Some Thoughts on Food

Have you all seen "Depression Cooking With Clara" videos? If not, check them out. I was struck primarily by the notion of turning off the stove and letting pasta cook itself just by sitting with the lid on.

Though Clara's egg drop soup recipe is nothing like "traditional" Chinese egg drop soup as far as I know, I liked her idea of bulking up egg drop soup with potatoes.

I make egg drop soup frequently for myself because it is basically zero Weight Watchers points and is surprisingly filling. I make a really simple version for reasons of economics and time: just broth, with egg whites dropped in through a fork (to break it up) once it is boils. Rarely I thicken the broth a little with a tiny bit of flour whipped in. I use egg whites alone per the standard recipe. Since I can't afford to waste yolks, I cook those up for my kids. Or sometimes I use egg substitute, as it is often more economical if I buy egg sub in bulk at BJs...it only works with Egg Beaters though, no other brands.

I might try Clara's recipe as another egg soup recipe. I also think I'll start adding finely diced carrots and onions in my egg drop soup for more nutrition.

(Photo courtesy of Cake Wrecks)

Something interesting is happening between me and food right now. You know how some people find fats troublesome, and some people find sweets troublesome? As in, some people find they can't control themselves around fats, and others can't control themselves around sweets?

For many years, I have struggled not with fats or sweets, but with both of these. I love food, and I frequently crave fats and sweets. Nothing has worked to rid myself of the cravings, including attempts at getting through some type of "withdrawl" period and quitting "cold turkey."

Recently, however, I've found my desire for sweets to be very low. So low in fact that the idea of having something sweet at times is a total and utter turn off. It's not that I never crave sugar now. I do. But the cravings are less strong and far, far more infrequent. Yesterday I turned down a delicious-looking piece of from-scratch chocolate cake, two different types of ice cream, and an offer of Peanut M & Ms. I'm back to watering down any juices to basically flavored waters, something I have done only periodically over my adult years. And this morning when I saw ice cream sandwiches in my mother-in-law's freezer, they only caught attention briefly before I moved on.

I do think this is more consistent with my genetic make-up. In my family of origin everyone enjoys some sweet treats, but no one as far as I know is overboard in any way like I have been over the years. That watering down juice until it is flavored water thing? That came straight from my mother.

I don't know what is shifting, but I think this will be a nice wave to ride for a while. I am hoping the change in taste preferences is permanent, and for a good reason (growing out of sweets or something) rather than a bad one (my body compensating for wildly fluctuating hourly blood glucose levels from stress and life changes over the last couple years).

Either way, for now, I am quite happy and have a renewed sense of hope about getting my dietary life and overall state of health back in gear. Only problem is, my salty fats cravings have increased slightly...I'm finding that at times, in place of wanting a big slice of cake or something, I want a big snack of potato chips. That said, I'm not worried yet, as the increase is only very minor and might just be a matter of adjustment.

This is My Wife

Okay, it's not really my wife. But this is what I come home to most days of the week. A big tortilla-making mess on my kitchen table and my wife with sore tortilla-rolling shoulders (and the kids assuring me "we made tortillas for you today..." funny how even though the tortillas are for us, they always say they are special for me). The big excitement-- according to the kids-- is always whether she made flour or corn tortillas. Bless her, I love her...she takes such good care of all of us.

Dear Chard, I Forgive You

Dear Rainbow Chard,

I forgive you for being bitter. I am sorry I took you to the smoothie party. Those berries are not your kind. You don't belong with them. They are nothing like you! I've learned my lesson. I can't love you unless I am willing to love you as you are. I can't find out more about you unless I am willing to enter into your own world.

I promise from now on I won't continue to force you to be so out of place just so we can be where I love to be. I promise I will meet you half way. Tonight when I blanched you, so much of your bitterness left, and I am glad I gave you the time of day. I saw how many sides you have today, chard, and I am interested.

You have to understand: I let you nourish me. That is so hard for me to do. You have no idea the history I have with leafy greens. So much time I have wasted by allowing my previous relationships to interfere with ours. So much time I have wasted trying to make you into something you aren't.

I can't change you. I know that now. But I hope you can forgive me for trying and we can move on from here. I want to know who you are.

Love,
Masasa of becausethatisthewaymylifeisrightnow.blogspot.com

CSA: Day 3

Yesterday we ignored the veggies in our fridge, but today we came back on board. G. says she is going to make "eggs in purgatory" tonight (a big bow to the Italian side):



http://www.tomatocasual.com/2007/09/23/recipe-eggs-in-purgatory-eggs-in-tomato-sauce/
http://menuinprogress.com/2007/11/eggs-in-purgatory.html
http://www.thepauperedchef.com/2007/03/eggs_in_purgato.html

She will be making her own sauce I am sure, so I am assuming/hoping this means she will use up some of our basil. She will likely throw in some of the squash too.

I tried a "green smoothie" this morning with G. and the kids. Hmmm. Not sure what to think. It was more purple than green because it included blueberries (which were too brilliant to be overwhelmed by the green) and strawberries. I only used about a leaf and a half of the swiss chard in a blender full of fruit and yogurt, fearful I couldn't tolerate more.

Sure enough, I definitely tasted the green leafy-ness, and it was bitter and a turn off. I was happy, at least, to be thinking of us all getting some good nutrients, until M. drank for a while and then said firmly, "not good." Argh. But he did finish it off and even had a little more after a break when he saw K. having some (they always want what the other has). So maybe it was bearable. K. seemed to like it, and she asked for seconds. I had to make another pitcher to accomodate her request. However, G. then finished the second pitcher because K. lost interest.

In the second pitcher I added some honey. We did not have any juice, and I thought perhaps we needed some more concentrated sweetness to balance the bitter. Honey made no difference, and apparently the leaves I picked for the second pitcher were more bitter than the first.

I really don't know what I am going to do with all this chard.

I Ate It Before I Could Even Take a Picture! (And it had cabbage in it!!!!)

Note: This is not my picture. I, along with the rest of my family, ate mine up too quickly to even think of getting the camera to snap a shot. Besides, this is made from a much more dressed up version of the recipe. Ours was simpler, and looked simpler too. It was not nearly as colorful, but plenty tasty and relatively nutrient-dense for a comfort food. The picture came from: http://kitchen-parade-veggieventure.blogspot.com/2006/03/day-328-potato-cabbage-rapini.html


CSA Day One Report

One thing I learned from my new book, Greens, Glorious Greens is that cabbage keeps longer than most other leafy vegetables. If it hasn't been sliced (which causes vitamin C loss anyway), it keeps for at least four weeks in the fridge. Apparently some gardeners are even able to store some cabbage away for use in the winter. Who knew?!

Because cabbage is the longest lasting out of the veggies we received yesterday, I probably should have tried to cook with the others first. But I found a tempting recipe in the book for cabbage, and it served as too much of a draw. It was for a milkless (???!) version of colcannon. I went online and dug around and found a great variety of colcannon recipes.

Colcannon is an Irish dish that is basically, when it comes down to it, mashed potatoes with sauteed cabbage or kale. Though the version in the book is without milk, many descriptions of the dish include milk as a defining feature of the dish. I found only a handful of recipes for colcannon with milk alternatives, ranging from sour cream to a thick broth. That said, some recipes called for cooking the cabbage in the milk while most involved putting the milk in the mashed potatoes as you might usually. I opted for the latter because it was a much more common recipe and also because I wanted to make absolutely sure I didn't have soggy cabbage on my hands.

The potato most recipes recommended was the yukon gold. I did red potatoes instead because that is what I had on hand. It was very flavorful and I have no regrets at all. In fact, I'd recommend them.

I followed the common recipe using butter for sauteeing the cabbage. Thank goodness! This would have been a very different dish with my usual olive oil sautee. Butter was the right choice for this dish. Along with the cabbage, I also sauteed thinly diced yellow onions. No recipes recommended this, to my recollection, though a few suggested slicing in some chives. I rather liked the diced onions (about 3/4 of an onion), and dare I say they made the dish complete. Not sure I would have liked it without the onion, actually.

For the cabbage, I did not core it as is recommended, in case we wanted to store it for a while for other uses. Instead, I just pulled off a number of leaves, including some of the stiffer inner leaves. I sliced these thinly-- and in some cases chopped them for smaller peices as well-- fearful that the cabbage would overwhelm the dish (it did not). The trick is to sautee these on medium heat just for a few minutes. My onions had not yet started to turn brown. The idea is that the cabbage should add a nice, mild flavored crunch to the dish rather than being a smelly overcooked mess.

I chose a recipe without any spices other than salt and pepper. I am not sure whether having more or fewer spices is more traditional, but because of the move I have few spices on hand right now. I decided to keep it simple. I did not regret this either. If I had expected this dish to be something unlike mashed potatoes, I would have needed to opt for a more spiced version. But I went into this thinking I was going to have something like "enhanced mashed potatoes," and thus the salt and pepper was a perfect, simple pair of spices.

Speaking of treating this dish like a special type of mashed potatoes, it is even simpler to make than the recipes read. Basically, all one needs to do is to make some mashed potatoes (in my opinion, hand mashed was especially tasty), and sautee some green cabbage (or another cabbage, or kale) lightly at the same time. Then mix. The most time consuming part truly was hunting down the right recipe.

In the future, I think I might try making this as a layered dish, rather than mixing the cabbage and onions in with the mashed potatoes. This would better preserve the crunch (though there definitely was still a crunch in some of the cabbage, even after mixing), and it would make the dish a less challenging sensory experience (when there isn't crunch, getting a peice of floppy green stuff in your mashed potatoes may be tasty but can take a lot of adjustment). I also understand that if mixed without any milk at all, the dish can be formed into patties and fried like a pancake for a breakfast version. That sounds yummy too.

I think using this basic green cabage was perfect (might it be "spring cabbage"??). The taste was mild but sweet, there was little if any odor, and the color made me envision making it as a St. Patricks Day dish. By the way, the color holds strong through the sauteeing.

I realized later I could have thrown in some of the parsley for another dimmension for the dish, but I am glad I tried a very simple version first to really get to know the basic dish before begining to experiment. It is truly an ultimate comfort food.

I would be happy to finish off this whole head of cabbage in this same manner. The kids liked it too. M. didn't want any of the bigger chunks of cabbage or onion, but ate a few bites with smaller bits in there. K. ate the whole thing right up, no second thoughts! I like the idea of having some especially Irish food in our diets. Up until now, I thought the Irish diet was mostly meat, meat, and more meat, with a few potatoes and some cabbage thrown in on the side. I had no idea there was anything we'd particularly take a liking to, and I had no idea I could take this much joy in cabbage. This is an ode to the Irish side!

There is a video here where you can see the dish being made. Enjoy!

CSA Week One

There were delays, but we got our first CSA box this week. It had to sit outside for a while because we were out of town when we got confirmation that we were IN, but oh well. We can pick it up more fresh next week.

Here's what we have in terms of the green leafy things (we also got some blueberries, carrots, summer squash, zucchini, and cucumbers). Continued suggestions...and education...welcome:

This seems to be a pretty straight-forward case of green cabbage.

Here's some swiss chard. This one was labeled.

At first glance we thought this was romaine or green leaf lettuce,

but after getting it out and taking a closer look, we decided it is most likely bok choi.

This does appear to be a lettuce. I am assuming green leaf. Maybe romaine???

I wish I could photograph SMELL. Mmmm. Parsley and basil, of course.

Okay, so not sure about these. We'd assume either is a red leaf lettuce, but there are two, and if you look at the photo, the leaves are distinctly different. Hmmmm(???)

Help! Help! I am joining a CSA and I HATE leafy greens!

I am two weeks late, but they said they would let me in for a full share. The price is normally $550, but they took $50 off for the first two weeks. I have to confirm tomorrow. Among my many feelings (Hooray! I found one where I can WALK to the delivery location on a cool enough day!), I am unsure where I will come up with the $500 by tomorrow. I am also doing this, so far, without having consulted G. Finally, I am terrified because I am seriously not a fan of leafy greens. I can put up with small doses of romaine and iceberg lettuce, but that is the extent of it. The problem? In New England, at this time of year, that is pretty much what you get. Eeeeeewwww! Leafy, leafy greens!

Anyone with survival tips on cooking with leafy greens when you generally don't like them? "Oh laaawd, the drama!" you say? I probably am being a little overly-dramatic, but I guess I just need my moment to do the juvenile thing. I am already collecting some smoothie recipes, that apparently folks love even when they hate greens. But what else? I can stand a small, single leaf of almost any type of green on a sandwich with many other flavors. Spinach can go in lasagna if there is a day cool enough to heat up the kitchen making it. (I guess I could blanch and freeze in the meantime???).

But cabbage, chard, and kale have been known to make me vomit...or nearly so! What will I do if they want to send me cabbage? I've only eaten one coleslaw I could stand-- and yes, believe me, I am going to be contacting this church member for the recipe.

I don't want to sautee up a bunch of leafy greens because the slimey texture will make me gag. If I chop it up small enough, I might be able to add small doses to soups and stews, if not now, maybe in the winter (can I freeze everything but lettuce?). What else?! What else?! I am having CSA panic!

Movie Recommendation: King Corn

I watched another food documentary on Instant Netflix today. The title was "King Corn." It featured a segment from Wray, Colorado. Funny that. I spent a summer in Wray. Right around the fifty-one minute mark of the movie...that's what I remember from driving into Wray. Cows packed into small confined spaces as tightly as they could fit, and the stench of it all.

This movie title and subtitle makes it seem like it is going to be predictable, and yeah, perhaps the message is (although G. thought the message was a little unclear, I thought it was a well told story). But it does some interesting things along the way, and it was a well worth-it and enjoyable watch. Around one hour and twelve minutes, when they started breaking down the farm by finances, the "a-ha" moments started rolling out one after another.

The only thing I found irritating about this video is that there was a whole segment on diabetes, but not once was type II explained as a disease seperate from type I, with a different cause, pathological process, and often scope of complication. That's one of my major pet peeves, so you can assume the movie had to have some redeeming qualities in order for me to recommend it.

What am I saying about food?

I have been thinking for some time now about what I am saying to my children about food. What messages, what values, what nourishment am I giving them through food?

I have no answers now, am just continually reflecting.

A person on one of my online parenting discussion boards posted a question about how she should explain to her animal-loving daughter that the meats they eat were once live animals.

There was a good discussion, on many different levels. On one of those levels, I said this:

I think this can be a tough one, even for those of us who are vegetarian families.

I was raised vegetarian, and have chosen to remain vegetarian into adulthood. I value this and hope to pass it on to my children. My wife was raised eating meat, but her feeling is that our kids should not eat meat until they can understand what it means and make a decision for themselves.

So we're a vegetarian household.

Nonetheless, here are a couple examples of tricky situations we have been in:

1. Our younger dog was hit by a car and killed on Valentines day after his leash failed and broke loose from his harness. We explained to my son that his dog was dead. It was hard, but we tried to explain what that meant. Fast forward a month or so, and we are at the store, and we're passing the meat section and my son asks about it. I was rushing through the store with two toddlers, trying to get my shopping done in a hurry, and without thinking, I told my son: "We don't eat that. Those are dead animals." Then, I caught myself rushing through that first conversation about meat without being present for my son, but it was too late. He looked at me with a look of complete confusion and then asked if our dog was there. OMG!!!!!! It was heartbreaking.

2. My son loves this Signing Time video with animal signs. One of the signs is for "turkey." I don't recall if he's ever seen a turkey live before, but he knows what they are: that they are animals, a type of bird. We've talked about turkeys, made turkey sounds, pretended we were walking around being turkeys, signed "turkey" as we've looked at video images of turkeys walking around and eating on his Signing Time video. My wife's sister was babysitting my son during my baby girl's therapy appointment a week or two ago. When we returned to pick up my son, my sister-in-law (his babysitter) had my son tell us what he did while we were gone. He told us they walked to the store. Sister-in-law said, and "what did we get at the store?" and my son replied, "A turkey!" I found myself taken off-guard. I didn't want my son to be confused, nor is this something I want my son to think about with no thought, if that makes sense, so I said, "M, was that turkey alive or dead?" M. said, "dead." Meanwhile, there was SIL, cooking up the turkey for her husband and kids for dinner in front of us all. It's not like G.'s family isn't cooking up meats around us all the time, but I found that particular instance stirred some sadness inside me about those experiences.

It's not that I don't want my kids to get real information. It's just that (1) the grocery store incident reminded me of the importance of the information being age appropriate, especially given how disconnected we are from the raising of our food, (2) I want my kids to understand death first, and I know they are confused about it still, and (3) I am learning that these first conversations can come naturally but I feel strongly that they should come with some sensitivity, especially for vegetarian kids.

Even having been raised vegetarian and raising my children as vegetarians, I am still trying to figure this one out.

What am I saying about food? What am I saying, to my wife, to my children, to myself?

I watched an interesting video on "watch instantly" Netflix tonight. It was a documentary on zen buddhism and cooking called "How to Cook Your Life" I wouldn't recommend watching only part of it. Like a meal, it had many flavors. I found it thought-provoking, and would love for any of you to watch it (if you haven't seen it), and share your thoughts on any level.

Enough Food

Someone I know online is in the practice of re-plating her leftovers after eating at a restaurant:

http://replate.org/

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/441533/replating_as_a_gift.html

She added to the second article above that she marks the container with the date and time and what is in it as well.

Not a bad idea. However, if I am eating at a restaurant, I often am spending money that I haven't budgeted, and I am counting on eating the leftovers for the next day or two to make the money stretch as far as I can.

If one doesn't have any food on hand, maybe passive help will work?http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1743880

Why a Guy Named Kurt Tyson Should Start Apologizing

(child injecting insulin)

Several months ago, I stumbled upon this video on raw food diets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtvFpF-3B5Q&feature=related

I originally found it on http://www.naturallivingmarket.com/rawlifestyle.html, but it seems to have been taken down (??).

A little less than halfway through the video, a guy name Kurt Tyson, who is narrating, says "Hi my name is Kurt Tyson, and I was diagnosed with type I diabetes. I was chosen out of hundreds of applicants to be one of six people to participate in a unique opportunity. For thirty days, we ate nothing but raw, live foods, and took supplements under the direction of Dr. Gabriel Cousins here at the Tree of Life. Since then I have returned to the real world, and I am excited to say that I have been diabetes free for over a year and a half now. Currently, I am attending Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, where I am studying to become a naturopathic doctor because I want to help people live healthier lifestyles."

Here is why you should be disturbed by that statement, and why Kurt Tyson should start apologizing:

Type I diabetes is not the same as type II.

Type I diabetes occurs when your pancreas does not have the ability to produce any insulin. The islet cells in the pancreas are permanently destroyed in the pathological process of type I. This can't be cured, at least not yet, and there is no diet to save you from a type I diagnosis.

If you have type I, you have to take insulin via injection or insulin pump in order to live.

It is NOT at all like type II, in which the body just has reduced ability to use the insulin it produces (or produces less of it)...in which case I could certainly see that a raw food diet (which would significantly reduce fat and carbohydrate consumption) "making a type II better."

This video looks like a pretty big production. It is hard to imagine that the guy could have simply misspoke. There seem to be two plausible possibilities here:

1. This guy was either misdiagnosed with type I, or

2. He is misleading the audience (I noticed he said, "I was diagnosed with type I diabetes" rather than "I had type I diabetes.")

Either way, this claim destroys any shred of credibility in the video. This type of misinformation can make people dangerously ill. It can KILL people. Worse yet, on the video Mr. Tyson says he is studying to become a naturopathic doctor. Really??!! Would you want this guy as your doctor, naturopathic or not...this man who can't distinguish between two distinctly different medical conditions that happen to share part of a name, this man who purports a cure to an incurable condition?!?

You know who really ought to be concerned is the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine. This is not good for their credibility, and if they are letting this guy go on believing this stuff, they are promoting irresponsible "medicine."

I have seen someone make himself very ill trying to treat type I diabetes through herbal treatment. This smacks of a new version of the same thing.

Let's hear some apologizing Mr. Tyson. Please. Or if you have misunderstood the condition until now, would you please make a public correction of the dangerous misinformation you spread?

How to survive life with one skillet

So we are hoping to put our house up on the market within a week or so. We decided to have the movers pack up most of our things now so that our house shows better. The idea is that a cluttered house looks smaller, and small is not good when one is trying to sell one's house. We now have one medium size pot and one cast iron skillet in which to cook. We also have a microwave. Since G will be stuck with this situation for a while, I went online tonight to find skillet meal recipes. I have found some interesting ideas:

The image above is of "potato and onion flatbread" from http://food.realsimple.com/realsimple/display/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1177454

We live two blocks from a bakery where G could easily pick up pizza dough so she doesn't have to make it herself, so it looks like this could be fairly simple for her.

Another intriguing recipe from the same site is for "roast herb artichokes." You can view it here: http://food.realsimple.com/realsimple/display/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1178502

And check out this vegetarian "jambayla," which seems like a cross between some of our other family favorites: http://busycooks.about.com/od/meatlessentreerecipes/r/veggiejambalaya.htm

This one wasn't too exciting, but a 15 minute meal sounds like a good plan: http://pricesmartfoods.ca/recipes/lowfat_vegetarianskilletdinner.htm

Skillet lasagna also seemed to be a popular item in my search. We'd have to substitute something for the ground beef called for in most of the recipes (we're vegetarians), and we couldn't do it often since M has a dairy (and soy) sensitivity, but below is a picture from http://www.chowhound.com/topics/325167

I hope G has a chance to try some of these. Mmmm.