punch from a Food Network recipe for her thirtieth birthday celebration. “I like all different kinds of sangria, but this one in particular because it can be made with fruit that’s available year-round. Sometimes it’s fun to kick back with a big plate of paella or enchiladas and enjoy a glass.”

Red Sangria

3/4 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
2 bottles dry red wine*
3/4 cup brandy
1/2 cup triple sec
3/4 cup orange juice
2 oranges, sliced in thin rounds
2 green apples, cored and sliced thin
2 lemons, sliced in thin rounds

Boil water and pour over sugar to dissolve. Cool. Combine all ingredients in a large pitcher and refrigerate covered for at least two hours and up to two days. Serve over ice.

*Miller suggests any of these Brennan’s private label picks: Bootleg Reserve Mixed Red, Riverland Merlot, Monterey Coast Cabernet Sauvignon. Or, try a single 1.5 liter bottle of Brennan’s Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon.

Orange Tree Imports' very own Orange

Carol "Orange" Schroeder of Orange Tree Imports
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In ANEW Magazine
Column: Around the Table
April 2006

Related recipe: Orange's Roasted Veggies

In the mid-1970s a Jersey girl nicknamed "Orange" for her bright tresses, along with her husband, Dean, founded a foodie's paradise on Monroe Street. From cooking classes to gourmet cookware to exquisite serving accessories and gifts, Orange Tree Imports is one local treasure that just keeps getting better.

Though co-proprietor Carol “Orange” Schroeder has no formal business education, her shop has thrived for over 30 years, and her book, Specialty Shop Retailing: How to Run Your Own Store (John Wiley & Sons), has sold over 30,000 copies and been translated into Russian. Recently, I caught up with Orange to learn the story behind her success.



VVK: What attracted you to the Monroe Street neighborhood?


OS: I grew up in a very small town in New Jersey. When I first saw Monroe Street, it was like a village within the big city of Madison. Even today, it has its own bank, library, drug store, school and park - just like my hometown. We were lucky to buy a house a few blocks from the store when I was hired by Bord & Stol, so we feel very much part of the community.



VVK: What led to the unique configuration of your establishment?



OS: I had spent a year at the University of Copenhagen, with lots of free time to browse in Danish stores, and I wanted to bring some of their friendly feeling to Madison. I came in the early 1970s to get an M.A. in Danish literature, which was a wonderful experience but not necessarily a wise career move. A few months after receiving my degree, I was hired by a Madison-based Scandinavian furniture store called Bord & Stol to manage their new branch. I immediately fell in love with the antique bay window of the little shop.

When my husband Dean and I bought the branch six months later, we discontinued the furniture and concentrated on accessories. We changed the name of the store to Orange Tree Imports rather impetuously. It was a natural extension to expand into even more kitchenware when Dean joined the business full-time a year later.



VVK: How do you and your husband share the responsibilities at the store?



OS: Dean is in charge of merchandise relating to cooking and serving food, and I'm in charge of all the gift items. Orange Tree Imports is run as a participative democracy, with every one of our 30 staff members having real responsibility for some aspect of the store.



VVK: How about cooking duties at home?



OS: Dean is the creative cook. He’s known for his original version of Cape Breton oatcakes. But we split the daily cooking about evenly.


VVK: What’s your most popular kitchen item these days?



OS: The Santoku knife, which has been featured on several television cooking shows. It's a cross between a chef's knife and a cleaver. Dean gave me a ceramic one for Christmas. I was worried at first about it being breakable, I love using it -- it cuts incredibly well. We also sell lots of traditional forged metal ones.

The other big trend is silicone, a flexible, functional material that comes in whimsical colors not previously associated with cooking. There are reusable pink silicone food loops for tying together large fish or roasts, frosted silicone multi-function lids that can go in the microwave or oven, and heat-proof silicone spatulas. 




VVK: How about the most useless, outlandish kitchen item you’ve sold?


OS: The “square egger,” a mold that you could put a warm hard-boiled egg in so that it cooled in a cube shape.



VVK: What's your take on people's attitudes towards cookware?



OS: Customers, especially male shoppers, seem more willing to spend money on good knives than quality cookware. I think that is in part because men relate to knives as tools, and often want the best, even for kitchens where they aren't the primary cook. 

It's not quite as obvious why a high quality pan will enhance the cooking experience. Not everyone knows, for example, that food doesn't tend to stick in cookware that heats very evenly. Not everyone realizes that there are alternatives to traditional Teflon-like nonstick finishes, even though many customers express concern about the safety of nonstick cookware. As a specialty shop, it's our job to inform customers about the different options, and encourage them to try a piece or two to see what a difference a good pan can make.


VVK: When did the Cooking School begin? What role does it play?



OS: We started it back in 1980. Although we don't make money on it, we feel it helps establish our store as a reliable authority on cooking, and of course the instructors do demonstrate products that we sell. Students are offered a discount on the day of the class, and sometimes they are inspired to make rather extensive purchases.




VVK: What sort of impact have “big box” stores and Internet shopping had?



OS: We’re always looking for special products customers can't get at the big box stores. Fortunately for us, Madison has a strong interest in supporting locally owned businesses. We try to provide a pleasant shopping experience and competitive prices to reward that loyalty.

The Internet has not proven to be a big competition in our type of merchandise, because customers like to examine what they are buying, and compare it to other items. There’s also the serendipity of finding things you love while just browsing. The added shipping costs and delayed gratification of shipping time have also been deterrents to Internet sales in our field, although we know that a few people come and talk to us and then make the purchase elsewhere. That is probably true in every type of retailing today.




VVK: What’s in Orange Tree Imports’ future?



OS: In the fall Monroe Street will again have a grocery store, which will help restore a part of our "town" that’s been missing for four years. We anticipate that the Trader Joe's customer will in many cases also be an Orange Tree Imports customer, and hope to introduce our shop to a whole new market as a result.

Orange's Roasted Veggies

Related article: Orange Tree Imports' Very Own Orange

Forget boiling, steaming and sauteeing! Oven roasting concentrates veggies’ flavor, carmelizes their sugars, browns beautifully and retains their shape. These easy examples – a warm side and a chilled party snack – will prove the point: no fuss, no mush.

Oven-Roasted Asparagus

Preheat oven to 450° F. Clean a pound of fresh asparagus, trimming off the woody ends. Line a jelly-roll pan with a silicone liner or aluminum foil. Spray surface with olive oil or cooking spray. Spread asparagus in a single layer. Mist with olive oil (a Misto sprayer works great), turn and spray again. Sprinkle lightly with freshly ground salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes, stirring once. Garnish with lemon wedges.

Marinated Brussels Sprouts and Baby Carrots

Preheat oven to 400° F. Using the same method as above, roast a pound of Brussels sprouts and a half pound of baby carrots. Let cool. Combine with 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar in a lidded container. Refrigerate at least two hours, occasionally shaking to mix.

Madison Club’s Executive Chef Catherine McKiernan

In ANEW Magazine
Column: Around the Table
March 2006

Related recipe: Madison Club PBJ

For those of us who have enough trouble just mangling a supermarket pack of boneless, skinless chicken breast into stir-fry chunks, imagine the skill and nerves it would take to disassemble an entire bird – beautifully, to exacting standards of precision and cleanliness. Now add a gang of chefs scrutinizing your every move, just waiting for you to slip up by wiping your hand on your apron or leaving behind an unsightly knife mark.

That’s just a sliver of the practical exam portion of the American Culinary Federation’s grueling process of Chef de Cuisine Certification (CCC), a distinction recently earned by Catherine McKiernan. That makes her one of 726 CCCs in the nation, possibly the only one in the Madison area and certainly the only female one locally.

“It was a long process,” says McKiernan, 36, a native of Scotland who moved here in 1988 when she married her (now ex-)husband, a Madisonian. “I had to sit a lot of exams. But the hardest part for me was the practical.” Under five merciless pairs of eyes and a strict time limit McKiernan whipped up classic French sauces, crystal-clear consommé and intensive, artful platings that would make the Iron Chefs weep. “I must have washed my hands a thousand times,” she recalls.

One of a handful of women to make the difficult break into the rigidly male-dominated upper echelons of cuisine, McKiernan is executive chef at the Madison Club, a prestigious private venue located downtown on Wilson Street.

McKiernan graduated MATC’s culinary trades program, attending on a scholarship from the Wisconsin Restaurant Association. Today she’s a scholarship mentor for the Association’s Education Foundation.

As a teen McKiernan worked a fruit and veg stand on the streets of Glasgow. Later she took jobs in professional kitchens while earning her degree in English literature at the University of Glasgow.

Stateside, McKiernan started out washing dishes at Camp Ojibwa in Eagle River, where she was quickly promoted to head cook. “The camp director, Denny Rosen, is the person who really encouraged me to pursue my culinary career. No other boss since has been so fair and encouraging,” she says. McKiernan spent 12 summers at the camp. After her first marriage ended, romance blossomed with Paul Williams, camp waterfront director, who’s now her fiancé.

Q: In this day and age, is it so different for a woman to make it in the professional kitchen?

A: Yes. Part of it is the hours. I work six days a week, usually 55 to 60 hours. It’s hard to have a life, a family. I don’t have children or anything. The men have a wife who will do that.

There is prejudice, especially as you go up through the levels. I went to a chef’s conference in West Virginia recently. Out of 300 chefs, only 4 were women, myself included, and one of the women was from Dubai!

[A local magazine] just came out with an article about the top chefs in Madison. Not one woman was mentioned. This happens a lot.

Q: How about in your kitchen?

Our situation is extremely unusual – I’m sure we’re the only place in town where both the executive chef and sous chef are female. Amy Shimank is my sous chef. She just had a baby. That’s really unusual for women in our profession. Her fiancé is home looking after the baby. She’s fantastic – 100% focused. Then there’s Corrine Richardson, She’s the lead sauté chef.

I can’t say enough about these wonderful, skilled women. The three of us have skills that the men in that article don’t even have! For example, we’re all accomplished in pastry work. That opens up more possibilities for what we can do. I can describe something, and they know exactly what I mean and how to create it. But because we’re a private club, it’s harder to get the word out about what we’re doing.

Q: Did you pursue the Chef de Cuisine Certification in order to prove yourself?

A: Definitely. Especially because I’m a woman. Even if you say you’re an executive chef, it could mean nothing in sense of professional certification to back you up. I’ve interviewed so many people who say they can cook, but put them in a kitchen and they can’t. I never want to be that person.

Q: What’s for lunch today at the club?

A: A group of Norwegians get together here every month. All men. They always have the same thing: cod with lots and lots of butter. And they drink lots of Aquavit.

Q: How about the regular menu?

Our menus are seasonal, and we get a lot from the Farmers’ Market right next door. When we serve lamb, it’s organic lamb from a farm nearby.

We just did the menu tasting for spring. Amy and I are very happy with it. I really like the genuine, wild, striped bass. It’s done in a Niçoise style, with haricots verts, Kalamata olives, baby red potatoes. We’re oven roasting the tomatoes. All the flavors just work so well with that.

We’re also serving a tangerine-glazed pork belly. It’s one of those cuts of meat you have to braise for hours on end. But it comes out so tender and flavorful.

Q: Are you going to call it “pork belly” on the menu?

A: No! We’re calling it “House-Cured Pork.” Pork belly? Nobody would order that.

Madison Club PBJ

Related article: Madison Club Chef Catherine McKiernan

This playfully layered treat features fruity preserves and fluffy mousse on that loveliest of French breads, a rich, buttery slice of brioche. Prepare the luscious components at your convenience for serving-time assembly. McKiernan assures me this is the easiest brioche recipe ever, and it freezes well, too. You can also slice up a purchased pound cake. If you can locate loaf-shaped brioche for sale in town, let me know!

One step easier? Use any of the excellent, locally made fruit spreads available at farmers’ markets and supermarkets.

To assemble, cut 1/2" slices of brioche or pound cake. Slather with PB mousse. Lay on some strawberry. Garnish with powdered sugar. Serve on pretty plates!

Brioche

1/3 cup warm (105 F) water
1 packet active dry yeast
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons Kosher salt
6 eggs, at room temperature
2 1/2 sticks butter, cut in cubes

Dissolve yeast in water. Sift together flour, sugar, and salt into mixer bowl fitted with dough hook. Add eggs and beat on low for 1 minute. While still beating, slowly add water-yeast mixture. Beat five minutes. Scrape down bowl and beat five minutes more. Add butter cubes, beating one minute after each addition. Beat 10-15 minutes more.

Let dough double, covered, in a bowl. Turn onto floured surface and gently work out air bubbles. Cover with plastic and refrigerate overnight. Divide in half, shape, place in two generously buttered loaf pans and let rise to about 1/2" above the tops of the pans. Bake at 350 F for 35-40 minutes, until top is well-browned. Bottom should make a hollow sound when thumped. Turn out onto rack to cool.

Peanut Butter Mousse

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup mascarpone cheese
1/4 cup whipping cream, whipped with 1 teaspoon powdered sugar
2 tablespoons whipping cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Mix peanut butter and mascarpone. Add whipping cream and vanilla. Fold into whipped cream.

Preserved Strawberries

1 pint fresh, or 1 bag frozen, strawberries
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon each lemon and orange zest
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, cook berries (top and halve if fresh) over medium heat, stirring frequently, until they break down. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Increase heat and stir about 20 minutes, until thickened. Remove from heat. Stir in lemon and orange zest and vanilla extract. Let cool.

Dorothy Priske of Fountain Prairie Farm

In ANEW Magazine
Column: Around the Table
February 2006

Related recipe: Perfect Pot Roast

Lovable, charismatic moptops from the British Isles? No, they’re not the Beatles – they’re Highland Cattle, a fixture of the Scottish landscape for some 15 hundred years. And you can meet them at Fountain Prairie Farms and Inn, a bed and breakfast and so much more, owned by Dorothy and John Priske.

Just outside Columbus, about 35 miles northeast of Madison, 250 of these magnificently shaggy heritage-breed beasts roam the Priske’s grassy pastures. There the Priskes have poured their passion for environmentally sustainable farming into lovingly restoring the 1899 Victorian farmhouse that now serves as the B&B, as well as 28 acres of tal-grass prairie and 35 acres of wetland. Fountain Prairie is also home to some 50 hogs – their meat appears on the B&B menu, and you can’t eat more local than that.

For 18 years, the Priskes have been a mainstay at the Dane County Farmers’ Market. Their offerings include pork, and, of course, dry-aged, grass-fed, grain-finished Highland beef – the same beef served up at L’Etoile, the Greenbush Bar and several other fine dining establishments.

The inn and farms keep the Priskes, married 33 years, busy full-time. Dorothy once worked for a stockbroker in Madison, but she much prefers farm living. “All of our stock now is four-legged,” she says with a laugh.

VVK: Have you always been into sustainable agriculture?

DP: We’ve done a total switch. We used to do industrial row-crop farming, soybeans and corn. But things didn’t seem right to us anymore. After both of our dogs died of cancer in the same year, we thought, oh! – they’re the canary in the mine shaft.

VVK: How do Highland Cattle fit in with your goal of a more natural farm environment?

DP: We had to decide, if we have everything in grass, what’s going to eat the grass? That’s how we came upon the Highlands. They’re known for cleaning up brushy vegetation. They have a tougher tongue and throat than other kinds of cattle. They’ve been known to take down small trees!

They have two layers of hair, so they don’t need housing in winter. They get really shaggy in the winter. They look almost prehistoric when it snows. It doesn’t melt – it just sits on their back. And as a result of the extra layer of hair, they don’t put on an outside layer of fat. Of course, they make a wonderful attraction for a bed and breakfast. On a foggy, misty morning, they look so cool.

VVK: How would you describe the Highlands’ personality?

DP: They’re just so sweet. They seem smarter than Holsteins – though I shouldn’t say that in Wisconsin! Even the bulls are docile. One is named Lover Boy, and there’s a new bull named Rohan, a handsome fella. There’s Daisy. One of her horns goes up, and the other down. We call her “Crazy Daisy.”

The lead animal is a really nice cow named Gretchen. Everybody knows Gretchen is boss! She drinks first. When it’s time to move them, she leads the way. She breaks up fights between the cows. We think she’s even intervened to keep us from harm from an animal that’s being aggressive towards us. She gives them a nudge and gets between them and us.

Those are genetics we don’t want to pass on to the breed. When something like that happens, they end up in the freezer within a few weeks.

VVK: Is slaughtering difficult, emotionally?

DP: Yes. Yes. It’s not as hard now that there are more of them. But number 39 was special. And I cried the entire week. They’re a heritage breed, and the way to preserve them is to eat them. And it is difficult. But we know that that’s their purpose. We don’t name the cows that we’re going to slaughter, so that we become less involved. But they are around for at least two years. You get to know them, and some are friendlier than others.

VVK: Does the meat taste different from regular beef?

DP: The flavor is incredible. The animals older, more mature than at the supermarket. And what really brings the flavor up is dry aging for 21 days. Excess moisture evaporates, and the flavor is really intensified. The texture is different, because enzymes break down the muscle and make is tender. Wet aging is what supermarkets use. It’s packed in Cryovac, so the moisture doesn’t have anywhere to go. Wet aged beef is – ‘mush’ is the only word that comes to mind.

VVK: What do you love most about Fountain Prairie?

DP:We like knowing who eats our meat. We really enjoy working together and working at home. We adore the animals. We were talking this morning about how much we love the smell of cow breath. Kind of sweet, warm. I wonder if it makes a difference that they don’t eat silage and animal products like conventional cattle. But I’m not going to go around sniffing cows!

I love watching the wildlife – the waterfowl and deer. The other day I took a walk with the dog. The entire herd followed us. I like to go out and look at the cows, just to see who wants to come over and talk to us. Who wants a scratch.

VVK: What do you see for the future?

DP:We’re really encouraged about prospects for natural beef. Sales have increased 20 percent in the last year, which I think is a really good sign. Natural means no animal by-products or antibiotics in the feed. No hormone implants. We did all those things years ago.

I don’t know if we’ll go for organic certification or not. There are a lot of costs involved, and the federal regulations have been watered down. I believe in the importance of local and sustainable over organic.

Perfect Pot Roast

Related article: Dorothy Priske of Fountain Prairie Inn and Farm
In ANEW Magazine
Column: Around the Table
February 2006

This simple, hearty dish is perfect during a rugged Wisconsin winter. Made with high-quality, dry-aged Highland beef from Fountain Prairie, it’s rich in natural flavor, with a sumptuous buttery tenderness and an intensely flavorful, thick gravy.

Perfect Pot Roast

1 3 lb. chuck roast
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
4 sprigs fresh thyme
1 cup red wine
1-2 tsp. salt (or to taste)
Pepper to taste
Optional: cubed root vegetables

Place onion, garlic and thyme in bottom of roasting pan. Sear chuck roast (thawed and patted dry) on both sides in skillet. Place atop onions. De-glaze skillet with wine and pour over roast. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and roast at 300° F for 3-4 hours. Remove roast to a warm platter and cover. Discard thyme stems. With roasting pan over medium heat, whisk juices to incorporate garlic, onions, and any brown bits into a thick, savory gravy to pour over the roast.

Extra tips:
- You can add cubed root vegetables such as carrots, turnips, rutabagas or potatoes in the last hour of cooking.
- You can also make this dish in a crock pot. If you do, add vegetables at the beginning of cooking.
- You can use beef that’s not dry-aged, but because dry-aged beef contains very little water, you will end up with significantly more moisture and less meat in the roasting pan.

Good energy: Acupuncturist Dr. Leaf Song

Traditional Chinese Medicine with a gentle touch
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In ANEW Magazine, January 2006

In the reception area of the Beijing Acupuncture & Chinese Herbal Medicine Clinic in Middleton, the air is fragrant with the stinging scent of Chinese medicinal herbs. On the counter a blue glass vase brims with fresh flowers of purple, yellow and pink. These blossoms have a bite, albeit a painless one: they’re snapdragons. If you were to squeeze open and then release one by its bulb-like, jointed base, it would shut with a snap – firm and lightning fast, but also velvety, petal soft.

They seem an apt decoration for the acupuncture clinic founded in 1997 by Leaf Song, O.M.D., M.S., L.Ac., who specializes in “creating the energy flow” that she says promotes weight loss, facial rejuvenation, lifting of depression, smoking cessation, pain relief and more. And it’s not only because beautiful items from nature befit the natural healing philosophy behind Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The gentle nip of a snapdragon mirrors her style of acupuncture needle insertion, as well.

“Her touch is very soft,” explains her husband, Jonathan Song, O.M.D., M.D., Ph.D., L.Ac., who is also a TCM doctor and who joined the Beijing Clinic early in 2005. “Patients like when she’s needling. She knows the American style.”

After the Chinese-born Dr. Leaf realized that “Americans’ bodies tend to be more sensitive to needles,” as she puts it, she applied herself to developing techniques that would be acceptable to even the most needle-shy among us.

“She practiced at home to learn how to maneuver needles so that they would be painless. That’s what makes her different from other acupuncturists,” says Dr. Jonathan. “She practiced on her own body. And on me and our daughter,” he adds with a laugh.

Dr. Jonathan says that each TCM practitioner has a different style; it’s more of an individual art than Western medicine, even though both are rigorous professions based on vast, time-honored bodies of knowledge. Dr. Leaf, he says, “has a unique view. She sees the problem precisely and gets a very good result. She’s particularly good at lower back pain and at women’s health issues, like infertility. It’s often a complicated situation. She can see it as a simple thing and treat it in a simple way.”

Dr. Leaf’s therapies include Chinese herbal medicine as well as acupuncture; both have been essential components of TCM for thousands of years. The slim 44-year old is particularly enthusiastic about her herbal approach to weight loss. “We’ve developed our own herbal formula that’s very safe and effective,” she says. “It opens up your energy and moves out stagnation. It’s a circle: overweight causes energy stagnation, and stagnation causes overweight.”

Though terms like “energy” and “stagnation” might sound like fuzzy New Age talk to the Western ear, they have ultra-precise meanings for a doctor of TCM. And Dr. Leaf is well qualified to use them. She began her studies at the Zhejiang College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Hongzhou, where she met her future husband. They moved to Beijing, where he went on to get his M.D. at the Peking Union Medical College and she continued TCM studies at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine. There Dr. Leaf was awarded her the Hu Shi-Xi award for distinguished achievement in Chinese medicine in 1987.

In 1989, Dr. Jonathan arrived in the U.S. for the Ph.D. program at Michigan State University. Dr. Leaf followed soon after with their baby daughter, Willa, who is now a 15-year-old Middleton High student. After postdoc work at the University of Rochester studying Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Jonathan came to the UW-Madison for multiple sclerosis research in 1997.

The doctors chose their lyrical, Westernized names after coming to the States. Dr. Jonathan’s birth name, Jian Xiong, is pronounced like “John Song.” He found the name “Jonathan” – he prefers it to “John” – in a baby name book presented to him by his Ph.D. professor, who encouraged a name change to facilitate his American career.

Dr. Leaf followed suit, translating her family surname, “Ye” into its English meaning, and making it her new first name.

The daughter of a doctor of Western medicine and an office administrator, Jia Nong Ye was born in China in 1961. “I grew up in a hospital. The front was the hospital building, and the back was where the doctors and nurses and their families lived. You couldn’t go out without going through the hospital part.” When it came time to choose a career, says Dr. Leaf, medicine was the natural choice. “I didn’t know anything else,” she says.

In the mid-1960s, during China’s Cultural Revolution, “Mao gave the order that all M.D.s must study acupuncture,” says Dr. Leaf. Her mother was among them. Later she encouraged her daughter to go into TCM. “She said it was a good career for a female. Western doctors are on call and in the hospital for such long hours. So acupuncture would be good for a woman, a wife. That was the reason I went to school for Chinese medicine.”

Since then Dr. Leaf has distinguished herself as an accomplished and caring healer. Along with her many years of practice, she has published several peer-reviewed journal papers and book chapters on TCM. She is working on a book about diet and health.

In addition, she and Dr. Jonathan are senior clinic supervisors for the Midwest College of Oriental Medicine in Racine. One or more students works as an intern at the Beijing Clinic – the only one authorized by the school – most days. Debbie Gordon, R.N., who will be graduating in June, is impressed with her experiences here. Many patients, she says, arrive after Western medicine hasn’t been able to help them. “They have test after test, and can’t get a diagnosis for their pain or chronic fatigue. But their condition fits an Eastern diagnosis,” she says. “This is a wonderful clinic. They do wonderful work here.”

In recent years, awareness and acceptance of TCM has come a long way in America, says Dr. Leaf, but still “there’s a lot we can do. The American diet, stress – people don’t know how much these things affect your health. They never make any connection with their chronic pain or allergies,” she says. “Diet and herbs, properly chosen for the proper effect,” can be powerful tools for health: “You can revive up your body and move your energy.”

Looking to the future, Dr. Leaf plans to move the clinic out of the storefront rental and into its own building, expanding it into a total center for holistic health. “I want to do more group practice. Add other kinds of health care, with nutritional consultants, massage therapists and more,” she says.

After practicing in two countries and several American cities, Dr. Leaf Song is here, in the Madison area, to stay, to grow and to continue to blossom. And that’s good energy.


Dr. Leaf Song's bio page at the Beijing Acunpuncture Clinic Web site

The Beijing Acupuncture Clinic is located at 6255 University Ave., Suite 202 in Middleton, Wisc. Phone: 608-238-3333. URL: beijing-acupuncture.com

Cholesterol: It does a body good

A growing group of folks dare to say that more might just be better
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach

It’s an integral part of every cell in your body; embedded in each one’s membrane, it quite literally keeps you together. Over a remarkably wide range of temperature, it keeps your cells firm enough that they don’t soften into mush, yet supple enough not to crystallize. It’s also a vital ingredient in cell manufacture and repair.

This same substance is the principal building block of many of your most important hormones, including the sex hormones progesterone, estrogen and testosterone, and several adrenal hormones, too: cortisol, cortisone, aldosterone. You need it to make the glucocorticoids that regulate your blood sugar. You also need it to make the mineralocorticoids that balance minerals and regulate blood pressure.

Pivotal in brain synapse function, this plentiful component of mother’s milk is critical to the development of a baby’s brain and neurological system.

As if this all weren’t enough, this same substance is also essential for your body’s synthesis of Vitamin D. Your liver needs it to create bile salts and acids for effective digestion; its name means “bile solid” in Greek.

What is it, this magical substance so central to all animal life? Here are some clues that probably won’t help. It’s soft, white, waxy and crystalline. You have about five ounces of it in your body, most of which you make yourself. Some comes from the food you eat.

It’s cholesterol.

We hear about cholesterol all the time, everywhere from the evening news to product labels. Many of us plan our diets, if not our entire lifestyles, around it – or anyway, around avoiding it.

But for something we spend so much energy thinking about, how many of us know what it actually is: what it’s made of, where it comes from, what it looks like? And what, if anything, it’s good for?

The information is not so readily available to the casual seeker. Even an Internet search for “cholesterol benefits” will turn up mostly information about ways to get rid of it – or, more precisely, how to have less floating around in your blood (serum cholesterol) – rather than about the various benefits of cholesterol itself.

Cholesterol fits many categories. It’s an alcohol, by virtue of having an OH component. It’s a lipid, which is a family of substances that includes fats and waxes. It’s also a steroid, which is a type of lipid. Cholesterol is the precursor to pregnenolone, used to synthesize all the body’s steroid hormones.

Cholesterol needs to get wherever cells need mending. The logical way to travel is through the circulatory system; that is, by floating along in the bloodstream. But there’s a problem: cholesterol can’t dissolve into your blood, because it’s not easily soluble in water. Our bodies have developed an ingenious workaround. We pack up individual molecules of cholesterol into lipoproteins, little globes made of water-soluble protein on the outside and fat-soluble lipid on the inside – and away they go, like little submarine travelers.

The lipoproteins that carry cholesterol away from the liver toward cells that need repair are less dense than the ones that bring it back to the liver. Hence the familiar terms low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) – the so-called “bad” and “good” cholesterols. Technically, the cholesterol itself is the same; it’s the submarines that are different.

Incidentally, plaque, that infamous cholesterol-laden tissue of arterial walls, is not a residue of cholesterol swimming by, even though it is associated with high blood cholesterol levels. It’s not like a bathtub ring; rather, it’s built into the artery tissue on a deeper level.

All animals produce cholesterol. Plants don’t. That’s why meat, eggs, butter and other animal foods contain cholesterol, while absolutely all vegetable oil is cholesterol free. Same goes for all grains, fruits and veggies.

Even the strictest vegetarian folks have cholesterol – sometimes even at levels deemed too high by current standards. In fact, some research seems to show that our bodies work to maintain a level of cholesterol that’s consistent within each individual, so that if you eat less, your body makes more, and vice versa.

None of the information above is considered controversial. Recently, though, there has been a groundswell of controversy regarding cholesterol’s role in coronary heart disease (CHD).

A growing community of physicians and layfolk worldwide reject what they’ve dubbed the “diet-heart idea”: the view that saturated fat and cholesterol (read: animal food) leads to blocked arteries and heart attack. According to them, the reason cholesterol is present in damaged, lesioned arterial walls is because of its role in cell repair. They hold that cholesterol is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

High levels of blood serum cholesterol don’t cause heart attacks, they say, any more than high numbers of plaster casts cause broken bones. They point to examples that seem to contradict the conventional view, like the Masai tribespeople of Kenya who live almost entirely on meat and milk, yet have ultralow rates of CHD.

As possible culprits for the CHD epidemic, they cite smoking, stress, bacterially caused inflammation, and modern “fabricated” foods – margarine, nonfat cream cheese, boxed breakfast cereal. To the typical health-conscious consumer, theirs seems a topsy-turvy worldview in which just about all the modern dietary improvements turn out to be positively lethal.

The critics of the diet-heart idea admit that not all animals are designed to eat food that contains cholesterol. Lettuce-chomping rabbits, for instance, are virtually unable to metabolize this substance in their diet, even though, like all animals, they produce it internally.

In fact, they use this well-established bit of rabbit biology to bolster their pro-cholesterol view. They say it renders useless the many studies of harmful effects of dietary cholesterol using rabbits as test subjects – that although the results are dramatic, they can’t shed light on how dietary cholesterol affects humans.

One of the voices in the forefront of the diet-heart detractor movement belongs to a general practitioner in Sweden, Uffe Ravnskov, M.D., Ph.D., spokesperson for The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics (thincs.org) and author of The Cholesterol Myths, which purports to detail how, from a seminal 1950s cross-nations study on, the actual findings of cholesterol research have been grossly misreported in study abstracts and by the press.

Ravnskov goes so far as to maintain that it’s only because rabbits are small, cheap and easy to handle that so much cholesterol (and other human-health-related) research has been done on them – and that the public pays the price in terms of misleading results that lead us – with futility – to adopt diets that are unappetizingly low in fat, to choose modern, high-tech alternatives (like margarine) to foods that have been part of the human diet for millennia, and to consign ourselves to a lifetime of taking expensive, powerful, yet little-understood drugs.

Moving our story closer to home, 2005 saw the birth of a Madison chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation, an international organization dedicated to promoting traditional, natural foods. This is a natural foods movement with a difference.

Far from the conventional pro-vegetarian mindset that characterized the health foods movement throughout the 20th century, the WAPF view focuses sharply on the animal foods of our not-so-distant ancestors – beef, lamb, eggs, milk, butter – with an emphasis on natural, small-farm products, minimally processed and without artificial ingredients.

WAPF proponents like to point out that the rise in heart disease since the 1920s is concurrent with the decline in these foods.

At monthly meetings, local farmers bring their wares – raw-milk cheeses, grass-pastured meats and more. A lively Internet community thrives via a Web site (geocities.com/madison_wapf/) and online discussion boards. Topics include tips on home preparation of cream cheese and naturally fermented and cultured foods like yogurt and kefir – using whole milk, of course – and pointers to articles and books featuring obscure – some say suppressed – cholesterol-friendly nutritional and medical information.

If this seems far-out, consider that there are over 300 WAPF chapters in the United States alone. The Madison chapter is Wisconsin’s fifteenth.

Last April some 250 people flocked to the local group’s inaugural event, a talk given by the national organization’s founder and president, Sally Fallon, to hear her message of the dangers of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs (she says they’ve been linked to depression, cancer – and, perhaps ironically, heart disease), hydrogenated and trans fats (the mainstream is catching up to this particular caveat), and modern low-fat dairy products (she says they are thickened with dry milk powder for palatability – a source of “damaged,” or oxidized, cholesterol, which actually is dangerous for your heart.)

Testimonials to the healing power of cholesterol-rich foods are rife. Mary Smith, trim and energetic at 54, one of the event’s organizers, says following advice like that found in Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions changed her life. “I was depressed and anxious for years,” says the former vegetarian. “I had terrible cravings all the time.” Now, when symptoms begin to return, Smith cuts out most everything except eggs, meat and, doled out over the course of the day, a full stick of butter. “I spread some on my eggs and some on my meat. If the eggs and meat are gone before I’ve eaten my full portion of butter, I just eat it straight.”

Another chapter founder, Mary Jo Fahey, suffered from chronic fatigue. “I wasn’t getting enough fat,” says the lean, self-employed writer who teaches workshops on making kefir and other naturally cultured foods. “I needed the energy.” Her favorite foods include a local farm’s heavy cream that’s “so thick, it’s like custard – you can practically stand up a spoon in it.”

And Martha Reilly, 50, an optometrist whose professional background includes nearly a decade of medical research, says she lost forty pounds and reversed her diabetic symptoms by switching from a low-fat diet centered on whole grains to one built on what she calls “good fats” – those found in grass-fed beef and raw milk. “Commercial livestock are fed the wrong foods to begin with,” she says. “So their fats aren’t as good.”

Certified Nutritional Consultant Kristina Amelong, 41, struggled with chronic bladder, sinus and yeast infections. “I was very, very sick. I was in pain all the time,” she says. She devoted herself to natural remedies, acupuncture and natural foods for years, but, she says, “It wasn’t until I started a diet with lots of fat that my health turned around.” In addition to her Atwood neighborhood practice, Amelong and her husband, Tim Cordon, boards goats at their farm in Blue Mounds. The goats belong to fellow natural foodies who want raw, non-homogenized milk.

Of course, conventional medicine does not condone these examples. Nor does it consider the diet-heart connection to be an open question. Major organizations ranging from the National Institutes for Health, the USDA, the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association and the Centers for Disease Control all are unequivocal that low-cholesterol diets can help prevent CHD, and that the opposite is risky.

But the cholesterol skeptics are confident they have the facts, and the history of human nutrition, on their side. “If the mainstream is right, then maybe I won’t live as long,” says Smith. “But it tastes good. And I feel good. And it’s better than being depressed.”

Rub Out TMJ

Therapeutic massage holds out healing hope for sufferers of jaw joint disorders
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Anew magazine, Autumn 2005

He was graceful, lean but not quite lanky, with high, well-defined cheekbones, a broad, intelligent forehead, and a thoughtful, artistic intensity in his eyes. He pretty well fit the description of all my youthful crushes – like Fred Astaire and Ludwig Wittengstein (yes, the philosopher) – and also of – maybe you could guess it, but I was 30 before a girlfriend pointed it out to me – my father. My heart leapt. My blood rushed. My brain – scandalized – scolded and denied. I shouldn’t be feeling any of this.

It was my ex-boyfriend from L.A., whom I hadn’t seen for nearly a decade, come to visit. It hadn’t occurred to me that, after years of friendly correspondence, I’d be so primally attracted to him on sight, just like when we first met. I suddenly and painfully recalled that he dumped me. And what a fool of myself I’d made over it.

My body fairly vibrated as I accepted his warm hug. I watched as if from a great distance as he cordially shook hands with my husband. I tensed. I didn’t know what to say.

And then my jaw locked shut.

My jaw remained clenched, frustratingly, through the wonderful Chinese dinner we went out for. (Sucking Lo Mein wasn’t too bad, but oh, those big, juicy dumplings!) Long past that short-lived, but intense, jolt of first encounter. All through the perfectly normal and lovely week the three of us enjoyed together. And a few days thence.

This was one of the many episodes of TMJ (temporomandibular joint, or jaw joint) disorder (sometimes abbreviated as TMD) I’ve experienced over the course of my adult life. And I’m not alone. The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, one of the National Institutes of Health (www.nidcr.nih.gov), estimates 10.8 million Americans share my pain.

Recently I decided to find out more about TMJ, and explore the possibilities for a healing journey. I discovered some surprises along the way. And I came to the conclusion that the most promising avenue for treatment might be one that most of those millions will, unfortunately, probably never pursue: therapeutic massage.

TMJ problems can be difficult to diagnose, partly because there are so many possible symptoms: pain; impairment of motion; a jaw that’s locked in an open or closed position; clicking, popping and crunchy noises; headaches; eyelid twitching; sleep disturbance; dizziness; a changing bite; flu-like symptoms; bad wear on the teeth; even toothaches. For some, the symptoms are mild and/or infrequent; for unlucky others, persistent and/or excruciating. Episodes are often triggered by stress, as in my case, and are intermittent – and that also makes it hard to judge the effectiveness of therapy.

The cause of “TMJ syndrome,” as this cluster of conditions is often called, is unknown. There are plenty of theories: orthodontic work, malocclusion (bad bite), stress, chewing gum or ice, tooth grinding at night, injuries or trauma to the head or neck, posture, playing woodwind instruments, tooth extractions. But for just about each theory, there’s at least one scientific study that contradicts it.

Treatments include braces to correct jaw position, grinding down the teeth to change the bite, “splints” that can be inserted or else implanted surgically – an irreversible procedure – hot and cold packs, and rather dreary advice to subsist on soft foods for life. None of these are known to work terribly well, according to the NIDCR’s 1996 Management of Temporomandibular Disorders conference assessment statement.

Another wrinkle: 90% of folks seeking treatment are women in their childbearing years, according to the TMJ Association (tmj.org), a national non-profit advocacy, education and support group based in Milwaukee.

So here’s a condition that (1) is generally reported by women, (2) is associated with stress, (3) has no known cause, and (4) resists treatment. Put all that together and you shouldn’t be surprised that TMJ sufferers are too often told that their condition is merely psychological – all in our pretty little female heads, as it were. For many, the legacy of this invisible pain can be alienation from friends and family who have run out of patience, humiliation by condescending or unsympathetic doctors and dentists, frustration and despair.

Add to this the likelihood that the number of TMJ sufferers is far greater than statistics indicate. There’s reason to believe that many, if not most, do not report their condition to anyone. Or that when they do, it’s shrugged off and not referred for treatment, as happened with me some 23 years ago when I consulted a physician soon after first experiencing jaw locking. More recently, I told my dentist that my bite sometimes changes from day to day. He looked puzzled, then told me that was impossible and changed the subject.

This time, I decide to investigate massage therapy. I speak to Rebecca Massman, LMT, a massage therapist who specializes in site-specific, medically directed, therapeutic bodywork. Massman tells me she encounters plenty of TMJ troubles in her work; about one in eight of her clients report it. “I think it’s way more common than people think,” she says. But only rarely is it the reason for their visits.

Massman works at the UW Health Center for of Integrative Medicine, as well as in private practice. She is an instructor of soft tissue techniques and clinical anatomy at the East-West Healing Arts Institute, a local school for therapeutic massage. (“Soft tissue” refers to all sorts of features softer than bone, even though they may not seem squishy-soft to us layfolk.) The massage modalities she uses include myofascial release (the stretching and pulling of fascia, fibrous bands of connective tissue) and trigger point techniques (areas that, when touched, feel painful at that spot and in other “referred” places as well).

Massman is trained in TMJ massage. But having the opportunity to use it is another story. “Clients will usually come for something else, and the TMJ is secondary to other issues,” she says, but as “everything’s connected, everything’s related in the body,” these could be addressed holistically together with the TMJ. “It’s not well known that massage can help,” she says. “They don’t think we can treat it, or what to do. I let them know we can work on it, and they can get relief. They listen. I do a little jaw work to let them know. But then the numbers go way down, like one out of 50 says, yeah, go ahead, let’s do it.”

Why not? One reason is insurance. It’s rare to find coverage for TMJ massage – even though more invasive approaches that are far more expensive, like surgery, are readily covered. What’s more, Massman says TMJ is just one of many conditions that could be treated successfully with massage, but that few people get because of insurance. She lists Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, frozen shoulder and Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, which causes numbness, pain and pins-and-needles sensations along the arm.

Massman says that a full course of TMJ therapy can take anywhere from one to 10 hour-long sessions, “depending on the individual, what’s involved, how long it’s been an issue. Years, or months? The longer it’s been around, the more time and work it will take.” In south central Wisconsin, massage typically costs $60 to $70 per hour.

Another reason could be that physicians traditionally have referred TMJ cases to dentists and orthodontists, who are not usually experienced in soft tissue work in the same way that massage therapists are. These specialists do not ordinarily make referrals to massage therapists.

Another factor that keeps people from diving into TMJ massage treatment: pain. “It’s an ongoing series of treatments, and it can be really painful,” says Massman. “Probably the most painful area of the body to work on.”

I get a demo session from Massman, and I can attest to the pain – but also to the effectiveness. The experience transforms how I think and feel about my TMJ issues.

Massman begins by palpating my subocciptals, the muscles down at the back of my skull. As she presses on the trigger points that she finds there, I feel sensations shoot through my cranium and then subside as the muscle fibers relax. A classic trigger point response.

Next, she squeezes along the length of the sternocleidomastoid (SCM), the long, ropy muscle on the side of the neck that connects chest to collarbone to jaw. Not much pain there, in my case. “I would do the scalenes in further sessions,” she explains, with an explanatory nudge at the raft of muscles that run underneath and crosswise to the SCM. “You have a lot of work to be done there.” Ouch. Sounds right.

Finally Massman moves to the three key muscles of the TMJ assembly. She finds some tension and knotting in the medial pterygoid (poke upwards under your jaw toward the back and you’ll find it) and lateral pterygoid (under the cheekbone). But it’s in the masseter (reach inside your mouth for a tough, fin-like ridge) that she finds scores of trigger points. She methodically applies steady, firm pressure to individual spots. “It feels like a wad of tissue,” she explains, “Thick and hard. Then I can feel it release.” What I feel is exquisite pain during that release, as if she is pushing harder (she isn’t), and then nothing, as if she’s let go (when she hasn’t). Also classic trigger point behavior.

There are plenty more points to be resolved, she assures me, but they will have to wait for future sessions. “They’re deeper. It’s like peeling the layers of an onion,” she says. And it would be a mistake (besides unbearable) to attempt it all in one day: “Your jaw would probably seize up, go into shock.”

Massman explains that the patterns of tensions she has found are unique to me, and have developed over years in response to numerous factors and life events, probably including clenching when stressed, poor postural habits and the trauma to my jaw of wearing braces and then getting them removed. (That doesn’t mean that braces are bad – just that getting massage in conjunction with them is probably a good idea.)

Over the next several days, I feel increased mobility. My jaw feels markedly more open and relaxed – and it’s quieter during chewing. The familiar crunchy feeling is gone. Perhaps most important, my point of view is greatly expanded.

I’ve begun to appreciate the truly marvelous, complex system of muscles and other tissues that keep my jaw in place, allow movement for talking, provide force for chewing. I’ve learned that tensions and knots in some of these muscles have pulled my jaw out of kilter in a highly individualized way.

In other words, there’s a lot of stuff there, and all those parts work really hard, all day, every day. No wonder things go awry fairly frequently. Or that different bits go wacky in different ways for different people. In fact, the very term “TMJ syndrome” begins to sound silly to me. Would we say there is a “knee syndrome” because many people are susceptible to various injuries to that complex and heavily used part of the anatomy?

I’ve discovered that my TMJ tensions are responsible for more of my symptoms than I had dreamed. I’ve learned how far-reaching and variable TMJ effects can be, and how common. I am convinced that therapeutic bodywork, given time and in the hands of a properly trained practitioner, can resolve most, if not all, of these effects in my own case, and that the potential is great to help others, as well. I have a long way to go on my TMJ healing journey. But for the first time, I believe my path is clear.

To learn more about the TMJ and related areas, and for massage you can do yourself, check out The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief, Second Edition, by David G., Md. Simons (New Harbinger Publications, 2004).

Rebecca Massman, LMT, can be reached at 608-222-7473.