At first suggestion, the idea of a "Food Secretary" to replace the Secretary of Agriculture sounds a bit redundant, maybe even silly, but in his article "Obama's 'Secretary of Food'?", Nicholas Kristof makes a very good argument for redefining the scope and activities of the Dept. of Agriculture.
A shift away from subsidies for industrial food products would be a start. Kristof makes the point that a farm that produces as much waste (not trash, but literally, to be graphic, shit) as a small town is not required to have a sewage system, whereas the town would be. Who pays to clean up that shit? You and I do, via subsidies.
There is a problem with our food system when everything else is more expensive than it was 20 years ago except for meat and poultry. As my husband recently pointed out: Labor is more expensive, storage, transportation and processing is more expensive but meat and poultry are much cheaper.
Think about where that savings comes in. Part of it is subsidies - your tax money going to make your steak cheaper, instead of the apple, for example. Part of it is just gross: treating animals like products instead of like animals, which is inherently shitty, in all the terms of the word.
There is a problem when it is cheaper for your grocery store to give you that unsubsidized apple from across the country rather than from the farmer 50 miles away.
Kristof says many of these things with less cursing and more precise language than I do, but the point remains: why shouldn't this change? For economic reasons, for health reasons, for environmental reasons, why on earth should this failing system be allowed to stay?
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
On Thanksgiving
This year, for the first time, we had family over for Thanksgiving. We had nothing like Hell's Belle's family influx (with parents and a brother-in-law collapsing in a one bedroom apartment), as we only had one visitor and she stayed in a hotel. Still, we had the least predictable and most potentially stressful family member visiting. Not to perpetuate a stereotype, but this member was my mother-in-law, S.
S. and I have a long history, some of which involves mutual antagonizing, and most of which involves the projection of her own emotional issues on me and my relationship. Sometimes happy, stable, eager to reconcile S shows up, and makes jokes and pleasantries. Sometimes angry, narcissistic, eager to cause pain S shows up and wreaks havoc. There's no real way to tell which one will show up.
So I felt some pressure going into Thanksgiving. I felt pressure to make my house spotless, welcoming, and above criticism; a perfect homemaker's house with the traditional trappings, when in reality, my tiny apartment is more like a nest, with the art being personal, the fancy things mostly hidden away (there's not a great deal of storage space), books piled on the floor, and dirty dishes, dirty pots, and dirty counters accenting how well used the kitchen is. I try hard to make it welcoming, and cat friendly, but it's rarely spotless, and rarely perfect. Right now, there are boxes of Christmas cards strewn over the couch, envelopes labeled and piled according to how much postage they will need, and whether I have the current address, and Christmas ornaments waiting to be put on the tree piled on the end table. The cats are crawling about, calm for once. It's a peaceful scene, one I would not be ashamed to share with any friend who came along, but it is also one I would be deeply afraid of sharing with someone who once openly searched for things about me to criticize.
I also felt pressure to create a big, perfect meal, something which really doesn't happen, at least in these terms of perfect, which has little room for error or flexibility. I do screw up, but rarely big enough to be noticed by family (or at least, my big screw ups don't happen when family is around). I'm a decent cook, and I enjoy food, and for a holiday that celebrates not just food but the love of food, I wanted to put my best foot forward. I had my own personal reasons: I wanted the challenge of creating a huge meal without relying on anything canned or overly processed (the only thing that I can remember that I used that was processed was buttermilk powder). I made two kinds of cranberry sauce, squash casserole (with squash I had frozen earlier in the fall), green bean casserole (with green beans I had frozen earlier in the fall), dressing (with homemade cream of smoked turkey leg soup), and pumpkin pie. John was in charge of the turkey. I made way too much food for three people, and we just finished leftovers earlier today (more on that later) but I feared making a reasonable amount might bring criticism.
Fortunately, the kind, reasonable S showed up, and everything turned out beautifully except the green bean casserole - more the fault of the recipe, from Eating Well, which was not all that good. But still, the build up to the holiday, which was made worse by the bad cold I suffered from, was stressful, less because of the preparations and the food and more about the person whom the preparations and food was for.
Growing up, I never understood holiday stress. Then, when someone truly problematic came into my life, when her huge holiday issues began to be projected onto me, and my smallest steps were laid open to criticism, I began to understand the pressures many felt, and the distaste many felt. I find myself approaching holidays with family with a mixture of dread and excitement that turns my stomach. But I try to fight those tensions by remembering one of the most important parts of the holidays:
The Food.
While it may not be a strong response to retreat into food, during the holidays, there is always food to retreat into. Always something to think about, and to want, and to wander into the kitchen in search of. Always something to offer relatives to eat to shut them up. Because nothing says, "Fuck you" like making a meal completely from scratch that you know, deep down, your antagonist could not.
S. and I have a long history, some of which involves mutual antagonizing, and most of which involves the projection of her own emotional issues on me and my relationship. Sometimes happy, stable, eager to reconcile S shows up, and makes jokes and pleasantries. Sometimes angry, narcissistic, eager to cause pain S shows up and wreaks havoc. There's no real way to tell which one will show up.
So I felt some pressure going into Thanksgiving. I felt pressure to make my house spotless, welcoming, and above criticism; a perfect homemaker's house with the traditional trappings, when in reality, my tiny apartment is more like a nest, with the art being personal, the fancy things mostly hidden away (there's not a great deal of storage space), books piled on the floor, and dirty dishes, dirty pots, and dirty counters accenting how well used the kitchen is. I try hard to make it welcoming, and cat friendly, but it's rarely spotless, and rarely perfect. Right now, there are boxes of Christmas cards strewn over the couch, envelopes labeled and piled according to how much postage they will need, and whether I have the current address, and Christmas ornaments waiting to be put on the tree piled on the end table. The cats are crawling about, calm for once. It's a peaceful scene, one I would not be ashamed to share with any friend who came along, but it is also one I would be deeply afraid of sharing with someone who once openly searched for things about me to criticize.
I also felt pressure to create a big, perfect meal, something which really doesn't happen, at least in these terms of perfect, which has little room for error or flexibility. I do screw up, but rarely big enough to be noticed by family (or at least, my big screw ups don't happen when family is around). I'm a decent cook, and I enjoy food, and for a holiday that celebrates not just food but the love of food, I wanted to put my best foot forward. I had my own personal reasons: I wanted the challenge of creating a huge meal without relying on anything canned or overly processed (the only thing that I can remember that I used that was processed was buttermilk powder). I made two kinds of cranberry sauce, squash casserole (with squash I had frozen earlier in the fall), green bean casserole (with green beans I had frozen earlier in the fall), dressing (with homemade cream of smoked turkey leg soup), and pumpkin pie. John was in charge of the turkey. I made way too much food for three people, and we just finished leftovers earlier today (more on that later) but I feared making a reasonable amount might bring criticism.
Fortunately, the kind, reasonable S showed up, and everything turned out beautifully except the green bean casserole - more the fault of the recipe, from Eating Well, which was not all that good. But still, the build up to the holiday, which was made worse by the bad cold I suffered from, was stressful, less because of the preparations and the food and more about the person whom the preparations and food was for.
Growing up, I never understood holiday stress. Then, when someone truly problematic came into my life, when her huge holiday issues began to be projected onto me, and my smallest steps were laid open to criticism, I began to understand the pressures many felt, and the distaste many felt. I find myself approaching holidays with family with a mixture of dread and excitement that turns my stomach. But I try to fight those tensions by remembering one of the most important parts of the holidays:
The Food.
While it may not be a strong response to retreat into food, during the holidays, there is always food to retreat into. Always something to think about, and to want, and to wander into the kitchen in search of. Always something to offer relatives to eat to shut them up. Because nothing says, "Fuck you" like making a meal completely from scratch that you know, deep down, your antagonist could not.
Monday, November 24, 2008
On Birthdays
Today has been a different kind of day. I turn 27 today, and have spent most of the day in silence, speaking only to request that my husband get me some cough syrup before he went to work and to tell the people on the phone that no, this is not the center for early childhood education, or the council for basic education (neither of which appears to actually exist according to the internet). But the good part of silence, particularly on birthdays, is that we have the opportunity - in between marathon viewings of Scrubs DVDs - to reflect on the years behind us. In my case, most of that reflection centered around the dish I served last night at my birthday dinner.
Last year, when we resided in MS, John and I would occasionally go to a restaurant near us called Amerigo. Most of the time, we would sit in the bar, because we firmly believe that a lot of what makes eating out great (interaction, relaxed pace, good service) often happens in the best way at the bar. During the week, the bartender, whose name I never learned, would remember us, what we did for a living, and usually, what kind of wine I wanted (Simi Sauvignon Blanc, almost always). She would talk happily with us until another customer or just our need to be still took her away. She had a gift for reading customers.
Once, we went on a Saturday night. Our bartender wasn't there, and most of the clientele was a mix of older men, and the over-tanned, over-blond, over-botoxed women who were their hangers on. We were decidedly out of place, and we never returned on a weekend, for during the week, the place was like a sanctuary.
Our dish was the Fettucine Imperial: alfredo sauce with ham, roasted chicken, and sliced mushrooms over pasta (we always substituted the whole wheat penne). We would get the dish, and split it, eat from the same plate, dip our bread in the sauce, and drink wine, right at the bar, inches apart, more comfortable and more intimate that we could have been at a table.
I started to crave this pasta about two weeks ago, and decided I would have it be my birthday meal. So, last night, we added another element to this food memory: that of 8 friends, gathered around a table, wine flowing, conversation moving easily between those that have known us for a while and those who were just getting to know us. The very light in the apartment seemed to change, as this dish, that had been a symbol of private comfort and intimacy, became a little more public. It's meaning changed, and as wonderful a memory as it was before, the nuance added by the dinner party is a lasting gift because it is now spread among friends.
Last year, when we resided in MS, John and I would occasionally go to a restaurant near us called Amerigo. Most of the time, we would sit in the bar, because we firmly believe that a lot of what makes eating out great (interaction, relaxed pace, good service) often happens in the best way at the bar. During the week, the bartender, whose name I never learned, would remember us, what we did for a living, and usually, what kind of wine I wanted (Simi Sauvignon Blanc, almost always). She would talk happily with us until another customer or just our need to be still took her away. She had a gift for reading customers.
Once, we went on a Saturday night. Our bartender wasn't there, and most of the clientele was a mix of older men, and the over-tanned, over-blond, over-botoxed women who were their hangers on. We were decidedly out of place, and we never returned on a weekend, for during the week, the place was like a sanctuary.
Our dish was the Fettucine Imperial: alfredo sauce with ham, roasted chicken, and sliced mushrooms over pasta (we always substituted the whole wheat penne). We would get the dish, and split it, eat from the same plate, dip our bread in the sauce, and drink wine, right at the bar, inches apart, more comfortable and more intimate that we could have been at a table.
I started to crave this pasta about two weeks ago, and decided I would have it be my birthday meal. So, last night, we added another element to this food memory: that of 8 friends, gathered around a table, wine flowing, conversation moving easily between those that have known us for a while and those who were just getting to know us. The very light in the apartment seemed to change, as this dish, that had been a symbol of private comfort and intimacy, became a little more public. It's meaning changed, and as wonderful a memory as it was before, the nuance added by the dinner party is a lasting gift because it is now spread among friends.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
On Onions and Poetry
The Traveling Onion
Naomi Shihab Nye
“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship - why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” Better Living Cookbook
When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.
And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.
Naomi Shihab Nye
“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship - why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” Better Living Cookbook
When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.
And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
On Picky Eaters
(I got all caught up politicking, and forgot about blogging. Combine that with being unable to sign in to blogger on Firefox - a problem I just spent a half hour fixing - and my little blog suffered).
In my very first food post on this blog, I bring up that I wasn't always an adventurous eater. I have a thing with textures and smells, and that has proven difficult to get over (for other insight into my relative pickiness, see my thoughts on eggs). Tiny pieces of crunchy onions, for example, regardless of what they're an ingredient in, at the least make me gag, and will definitely ruin my appetite. There's something about the crunch, lasting bite after bite, getting pressed into the grooves of your molars, sending the sound taking advantage of the acoustics of your soft palate, reverberating down the back of your throat and in your ears. I can't take it. I like my onions coarsely chopped, well cooked, or both.
For years, I refused to cook with onions, or to allow my husband to. But slowly, I came to realize that I enjoy the flavor of an onion, and that with adequate precautions, I can cook with them. How did I get there? Well, first by allowing big (probably unsightly huge) pieces of cooked onion in my food, where at least I could pick them out. Then, by learning to appreciate chopped raw onion as a condiment on top of the lentils and beans that were grad school staples. Now, I regularly cook with onions, but I still find that crunch, in just the right spot, can send me running to the bathroom for relief (usually to brush my teeth to stop the crunch, but I have been known to barf on occasion when this happens).
Turns out, I'm not alone. There's a syndrome, or dysfunction if you will, in which the brain has difficulty processing sensory information. So, something soft will feel rough, etc.... Now, certainly, I do not have such a thing, but judging by this comment thread on one of my favorite sites, Jezebel, there are plenty of us for whom the textures of foods can be a problem.
Of course, there are other kinds of picky. There's "I won't eat that no matter what even though I've never tried it", which is the worst kind of picky; there's "This doesn't meet whatever ethical/moral standards I hold myself too," which is a very common and understandable kind of picky ('sup Kosher and Halal folks). There's also snobby picky, and totally arbitrary picky (example: I have a friend who would not eat cold cheese. Hot cheese - totally fine. Cold cheese, no dice. This same friend would also drink Muscle Milk in banana flavor, so we thought there was no hope for him. Fortunately he married another friend, who is the opposite of picky - we lovingly call her a goat - and has actually eaten cheesecake, in which there is, you guessed it, cold cheese).
Interestingly enough, there is also Presidential pickiness. I'll excerpt the paragraph in question:
Obama carefully conserved his energy. He was not a man of appetites, like Bill Clinton, who would grab whatever goodie passed by on the tray. Obama was abstemious. Indeed, to the reporters following him, he appeared very nearly anorexic. Most candidates gain the Campaign 10 (or 15). Hillary was struggling with her waistline, as she gamely knocked back shots and beers in working-class bars and gobbled the obligatory sausage sandwiches thrust at her in greasy spoons along the Trail of the White Working-Class Voter. Obama, by contrast, lost weight. He regularly ate the same dinner of salmon, rice and broccoli. At Schoop's Hamburgers, a diner in Portage, Ind., he munched a single french fry and ordered four hamburgers—to go. At the Copper Dome Restaurant, a pancake house in St. Paul, Minn., he ordered pancakes—to go. (An AP reporter wondered: who gets pancakes for the road?) A waiter reeled off a long list of richly topped flapjacks, but Obama went for the plain buttermilk, saying, "I'm kind of traditionalist." Reporters joked that if he ate a single bite of burger or pancake once the doors of his dark-tinted SUV closed, they'd eat their BlackBerrys. Frustrated by reporters fishing for trivial "gaffes," Obama did not like coming back to the plane to talk to the press. As he trudged back from time to time to deal with the reporters' incessant questions, he looked like a suburban dad, slump-shouldered after a long day at the office, taking out the trash.
The article contrasts President-Elect Obama with his wife, saying:
Michelle Obama is not ascetic like her husband. She has long been familiar with Chicago's chicest clothing stores, and she'll "eat a cheeseburger in a heartbeat," said Cheryl Rucker-Whitaker, her close friend from Chicago (Rucker-Whitaker's husband, Eric, is a friend of Obama's from Harvard days and often plays basketball with him). Michelle's favorite drink, said Rucker-Whitaker, is champagne.
Our interest in food as a culture has probably never been quite so strong, with the exception of right after WWII, when technologies left over from the war helped agriculture boom and brought more food to us more quickly. Everyone and her mama has a food blog, and everyone has an opinion. We're also spending a lot of time discussing the eating habits of those in power (anyone remember the Obama arugula thing?). In a way, there's never been a better time to talk about this stuff, and what it signifies to us when someone in power (or someone at all) is picky: in a bad economy, what sends a better signal, someone who can abstain, and be measured, or someone who stops in for a burger whenever they've got the craving? I'm not positing either as a moral failing or moral success - I know I sure as hell lean more toward the burger side of that equation. But food signifies a lot to us, and the way we consume it can speak of responsibility or of decadence.
On that note, I think being too picky can be just as decadent as overconsumption. It is an enormous privilege to be able to choose from the bounty that we do as Americans what we will and won't eat. The day could be coming when farmlands, oceans, and water supplies are too strained to allow us to do so anymore. The day could also be coming when beans and rice are back on the menu daily, even now that grad school is a thing of the past.
PS - Thanks to a kitty paw, this almost didn't get posted. No treats for Seamus tonight.
In my very first food post on this blog, I bring up that I wasn't always an adventurous eater. I have a thing with textures and smells, and that has proven difficult to get over (for other insight into my relative pickiness, see my thoughts on eggs). Tiny pieces of crunchy onions, for example, regardless of what they're an ingredient in, at the least make me gag, and will definitely ruin my appetite. There's something about the crunch, lasting bite after bite, getting pressed into the grooves of your molars, sending the sound taking advantage of the acoustics of your soft palate, reverberating down the back of your throat and in your ears. I can't take it. I like my onions coarsely chopped, well cooked, or both.
For years, I refused to cook with onions, or to allow my husband to. But slowly, I came to realize that I enjoy the flavor of an onion, and that with adequate precautions, I can cook with them. How did I get there? Well, first by allowing big (probably unsightly huge) pieces of cooked onion in my food, where at least I could pick them out. Then, by learning to appreciate chopped raw onion as a condiment on top of the lentils and beans that were grad school staples. Now, I regularly cook with onions, but I still find that crunch, in just the right spot, can send me running to the bathroom for relief (usually to brush my teeth to stop the crunch, but I have been known to barf on occasion when this happens).
Turns out, I'm not alone. There's a syndrome, or dysfunction if you will, in which the brain has difficulty processing sensory information. So, something soft will feel rough, etc.... Now, certainly, I do not have such a thing, but judging by this comment thread on one of my favorite sites, Jezebel, there are plenty of us for whom the textures of foods can be a problem.
Of course, there are other kinds of picky. There's "I won't eat that no matter what even though I've never tried it", which is the worst kind of picky; there's "This doesn't meet whatever ethical/moral standards I hold myself too," which is a very common and understandable kind of picky ('sup Kosher and Halal folks). There's also snobby picky, and totally arbitrary picky (example: I have a friend who would not eat cold cheese. Hot cheese - totally fine. Cold cheese, no dice. This same friend would also drink Muscle Milk in banana flavor, so we thought there was no hope for him. Fortunately he married another friend, who is the opposite of picky - we lovingly call her a goat - and has actually eaten cheesecake, in which there is, you guessed it, cold cheese).
Interestingly enough, there is also Presidential pickiness. I'll excerpt the paragraph in question:
Obama carefully conserved his energy. He was not a man of appetites, like Bill Clinton, who would grab whatever goodie passed by on the tray. Obama was abstemious. Indeed, to the reporters following him, he appeared very nearly anorexic. Most candidates gain the Campaign 10 (or 15). Hillary was struggling with her waistline, as she gamely knocked back shots and beers in working-class bars and gobbled the obligatory sausage sandwiches thrust at her in greasy spoons along the Trail of the White Working-Class Voter. Obama, by contrast, lost weight. He regularly ate the same dinner of salmon, rice and broccoli. At Schoop's Hamburgers, a diner in Portage, Ind., he munched a single french fry and ordered four hamburgers—to go. At the Copper Dome Restaurant, a pancake house in St. Paul, Minn., he ordered pancakes—to go. (An AP reporter wondered: who gets pancakes for the road?) A waiter reeled off a long list of richly topped flapjacks, but Obama went for the plain buttermilk, saying, "I'm kind of traditionalist." Reporters joked that if he ate a single bite of burger or pancake once the doors of his dark-tinted SUV closed, they'd eat their BlackBerrys. Frustrated by reporters fishing for trivial "gaffes," Obama did not like coming back to the plane to talk to the press. As he trudged back from time to time to deal with the reporters' incessant questions, he looked like a suburban dad, slump-shouldered after a long day at the office, taking out the trash.
The article contrasts President-Elect Obama with his wife, saying:
Michelle Obama is not ascetic like her husband. She has long been familiar with Chicago's chicest clothing stores, and she'll "eat a cheeseburger in a heartbeat," said Cheryl Rucker-Whitaker, her close friend from Chicago (Rucker-Whitaker's husband, Eric, is a friend of Obama's from Harvard days and often plays basketball with him). Michelle's favorite drink, said Rucker-Whitaker, is champagne.
Our interest in food as a culture has probably never been quite so strong, with the exception of right after WWII, when technologies left over from the war helped agriculture boom and brought more food to us more quickly. Everyone and her mama has a food blog, and everyone has an opinion. We're also spending a lot of time discussing the eating habits of those in power (anyone remember the Obama arugula thing?). In a way, there's never been a better time to talk about this stuff, and what it signifies to us when someone in power (or someone at all) is picky: in a bad economy, what sends a better signal, someone who can abstain, and be measured, or someone who stops in for a burger whenever they've got the craving? I'm not positing either as a moral failing or moral success - I know I sure as hell lean more toward the burger side of that equation. But food signifies a lot to us, and the way we consume it can speak of responsibility or of decadence.
On that note, I think being too picky can be just as decadent as overconsumption. It is an enormous privilege to be able to choose from the bounty that we do as Americans what we will and won't eat. The day could be coming when farmlands, oceans, and water supplies are too strained to allow us to do so anymore. The day could also be coming when beans and rice are back on the menu daily, even now that grad school is a thing of the past.
PS - Thanks to a kitty paw, this almost didn't get posted. No treats for Seamus tonight.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
On Learning
This webcomic is always a favorite, but today I found it particularly amusing.
One of the reasons I found it so amusing is that its true: cooking, well baking, is mostly about following directions. Oh sure, you should eventually develop a knowledge of things like heat management, basic needed equipment, knife skills, cooking terms, and some basic skills. You should probably also, especially if baking, know a little about the chemistry of how all those things work. My favorite example of this occurred several Thanksgivings ago, when my husband's family discovered I could make pie. I used a crust recipe known as "never fail" in the family cookbook, and my husband's grandmother spent a lot of her conversation with me over the next day asking me to recite the recipe and nodded along, saying things like, "The vinegar activates the gluten." Of course, I know so little about kitchen chemistry, that I have no idea if that statement makes any sense.
The reason it is mostly okay that I'm not an expert in activating gluten etc... is twofold: most cooks work by trial and error, and most cooking knowledge is handed down. If I don't know something, I rarely go to the internet first; instead, I call my mother, whom I regard as a bastion of culinary knowledge. The other reason is that there are plenty of people out there who know this stuff and make a good living teaching it to others, like this man, pictured below.
Point being that when I started cooking on my own in my teens, I experimented. I did brownies with all kinds of added calories. I did very spicy chicken. I did some pretty damn good baked beans. And if it didn't work out... well, it mostly worked out. There's a learning process with cooking, and a huge part of that process is the ability to admit what you don't know, and to seek that knowledge.
As I moved onward and upward, I started with the basic things: spaghetti, chicken and pasta, hamburgers etc... I can remember being bothered by the fact that there were people who were better at cooking than I. I can't remember when I started to list cooking as a hobby - perhaps when I figured out that I was good at it. I also remember that as I started to want to know more - as I began to admit what I didn't know - I started to love the company of those who knew more about food and cooking than I did. And that openness started to form into richer, more evolved opinions, which evolve into more openness, more desire for knowledge.
In a lot of ways, the cooking I do is both looking forward and back. Forward toward new things I haven't tried. And back toward trying old things in improved ways. Because really, no matter what level of cooking expertise you have, you're going to mess up sometimes. And really, the ability to make good brownies, or good chicken and rice casserole in a pinch more than makes up for the mess ups.
One of the reasons I found it so amusing is that its true: cooking, well baking, is mostly about following directions. Oh sure, you should eventually develop a knowledge of things like heat management, basic needed equipment, knife skills, cooking terms, and some basic skills. You should probably also, especially if baking, know a little about the chemistry of how all those things work. My favorite example of this occurred several Thanksgivings ago, when my husband's family discovered I could make pie. I used a crust recipe known as "never fail" in the family cookbook, and my husband's grandmother spent a lot of her conversation with me over the next day asking me to recite the recipe and nodded along, saying things like, "The vinegar activates the gluten." Of course, I know so little about kitchen chemistry, that I have no idea if that statement makes any sense.
The reason it is mostly okay that I'm not an expert in activating gluten etc... is twofold: most cooks work by trial and error, and most cooking knowledge is handed down. If I don't know something, I rarely go to the internet first; instead, I call my mother, whom I regard as a bastion of culinary knowledge. The other reason is that there are plenty of people out there who know this stuff and make a good living teaching it to others, like this man, pictured below.
Point being that when I started cooking on my own in my teens, I experimented. I did brownies with all kinds of added calories. I did very spicy chicken. I did some pretty damn good baked beans. And if it didn't work out... well, it mostly worked out. There's a learning process with cooking, and a huge part of that process is the ability to admit what you don't know, and to seek that knowledge.
As I moved onward and upward, I started with the basic things: spaghetti, chicken and pasta, hamburgers etc... I can remember being bothered by the fact that there were people who were better at cooking than I. I can't remember when I started to list cooking as a hobby - perhaps when I figured out that I was good at it. I also remember that as I started to want to know more - as I began to admit what I didn't know - I started to love the company of those who knew more about food and cooking than I did. And that openness started to form into richer, more evolved opinions, which evolve into more openness, more desire for knowledge.
In a lot of ways, the cooking I do is both looking forward and back. Forward toward new things I haven't tried. And back toward trying old things in improved ways. Because really, no matter what level of cooking expertise you have, you're going to mess up sometimes. And really, the ability to make good brownies, or good chicken and rice casserole in a pinch more than makes up for the mess ups.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
On HFCS
I saw this series of commercials today while watching the Food Network and reading Vogue on the treadmill.
I've discussed HFCS before, but I'll excerpt it for you here:
One of the reasons I have such a bread preference has to do with my fear and loathing for high fructose corn syrup. While it is impossible to completely avoid if you want the occasional soda or hot dog bun, I figure I can do without the extra calories (some sources claim that HFCS provides the average American with most of his or her daily calories), and that I'd like to be able to taste subtle sweetness again. Also, the shit is in everything. Seriously. Check out the labels in your kitchen. I once picked up a can of kidney beans. Plain old kidney beans: no sauce, nothing. The first ingredient was water. The second ingredient was high fructose corn syrup. As you may know, the order in which ingredients are listed on food items depends on how much of one particular ingredient is present in the food. So, most foods will have water as the first ingredient, but one would expect kidney beans to have more beans than highly processed corn by-product sweetener. While I wish I was dedicated and patient enough to bake my own bread (I can do it, as anyone who has enjoyed my winter sourdough baking frenzy can attest), I find that, in a pinch, Pepperidge Farm and Sara Lee produce whole grain (yummy and healthy) breads that do not have HFCS in the ingredient list.
If you go to the original post, you'll see I've got links to some sources there, but my main issue with the commercials above is the "in moderation" part. I would like to emphasize the shit is in everything. It's in the tonic water you use with your gin. It may also be in the juice you use with your gin, should you prefer that cocktail. I've seen it in cans of beans; it's in jelly, peanut butter, cereal, tomato sauce. I've seen foods that have both it and sugar. There are two issues here First, only obsessive and anal people like myself really examine food labels. Most of us would grab the can of cheap, generic kidney beans because they're just beans, and in the process we would add more calories than needed or expected. Think about it. How many Cokes did you have today? Most of the sugar in Coke is HFCS. Add up those grams of sugar. Gross, isn't it? Second, it is in these foods because it is cheap. It is cheap because it is highly processed. For a brief intro into how it is produced, go here. For a longer discussion, check out Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. That long production time uses a lot of resources, particularly compared to beet sugars, especially for a product that only serves to sweeten things that don't necessarily need to be sweet.
We're attracted to sweet things because of how nutritionally complex and desirable fruits were to our ancestors. But now, many of us, especially in America, are loosing the ability to taste subtle sweetness, or even to taste at all. I'm no scientist, but I'm a reader, and most of the things I've read indicate that cheaper, sweeter, omnipresent sweeteners, like HFCS are causing this.
I rarely eat candy bars, or sweets that I don't make at home. Even restaurant deserts are rare for me. Candy to me is so sweet that it makes my teeth hurt, which can be attributed to sensitive teeth, but candy wasn't always so painful. I'm more sensitive to sweet because I rarely have a soft drink or eat foods that have been artificially sweetened. I'm proud of that, perhaps excessively so. But I'm more easily satisfied by sweet flavors. I also enjoy more fruit. Part of this food experiment is to open myself up to new flavors, and new knowledge. But how can I, or anyone else, do so if heavily processed sweeteners are in far too many of our foods?
We can eat cheaply by accepting HFCS, and believing that it's "just fine." We probably won't make ourselves too ill (excluding the currently historical high rates of obesity and diabetes), at lease in the short term. But cheap by-products are still cheap, and still not whole foods. If we are what we eat, do we really want to be a cheap, oozing mess of chemicals and corn?
I've discussed HFCS before, but I'll excerpt it for you here:
One of the reasons I have such a bread preference has to do with my fear and loathing for high fructose corn syrup. While it is impossible to completely avoid if you want the occasional soda or hot dog bun, I figure I can do without the extra calories (some sources claim that HFCS provides the average American with most of his or her daily calories), and that I'd like to be able to taste subtle sweetness again. Also, the shit is in everything. Seriously. Check out the labels in your kitchen. I once picked up a can of kidney beans. Plain old kidney beans: no sauce, nothing. The first ingredient was water. The second ingredient was high fructose corn syrup. As you may know, the order in which ingredients are listed on food items depends on how much of one particular ingredient is present in the food. So, most foods will have water as the first ingredient, but one would expect kidney beans to have more beans than highly processed corn by-product sweetener. While I wish I was dedicated and patient enough to bake my own bread (I can do it, as anyone who has enjoyed my winter sourdough baking frenzy can attest), I find that, in a pinch, Pepperidge Farm and Sara Lee produce whole grain (yummy and healthy) breads that do not have HFCS in the ingredient list.
If you go to the original post, you'll see I've got links to some sources there, but my main issue with the commercials above is the "in moderation" part. I would like to emphasize the shit is in everything. It's in the tonic water you use with your gin. It may also be in the juice you use with your gin, should you prefer that cocktail. I've seen it in cans of beans; it's in jelly, peanut butter, cereal, tomato sauce. I've seen foods that have both it and sugar. There are two issues here First, only obsessive and anal people like myself really examine food labels. Most of us would grab the can of cheap, generic kidney beans because they're just beans, and in the process we would add more calories than needed or expected. Think about it. How many Cokes did you have today? Most of the sugar in Coke is HFCS. Add up those grams of sugar. Gross, isn't it? Second, it is in these foods because it is cheap. It is cheap because it is highly processed. For a brief intro into how it is produced, go here. For a longer discussion, check out Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. That long production time uses a lot of resources, particularly compared to beet sugars, especially for a product that only serves to sweeten things that don't necessarily need to be sweet.
We're attracted to sweet things because of how nutritionally complex and desirable fruits were to our ancestors. But now, many of us, especially in America, are loosing the ability to taste subtle sweetness, or even to taste at all. I'm no scientist, but I'm a reader, and most of the things I've read indicate that cheaper, sweeter, omnipresent sweeteners, like HFCS are causing this.
I rarely eat candy bars, or sweets that I don't make at home. Even restaurant deserts are rare for me. Candy to me is so sweet that it makes my teeth hurt, which can be attributed to sensitive teeth, but candy wasn't always so painful. I'm more sensitive to sweet because I rarely have a soft drink or eat foods that have been artificially sweetened. I'm proud of that, perhaps excessively so. But I'm more easily satisfied by sweet flavors. I also enjoy more fruit. Part of this food experiment is to open myself up to new flavors, and new knowledge. But how can I, or anyone else, do so if heavily processed sweeteners are in far too many of our foods?
We can eat cheaply by accepting HFCS, and believing that it's "just fine." We probably won't make ourselves too ill (excluding the currently historical high rates of obesity and diabetes), at lease in the short term. But cheap by-products are still cheap, and still not whole foods. If we are what we eat, do we really want to be a cheap, oozing mess of chemicals and corn?
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
On Comfort
We turn to comfort foods for a variety of reasons: illness, cold, nostalgia. Today, in the midst of preparing the lasagna recipe below (which I also created today), I received a phone call informing me that a friend had died tragically and unexpectedly. Few things can comfort us in times like this, with the feelings of powerlessness and sadness that grief and shock bring. Creating something substantial, something delicious, something warm, messy and unpretentious is the best therapy I've found. The only thing better is sharing it with loved ones.
Lasagna
½ pound ground lamb
1 zucchini, cubed
2 carrots, coarsed chopped
¼ pound button mushrooms (portobellos would be good as well), sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 big handfuls (1/2 a 5 ounce box) baby spinach, coarsely chopped
1 big handful cherry tomatoes, quartered
salt
pepper
1 tablespoon fresh basil, chopped
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 ½ cups cottage cheese (ricotta would work if you want a sweeter cheese)
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 small jar homemade marinara (2 cups or so)
Enough lasagna noodles to make 3 layers (12 for my pan, 4 per layer)
4-5 thin slices of fresh mozzarella, torn into thirds
Preheat oven to 375. Place tomatoes, 1 T olive oil, and vinegar in a small baking dish. Season with salt and pepper. Roast for 15 minutes, or until tomatoes being to fall apart. Remove from oven and let cool.
Place lamb, zucchini, and carrots in a dry pan (the lamb has plenty of fat Рno need to add more), season with salt, pepper, and oregano and saut̩ until lamb is browned. Add mushrooms and 2/3 of the garlic, and cook for 2 -3 more minutes, until mushrooms turn brown. Add marinara and bring to a boil. Turn off heat.
In a separate bowl, mix cottage cheese, spinach, tomatoes, basil, and remaining garlic until well combined. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Bring a pot of water to a boil. Salt the water and add the remaining olive oil, then boil the noodles until not quite done, about 7 minutes.
In your pan, spoon a small bit of the lamb mixture and of the cheese mixture. Smear the mixture along the bottom, then cover with a layer of noodles. Top with the remaining lamb mixture, spread evenly. Cover with a second layer of noodles, and top with the remaining cheese mixture, spread evenly. Add the final layer of noodles, and place the mozzarella slices over the top layer of noodles.
Bake at 375 for 30 minutes, or until cheese is browned.
Lasagna
½ pound ground lamb
1 zucchini, cubed
2 carrots, coarsed chopped
¼ pound button mushrooms (portobellos would be good as well), sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 big handfuls (1/2 a 5 ounce box) baby spinach, coarsely chopped
1 big handful cherry tomatoes, quartered
salt
pepper
1 tablespoon fresh basil, chopped
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 ½ cups cottage cheese (ricotta would work if you want a sweeter cheese)
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 small jar homemade marinara (2 cups or so)
Enough lasagna noodles to make 3 layers (12 for my pan, 4 per layer)
4-5 thin slices of fresh mozzarella, torn into thirds
Preheat oven to 375. Place tomatoes, 1 T olive oil, and vinegar in a small baking dish. Season with salt and pepper. Roast for 15 minutes, or until tomatoes being to fall apart. Remove from oven and let cool.
Place lamb, zucchini, and carrots in a dry pan (the lamb has plenty of fat Рno need to add more), season with salt, pepper, and oregano and saut̩ until lamb is browned. Add mushrooms and 2/3 of the garlic, and cook for 2 -3 more minutes, until mushrooms turn brown. Add marinara and bring to a boil. Turn off heat.
In a separate bowl, mix cottage cheese, spinach, tomatoes, basil, and remaining garlic until well combined. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Bring a pot of water to a boil. Salt the water and add the remaining olive oil, then boil the noodles until not quite done, about 7 minutes.
In your pan, spoon a small bit of the lamb mixture and of the cheese mixture. Smear the mixture along the bottom, then cover with a layer of noodles. Top with the remaining lamb mixture, spread evenly. Cover with a second layer of noodles, and top with the remaining cheese mixture, spread evenly. Add the final layer of noodles, and place the mozzarella slices over the top layer of noodles.
Bake at 375 for 30 minutes, or until cheese is browned.
Monday, September 29, 2008
On Reviews
I thought I'd officially post some reviews of the books I mention here
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan
rating: 3 of 5 stars
Pollan is as passionate and as thorough in this book as he was in OD. The book has the potential to change the way you eat; it has already changed the way I think about grocery shopping. So why only 3 stars?
A lot of the information, even though it has been diluted from scientist to journalist, is frankly, boring. I recommend reading the first third and the last third carefully, and skimming the middle, lest your eyes glaze over at the umpteenth mention of Omega 3 or 6.
View all my reviews.
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Michael Pollan's writing has something of the ethereal about it - his passion and thoughtfulness about food, and the necessarily interlinked social, political, economic and environmental issues involved with our food, inspire without muckraking. He presents incredibly well-researched reasons for opting out of the industrial food market, but he does not make the same mistake that many of us do and assume that our food options are either industrial or organic. He looks at local food economies, and ponders ways for people to feasibly eat ethically. In the pursuit of ethical eating, Pollan does not shy away from looking at the life and death consequences of what we eat (in a very literal sense).
The premise of the book is the philosophical question of the omnivore's dilemma. In other words, many non-omnivores are so specialized that they do not think about their food choices. Food for them is not a risk, whereas food is risky for the omnivore, particularly early omnivores who operated without the benefit of a food culture, and modern omnivores who operate within a very fraught food culture. Pollan divides the book into 3 sections, each exploring one modern "food chain" from its beginnings and each ending with a meal born of that food chain. He looks at it from a scientific as well as personal side, and the two collaborate each other very nicely. The writing is beautiful, and the information well researched. If you care about food, read this book.
View all my reviews.
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael PollanMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
Pollan is as passionate and as thorough in this book as he was in OD. The book has the potential to change the way you eat; it has already changed the way I think about grocery shopping. So why only 3 stars?
A lot of the information, even though it has been diluted from scientist to journalist, is frankly, boring. I recommend reading the first third and the last third carefully, and skimming the middle, lest your eyes glaze over at the umpteenth mention of Omega 3 or 6.
View all my reviews.
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael PollanMy review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Michael Pollan's writing has something of the ethereal about it - his passion and thoughtfulness about food, and the necessarily interlinked social, political, economic and environmental issues involved with our food, inspire without muckraking. He presents incredibly well-researched reasons for opting out of the industrial food market, but he does not make the same mistake that many of us do and assume that our food options are either industrial or organic. He looks at local food economies, and ponders ways for people to feasibly eat ethically. In the pursuit of ethical eating, Pollan does not shy away from looking at the life and death consequences of what we eat (in a very literal sense).
The premise of the book is the philosophical question of the omnivore's dilemma. In other words, many non-omnivores are so specialized that they do not think about their food choices. Food for them is not a risk, whereas food is risky for the omnivore, particularly early omnivores who operated without the benefit of a food culture, and modern omnivores who operate within a very fraught food culture. Pollan divides the book into 3 sections, each exploring one modern "food chain" from its beginnings and each ending with a meal born of that food chain. He looks at it from a scientific as well as personal side, and the two collaborate each other very nicely. The writing is beautiful, and the information well researched. If you care about food, read this book.
View all my reviews.
Monday, June 30, 2008
On Food Costs (Waste)
So, it's been nearly 2 months, and I'm sorry. I was plagued by boredom, headaches, and more pressing concerns. Pity that. Anyway, I'm going to finish up my theme, and move onward, and hopefully, more continually.
At any rate, I've been thinking a lot about waste lately. According to the October 2008 issue of Eating Well, which cites the EPA, "Americans throw away 96 billion pounds of food waste each year, from home and commercial establishments." Exactly how much of that is from homes, I don't know, but we can assume that at least a quarter of it is. The article in Eating Well discusses how some colleges are attempting to curb food waste by eliminating trays, thus making students take what they intend to eat in their hands, rather than cramming bits of everything onto a tray. Doing so can apparently reduce daily food waste by 44% and save hundreds of gallons of water. Awesome, but how to reproduce that in our homes?
Well, there are some obvious options for reducing how much food we throw away: only buy food we're going to eat, only prepare enough food for the number of people eating, eat left overs etc... But I have some potentially creative ideas as well that I'd like to throw out there.
1) Once, when I was working at a law firm in college, one of the secretaries was sharing how she had lost weight. Her plan had been very similar to the trayless food service plan. Instead of portioning her food on a dinner plate, she served herself on a salad plate. Less food would fit on the plate, but she still could clean the plate. She tricked her eye, which really is some great advice. All of our senses contribute to hunger, and relying too heavily on some of them (in my case, taste, in the case of others, sight) can cause us to pile more food on our plates than we can eat. If there's less food on our plates, there's less to toss afterwards (or less to gorge on), which is good for all aspects of the problem. Think of this as the "reduce" part of the equation.
2) I like to cook with stock, and I usually avoid store-bought vegetable stock, because it has an odor. However, I don't always have the patience to make chicken stock, which involves carcasses etc... So, I saved all the odd ends of my vegetables in freezer bags, and when I had a baking sheet's worth of them, I made stock. Because it was made from vegetables I would actually eat, and because I could control the seasoning, it smelled, and tasted delicious, and it froze easily to be reused. Reusing not only reduces your food costs by allowing you to cheaply make something that would otherwise have to be purchased, but it gives you control over what you put into your food, always a good choice.
How I make Vegetable Stock
First, I clean and wash all my vegetables carefully to remove any chemical residues. I use any vegetables for stock, mushrooms, cucumbers, scallions, etc.... Then, as I chop the ends off, or peel the vegetables, I place the ends and peels in a freezer bag and wait. I wait until I have one or two bags full, and then place the ends on a baking sheet, and roast them at 400 with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Once they're lovely and brown, I put them in a stock pot filled with water, and add any herbs that appeal to me and bring it to a boil. After it boils, I let it simmer for a while, about an hour or so, then cool it, strain it, and freeze it in smaller containers.
Another way to apply this concept is with shrimp shells. Simply freeze them after you've peeled the shrimp, and boil them with seasonings if you ever need seafood stock. Be sure to strain carefully!
3)Of course, the third leg of this trifecta is recycle, and the best way to recycle food is to compost. If you have a yard, composting is fairly easy. The EPA has lots of information about composting, including what should and should not be composted, how to create a compost pile, and the environmental benefits of composting. If you live indoors, you can use the EPA's suggestions for indoor composting at the link about creating a compost pile, or use the apparently odorless indoor worm composting tips found here and elsewhere on the web.
The frightening thing about the 96 billion pounds of food waste mentioned above is that most of it probably ends up in landfills, where it does not decompose, or at least not very readily. When we can take relatively small steps to ensure that we contribute less to landfills, we can save our waistlines, our wallets and our environment. Imagine: by wasting less food, we can be healthier in so many ways. Most of this is very easy, and takes very little time. These are all steps I've taken in one measure or another while working full time. Being responsible and less wasteful is not the huge time commitment it is made out to be. It's just a choice that has to be made.
At any rate, I've been thinking a lot about waste lately. According to the October 2008 issue of Eating Well, which cites the EPA, "Americans throw away 96 billion pounds of food waste each year, from home and commercial establishments." Exactly how much of that is from homes, I don't know, but we can assume that at least a quarter of it is. The article in Eating Well discusses how some colleges are attempting to curb food waste by eliminating trays, thus making students take what they intend to eat in their hands, rather than cramming bits of everything onto a tray. Doing so can apparently reduce daily food waste by 44% and save hundreds of gallons of water. Awesome, but how to reproduce that in our homes?
Well, there are some obvious options for reducing how much food we throw away: only buy food we're going to eat, only prepare enough food for the number of people eating, eat left overs etc... But I have some potentially creative ideas as well that I'd like to throw out there.
1) Once, when I was working at a law firm in college, one of the secretaries was sharing how she had lost weight. Her plan had been very similar to the trayless food service plan. Instead of portioning her food on a dinner plate, she served herself on a salad plate. Less food would fit on the plate, but she still could clean the plate. She tricked her eye, which really is some great advice. All of our senses contribute to hunger, and relying too heavily on some of them (in my case, taste, in the case of others, sight) can cause us to pile more food on our plates than we can eat. If there's less food on our plates, there's less to toss afterwards (or less to gorge on), which is good for all aspects of the problem. Think of this as the "reduce" part of the equation.
2) I like to cook with stock, and I usually avoid store-bought vegetable stock, because it has an odor. However, I don't always have the patience to make chicken stock, which involves carcasses etc... So, I saved all the odd ends of my vegetables in freezer bags, and when I had a baking sheet's worth of them, I made stock. Because it was made from vegetables I would actually eat, and because I could control the seasoning, it smelled, and tasted delicious, and it froze easily to be reused. Reusing not only reduces your food costs by allowing you to cheaply make something that would otherwise have to be purchased, but it gives you control over what you put into your food, always a good choice.
How I make Vegetable Stock
First, I clean and wash all my vegetables carefully to remove any chemical residues. I use any vegetables for stock, mushrooms, cucumbers, scallions, etc.... Then, as I chop the ends off, or peel the vegetables, I place the ends and peels in a freezer bag and wait. I wait until I have one or two bags full, and then place the ends on a baking sheet, and roast them at 400 with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Once they're lovely and brown, I put them in a stock pot filled with water, and add any herbs that appeal to me and bring it to a boil. After it boils, I let it simmer for a while, about an hour or so, then cool it, strain it, and freeze it in smaller containers.
Another way to apply this concept is with shrimp shells. Simply freeze them after you've peeled the shrimp, and boil them with seasonings if you ever need seafood stock. Be sure to strain carefully!
3)Of course, the third leg of this trifecta is recycle, and the best way to recycle food is to compost. If you have a yard, composting is fairly easy. The EPA has lots of information about composting, including what should and should not be composted, how to create a compost pile, and the environmental benefits of composting. If you live indoors, you can use the EPA's suggestions for indoor composting at the link about creating a compost pile, or use the apparently odorless indoor worm composting tips found here and elsewhere on the web.
The frightening thing about the 96 billion pounds of food waste mentioned above is that most of it probably ends up in landfills, where it does not decompose, or at least not very readily. When we can take relatively small steps to ensure that we contribute less to landfills, we can save our waistlines, our wallets and our environment. Imagine: by wasting less food, we can be healthier in so many ways. Most of this is very easy, and takes very little time. These are all steps I've taken in one measure or another while working full time. Being responsible and less wasteful is not the huge time commitment it is made out to be. It's just a choice that has to be made.
On Food Costs (Meat)
(Sorry for the long break. I've been working very long hours, and eating very boring food. I've got some back entries I want to write, but for now, I'd rather try to get back to once or twice a week posting.)
You would have to be living under a rock or independently wealthy to have not noticed the jump in food prices. Corn has shot up again, to $7.35 a bushel, from $6.00 (Jones, Chicago Tribune. Given the numerous reasons for this (increased global demand, natural disasters, biofuels etc...), we can probably assume that prices will continue to rise. I've already been priced out of several organic categories, and with a reasonable income, low cost of living, and no children, we are certainly the target market for organics. In fact, many producers have been forced to stop organic production due to rising operating costs. And the problem is not limited to organics. Conventional food costs more and more, particularly vegetables, and the rising costs are certainly not ensuring the safety of our food supply. One only needs to look at the recent salmonella outbreak to figure that out. Honestly, how do tomatoes get exposed to anything like salmonella, particularly in the amounts required to make us so sick? We have the same problem with E. coli in spinach on occasion, which is why our pre-washed salads are washing in chlorine. Fantastic. Our choices are chlorinated, or possibly irradiated, food, or the risk that foods that should be relatively low risk with proper handling will make us sick. And we're paying through the nose for that risk.
While the time has come for wholesale change in our food industry, our more immediate and pressing concern is how to pay both to get to the grocery store (gas is at 3.89 where I live, and we can't afford to replace our 10 year old small SUV), and pay to feed our families healthy foods. I've got three ways I'm trying to do so, and the three coincide with other goals I have for my life as well. These may not be helpful for those of you who have children, or very little time to cook, but they're options. I'll be making an individual post about each.
1) Cut back on meat.
Two of the most expensive things to purchase in the grocery store are meat and produce. It is most unwise to cut back on produce, but not all that bad of an idea to cut back on meat. In the grocery store today, I noticed that a pound of organic chicken thighs was $6. The whole organic roasting chickens were tiny, and expensive. The two it would have taken to have fed my husband and me for a week would have cost about $25. The convential chicken from Tyson was about $5 a pound for breasts, and they had no options for thighs, whole chickens (although they usually do), or bone-in, skin-on breasts. Nothing cheaper at all. The conventional chicken from a local company that I usually avoid because I've smelled the processing plant was cheapest. Thigh fillets, 1 pound, $3.50. Now, if every dinner I were to make this week were to include meat, even this cheap meat, that would come to about $24.50, which isn't awful for 7 meals, but if I were to choose a healthier, or more humanely produced option, my costs would skyrocket quickly. If I stretch that pound of meat into two meals, or maybe even three, and go meatless the rest of the week (assuming there are no pieces of fish in the freezer), then my costs have been reduced by 6/7.
It is possible for me to stretch the small amount of meat because I only have two people to feed, and we're both healthy eaters with a good understanding that meat is not all that makes a meal. A recommended serving of animal protein is about the size of your palm, or a deck of cards if you have big bear hands. This means that one and a half of those chicken thighs is a full serving for me and my husband. Rather than 2. Rather than a giant chicken breast. Huge portions of meat are a relatively recent introduction to our diet, coming about post WWII when industry made it possible to buy meat rather than have to grow it yourself. Meat can be a great source of nutrition, but it's certainly not the best source of nutrition available for the cost (not to mention the cost of production, but that's another cost). A grocery store near me recently put all of its meat on sale, pork, chicken, beef, you name it. While the presumed reasons for this were frightening (from 5 feet away from the coolers I could smell the chicken), the prices were incredibly low. As a result what I saw was probably very predictable. A huge woman, of deeply unhealthy proportions, with a grocery cart filled to the brim with various cuts of pork, ribs, ground beef, etc... While she was examining the meat in her hand, a young girl, who I presume was her daughter, watched her. This woman may have had a huge family to feed. Most of that meat was certainly going in a freezer for future use, but the sight was difficult to shake. Meat should not be the center of a diet, especially a someone who looked to be in poor health anyway.
I buy meat approximately once or twice a month, and it lasts a while. I've come to discover that meat is a pleasure, something to be carefully thought over, and used for maximum impact, not for plate filler. This is a big break from the dominant culture, of which we might presume the woman in the grocery store presents an extremely exaggerated example. We do eat a lot of fish, but I try to look for frozen fish, or canned fish (more later). Trying alternative proteins frees up a lot of our grocery budget for fresh foods, with maximum nutritional and taste impact. Think about it. If you need a pound of meat for your family each night, and that meat costs $3.50/lb (a low estimate), you can save ten dollars by cutting out meat, or stretching it to cover, 3 nights a week. A 6 ounce densely packed package of pink salmon (name brand, sustainable, easy, healthy) costs $2.50. Serve that instead, mixed with pasta perhaps, and you've saved a dollar. Over the course of your grocery shopping life, a dollar saved 3 nights a week, or more, goes a long way. A 26 ounce can of black beans (name brand, no additives, healthy) costs $1.65. Served as a topping for rice, or as black bean burgers, the beans are not only filling and tasty, but also save you almost 2 bucks a meal. That's nothing to scoff at. That two bucks can buy you some organic yogurt, or some organic bananas, or many other conventional things. Or it can just go in the jar toward your next tank of gas.
It's very easy to reduce your meat consumption, and you will probably not miss it. It does not require any familiarity with things like tofu or tempeh. And it can save you money. A good trial recipe is this one for Black Bean Burgers at A Mighty Appetite. These are excellent, and filling, and you do not miss the meat. Also, all I ever have to buy to make these are the scallions and the beans if we're out. I have everything else on hand. Other filling meat alternatives: lentils (over rice, as a sauce, in spaghetti sauce, soup, stew, red, green or brown), beans of any kind in a variety of difference ways, cheese (it's getting expensive too, and all the organic cheese available in the regular store is bland), spinach (lasagne, mac and cheese), and meatless, or meat-limited (I made that up, forgive it's dumbness) casseroles (chicken and rice, vegetables like squash).
Canned fish is also an alternative. Due to rising mercury levels, tuna is a limited option. You should be careful with it. For more specific information, see the Consumer Reports report on canned tuna. However, it is delicious, and works well in casseroles, or tuna salad. Another reason to avoid tuna is the serious problem over overfishing. There are very few sustainable fisheries in the world, and the pleasures of seafood may disappear soon, according to some studies (Boston Globe, "World Seafood Supply"). Yellowfin tuna is one of the most overfished. If you're eating tuna, both for lower mercury levels and higher sustainability, go for tuna labeled light over tuna labeled white. (And try tuna packed in oil. Delicious).
Canned or packaged salmon is a good alternative to canned tuna. If you're not into skin and bones, look for packages labeled boneless and skinless. I got a big shock the first time I didn't check this, and was grossed out by the processed fish starring me in the face in the can. Also, you must must must only buy pink salmon that is wild caught, preferably in Alaska. Alaska's wild salmon populations and it's fisheries are very sustainable, thanks to a very effective quota system based on how many fish return to the rivers to reproduce. The salmon season was canceled along the West Coast this year, due to very low populations, which will mean two very important things: cheap salmon will be more than likely farmed, which is bad in many different ways; and wild salmon, which is healthier and more sustainable, will be very expensive. However, cancelling the season goes a long way toward guaranteeing there will be a salmon season in the future.
Farmed salmon, like most farmed ocean fish, cause huge amounts of pollution, consume huge amounts of energy, are penned too close together and so develop diseases and parasites for which they must be fed antibiotics, and often escape, spreading the diseases and parasites to which they are immune to the wild salmon, especially young salmon,which are particularly vulnerable. The food they eat is not their natural diet (much like cows and corn, salmon aren't corn eaters) and includes synthetic dyes to make their flesh the coral color we identify with the fish (all info from Eating Well). When you know all of this, it makes it hard to swallow that bite of farmed salmon. I hope.
Reducing our meat consumption, and doing so in ways that are conscious of our health and the health of our world, not only eases some of the strain on our wallets, but also the strain on our belts, and on our environment. Small good things done in our own self interest can have amazing repurcussions for the world around us.
I'll probably freeze all but two of those chicken thighs I bought today. Those two, I'll chop and brown with onions and garlic from the farmer's market, and maybe add some tomatoes from my mother's garden. Toss in some herbs, maybe chopped carrots, zuchinni, red lentils, or chickpeas, and I'll have a great sauce to serve over brown rice. That'll be two dinners, and it'll be filling, and pretty damn cheap. It'll be tasty, and if I want, I can splurge on date-night dinner instead.
You would have to be living under a rock or independently wealthy to have not noticed the jump in food prices. Corn has shot up again, to $7.35 a bushel, from $6.00 (Jones, Chicago Tribune. Given the numerous reasons for this (increased global demand, natural disasters, biofuels etc...), we can probably assume that prices will continue to rise. I've already been priced out of several organic categories, and with a reasonable income, low cost of living, and no children, we are certainly the target market for organics. In fact, many producers have been forced to stop organic production due to rising operating costs. And the problem is not limited to organics. Conventional food costs more and more, particularly vegetables, and the rising costs are certainly not ensuring the safety of our food supply. One only needs to look at the recent salmonella outbreak to figure that out. Honestly, how do tomatoes get exposed to anything like salmonella, particularly in the amounts required to make us so sick? We have the same problem with E. coli in spinach on occasion, which is why our pre-washed salads are washing in chlorine. Fantastic. Our choices are chlorinated, or possibly irradiated, food, or the risk that foods that should be relatively low risk with proper handling will make us sick. And we're paying through the nose for that risk.
While the time has come for wholesale change in our food industry, our more immediate and pressing concern is how to pay both to get to the grocery store (gas is at 3.89 where I live, and we can't afford to replace our 10 year old small SUV), and pay to feed our families healthy foods. I've got three ways I'm trying to do so, and the three coincide with other goals I have for my life as well. These may not be helpful for those of you who have children, or very little time to cook, but they're options. I'll be making an individual post about each.
1) Cut back on meat.
Two of the most expensive things to purchase in the grocery store are meat and produce. It is most unwise to cut back on produce, but not all that bad of an idea to cut back on meat. In the grocery store today, I noticed that a pound of organic chicken thighs was $6. The whole organic roasting chickens were tiny, and expensive. The two it would have taken to have fed my husband and me for a week would have cost about $25. The convential chicken from Tyson was about $5 a pound for breasts, and they had no options for thighs, whole chickens (although they usually do), or bone-in, skin-on breasts. Nothing cheaper at all. The conventional chicken from a local company that I usually avoid because I've smelled the processing plant was cheapest. Thigh fillets, 1 pound, $3.50. Now, if every dinner I were to make this week were to include meat, even this cheap meat, that would come to about $24.50, which isn't awful for 7 meals, but if I were to choose a healthier, or more humanely produced option, my costs would skyrocket quickly. If I stretch that pound of meat into two meals, or maybe even three, and go meatless the rest of the week (assuming there are no pieces of fish in the freezer), then my costs have been reduced by 6/7.
It is possible for me to stretch the small amount of meat because I only have two people to feed, and we're both healthy eaters with a good understanding that meat is not all that makes a meal. A recommended serving of animal protein is about the size of your palm, or a deck of cards if you have big bear hands. This means that one and a half of those chicken thighs is a full serving for me and my husband. Rather than 2. Rather than a giant chicken breast. Huge portions of meat are a relatively recent introduction to our diet, coming about post WWII when industry made it possible to buy meat rather than have to grow it yourself. Meat can be a great source of nutrition, but it's certainly not the best source of nutrition available for the cost (not to mention the cost of production, but that's another cost). A grocery store near me recently put all of its meat on sale, pork, chicken, beef, you name it. While the presumed reasons for this were frightening (from 5 feet away from the coolers I could smell the chicken), the prices were incredibly low. As a result what I saw was probably very predictable. A huge woman, of deeply unhealthy proportions, with a grocery cart filled to the brim with various cuts of pork, ribs, ground beef, etc... While she was examining the meat in her hand, a young girl, who I presume was her daughter, watched her. This woman may have had a huge family to feed. Most of that meat was certainly going in a freezer for future use, but the sight was difficult to shake. Meat should not be the center of a diet, especially a someone who looked to be in poor health anyway.
I buy meat approximately once or twice a month, and it lasts a while. I've come to discover that meat is a pleasure, something to be carefully thought over, and used for maximum impact, not for plate filler. This is a big break from the dominant culture, of which we might presume the woman in the grocery store presents an extremely exaggerated example. We do eat a lot of fish, but I try to look for frozen fish, or canned fish (more later). Trying alternative proteins frees up a lot of our grocery budget for fresh foods, with maximum nutritional and taste impact. Think about it. If you need a pound of meat for your family each night, and that meat costs $3.50/lb (a low estimate), you can save ten dollars by cutting out meat, or stretching it to cover, 3 nights a week. A 6 ounce densely packed package of pink salmon (name brand, sustainable, easy, healthy) costs $2.50. Serve that instead, mixed with pasta perhaps, and you've saved a dollar. Over the course of your grocery shopping life, a dollar saved 3 nights a week, or more, goes a long way. A 26 ounce can of black beans (name brand, no additives, healthy) costs $1.65. Served as a topping for rice, or as black bean burgers, the beans are not only filling and tasty, but also save you almost 2 bucks a meal. That's nothing to scoff at. That two bucks can buy you some organic yogurt, or some organic bananas, or many other conventional things. Or it can just go in the jar toward your next tank of gas.
It's very easy to reduce your meat consumption, and you will probably not miss it. It does not require any familiarity with things like tofu or tempeh. And it can save you money. A good trial recipe is this one for Black Bean Burgers at A Mighty Appetite. These are excellent, and filling, and you do not miss the meat. Also, all I ever have to buy to make these are the scallions and the beans if we're out. I have everything else on hand. Other filling meat alternatives: lentils (over rice, as a sauce, in spaghetti sauce, soup, stew, red, green or brown), beans of any kind in a variety of difference ways, cheese (it's getting expensive too, and all the organic cheese available in the regular store is bland), spinach (lasagne, mac and cheese), and meatless, or meat-limited (I made that up, forgive it's dumbness) casseroles (chicken and rice, vegetables like squash).
Canned fish is also an alternative. Due to rising mercury levels, tuna is a limited option. You should be careful with it. For more specific information, see the Consumer Reports report on canned tuna. However, it is delicious, and works well in casseroles, or tuna salad. Another reason to avoid tuna is the serious problem over overfishing. There are very few sustainable fisheries in the world, and the pleasures of seafood may disappear soon, according to some studies (Boston Globe, "World Seafood Supply"). Yellowfin tuna is one of the most overfished. If you're eating tuna, both for lower mercury levels and higher sustainability, go for tuna labeled light over tuna labeled white. (And try tuna packed in oil. Delicious).
Canned or packaged salmon is a good alternative to canned tuna. If you're not into skin and bones, look for packages labeled boneless and skinless. I got a big shock the first time I didn't check this, and was grossed out by the processed fish starring me in the face in the can. Also, you must must must only buy pink salmon that is wild caught, preferably in Alaska. Alaska's wild salmon populations and it's fisheries are very sustainable, thanks to a very effective quota system based on how many fish return to the rivers to reproduce. The salmon season was canceled along the West Coast this year, due to very low populations, which will mean two very important things: cheap salmon will be more than likely farmed, which is bad in many different ways; and wild salmon, which is healthier and more sustainable, will be very expensive. However, cancelling the season goes a long way toward guaranteeing there will be a salmon season in the future.
Farmed salmon, like most farmed ocean fish, cause huge amounts of pollution, consume huge amounts of energy, are penned too close together and so develop diseases and parasites for which they must be fed antibiotics, and often escape, spreading the diseases and parasites to which they are immune to the wild salmon, especially young salmon,which are particularly vulnerable. The food they eat is not their natural diet (much like cows and corn, salmon aren't corn eaters) and includes synthetic dyes to make their flesh the coral color we identify with the fish (all info from Eating Well). When you know all of this, it makes it hard to swallow that bite of farmed salmon. I hope.
Reducing our meat consumption, and doing so in ways that are conscious of our health and the health of our world, not only eases some of the strain on our wallets, but also the strain on our belts, and on our environment. Small good things done in our own self interest can have amazing repurcussions for the world around us.
I'll probably freeze all but two of those chicken thighs I bought today. Those two, I'll chop and brown with onions and garlic from the farmer's market, and maybe add some tomatoes from my mother's garden. Toss in some herbs, maybe chopped carrots, zuchinni, red lentils, or chickpeas, and I'll have a great sauce to serve over brown rice. That'll be two dinners, and it'll be filling, and pretty damn cheap. It'll be tasty, and if I want, I can splurge on date-night dinner instead.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
On Oeufs (eggs)
Recently, I discussed my ambivalence toward the noble egg. Allow me to happily inform you that the ambivalence has chosen a direction: a deep and abiding passion.
It began with brinner, or breakfast for dinner. I promised it to my husband for a recent date night. I made hashbrown casserole (which was imperfect but decent), and bacon (which normally wins the breakfast food crown as far as I'm concerned), and on a whim, a Julia Child egg dish, recommended as a cure for hangovers by Julie Powell. While we certainly weren't hungover, we were planning on drinking a bit(it was date night, after all). I had the makings of bloody marys for him, and some prosecco for me. We knew it was going to be a good night, but we did not know what would happen with the eggs.
Oh, the eggs. These eggs must be called by their French name, as egg sounds far too harsh. They must be called Oeufs en Cocotte (or Oeufs for short), a short, breathy, soft word. You think I'm being ridiculous? Maybe so, but I've discovered that the egg is in fact incredible and edible, and I'll take my joy in that however I please.
The eggs are very simple. Simpler even than scrambled eggs, especially scrambled eggs a la Rainy Kate, which require copious amounts of vegetables and a little cheese. You bring some water to a simmer in a big, oven-safe sauce pan. You put two ramekins in the saucepan, and pour some cream in the ramekins. Crack two eggs in each ramekins, then cover with a little more cream and dot with butter. Bake the whole thing in the oven until just set, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Entire time you are required to function: 10 minutes. But the pleasure...
The whites mix with the cream, and get a little gelatinous, or very firm, depending on how much you want them cooked. Most of the time, egg whites don't have a great deal of taste, but egg whites that are mostly cream and a little butter taste like, well, like cream and butter. And the yolks melt in your mouth, with that eggy flavor blended with the cream. Oeufs en Cocotte are like a tiny little bowl of heaven: decadent to eat, and worth the work. Only this slice of heaven is pretty easy to get, and doesn't require any real sacrifice on your part.
Eat oeufs, drink prosecco, and be happy.
It began with brinner, or breakfast for dinner. I promised it to my husband for a recent date night. I made hashbrown casserole (which was imperfect but decent), and bacon (which normally wins the breakfast food crown as far as I'm concerned), and on a whim, a Julia Child egg dish, recommended as a cure for hangovers by Julie Powell. While we certainly weren't hungover, we were planning on drinking a bit(it was date night, after all). I had the makings of bloody marys for him, and some prosecco for me. We knew it was going to be a good night, but we did not know what would happen with the eggs.
Oh, the eggs. These eggs must be called by their French name, as egg sounds far too harsh. They must be called Oeufs en Cocotte (or Oeufs for short), a short, breathy, soft word. You think I'm being ridiculous? Maybe so, but I've discovered that the egg is in fact incredible and edible, and I'll take my joy in that however I please.
The eggs are very simple. Simpler even than scrambled eggs, especially scrambled eggs a la Rainy Kate, which require copious amounts of vegetables and a little cheese. You bring some water to a simmer in a big, oven-safe sauce pan. You put two ramekins in the saucepan, and pour some cream in the ramekins. Crack two eggs in each ramekins, then cover with a little more cream and dot with butter. Bake the whole thing in the oven until just set, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Entire time you are required to function: 10 minutes. But the pleasure...
The whites mix with the cream, and get a little gelatinous, or very firm, depending on how much you want them cooked. Most of the time, egg whites don't have a great deal of taste, but egg whites that are mostly cream and a little butter taste like, well, like cream and butter. And the yolks melt in your mouth, with that eggy flavor blended with the cream. Oeufs en Cocotte are like a tiny little bowl of heaven: decadent to eat, and worth the work. Only this slice of heaven is pretty easy to get, and doesn't require any real sacrifice on your part.
Eat oeufs, drink prosecco, and be happy.
Friday, May 16, 2008
On Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol 1. Part 2
Sorry for the delayed update - what a week it has been, full of termites, graduations, more termites, exams and grades.
Last Friday (a week ago), John and I decided to have another French Meal, only we were going to use Julie Powell's suggestion of cooking liver, which is apparently a very sexy meal, and what relationship can't use a very sexy meal every now and again.
Powell describes liver as "the silky soul of steak" (220), but I should point out that Powell had her liver on her birthday, after seeing a great show, and not after coming home after a long day of grading and grocery shopping to a house covered in dead bugs.
When termites swarm, they go everywhere. When termites swarm, they seek water especially. When termites swarm, they die. They die everywhere. On your furniture, on your books, on your windows, on your carpet, on your clean dishes, on your dirty dishes, and especially in your sink. Fortunately, cleaning up the termites distracted us from the fact that we were only able to find very thinly sliced frozen calves liver at our local grocery store (we opted out of going to the Fresh Market because we weren't sure they'd have anything better meat wise, and the butcher was closed), which then had to thaw, which results in a pool of red juices appearing on the plate.
After the termites were clean and the liver thawed, and the spinach cleaned, blanched, chopped, cooked, and finally in the process of being braised (Make spinach the Julia Child way once - it is so damn good, but it is so much effort), we were lucky that the liver recipe was very simple. You brown it, coat it in a mustard sauce, cover it in bread crumbs and broil it very quickly.
Handling the thawed, overly juicy, very thin and very fragile liver was tricky until it was browned, and it was a little disgusting and disturbing. I thought about the chicken livers my mother and I love to fry up and eat, and realized that this liver was a whole different animal. I only let my thoughts linger on the function of the liver, and the potential diet of the calf it came from for a moment before deciding to focus instead on the wine I was drinking.
The liver was good. Very good. Not "silky soul of steak" good, although it might have been if we had the requested 1/2 inch thick slices rather than the thin pieces we did have. It might have been better if I wasn't so tired. If I had known what state my house would be in when I arrived home that night, I would have planned on something else. Lesson learned: always have a back-up plan.
The context in which food is eaten affects the food's taste so much. I've eaten offal before: I loved Haggis when I ate it in Scotland in high school. I've already mentioned my inherited love for chicken liver. I wasn't too put off by it, but the fanciness and richness of the preparation of this meal did not fit the mood. Sometimes food can set the mood, and sometimes the mood can ruin the food. Tonight, I'm making a MtAoFC recipe for eggs, but mostly as an addition to our brinner (breakfast for dinner) menu. It's not complicated, which is good, because I'm tired. Too often, I try to do to much, to be all things to too many people. The liver recipe should have been put off to a night when it would have been more thoroughly enjoyed, and last Friday should have been spent as this Monday was when the termites swarmed again: eating out rather than in. When I'm tired, food doesn't need to be work; it needs to be comfort. It doesn't need to be rich and complex; it needs to be simple and flexible. Food is the last thing that should cause us stress.
Last Friday (a week ago), John and I decided to have another French Meal, only we were going to use Julie Powell's suggestion of cooking liver, which is apparently a very sexy meal, and what relationship can't use a very sexy meal every now and again.
Powell describes liver as "the silky soul of steak" (220), but I should point out that Powell had her liver on her birthday, after seeing a great show, and not after coming home after a long day of grading and grocery shopping to a house covered in dead bugs.
When termites swarm, they go everywhere. When termites swarm, they seek water especially. When termites swarm, they die. They die everywhere. On your furniture, on your books, on your windows, on your carpet, on your clean dishes, on your dirty dishes, and especially in your sink. Fortunately, cleaning up the termites distracted us from the fact that we were only able to find very thinly sliced frozen calves liver at our local grocery store (we opted out of going to the Fresh Market because we weren't sure they'd have anything better meat wise, and the butcher was closed), which then had to thaw, which results in a pool of red juices appearing on the plate.
After the termites were clean and the liver thawed, and the spinach cleaned, blanched, chopped, cooked, and finally in the process of being braised (Make spinach the Julia Child way once - it is so damn good, but it is so much effort), we were lucky that the liver recipe was very simple. You brown it, coat it in a mustard sauce, cover it in bread crumbs and broil it very quickly.
Handling the thawed, overly juicy, very thin and very fragile liver was tricky until it was browned, and it was a little disgusting and disturbing. I thought about the chicken livers my mother and I love to fry up and eat, and realized that this liver was a whole different animal. I only let my thoughts linger on the function of the liver, and the potential diet of the calf it came from for a moment before deciding to focus instead on the wine I was drinking.
The liver was good. Very good. Not "silky soul of steak" good, although it might have been if we had the requested 1/2 inch thick slices rather than the thin pieces we did have. It might have been better if I wasn't so tired. If I had known what state my house would be in when I arrived home that night, I would have planned on something else. Lesson learned: always have a back-up plan.
The context in which food is eaten affects the food's taste so much. I've eaten offal before: I loved Haggis when I ate it in Scotland in high school. I've already mentioned my inherited love for chicken liver. I wasn't too put off by it, but the fanciness and richness of the preparation of this meal did not fit the mood. Sometimes food can set the mood, and sometimes the mood can ruin the food. Tonight, I'm making a MtAoFC recipe for eggs, but mostly as an addition to our brinner (breakfast for dinner) menu. It's not complicated, which is good, because I'm tired. Too often, I try to do to much, to be all things to too many people. The liver recipe should have been put off to a night when it would have been more thoroughly enjoyed, and last Friday should have been spent as this Monday was when the termites swarmed again: eating out rather than in. When I'm tired, food doesn't need to be work; it needs to be comfort. It doesn't need to be rich and complex; it needs to be simple and flexible. Food is the last thing that should cause us stress.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
On Illustrations
Visual aids for On Crawfish
Crawfish in the bucket, preparing to be cooked
Up close and personal
Ready for munching
Visual Aids for On Eggs:
Guess which is which.
My flowers. Chivalry is not dead; it just comes in a beer can.
Crawfish in the bucket, preparing to be cooked
Up close and personal
Ready for munching
Visual Aids for On Eggs:
Guess which is which.
My flowers. Chivalry is not dead; it just comes in a beer can.
On Eggs
Eggs have always seemed a bit gross to me. I never choose them at breakfast buffets, and I stopped eating them altogether the summer I worked for my dad and my mom made tough fried eggs every morning (the way my dad likes them). I remember in college watching John eat eggs over easy, dipping his toast in the runny yolk. It seemed so disgusting, like he was violating the egg. (He loves eggs).
I recently decided that I needed to start liking eggs, or at least tolerating them. There are a few reasons for this. First, eggs are, as one of my charming brothers put it, "cheap protein." In my memory, he grunted and flexed as he said this, but I'm certain that in reality he just gave me one of those looks my brothers give me frequently, the kind that seems to doubt that it could be possible that we're related. Second, learning to enjoy eggs is a kind of belated attempt to have more things in common with my husband. This is odd, because we have quite a bit in common. In fact, if he were taller and had longer hair, and if I were shy, we'd be pretty close to the same person. One of the few things that separates us is eggs.
One of the first snags I hit was that this search for egg enjoyment came up around the same time that I decided to improve the ethics of my eating. So what, I wandered, might be the best egg choice for me? The USDA website is not only fairly difficult to navigate, the guidelines for their labels are hard to find and are fairly vague. GreenerChoices.org, sponsored by Consumer reports, gives a decent explanation of what all the egg labels mean, and The Human Society, however biased a source it may be, has a good list as well. If you click through you'll notice one thing: Some of these labels are regulated, some aren't, and some are just plain unclear. And this is frustrating, because if everything we eat contains a moral and ethical choice on which might lie our nutrition, our health, and our souls, shouldn't we at least have clear, concise information about how to make that choice?
The answer is no. We must acknowledge the simple fact that most food is an industrial product, and like any other industry, money is a bottom line. This is why there are limits about how much non-meat product can be in our meat, and how "organic" something can really be. The decisions about how certain types of food can be labeled are made just as any other political decision is made: with lobbyists on one side, voters on one side, and economics on the hypotenuse. And that's okay, because most of us won't get sick because of the food supply, and most of us don't need a food pyramid to tell us how to eat, and most of us can puzzle through the million dietary requirements and know that our sandwich, or our omelet, is fine for us.
Of course, being a part of the group described above is a privilege. As is being part of a group that can actually afford to give a shit about how the food we eat was grown, and where it was grown. Part of our discussion about organics has to include the fact that the discussion necessarily excludes some people. The unlucky, the poor, the uninformed, those dwelling so deep in a city that the idea of green grass is positively foreign. We are not only what we eat; we are how we eat as well.
As a result of puzzling through this, I thought to all of the articles I'd read about being a locavore. First, of course, to eat within a 100 mile radius of your home, you have to give up some things: coffee, flour, sugar, olives, possibly even cheese and milk. There are, though, things to be gained.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan describes a place that I have been mildly obsessed with ever since reading the book, Polyface Farms. If you bothered to click through and read a little bit, you'll notice that the Salatins are wonderfully obsessive about the health, nature, and sustainability of their farm. They try to mimic nature as closely as possible:
"In nature, you'll always find birds following herbivores," Joel explained, when I asked him for the theory behind the Eggmobile. "The egret perched on the rhino's nose, the pheasants and turkeys trailing after the bison - that's a symbiotic relationship we're trying to imitate." In each case the birds dine on the insects that would otherwise bother the herbivore; they also pick insect larvae and parasites out of the animal's droppings, breaking the cycle of infestation and disease. (Pollan 211)
This may not be "organic" by USDA standards, but it is certainly more natural and more sustainable than a bunch of chickens shoved into tiny crates, or even the organic version of that, which Pollan also describes as he recounts his visit to Petaluma Poultry (the website makes no mention of eggs or laying hens):
Running the entire length of each shed was a grassy yard maybe fifteen feet wide, not nearly big enough [to] accommodate all twenty thousand birds inside should the group ever decide to take the air en masse. Which, truth be told, is the last thing the farm managers want to see happen, since these defenseless, crowded and genetically identical birds are exquisitely vulnerable to infection. This is one of the larger ironies of growing organic food in an industrial system: It is even more precarious than a conventional organic system. But the federal rules say an organic chicken should have "access to the outdoors,"... so Petaluma Poultry provides the doors and the yard and everyone keeps their fingers crossed. (Pollan 172)
Maybe it is a bit disgusting to think of our chickens running around, digging in poop, eating bugs, and squatting down on big, fat, brown eggs. Maybe we prefer the sanitary (although vulnerable) organic industrial system. (I can't imagine preferring the other system, where beaks are clipped, and molting is forced, and so forth). But, when you make a decision to care about your food, you have to face what the food industry is doing.
Now, this is not to say that our wallets can sustain this type of eating. We have to give ourselves permission to not be perfect eaters. Odds are good that I will purchase, prepare, and eat with gusto an industrial (even conventional) chicken again in my life. But that doesn't mean I can't care, or that I should ignore what I know.
Fortunately, there's an upside to what I know: things that are raised locally, things that are raised sustainably, are very, very tasty. This is not a lesson I had to learn in a book. All I had to do was think of fish from my parents' pond, or going further into my childhood, vegetables from my grandparents' garden, or vegetables that were shared from local farms, or shrimp bought off the boat on the coast. These things, simply prepared, were small feasts, with flavors unique to their place. This is not an original thought, but if we can acknowledge that a coffee bean from Indonesia tastes different than a coffee bean from Mexico, or that a wine from California has different flavors than one from Australia, why can't we acknowledge that a bell pepper from my backyard is going to taste differently than one grown, I don't know, Iowa? It does. It will. Necessarily.
So, in my egg adventure, I headed out to the Jackson Farmer's Market to see what there was to be had. And I found eggs from Journey End Farm. Excited, I shelled out $3.75 for a dozen eggs. The man I bought them from was older, and judging by his shirt and the bumper stickers on his truck, very, very conservative. But, upon hearing that this was my first time at the farmer's market, he gave me a huge bouquet of sweet peas, with a 32 ounce Miller Lite can, decapitated, of course, as a vase. I was thrilled. And hooked. Even if the eggs were crap, I'd fallen under the charms of this crusty old farmer.
The eggs were in a Styrofoam container, which I plan to take back and see if I can reuse, and labeled with the name and address of the farm. Check out your eggs at home. Can you even find the state where they were produced? If you clicked through above, you'll notice that it is only an article in an alumni newspaper, but that the farm invites customers to come and see for themselves the means of production. Call up Eggland's Best and see if they give you an open invitation. For that matter, see how quickly you can find a phone number for a major egg producer, even for a secretary. All I had to do was look at my eggs. This is comforting. If I wanted to, and I may want to, I could drop by, and watch the hens eat. This is accountability. As Pollan puts it, "just because food is local doesn't necessarily mean it will be organic or even sustainable. There's nothing to stop a local farmer from using chemicals or abusing animals - except the gaze or good word of his customers.... That said, there are good reasons to think a genuinely local agriculture will tend to be a more sustainable agriculture" (257-258).
I had read about farm-raised eggs in Pollan's book, too (what else is new?), but I was unsure that the testimonials could be entirely accurate. The eggs were allegedly rich and bright orange. The Journey End eggs lived up to the standard. John and I did a color test (the farm eggs against our organic, cage-free grocery store eggs), and the farm eggs were shockingly orange. Next to the other, the grocery store egg barely looked even yellow. It almost looked beige. In terms of taste, after scrambling, they were pretty similar, but the farm egg was richer, and smoother, and the yolk was thicker, and harder to beat. (I have pictures of all this, but there are some computer issues....) I can only imagine how the competition would have gone against conventional eggs.
As I was conducting this little experiment, I thought of the March/April issue of Cook's Illustrated which contains a recipe for yellow cake. Regarding yellow cake mix, the article states, "[b]eyond these additives [mono- and diglycerides], cake mix contains hydrogenated fats and artificial food coloring - the latter imparting a deep golden hue that hasn't been common in all-natural yellow cake since mass-produced eggs with uniformly pale yolks began dominating supermarket shelves decades ago" (22). Just let that sink in: Yeah, your cake mix may be delicious, but at what cost to you, and to the chicken. Break a real egg in there. Leave out the crap.
This has gotten rather long, so I'll close with three simple thoughts. One is from Giorgio Deluca (the website is... well, yeah), of Dean and Deluca fame, as quoted by David Kamp in The United States of Arugula:
"I wanted to show that somethings are better than others. Americans are taught just the opposite: 'Whatever makes you happy. You like Coca-Cola and this guy likes fine Burgundies? You can't say one is better than the other!' Can you imagine the absurdity of that? But that's the underlying philosophy that Americans are brainwashed into" (201).
Quality is important. Location is important. An egg is not just an egg. An egg is color, taste, richness, and the life of the hen all wrapped up into one. This is important. We must acknowledge that it is important. We've got to start placing quality in the value system by which we make food choices.
The second thought is from Pollan, of course, and is about his relationship with Joel Salatin, and Salatin's relationship with his customers:
If there was a dark side to Joel's vision... it was the deep antipathy to cities that has so often shadowed rural populism in this country.... For my own part, this taut little exchange made me appreciate what a deep gulf of culture and experience separates me from Joel - and yet at the same time, what a sturdy bridge caring about food can sometimes provide. (245)
The farmer who gave me the sweet peas would, judging by his "Democrats are stupid" bumper sticker, shit a brick if he knew where I stood on things like gay marriage, abortion, education, and war. But we both know that food is more than politics; it is nourishment, for our bodies, for our minds, for our souls, and honestly, for the earth. We would never see eye to eye, and we may hate each other but for a dozen eggs. The fact that I cared enough about eggs, which I could buy more conveniently and probably more cheaply at a fluorescently lit grocery store, to come to the farmer's market in downtown and get excited about pictures of happy chickens was enough to warrant a bouquet of flowers. Food creates connection. Connection creates a world that works.
Finally, let me leave you with my gustatory thoughts on eggs. Some images: New Year's Eve 2006, in a tiny Cambridge kitchen, a small, blond intellectual took 6 eggs into her hands and separated each yolk tenderly from the white, and helped my husband make rich, heavily alcoholic egg nog. A Mississippi kitchen, cluttered and messed, with a dirty pan on the stove. John's excitement when he realized I had made myself eggs for lunch. Two bright orange yolks, beaten, and poured over garlic, asparagus, spinach and mushrooms. These are the bright spots in my egg adventure. I'm still not up to eggs by themselves, but I suppose I will get there. In the mean time, I can think about the eggs as I cook them to distract myself.
I recently decided that I needed to start liking eggs, or at least tolerating them. There are a few reasons for this. First, eggs are, as one of my charming brothers put it, "cheap protein." In my memory, he grunted and flexed as he said this, but I'm certain that in reality he just gave me one of those looks my brothers give me frequently, the kind that seems to doubt that it could be possible that we're related. Second, learning to enjoy eggs is a kind of belated attempt to have more things in common with my husband. This is odd, because we have quite a bit in common. In fact, if he were taller and had longer hair, and if I were shy, we'd be pretty close to the same person. One of the few things that separates us is eggs.
One of the first snags I hit was that this search for egg enjoyment came up around the same time that I decided to improve the ethics of my eating. So what, I wandered, might be the best egg choice for me? The USDA website is not only fairly difficult to navigate, the guidelines for their labels are hard to find and are fairly vague. GreenerChoices.org, sponsored by Consumer reports, gives a decent explanation of what all the egg labels mean, and The Human Society, however biased a source it may be, has a good list as well. If you click through you'll notice one thing: Some of these labels are regulated, some aren't, and some are just plain unclear. And this is frustrating, because if everything we eat contains a moral and ethical choice on which might lie our nutrition, our health, and our souls, shouldn't we at least have clear, concise information about how to make that choice?
The answer is no. We must acknowledge the simple fact that most food is an industrial product, and like any other industry, money is a bottom line. This is why there are limits about how much non-meat product can be in our meat, and how "organic" something can really be. The decisions about how certain types of food can be labeled are made just as any other political decision is made: with lobbyists on one side, voters on one side, and economics on the hypotenuse. And that's okay, because most of us won't get sick because of the food supply, and most of us don't need a food pyramid to tell us how to eat, and most of us can puzzle through the million dietary requirements and know that our sandwich, or our omelet, is fine for us.
Of course, being a part of the group described above is a privilege. As is being part of a group that can actually afford to give a shit about how the food we eat was grown, and where it was grown. Part of our discussion about organics has to include the fact that the discussion necessarily excludes some people. The unlucky, the poor, the uninformed, those dwelling so deep in a city that the idea of green grass is positively foreign. We are not only what we eat; we are how we eat as well.
As a result of puzzling through this, I thought to all of the articles I'd read about being a locavore. First, of course, to eat within a 100 mile radius of your home, you have to give up some things: coffee, flour, sugar, olives, possibly even cheese and milk. There are, though, things to be gained.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan describes a place that I have been mildly obsessed with ever since reading the book, Polyface Farms. If you bothered to click through and read a little bit, you'll notice that the Salatins are wonderfully obsessive about the health, nature, and sustainability of their farm. They try to mimic nature as closely as possible:
"In nature, you'll always find birds following herbivores," Joel explained, when I asked him for the theory behind the Eggmobile. "The egret perched on the rhino's nose, the pheasants and turkeys trailing after the bison - that's a symbiotic relationship we're trying to imitate." In each case the birds dine on the insects that would otherwise bother the herbivore; they also pick insect larvae and parasites out of the animal's droppings, breaking the cycle of infestation and disease. (Pollan 211)
This may not be "organic" by USDA standards, but it is certainly more natural and more sustainable than a bunch of chickens shoved into tiny crates, or even the organic version of that, which Pollan also describes as he recounts his visit to Petaluma Poultry (the website makes no mention of eggs or laying hens):
Running the entire length of each shed was a grassy yard maybe fifteen feet wide, not nearly big enough [to] accommodate all twenty thousand birds inside should the group ever decide to take the air en masse. Which, truth be told, is the last thing the farm managers want to see happen, since these defenseless, crowded and genetically identical birds are exquisitely vulnerable to infection. This is one of the larger ironies of growing organic food in an industrial system: It is even more precarious than a conventional organic system. But the federal rules say an organic chicken should have "access to the outdoors,"... so Petaluma Poultry provides the doors and the yard and everyone keeps their fingers crossed. (Pollan 172)
Maybe it is a bit disgusting to think of our chickens running around, digging in poop, eating bugs, and squatting down on big, fat, brown eggs. Maybe we prefer the sanitary (although vulnerable) organic industrial system. (I can't imagine preferring the other system, where beaks are clipped, and molting is forced, and so forth). But, when you make a decision to care about your food, you have to face what the food industry is doing.
Now, this is not to say that our wallets can sustain this type of eating. We have to give ourselves permission to not be perfect eaters. Odds are good that I will purchase, prepare, and eat with gusto an industrial (even conventional) chicken again in my life. But that doesn't mean I can't care, or that I should ignore what I know.
Fortunately, there's an upside to what I know: things that are raised locally, things that are raised sustainably, are very, very tasty. This is not a lesson I had to learn in a book. All I had to do was think of fish from my parents' pond, or going further into my childhood, vegetables from my grandparents' garden, or vegetables that were shared from local farms, or shrimp bought off the boat on the coast. These things, simply prepared, were small feasts, with flavors unique to their place. This is not an original thought, but if we can acknowledge that a coffee bean from Indonesia tastes different than a coffee bean from Mexico, or that a wine from California has different flavors than one from Australia, why can't we acknowledge that a bell pepper from my backyard is going to taste differently than one grown, I don't know, Iowa? It does. It will. Necessarily.
So, in my egg adventure, I headed out to the Jackson Farmer's Market to see what there was to be had. And I found eggs from Journey End Farm. Excited, I shelled out $3.75 for a dozen eggs. The man I bought them from was older, and judging by his shirt and the bumper stickers on his truck, very, very conservative. But, upon hearing that this was my first time at the farmer's market, he gave me a huge bouquet of sweet peas, with a 32 ounce Miller Lite can, decapitated, of course, as a vase. I was thrilled. And hooked. Even if the eggs were crap, I'd fallen under the charms of this crusty old farmer.
The eggs were in a Styrofoam container, which I plan to take back and see if I can reuse, and labeled with the name and address of the farm. Check out your eggs at home. Can you even find the state where they were produced? If you clicked through above, you'll notice that it is only an article in an alumni newspaper, but that the farm invites customers to come and see for themselves the means of production. Call up Eggland's Best and see if they give you an open invitation. For that matter, see how quickly you can find a phone number for a major egg producer, even for a secretary. All I had to do was look at my eggs. This is comforting. If I wanted to, and I may want to, I could drop by, and watch the hens eat. This is accountability. As Pollan puts it, "just because food is local doesn't necessarily mean it will be organic or even sustainable. There's nothing to stop a local farmer from using chemicals or abusing animals - except the gaze or good word of his customers.... That said, there are good reasons to think a genuinely local agriculture will tend to be a more sustainable agriculture" (257-258).
I had read about farm-raised eggs in Pollan's book, too (what else is new?), but I was unsure that the testimonials could be entirely accurate. The eggs were allegedly rich and bright orange. The Journey End eggs lived up to the standard. John and I did a color test (the farm eggs against our organic, cage-free grocery store eggs), and the farm eggs were shockingly orange. Next to the other, the grocery store egg barely looked even yellow. It almost looked beige. In terms of taste, after scrambling, they were pretty similar, but the farm egg was richer, and smoother, and the yolk was thicker, and harder to beat. (I have pictures of all this, but there are some computer issues....) I can only imagine how the competition would have gone against conventional eggs.
As I was conducting this little experiment, I thought of the March/April issue of Cook's Illustrated which contains a recipe for yellow cake. Regarding yellow cake mix, the article states, "[b]eyond these additives [mono- and diglycerides], cake mix contains hydrogenated fats and artificial food coloring - the latter imparting a deep golden hue that hasn't been common in all-natural yellow cake since mass-produced eggs with uniformly pale yolks began dominating supermarket shelves decades ago" (22). Just let that sink in: Yeah, your cake mix may be delicious, but at what cost to you, and to the chicken. Break a real egg in there. Leave out the crap.
This has gotten rather long, so I'll close with three simple thoughts. One is from Giorgio Deluca (the website is... well, yeah), of Dean and Deluca fame, as quoted by David Kamp in The United States of Arugula:
"I wanted to show that somethings are better than others. Americans are taught just the opposite: 'Whatever makes you happy. You like Coca-Cola and this guy likes fine Burgundies? You can't say one is better than the other!' Can you imagine the absurdity of that? But that's the underlying philosophy that Americans are brainwashed into" (201).
Quality is important. Location is important. An egg is not just an egg. An egg is color, taste, richness, and the life of the hen all wrapped up into one. This is important. We must acknowledge that it is important. We've got to start placing quality in the value system by which we make food choices.
The second thought is from Pollan, of course, and is about his relationship with Joel Salatin, and Salatin's relationship with his customers:
If there was a dark side to Joel's vision... it was the deep antipathy to cities that has so often shadowed rural populism in this country.... For my own part, this taut little exchange made me appreciate what a deep gulf of culture and experience separates me from Joel - and yet at the same time, what a sturdy bridge caring about food can sometimes provide. (245)
The farmer who gave me the sweet peas would, judging by his "Democrats are stupid" bumper sticker, shit a brick if he knew where I stood on things like gay marriage, abortion, education, and war. But we both know that food is more than politics; it is nourishment, for our bodies, for our minds, for our souls, and honestly, for the earth. We would never see eye to eye, and we may hate each other but for a dozen eggs. The fact that I cared enough about eggs, which I could buy more conveniently and probably more cheaply at a fluorescently lit grocery store, to come to the farmer's market in downtown and get excited about pictures of happy chickens was enough to warrant a bouquet of flowers. Food creates connection. Connection creates a world that works.
Finally, let me leave you with my gustatory thoughts on eggs. Some images: New Year's Eve 2006, in a tiny Cambridge kitchen, a small, blond intellectual took 6 eggs into her hands and separated each yolk tenderly from the white, and helped my husband make rich, heavily alcoholic egg nog. A Mississippi kitchen, cluttered and messed, with a dirty pan on the stove. John's excitement when he realized I had made myself eggs for lunch. Two bright orange yolks, beaten, and poured over garlic, asparagus, spinach and mushrooms. These are the bright spots in my egg adventure. I'm still not up to eggs by themselves, but I suppose I will get there. In the mean time, I can think about the eggs as I cook them to distract myself.
On Potatoes (Follow-Up)
On her blog, A Mighty Appetite Kim O'Donnel discusses potatoes as a possible solution to global food problems. Very interesting.
On Potatoes
On Potatoes
Sunday, May 4, 2008
On Beans on Toast
As I have mentioned before, I spent some time in college "studying" in Britain. The cuisine, as many who have traveled to the UK can attest, is not always the greatest, but I think we overlook some of the simpler bits.
I was introduced to beans on toast when a girl on my dorm floor made it using the toaster she had hidden away in her room. I was intrigued, had a try, and was subsequently hooked.
The dish is really quite simple. This recipe unnecessarily complicates the whole thing. Toast, of course, is essential. My mother-in-law (bless her heart) lent me the CD set of Mark Kurlansky's compliation of food writing across the world/time, Choice Cuts. If I had the text copy, I would quote for you from the recent section on toast that I listened to while driving down the Natchez Trace. Suffice it to say that the point was that toast is actually quite hard to make well. In my opinion, humble though it may be, you simply have to learn the way that your toaster works. Also, while white bread may be the usual bread for toast, I prefer a nice soft whole wheat oatmeal.
One of the reasons I have such a bread preference has to do with my fear and loathing for high fructose corn syrup. While it is impossible to completely avoid if you want the occasional soda or hot dog bun, I figure I can do without the extra calories (some sources claim that HFCS provides the average American with most of his or her daily calories), and that I'd like to be able to taste subtle sweetness again. Also, the shit is in everything. Seriously. Check out the labels in your kitchen. I once picked up a can of kidney beans. Plain old kidney beans: no sauce, nothing. The first ingredient was water. The second ingredient was high fructose corn syrup. As you may know, the order in which ingredients are listed on food items depends on how much of one particular ingredient is present in the food. So, most foods will have water as the first ingredient, but one would expect kidney beans to have more beans than highly processed corn by-product sweetner. While I wish I was dedicated and patient enough to bake my own bread (I can do it, as anyone who has enjoyed my winter sourdough baking frenzy can attest), I find that, in a pinch, Pepperidge Farm and Sara Lee produce whole grain (yummy and healthy) breads that do not have HFCS in the ingredient list.
The toast should be lightly buttered, of course, and a small sprinkling of shredded mozzerella cheese on the toast to gently melt under the heat of the beans adds a small depth of flavor. I mean, let's face it, any comfort food is improved with a bit of cheese.
You can't choose just any can of beans, though. I suppose that you could purchase some dried navy beans and make your own beans, but that's a lot of work for something that's meant to be a home version of fast food. Pork and beans won't do either: you want the taste of the beans and the tomato sauce, not of hot dogs, and you want the firm texture of the beans, not the odd mushiness of the white globs of "pork" floating around in those cans. I prefer the Heinz beans in tomato sauce sold in Britain (and to my great surprise and pleasure, my local Fresh Market). A 1/2 cup serving of these beans only has 90 calories, and the ingredient list reads like this: Navy Beans, Tomatoes, Water, Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Salt, Modified Corn Starch, Distilled Vinegar, Spices.
Check that out. Beans as the first ingredient in a can of beans. Yes, the product still has sugar and glucose syrup, which is corn syrup or Karo syrup. This is less sweet that HFCS, which, as the name suggests, is not glucose but is fructose. But because the beans taste so good (what, you expect me to be a perfect healthy eater?), I will make an exception. You can also order these beans off of Amazon, should you not have a fantastic grocery store nearby.
Prep is simple: dump the beans into a small saucepan. Heat them carefully - boiling makes them icky. Spoon them over your buttered toast, and eat with a fork. Depending upon the size of the can, you can eat the whole can for a big meal like dinner, and not feel like a piggy.
What you do feel is happiness. This meal is simplicity. And ease. Last week, when John was away on business, I ate beans on toast for a few nights in a row, partially to ease the tummy back into real food after crawfish, but partially because when I eat them, I think of that brown, dank little dorm, and the teeny little room I made into a home, and the incredible changes in personality, goals, and body type I went through that spring. I think about the 5 apartments that have followed that dorm room, and how the only really consistent thing in my life since that time has been that I can always return to the foods that comfort me, whether I encountered them in childhood, overseas, or in an adventure with my husband. One day, my life will have more stabilty, and I bet that even then, when I'm stressed, tired or lonely, I return to foods like beans on toast to improve my outlook, and remind me that I've had a good life, and a brave life, and that I'm going to be okay.
I was introduced to beans on toast when a girl on my dorm floor made it using the toaster she had hidden away in her room. I was intrigued, had a try, and was subsequently hooked.
The dish is really quite simple. This recipe unnecessarily complicates the whole thing. Toast, of course, is essential. My mother-in-law (bless her heart) lent me the CD set of Mark Kurlansky's compliation of food writing across the world/time, Choice Cuts. If I had the text copy, I would quote for you from the recent section on toast that I listened to while driving down the Natchez Trace. Suffice it to say that the point was that toast is actually quite hard to make well. In my opinion, humble though it may be, you simply have to learn the way that your toaster works. Also, while white bread may be the usual bread for toast, I prefer a nice soft whole wheat oatmeal.
One of the reasons I have such a bread preference has to do with my fear and loathing for high fructose corn syrup. While it is impossible to completely avoid if you want the occasional soda or hot dog bun, I figure I can do without the extra calories (some sources claim that HFCS provides the average American with most of his or her daily calories), and that I'd like to be able to taste subtle sweetness again. Also, the shit is in everything. Seriously. Check out the labels in your kitchen. I once picked up a can of kidney beans. Plain old kidney beans: no sauce, nothing. The first ingredient was water. The second ingredient was high fructose corn syrup. As you may know, the order in which ingredients are listed on food items depends on how much of one particular ingredient is present in the food. So, most foods will have water as the first ingredient, but one would expect kidney beans to have more beans than highly processed corn by-product sweetner. While I wish I was dedicated and patient enough to bake my own bread (I can do it, as anyone who has enjoyed my winter sourdough baking frenzy can attest), I find that, in a pinch, Pepperidge Farm and Sara Lee produce whole grain (yummy and healthy) breads that do not have HFCS in the ingredient list.
The toast should be lightly buttered, of course, and a small sprinkling of shredded mozzerella cheese on the toast to gently melt under the heat of the beans adds a small depth of flavor. I mean, let's face it, any comfort food is improved with a bit of cheese.
You can't choose just any can of beans, though. I suppose that you could purchase some dried navy beans and make your own beans, but that's a lot of work for something that's meant to be a home version of fast food. Pork and beans won't do either: you want the taste of the beans and the tomato sauce, not of hot dogs, and you want the firm texture of the beans, not the odd mushiness of the white globs of "pork" floating around in those cans. I prefer the Heinz beans in tomato sauce sold in Britain (and to my great surprise and pleasure, my local Fresh Market). A 1/2 cup serving of these beans only has 90 calories, and the ingredient list reads like this: Navy Beans, Tomatoes, Water, Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Salt, Modified Corn Starch, Distilled Vinegar, Spices.
Check that out. Beans as the first ingredient in a can of beans. Yes, the product still has sugar and glucose syrup, which is corn syrup or Karo syrup. This is less sweet that HFCS, which, as the name suggests, is not glucose but is fructose. But because the beans taste so good (what, you expect me to be a perfect healthy eater?), I will make an exception. You can also order these beans off of Amazon, should you not have a fantastic grocery store nearby.
Prep is simple: dump the beans into a small saucepan. Heat them carefully - boiling makes them icky. Spoon them over your buttered toast, and eat with a fork. Depending upon the size of the can, you can eat the whole can for a big meal like dinner, and not feel like a piggy.
What you do feel is happiness. This meal is simplicity. And ease. Last week, when John was away on business, I ate beans on toast for a few nights in a row, partially to ease the tummy back into real food after crawfish, but partially because when I eat them, I think of that brown, dank little dorm, and the teeny little room I made into a home, and the incredible changes in personality, goals, and body type I went through that spring. I think about the 5 apartments that have followed that dorm room, and how the only really consistent thing in my life since that time has been that I can always return to the foods that comfort me, whether I encountered them in childhood, overseas, or in an adventure with my husband. One day, my life will have more stabilty, and I bet that even then, when I'm stressed, tired or lonely, I return to foods like beans on toast to improve my outlook, and remind me that I've had a good life, and a brave life, and that I'm going to be okay.
On Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. 1 Part 1
One day, some months ago, I suggested to my husband that, as a project, I could cook my way through MtAoFC and blog about it. A few weeks later, I read an article about Julie Powell, who had already done so, to great acclaim and success. I was, of course, pissed at her, until I contribute to the fame and success in my own small way by buying her book. And reading it obsessively. Twice. In a week. It is very good. (I've linked to the Amazon page for it before, but just in case: Julie and Julia.
I was struck by how similar I am to Powell, or Powell is to me (aside from the rhyming last names): she is prone to hysteria and anxiety, is a massive potty mouth, and, at the time of the project, was struggling to find her way. I am, in an attempt at self-praise recommended by my therapist, more practical, patient, and sanitary than she (at least in comparison to the version of herself she puts forth in J&J). However, I am deeply grateful to Powell for two things: doing the project years before I had the idea or owned the book, therefore eliminating what would have assuredly been a great amount of stress and expense from my life; and for turning me back on to MtAoFC.
Powell says of the book that it "has the power of shock" (13). While she qualifies that by reminding us that "[s]elf-proclaimed foodies spare a smile of fond condescension [for MtAoFC] before returning to their Chez Panisse cookbooks" (14, at the time of its publication, Craig Claiborn raved about it in the Times, and, according to David Kamp's fantastic book, The United States of Arugula, it sold 100,000 copies and went through five editions in a year (88-90). It was the status book among foodies then, and to have mastered the skills therein was truly a mark of prestige (Kamp 91-92). In fact, the founder of Chez Panisse, Alice Waters (her info can be found at the Chez Panisse site), loved the book, and let it lead her to Elizabeth David and her book French Country Cooking (Kamp 136). (Under Jeremiah Tower, Chez Panisse went through its own decadent French period (Kamp 150-154)). Powell, upon rediscovering MtAoFC in her mother's kitchen, says of the now unfashionable and far too buttery book:
But reading MtAoFC - childishly simple and dauntingly complex, incantatory and comforting - I thought this was what prayer must feel like. Sustenance bound up with anticipation and want. Reading MtAoFC was like reading pornographic Bible verses. (15)
Needless to say, I was a little turned on.
I first bought MtAoFC for John during one of our summers apart while he worked at a law firm. He has made one recipe from the book, Boeuf a la mode, which is not beef with ice cream, but beef braised in read wine. For those of us lucky enough to be at the table the night he served it, the dish was succulent, and yes, a little sexy. However, after reading J&J, I started reading MtAoFC like one might read a novel, and decided that for our Friday date night, I would make some French food.
I started with aigo bouido (garlic soup) because, frankly, we love garlic. I followed the recipe strictly, although I did use one of the variations, the soupe a l'ail aux pommes de terre (saffron-flavored garlic soup with potatoes). I left out the saffron because we are on a budget. This soup is delicate and gentle, without the spice and spark of roasted, or sauteed garlic. It was also the only dish on the menu without butter in it.
For the next course (or the side dish) I made Concombres au beurre, using the variation, Concombres aux champignons et a la creme (creamed cucumbers with mushrooms). We never cook cucumbers in our house, but that will change. This dish takes a while, and involves many more steps than you ever thought you'd use with cucumbers, but oh. The taste is wonderful: sharp from vinegar, but with the warm roasted flavor of anything baked in the oven, and of course, the cream. You should make this dish.
For the last dish, I made Supremes de volaille a brun (chicken breasts sauteed in butter and with a brown butter sauce). The dish is so simple. The hardest parts are clarifying the butter and controlling the temperature of the butter for the sauce (I used a non-stick skillet and guessed at the color of the butter. When I tossed in the parsley, it foamed up something crazy). Despite simply being browned chicken breasts with parsley, this dish was beautiful: the gold crust of the chicken topped with the deep green of the parsley, and surrounded by the brown butter. And the taste was phenomenal. Lemony, and parsley-y and buttery, of course.
Despite the fact that we could barely move after eating, it was a great date. There's something about cooking elaborately for yourself and your lover. Food may be historical (as the barrage of links above indicate), but really, food is always about the moment in which it is eaten. I wasn't thinking of Julie Powell, or Julia Child, or Escoffier when I was eating: I was thinking of the subtly and variety of the flavors in my mouth, of the happiness on my husband's face, and of the quietness of the house. It is important to know where our food comes from, why we eat it, and how to prepare it well, but we can't let this knowledge stop us from cooking, eating, and enjoying. Occasionally, there will be a MtAoFC entry, and hopefully, they won't be all as dredged in history as this one is. I want to share what I know, but the most important thing is that many people have been moved by all the knowledge and people listed above to do one vital thing: cook and eat. Really, it's about pleasure. Pleasure that is brought by knowledge, by seeking more knowledge, by skill, and learning more skills, and ultimately, by a piece of chicken covered in butter and a cucumber covered in cream.
I was struck by how similar I am to Powell, or Powell is to me (aside from the rhyming last names): she is prone to hysteria and anxiety, is a massive potty mouth, and, at the time of the project, was struggling to find her way. I am, in an attempt at self-praise recommended by my therapist, more practical, patient, and sanitary than she (at least in comparison to the version of herself she puts forth in J&J). However, I am deeply grateful to Powell for two things: doing the project years before I had the idea or owned the book, therefore eliminating what would have assuredly been a great amount of stress and expense from my life; and for turning me back on to MtAoFC.
Powell says of the book that it "has the power of shock" (13). While she qualifies that by reminding us that "[s]elf-proclaimed foodies spare a smile of fond condescension [for MtAoFC] before returning to their Chez Panisse cookbooks" (14, at the time of its publication, Craig Claiborn raved about it in the Times, and, according to David Kamp's fantastic book, The United States of Arugula, it sold 100,000 copies and went through five editions in a year (88-90). It was the status book among foodies then, and to have mastered the skills therein was truly a mark of prestige (Kamp 91-92). In fact, the founder of Chez Panisse, Alice Waters (her info can be found at the Chez Panisse site), loved the book, and let it lead her to Elizabeth David and her book French Country Cooking (Kamp 136). (Under Jeremiah Tower, Chez Panisse went through its own decadent French period (Kamp 150-154)). Powell, upon rediscovering MtAoFC in her mother's kitchen, says of the now unfashionable and far too buttery book:
But reading MtAoFC - childishly simple and dauntingly complex, incantatory and comforting - I thought this was what prayer must feel like. Sustenance bound up with anticipation and want. Reading MtAoFC was like reading pornographic Bible verses. (15)
Needless to say, I was a little turned on.
I first bought MtAoFC for John during one of our summers apart while he worked at a law firm. He has made one recipe from the book, Boeuf a la mode, which is not beef with ice cream, but beef braised in read wine. For those of us lucky enough to be at the table the night he served it, the dish was succulent, and yes, a little sexy. However, after reading J&J, I started reading MtAoFC like one might read a novel, and decided that for our Friday date night, I would make some French food.
I started with aigo bouido (garlic soup) because, frankly, we love garlic. I followed the recipe strictly, although I did use one of the variations, the soupe a l'ail aux pommes de terre (saffron-flavored garlic soup with potatoes). I left out the saffron because we are on a budget. This soup is delicate and gentle, without the spice and spark of roasted, or sauteed garlic. It was also the only dish on the menu without butter in it.
For the next course (or the side dish) I made Concombres au beurre, using the variation, Concombres aux champignons et a la creme (creamed cucumbers with mushrooms). We never cook cucumbers in our house, but that will change. This dish takes a while, and involves many more steps than you ever thought you'd use with cucumbers, but oh. The taste is wonderful: sharp from vinegar, but with the warm roasted flavor of anything baked in the oven, and of course, the cream. You should make this dish.
For the last dish, I made Supremes de volaille a brun (chicken breasts sauteed in butter and with a brown butter sauce). The dish is so simple. The hardest parts are clarifying the butter and controlling the temperature of the butter for the sauce (I used a non-stick skillet and guessed at the color of the butter. When I tossed in the parsley, it foamed up something crazy). Despite simply being browned chicken breasts with parsley, this dish was beautiful: the gold crust of the chicken topped with the deep green of the parsley, and surrounded by the brown butter. And the taste was phenomenal. Lemony, and parsley-y and buttery, of course.
Despite the fact that we could barely move after eating, it was a great date. There's something about cooking elaborately for yourself and your lover. Food may be historical (as the barrage of links above indicate), but really, food is always about the moment in which it is eaten. I wasn't thinking of Julie Powell, or Julia Child, or Escoffier when I was eating: I was thinking of the subtly and variety of the flavors in my mouth, of the happiness on my husband's face, and of the quietness of the house. It is important to know where our food comes from, why we eat it, and how to prepare it well, but we can't let this knowledge stop us from cooking, eating, and enjoying. Occasionally, there will be a MtAoFC entry, and hopefully, they won't be all as dredged in history as this one is. I want to share what I know, but the most important thing is that many people have been moved by all the knowledge and people listed above to do one vital thing: cook and eat. Really, it's about pleasure. Pleasure that is brought by knowledge, by seeking more knowledge, by skill, and learning more skills, and ultimately, by a piece of chicken covered in butter and a cucumber covered in cream.
Monday, April 28, 2008
On Crawfish
One of my finest memories of the brief time I spent traveling was Orthodox Easter on the Greek Island of Patmos. My traveling companion and I arrived fairly early in the afternoon, and were met at the ferry by the owner of a nice, cheap hotel. We rented rooms, and he dropped us off at one of the nicest places we would stay on the whole trip. (Go to Greece in April!) Shortly after we got settled, there was a knock at the door, and the hotel owner insisted that we join him for Easter dinner. Why the hell not?
The first stop was a local restaurant, which would probably be more memorable if it weren't for what followed. After a full and delicious meal at the restaurant, we hopped back in the truck, and zoomed into this neighborhood full of beautiful white homes. We stop at a large one of these homes, and pile into the backyard, where the owner, his wife and children, and other friends greet the hotel owner, and us, as if they had been awaiting our arrival. There was roasted lamb, to be eaten with the fingers, and homemade wine, and goat cheese. There were toasts, loud, boistrous, bilingual, there were compliments on my companion's and my beauty, and there was a feeling of welcome and joy that settled the general anxiety and uneasiness I had felt for most of the trip.
This was my first experience with true, uninhibited, unworried hospitality. I have always wanted my home to be like that one: relaxed, open, and bawdy. And that brings us to the topic, the crawfish boil. A totally informal way to have your friends stuff themselves and drink too much. The first time I ever ate crawfish was at college, during one of the festivals that happened during the spring. It was delicious (and I'm a head-sucker). I've loved crawfish ever since.
For those not in the know, a crawfish is a freshwater crustacean (there has been some debate over whether or not they are insects). It looks like a tiny lobster, and it lives in the mud. It is cooked in boiling water (more on that later) with spices and served on newspaper. The saying goes "Pinch the tail and suck the head," and this is a fairly accurate description of how to eat a crawfish.
Last May, John and I, and 3 other misplaced Southerners marooned in the slow to come Boston spring/summer, mail-ordered live crawfish and had a boil in the backyard of our little apartment in Cambridge. We were quite good at it, so we tried it again this weekend, only now, we're in MS, the crawfish were cheaper, and the Southerners who came were hardly misplaced. Despite the chill in the air due to the rain, we were happy, and hungry. When I heard one guest muse about how the party reminded him of college, I felt an odd sense of accomplishment. Here, gathered around an old table covered in newspaper in my garage, were 9 people who were mostly strangers, and yet, we gathered together eagerly, to share and to eat. To fellowship, if you will.
I did, I have to admit, have some qualms about the cooking method, particularly after I let one of the fellows crawl on my arm and thought he was quite charming. I suppose this is why our parents tell us not to play with our food. We may feel guilty about eating it and become vegan or something equally abhorrent. I asked John, feeling a bit ashamed to ask the question, whether or not it was ethical to boil crawfish alive, and he looked at me with the same look that he gives me when I suggest we get a puppy, a look that is fully of incredulity and concern for my sanity.
"Everything you eat has to die somehow," he replied with a shrug. I allowed that to satisfy me. And I reread a section of Julie and Julia about cooking lobsters:
I had read up on all sorts of methods for humanely euthanizing lobsters - sticking them in the freezer, placing them in ice water then bringing it up to a boil (which is supposed to fool them into not realizing they're boiling alive), slicing their spinal cords with a knife beforehand. But all these struck me as palliatives thought up more to save boilers from emotional anguish than boilees from physical. In the end I just dumped them out of the paper bad into a pot with some boiling water and vermouth and vegetables. And then freaked the fuck out.
The pot wasn't big enough. Though the lobsters didn't shriek in horror the second I dropped them in, their momentary stillness only drew out the excruciating moment. I was like that instant your car begins to skid out of control and before your eyes you see the burning car wreck that is your destiny.
...My final victim was another Chinatown denizen. He was spryer than his predecessors, flailing around in his bag for the entire subway ride. Because shivving a dead lobster in the back would be no challenge at all.
I put him in the freezer for a while when I got home, to try to numb him, maybe make it go a little easier, but is there such a thing as an easy vivisection, really? After half an hour or so, while Eric retreated to the living room... I took the lobster out of the freezer and laid him out on the cutting board.
...The poor guy just sat there, waving his claws and antennae gently, while I stood over him, my lardgest knife poised at the juncture of chest and tail. I took a deep breath, let it out.
... I pressed down, making an incision in the shell where Julia said I could quickly sever the spinal cord.
The thing began to flail.
...Clear blood leaked off the edges of the cutting board onto the floor as the lobster continuned to flail vigorously, despite the fact that its head was now chopped neatly in two....I sawed away at the thing, managing to get about halfway through before I had to leave the room for a bit to clear my head.
But I think perhaps I'm approaching a Zenlike serenity when it comes to crustacean murder, because when I reenetered the kitchen to the sight of the giant thing pinned to the cutting board... I just giggled. (Pages 149-164, seriously reduced)
The fact of the matter is that most of us are going to eat lobster and crawfish anyway, and the least we can do is to make ourselves go through the possible psychic trauma of killing the creature ourselves. We are removed from the process of what makes our steak a steak, or our fish a fish. Cruelty is something to be avoided, but a fairly immediate death in a pot is merciful compared to being cut in half alive. I'm guessing. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan says this about a meal that he has hunted, gathered, and created from scratch, in a very literal sense: "The pleasures... are based on a nearly perfect knowledge" (410). And in some small way, this idea applies to the crawfish, and possibly, though I cannot speak for Julie Powell, the lobster: when we are fully aware of what we are doing to another creature, and why we are doing it, then perhaps our minds can more fully enjoy the product of what we have done.
So why did my husband and I boil 36 pounds of crawfish on Saturday? Perhaps this is circular, but, we did it for the pleasure we could take from it, and the pleasure we could give to others from it. Maybe pleasure should not be the standard by which we measure all of our ethical decisions. But, then, all of our ethical decisions were never measured by the same yardstick anyway. Pleasure should be a consideration when we eat, as well as ethics, sustainability, and nutrion. If we leave out one of these factors, then we can never really acheive what it was I felt in Greece. If we think of each of them, in careful consideration, and giving each its proper weight, we can enjoy ourselves and our company while we eat. And really, this is what a party should be.
The first stop was a local restaurant, which would probably be more memorable if it weren't for what followed. After a full and delicious meal at the restaurant, we hopped back in the truck, and zoomed into this neighborhood full of beautiful white homes. We stop at a large one of these homes, and pile into the backyard, where the owner, his wife and children, and other friends greet the hotel owner, and us, as if they had been awaiting our arrival. There was roasted lamb, to be eaten with the fingers, and homemade wine, and goat cheese. There were toasts, loud, boistrous, bilingual, there were compliments on my companion's and my beauty, and there was a feeling of welcome and joy that settled the general anxiety and uneasiness I had felt for most of the trip.
This was my first experience with true, uninhibited, unworried hospitality. I have always wanted my home to be like that one: relaxed, open, and bawdy. And that brings us to the topic, the crawfish boil. A totally informal way to have your friends stuff themselves and drink too much. The first time I ever ate crawfish was at college, during one of the festivals that happened during the spring. It was delicious (and I'm a head-sucker). I've loved crawfish ever since.
For those not in the know, a crawfish is a freshwater crustacean (there has been some debate over whether or not they are insects). It looks like a tiny lobster, and it lives in the mud. It is cooked in boiling water (more on that later) with spices and served on newspaper. The saying goes "Pinch the tail and suck the head," and this is a fairly accurate description of how to eat a crawfish.
Last May, John and I, and 3 other misplaced Southerners marooned in the slow to come Boston spring/summer, mail-ordered live crawfish and had a boil in the backyard of our little apartment in Cambridge. We were quite good at it, so we tried it again this weekend, only now, we're in MS, the crawfish were cheaper, and the Southerners who came were hardly misplaced. Despite the chill in the air due to the rain, we were happy, and hungry. When I heard one guest muse about how the party reminded him of college, I felt an odd sense of accomplishment. Here, gathered around an old table covered in newspaper in my garage, were 9 people who were mostly strangers, and yet, we gathered together eagerly, to share and to eat. To fellowship, if you will.
I did, I have to admit, have some qualms about the cooking method, particularly after I let one of the fellows crawl on my arm and thought he was quite charming. I suppose this is why our parents tell us not to play with our food. We may feel guilty about eating it and become vegan or something equally abhorrent. I asked John, feeling a bit ashamed to ask the question, whether or not it was ethical to boil crawfish alive, and he looked at me with the same look that he gives me when I suggest we get a puppy, a look that is fully of incredulity and concern for my sanity.
"Everything you eat has to die somehow," he replied with a shrug. I allowed that to satisfy me. And I reread a section of Julie and Julia about cooking lobsters:
I had read up on all sorts of methods for humanely euthanizing lobsters - sticking them in the freezer, placing them in ice water then bringing it up to a boil (which is supposed to fool them into not realizing they're boiling alive), slicing their spinal cords with a knife beforehand. But all these struck me as palliatives thought up more to save boilers from emotional anguish than boilees from physical. In the end I just dumped them out of the paper bad into a pot with some boiling water and vermouth and vegetables. And then freaked the fuck out.
The pot wasn't big enough. Though the lobsters didn't shriek in horror the second I dropped them in, their momentary stillness only drew out the excruciating moment. I was like that instant your car begins to skid out of control and before your eyes you see the burning car wreck that is your destiny.
...My final victim was another Chinatown denizen. He was spryer than his predecessors, flailing around in his bag for the entire subway ride. Because shivving a dead lobster in the back would be no challenge at all.
I put him in the freezer for a while when I got home, to try to numb him, maybe make it go a little easier, but is there such a thing as an easy vivisection, really? After half an hour or so, while Eric retreated to the living room... I took the lobster out of the freezer and laid him out on the cutting board.
...The poor guy just sat there, waving his claws and antennae gently, while I stood over him, my lardgest knife poised at the juncture of chest and tail. I took a deep breath, let it out.
... I pressed down, making an incision in the shell where Julia said I could quickly sever the spinal cord.
The thing began to flail.
...Clear blood leaked off the edges of the cutting board onto the floor as the lobster continuned to flail vigorously, despite the fact that its head was now chopped neatly in two....I sawed away at the thing, managing to get about halfway through before I had to leave the room for a bit to clear my head.
But I think perhaps I'm approaching a Zenlike serenity when it comes to crustacean murder, because when I reenetered the kitchen to the sight of the giant thing pinned to the cutting board... I just giggled. (Pages 149-164, seriously reduced)
The fact of the matter is that most of us are going to eat lobster and crawfish anyway, and the least we can do is to make ourselves go through the possible psychic trauma of killing the creature ourselves. We are removed from the process of what makes our steak a steak, or our fish a fish. Cruelty is something to be avoided, but a fairly immediate death in a pot is merciful compared to being cut in half alive. I'm guessing. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan says this about a meal that he has hunted, gathered, and created from scratch, in a very literal sense: "The pleasures... are based on a nearly perfect knowledge" (410). And in some small way, this idea applies to the crawfish, and possibly, though I cannot speak for Julie Powell, the lobster: when we are fully aware of what we are doing to another creature, and why we are doing it, then perhaps our minds can more fully enjoy the product of what we have done.
So why did my husband and I boil 36 pounds of crawfish on Saturday? Perhaps this is circular, but, we did it for the pleasure we could take from it, and the pleasure we could give to others from it. Maybe pleasure should not be the standard by which we measure all of our ethical decisions. But, then, all of our ethical decisions were never measured by the same yardstick anyway. Pleasure should be a consideration when we eat, as well as ethics, sustainability, and nutrion. If we leave out one of these factors, then we can never really acheive what it was I felt in Greece. If we think of each of them, in careful consideration, and giving each its proper weight, we can enjoy ourselves and our company while we eat. And really, this is what a party should be.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
On Oysters
The first time I ever had an oyster was with my then boyfriend and now husband (henceforth referred to as John)at Felix's on Bourbon Street. It was my freshman year in college, during September. My friend R had come with us. This trip has many huge memories: running through the downpour holding stuffed pandas, my father's anger at being unable to keep me from going, R's terrible, terrible snoring, sleeping in the same bed with someone I loved for the first time. But the oyster is powerful.
I had ordered some sort of po'boy I'm sure, given my love for hot sandwiches, but John had ordered a dozen oysters on the half shell. Having grown up with a father who refers to such things as "boogers," I had never eaten one. John offered me one, and feeling brave, I accepted. I watched his method of preparing the oyster: saltine, oyster, horseradish, tabasco. Bite. Chew. Swallow. I followed his lead, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Thus began one of my favorite of our food adventures.
Of course, at this point, the oyster just tasted like a chewy piece of spicy slime. The texture is an acquired taste. Oysters are bivalves, and edible ones do not make pearls. The first person to pry one open and slurp down the contents was truly brave, and truly a gourmet. Oysters are allegedly aphrodisiacs, an interesting allegation. They are not particularly phallic, like some aphrodisiacs, and it might take a bit of a stretch to imagine them as vaginal. But the experience of eating an oyster, and just an oyster, is highly erotic.
I first experienced this in Ireland. In 2007, in May, John and I went on a whim. We have a habit of doing fairly objectively stupid things on a whim. (This will come up in other entries on shellfish.) Our last night in the country, in Limerick and ordered a plate of oysters. They came, in big shells full of salty brine, with no offered condiments, no horseradish, no lemon, certainly no tabasco. The muscle had been gently separated from the shell, and no utensils were needed. One simply poured the oyster, brine and all, into one's mouth.
How decadent. How divine. The brine tasting, of course, of the ocean, and the sweetness of the oyster came through cleanly, without hiding beneath sugary cocktail sauce, or too much heat. The feel of my lips on the shell was so odd, and it has become one of those sense memories that makes me insistent that we should actually touch our food, at least as we prepare it.
Certainly the experience was imperfect: the brine dribbled down the chin, bits of shell and grit slid into the mouth while slurping the oyster. As with any raw, or only lightly cooked, food, there is a risk of illness and disease, although with oysters this risk is more due to what we do to our oceans than to the inherent nature of the oyster itself. But isn't that really what the erotic is? Salt and sweet. Messy. Noisy. Risky. A state of heightened sensory experience. When we don't cover our food, it can feel the same as when we uncover ourselves. Certainly we might end up regretting it, but our lives would be so much more empty if we did not do it.
And now, when I eat oysters, as I did last night at Trios, it is rarely without my husband, and it is always with the knowledge that there is a lot of possibility in this food: raw, bare, with a variety of choices for eating (we were offered crackers, crostini, and cocktail sauce at Trios). What matters most to our experience of the oyster is that we try all the choices, even the ones that are the simplest. It sounds contrived, and it's a poor way of saying what I mean: oysters are important because they offer us the chance to really adventure. They are sexy, they are disgusting, they are risky, they are delicious.
I had ordered some sort of po'boy I'm sure, given my love for hot sandwiches, but John had ordered a dozen oysters on the half shell. Having grown up with a father who refers to such things as "boogers," I had never eaten one. John offered me one, and feeling brave, I accepted. I watched his method of preparing the oyster: saltine, oyster, horseradish, tabasco. Bite. Chew. Swallow. I followed his lead, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Thus began one of my favorite of our food adventures.
Of course, at this point, the oyster just tasted like a chewy piece of spicy slime. The texture is an acquired taste. Oysters are bivalves, and edible ones do not make pearls. The first person to pry one open and slurp down the contents was truly brave, and truly a gourmet. Oysters are allegedly aphrodisiacs, an interesting allegation. They are not particularly phallic, like some aphrodisiacs, and it might take a bit of a stretch to imagine them as vaginal. But the experience of eating an oyster, and just an oyster, is highly erotic.
I first experienced this in Ireland. In 2007, in May, John and I went on a whim. We have a habit of doing fairly objectively stupid things on a whim. (This will come up in other entries on shellfish.) Our last night in the country, in Limerick and ordered a plate of oysters. They came, in big shells full of salty brine, with no offered condiments, no horseradish, no lemon, certainly no tabasco. The muscle had been gently separated from the shell, and no utensils were needed. One simply poured the oyster, brine and all, into one's mouth.
How decadent. How divine. The brine tasting, of course, of the ocean, and the sweetness of the oyster came through cleanly, without hiding beneath sugary cocktail sauce, or too much heat. The feel of my lips on the shell was so odd, and it has become one of those sense memories that makes me insistent that we should actually touch our food, at least as we prepare it.
Certainly the experience was imperfect: the brine dribbled down the chin, bits of shell and grit slid into the mouth while slurping the oyster. As with any raw, or only lightly cooked, food, there is a risk of illness and disease, although with oysters this risk is more due to what we do to our oceans than to the inherent nature of the oyster itself. But isn't that really what the erotic is? Salt and sweet. Messy. Noisy. Risky. A state of heightened sensory experience. When we don't cover our food, it can feel the same as when we uncover ourselves. Certainly we might end up regretting it, but our lives would be so much more empty if we did not do it.
And now, when I eat oysters, as I did last night at Trios, it is rarely without my husband, and it is always with the knowledge that there is a lot of possibility in this food: raw, bare, with a variety of choices for eating (we were offered crackers, crostini, and cocktail sauce at Trios). What matters most to our experience of the oyster is that we try all the choices, even the ones that are the simplest. It sounds contrived, and it's a poor way of saying what I mean: oysters are important because they offer us the chance to really adventure. They are sexy, they are disgusting, they are risky, they are delicious.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
On Potatoes
When I was a junior in college, I spent a semester "enriching" myself by studying abroad in the UK. By enriching, I mean drinking, gaining 15-20 pounds, getting laid, and pursuing my passion for potato based foods. And drinking.
I've got a lot of mixed feelings about this arena of life, mostly because I oscillated between very solitary and very outgoing, and could not figure out what the hell I was doing. Sensing a theme here? At any rate, for some reason, the Brits, and my motley crew of American/Canadian pals did not mercilessly mock me when I danced the way my college friends did. This is not to say they thought I was a good dancer. They were merely a)kind, b)not yet immune to the cuteness that is embodied in my awkward flailing, or c) too drunk to notice. At any rate, while I mostly cooked for myself while I was there (things like stir-fries buried in sauce, beans and toast, and pasta with red sauce), after we went to the Union - the on-campus dance club - we would often prevent our hangovers early by indulging in chips cheese and gravy. I believe Canadians call this Poutine, which I find personally too close to poontang to use (by the way, in case you don't realize that clicking on a link labeled with a slang term for genitalia is NSFW, here is your official warning. Also, if you fall into this category, learn some common sense). I prefer to stick with the cumbersome but accurate title "chips cheese and gravy."
This delicacy is made by taking warm french fries, sprinkling cheese over them (mozzarella works well) and pouring warm gravy over that. It makes a brownish, globby mess on the plate, and unless you are familiar with its glories, it doesn't look particularly appetizing. You certainly don't want to overdo the gravy, because while you want a certain softness to the fries, and you want the cheese to melt, you do not want french fry soup. The type of fries matters little, as they are really simply a vehicle for the gravy and cheese, but teeny crunchy fries, while tasty, are hard to eat without making a huge mess.
The taste is delicious. It is salty, and beefy (or turkey-y, depending on the type of gravy used), with the firm texture of the fries, and the creaminess of the cheese. Eaten with a fork, and accompanied by a beer, it is the ultimate in late-night cravings.
So why did I eat it Sunday night for dinner?
The husband and I had gone to the hinterlands to visit my family for the weekend. I had visited a new grave, walked through the woods several times, and eaten more homegrown vegetables than I had in the last 2 months combined. On the way home, I felt ill. I was nauseated by the sandwich meat proudly displayed on the Subway billboard, and felt like my head and throat were going to rebel and move away to Alaska, where the cool air would ease the throbbing and the dryness. So why did I crave the food of late nights and sweaty, smoking dancing?
The memory and the psyche are astonishing, amazing things. Eating this food, I did not think of the faces that once sat around me, laughing tiredly, ears ringing from the speakers above. Sunday night, as I ate, I thought of my husband, whom I knew at the time I was in the UK, and who was on my mind a great deal during those months. I did not think of the fairly painful memories of that time. Instead, I thought of how, kneeling beside the couch on which I had collapsed, exhausted and sick, he kissed my forehead and without a second thought went to the store (after driving 3 hours already that day) to buy the things to make me the snack. Just as when I am hungover, or have the flu, he will just accept the situation, and provide me the starchy sustinence I crave: the potato, in all its forms.
The potato is easily manipulated into a variety of forms: fried, baked, mashed, roasted. It takes well to a variety of seasonings: salt, cheese, butter, rosemary, gravy. It is warm, soft, giving, nurturing. It is easily digested, and easy to eat thoughtlessly. If the potato were your friend, it would be the friend that spent the night just because you were lonely. It would be the friend who always had a bed made for you so you didn't have to walk home in the rain. It would be the friend who listened to you complain about your other friends, without joining in, without telling them, and without judging you. The potato is forgiveness dug up, dusted off, and given to you, just to make you feel better. No other reason.
And so, even though I don't crave the bad music, bad outfits, and bad dancing I used to do in that dark smoky room before scarfing down chips cheese and gravy at 2 in the morning, I do crave what the potato did for me then and still does: assures me that despite the fact that I am drunk, hungover, sick, or otherwise imperfect, I am still rooted in a world where those things are forgivable. And for me, who can barely forgive myself for much lesser sins, the potato is a reminder that while my fights may only be with myself, I can recover from the body blows.
I've got a lot of mixed feelings about this arena of life, mostly because I oscillated between very solitary and very outgoing, and could not figure out what the hell I was doing. Sensing a theme here? At any rate, for some reason, the Brits, and my motley crew of American/Canadian pals did not mercilessly mock me when I danced the way my college friends did. This is not to say they thought I was a good dancer. They were merely a)kind, b)not yet immune to the cuteness that is embodied in my awkward flailing, or c) too drunk to notice. At any rate, while I mostly cooked for myself while I was there (things like stir-fries buried in sauce, beans and toast, and pasta with red sauce), after we went to the Union - the on-campus dance club - we would often prevent our hangovers early by indulging in chips cheese and gravy. I believe Canadians call this Poutine, which I find personally too close to poontang to use (by the way, in case you don't realize that clicking on a link labeled with a slang term for genitalia is NSFW, here is your official warning. Also, if you fall into this category, learn some common sense). I prefer to stick with the cumbersome but accurate title "chips cheese and gravy."
This delicacy is made by taking warm french fries, sprinkling cheese over them (mozzarella works well) and pouring warm gravy over that. It makes a brownish, globby mess on the plate, and unless you are familiar with its glories, it doesn't look particularly appetizing. You certainly don't want to overdo the gravy, because while you want a certain softness to the fries, and you want the cheese to melt, you do not want french fry soup. The type of fries matters little, as they are really simply a vehicle for the gravy and cheese, but teeny crunchy fries, while tasty, are hard to eat without making a huge mess.
The taste is delicious. It is salty, and beefy (or turkey-y, depending on the type of gravy used), with the firm texture of the fries, and the creaminess of the cheese. Eaten with a fork, and accompanied by a beer, it is the ultimate in late-night cravings.
So why did I eat it Sunday night for dinner?
The husband and I had gone to the hinterlands to visit my family for the weekend. I had visited a new grave, walked through the woods several times, and eaten more homegrown vegetables than I had in the last 2 months combined. On the way home, I felt ill. I was nauseated by the sandwich meat proudly displayed on the Subway billboard, and felt like my head and throat were going to rebel and move away to Alaska, where the cool air would ease the throbbing and the dryness. So why did I crave the food of late nights and sweaty, smoking dancing?
The memory and the psyche are astonishing, amazing things. Eating this food, I did not think of the faces that once sat around me, laughing tiredly, ears ringing from the speakers above. Sunday night, as I ate, I thought of my husband, whom I knew at the time I was in the UK, and who was on my mind a great deal during those months. I did not think of the fairly painful memories of that time. Instead, I thought of how, kneeling beside the couch on which I had collapsed, exhausted and sick, he kissed my forehead and without a second thought went to the store (after driving 3 hours already that day) to buy the things to make me the snack. Just as when I am hungover, or have the flu, he will just accept the situation, and provide me the starchy sustinence I crave: the potato, in all its forms.
The potato is easily manipulated into a variety of forms: fried, baked, mashed, roasted. It takes well to a variety of seasonings: salt, cheese, butter, rosemary, gravy. It is warm, soft, giving, nurturing. It is easily digested, and easy to eat thoughtlessly. If the potato were your friend, it would be the friend that spent the night just because you were lonely. It would be the friend who always had a bed made for you so you didn't have to walk home in the rain. It would be the friend who listened to you complain about your other friends, without joining in, without telling them, and without judging you. The potato is forgiveness dug up, dusted off, and given to you, just to make you feel better. No other reason.
And so, even though I don't crave the bad music, bad outfits, and bad dancing I used to do in that dark smoky room before scarfing down chips cheese and gravy at 2 in the morning, I do crave what the potato did for me then and still does: assures me that despite the fact that I am drunk, hungover, sick, or otherwise imperfect, I am still rooted in a world where those things are forgivable. And for me, who can barely forgive myself for much lesser sins, the potato is a reminder that while my fights may only be with myself, I can recover from the body blows.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)