Archive for December, 2011

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December 20, 2011

Consider the Stove

I came across this article on Grist this morning and must, must, must share it. Here’s the critical link that makes eating locally, organically, and sustainably possible: people have to cook. I just blew your mind, right? Probably not.

Anyway, the article is a conversation between Kurt Michael Friese and Tamar Adler, both food authors. Adler is getting a lot of press for her recently released book An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, which is on a long list of books I’d like to pick up. But back to the conversation. They’re talking about how Americans have been convinced not to cook for themselves, often by many of the same companies that make both processed foods and health claims.

Okay, that isn’t really news either, but these two touch on something else that I think is so important and largely overlooked. Home cooking is not and should not try to be celebrity chef-ery. If you’ve been fed (sorry) the idea that anything you cook should be worthy of a hi-def close up, you’re probably not overly eager to get in the kitchen and awkwardly chop an onion into uneven pieces. In fact, you’re most likely convinced that anything you cook will be a disaster in comparison to the latest culinary challenge.

Now we come to my very favorite quote of the whole piece. Friese makes a great comparison: “I worry about what people learn from TV because it’s too much like porn: People who are prettier and more talented than you doing things you’ll never do in places you’ll never do them. It stresses people out to think that they need to live up to that standard.” It doesn’t matter that all these shows fall under the “reality” category: they aren’t the reality of cooking to feed yourself. The point being: this is a conversation worth reading.

And a quick aside: both authors cite MFK Fisher, arguably the best food writer of the past century. I’m currently reading The Art of Eating, which was published in the 50s and is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read. It’s a compilation of five of her previous books and I’m just about to the end of one called Consider the Oyster. I have never eaten an oyster, but now find myself wondering where I can find oyster stew and Oysters Rockefeller. More on this adventure and the rest of the book later.

A very successful and un-stressful last minute shopping week to all!

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December 12, 2011

Folks, This Ain’t Normal

If you’ve seen Food, Inc. (if you haven’t, do), you’ve been introduced to Joel Salatin. He’s the Virginia farmer, animated and memorable lounging with his pigs in his straw hat. He released a book this fall, Folks, This Ain’t Normal which I immediately picked up. He’s been called the “high priest of pasture” by the New York Times.

Defining “normal” looks like a minefield to me, but Salatin is talking about historical norms and pointing out our decades-old deviation from them. He offers an indictment against most of us, that “the average person is still under the aberrant delusion that food should be somebody else’s responsibility until I’m ready to eat it.” I felt a bit shamed just reading it, and irresponsible for not knowing how to cook and carve a whole chicken.

One of my biggest take-away understandings is that our food system need not destroy soil and produce massive amounts of waste. On some level, I think I knew this before, but Salatin explains the how and why. Basically, plants and animals balance and feed each other. Between chickens, cows, pigs and a variety of plants, you can produce very little waste and end up with healthier, happier versions of everything. This makes me a little uneasy about our almost totally vegetarian diet (using both plants and animals for food makes the whole thing economically viable), although I think not eating feedlot animals is a big net improvement.

Salatin has examined the new cultural norms in cooking as well. He describes students coming to a farm on a field trip and looking for the salsa tree, and school cafeteria customers who complained when industrial burger patties were replaced with ones that needed to be chewed. The kinds of things that make you want to hit your head against a wall. Salatin defines home cooks as the link between farm and table; if individuals in their homes don’t have a working knowledge of cooking, we’re never going to move to a more localized and healthy food environment. He’s got a point. This puzzle piece is Everyday Eats’s raison d’être.

Salatin also makes a completely true argument that farming should be a highly respected vocation and that undermining it leaves behind the least capable people to steward our environment and land. That doesn’t make sense. Complete, sustainable farming is probably some of the most important work being done in America today. It requires intelligence, instinct, extensive knowledge, compassion and constant learning. How many of the rest of us can manage to grow a tomato (I tried this year and failed), let alone feed a population? We need smart, passionate people growing our food.

Whether you agree with some of Salatin’s conclusions about the food system and its regulation, Folks, This Ain’t Normal offers a lot to think about. I’d encourage anyone with an interest in the food system (and we all eat) to read his book and consider his assertions about how we grow, obtain, prepare and eat food.

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December 1, 2011

Make Cooking Easier, Cheaper and Healthier

My husband and I aren’t vegetarians, but to be honest, I can’t tell you the last time I cooked meat at home. I think it was in February. Ditching the Meat+Starch+Vegetable=Meal equation has changed my culinary life and really improved how we eat. Cooking is much, much easier now and this improvisational style is the inspiration behind the meals you can make with Everyday Eats deliveries. Example: last night’s dinner was pumpkin-coconut rice with sautéed rainbow chard on the side. It was a “clean out the fridge” dinner—the pumpkin and coconut milk were leftover from a baking project last week. Both dishes were delicious.

I think the term flexitarian works for us. We eat meat regularly, when we’re at other people’s houses for meals, or if we’re out at a restaurant that doesn’t have many veggie options. Filet mignon and garlic mashed potatoes remains one of my favorite meals, but it’s a twice-a-year indulgence.

For some of the other 363 dinners a year, we’ve become connoisseurs of house made black bean and garden burgers in Portland. Um, the Leaky Roof and Hamburger Mary’s are faves in case you wanted to know. If you’re worried about protein deficiency (most Americans eat way too much protein, by the way, so don’t worry about it unless it’s a medical concern), check out this list of protein content of a ton of foods, and an interactive calculator to get an idea of what you need.

Anyway, I’m here to make the argument for non-meat sources of protein. There’s a lot of variety. You can get your protein from any of dozens (or hundreds?) of kinds of beans, lentils, whole grains, other legumes, nuts and vegetables. A lot of those contain only trace amounts of fat and lots of fiber.

Then there’s price. A pound of organic dry black beans in bulk might run you as much as 2 or 3 dollars. A pound of the cheapest meat in the store might be about the same (I’m guessing). It gets better. When you cook meat, lots of fat and water cook out of it, reducing the weight of the end product. Beans, whole grains and legumes go in the opposite direction: they gain water weight when soaked and cooked. I haven’t done the math to figure out exactly how much you gain or lose by choosing one or the other, but if you’ve ever soaked dry beans, you know what I mean.

The last endearing quality I’ll gush about is cross contamination. You don’t have to worry about it when you’re using “alternative” protein sources. Though it’s not the kind of thing you can do in a restaurant kitchen, at home, I reuse pots, cutting boards and utensils shamelessly. Dealing with raw meat makes more dirty dishes and means you have to clean a section of the counter like it’s a biohazard and turn on the faucet with your wrists. And you have to check your reusable grocery bags for meat juice then wonder if it got on everything else in the bag…ew. All you have to worry about with beans is sorting through them well enough to pick out pebbles and giving them a good rinse.

So, getting protein from beans, legumes and whole grains makes cooking easier, is more cost effective and adds fiber while subtracting fat from your meals. What’s not to love?

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