Vegetables

Healthy food, we've often heard, is pricey food. Fruits and vegetables -- they're expensive! We can't afford to eat that way! That's why we don't do it! The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants us to understand that this isn't the case, and held a news conference Wednesday to report the results of a study that examined the matter. Study lead author Andrea Carlson from the USDA's Economic Research Service presented the 50-page report , entitled “Are Healthy Foods More Expensive?

WASHINGTON -- The notion that Congress could consider pizza a vegetable may be just too much to digest. The SLICE Act, for School Lunch Improvements for Children’s Education, has been introduced in response to congressional action last fall ensuring that two tablespoons of tomato paste slathered on pizza could continue to be classified as a full vegetable serving in the federal school lunch program.

Some good buys for your health and your pocketbook: Buy fresh fruits and vegetables in season. Buy frozen otherwise. Frozen is cheaper and may even be better for you than fresh. That's because produce is usually frozen at its ripest, which is usually when it maxes out in nutrient content too. Some nutrients do break down or leach out in the freezing process, but most make it through.

Healthy food, we've often heard, is pricey food. Fruits and vegetables -- they're expensive! We can't afford to eat that way! That's why we don't do it! The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants us to understand that this isn't the case, and held a news conference Wednesday to report the results of a study that examined the matter. Study lead author Andrea Carlson from the USDA's Economic Research Service presented the 50-page report , entitled “Are Healthy Foods More Expensive?

Being surrounded by delicious food all day sounds like a decent way to make a living. And according to Gail Simmons, a judge on Bravo's "Top Chef" and "Top Chef: Just Desserts," it is — but it requires some conscientiousness to not overindulge. Simmons is also a director of special projects for Food & Wine magazine and recently released a memoir, "Talking With My Mouth Full. " The 35-year-old culinary expert explained to us how she manages to stay healthy amid a sea of gourmet delights and with a very hectic schedule.

A law blocking new regulations of tomato paste, spuds and salt in school meals causes a stir. If you've been following the headlines recently, you could be forgiven for thinking that pizza is now considered a vegetable in the cafeterias of American schools. The latest food fight in Washington, D.C., did indeed feature this kid-food staple, especially a key ingredient - tomato paste. One point of contention was whether the amount of sauce contained in a pizza slice was enough to qualify as a "serving" of vegetables.

  Ragout of spring vegetables Total time: 45 minutes Servings: 6 Our recipes, your kitchen: If you try any of the L.A. Times Test Kitchen recipes from this week's Food section, please share it with us: Click here to upload pictures of the finished dish. 3/4 pound fingerling potatoes 1/2 pound carrots 1/2 pound cauliflower 1 onion 1 head garlic 6 tablespoons butter, divided Salt 1/4 pound arugula or other lettuce, cut in thin strips 1 to 2 tablespoons white wine, optional 1 1/2 teaspoons minced fresh tarragon, chervil, parsley or chives, or a mixture 1. Prepare the vegetables: If the potatoes are very small, leave them whole.

Forget lettuce and spinach. Start thinking mallow, purslane and amaranth. Even if you've never heard of these greens, they could be all around you, according to an interesting NPR piece on urban foraging. The story follows expert forager Sam Thayer around Washington, D.C., as he plucks and nibbles on uncommon salad ingredients, including weeds like shepherd's purse and sow thistle as well as Siberian elm seeds. He finds them in the unlikeliest of places -- reclaiming an abandoned garden box, sprouting near chain-link fences.    And, barring the risk of dog pee and pesticide, they're pretty good for you -- according to the story , more nutritious than your grocery store greens.

The big bang captures too much of our attention at Christmas. As kids (and maybe even later), we immediately go for the biggest packages under the tree, ignoring the more apparently modest stockings by the fireplace. The adult equivalent of that comes at the table, where we'll plan for weeks the massive roast that will be the centerpiece of Christmas dinner, the spectacular desserts that will cap it, or the fabulous wines that will make everything flow, and then wake up that morning thinking, "Oh shoot, maybe we ought to have a vegetable too."

There's a lot of talk about green jobs being the savior for the country's disturbingly high unemployment and underemployment rates. The city of Los Angeles says it is actively working to create some. In a Feb. 24 ceremony on the third floor of L.A.'s City Hall 23 people were awarded certificates for completing a green gardener training course that is seen as a template for creating jobs that will protect the environment. "Since last spring, we've been working on this program to train gardeners in managing and maintaining the designs of the 21st century garden in Southern California, which is a garden that uses drought-tolerant plants and that retains and reuses rainwater," said Paula Daniels, the L.A. Board of Public Works commissioner who helped pioneer the program.

Being surrounded by delicious food all day sounds like a decent way to make a living. And according to Gail Simmons, a judge on Bravo's "Top Chef" and "Top Chef: Just Desserts," it is — but it requires some conscientiousness to not overindulge. Simmons is also a director of special projects for Food & Wine magazine and recently released a memoir, "Talking With My Mouth Full. " The 35-year-old culinary expert explained to us how she manages to stay healthy amid a sea of gourmet delights and with a very hectic schedule.

Most of us are too plump and are overly fond of snacks, fast food - and food in general. So why did two lean young women who dine on smoothies and organic fruits and vegetables (how unimpeachable does that sound) seek help cleaning up their act? May Haduong, 33, and Frances Motiwalla, 34, just had this sense they were slaves to each passing fad (greens! organic! flaxseed! gluten-free!) and were building up their eating rules in a haphazard, unscientific way. "We've sort of made it up in our heads," Haduong says: whirring up slurries of kale, beet greens, frozen fruits and celery in the blender in their pint-sized kitchen twice a day (down to once a day when Motiwalla couldn't take it anymore)

Many growers proudly advertise their local origins, but when David Rosenstein of Evo Farm sells his produce on Sunday for the first time at the Mar Vista farmers market, he says he will be talking "not about food miles, but food feet. " Rosenstein has built an innovative prototype aquaponics farm, combining aquaculture and hydroponic (soilless) vegetable cultivation, in a neighbor's backyard. Each of these systems by itself generates copious waste, but when they are synergized, the fish provide the fertilizer for the plants and the plants filter the water for the fish.

Please don't take this wrong. You look absolutely fine the way you are. It's just that ... well, with a little work, you might look even better. We're not talking plastic surgery. Just the daily grind of buckling down and trying to eat better. Fresh from the March issue of the journal PLoS ONE comes word that scarfing down a few extra fruits and vegetables - yes, those again - could give you a significant leg up in the attractiveness department. Scientists have known for a while that the same pigments that give fruits and vegetables their color - carotenoids - can accumulate in your skin and give it color too. What they didn't know was this: How many fruits and vegetables do you have to eat for how long in order for people to notice the difference in your coloring?

THERMAL, Calif. - One of the most highly regarded farms in Northern California, Petaluma-based County Line Harvest started growing organic vegetables in the Coachella desert to extend its production in the winter and spring. For owner David Retsky, who grew up in Beverly Hills, selling to Southern California was the logical next step, and almost like coming home. It's been a circuitous route for Retsky, 40. The son of a doctor, he became interested in agriculture after high school, when he stayed on a kibbutz in Israel.

Vegan vegetable and sesame feast Total time: 1 hour, 15 minutes Servings: 4 or 5 appetizer or 3 main course servings 4 fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed, and cut into ¼-inch-thick slices, or 4 to 6 ounces button or cremini mushrooms, cut into ¼-inch-thick slices 1 long eggplant (about ½ pound), halved lengthwise, then cut crosswise into ½-inch-thick slices 1 onion, quartered lengthwise, then sliced crosswise about ¼-inch thick 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil Salt and freshly ground pepper 1/2 small Korean or daikon radish (about 7 ounces)

Next time you're considering skipping the salad bar, think again: Eating more raw fruits and vegetables could alter the effects of a gene that's a marker for heart disease. FOR THE RECORD: A headline on an earlier version of this post incorrectly said eating more fruits and vegetables alters genes. Researchers genotyped 27,243 people from two separate studies to see if they had a certain gene variant. The 9p21 gene has been shown in previous studies to be linked with a higher risk of heart attack and cardiovascular disease, including a 2010 meta-analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

- Morning fog weaves its way through colorful rows of vegetables, herbs and flowers as staff and apprentices gather at the center of the garden at Esalen Institute. It's 7 a.m. The freshly awakened faces sit calmly in a circle for a morning meditation, listening to the Pacific Ocean until the sound of chimes lets meandering minds know it's time to tend to the day's harvest. Bins of chard, arugula, parsley, radishes and carrots are picked, washed and delivered to the back door of the kitchen, roughly 1,250 feet from the field.

Kids don't always eat their vegetables, but does showing them photos of veggies make them consume more? A research letter published online Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. employed about 800 kindergarten through fifth-grade students at one elementary school in Minnesota as study subjects. On two separate days in 2011 they received a school lunch; on the first day it was business as usual, as the kids helped themselves to the foods available. A few months later they had the same meal, but this time their trays were fitted with photographs of the vegetables they served: green beans and carrots.