Learning about Food

As I mentioned in a previous post (here), I've become a fan of Michael Pollan and his writings. I could quote left and right from his books, but it's just easier for you to pick up a copy and educate yourself. I will tell you what I have taken away from the books as an individual, and these are simple, simple lessons to learn: 1) eat less; 2) stay away from fast food. It's really that easy. Except it's not. In principle, yes, they are easy lessons. They are things we already know. There is absolutely no way in this big, crazy world that eating a shit ton of fast food is going to be healthy. It's not. We KNOW that. It's just easier. And cheaper. I was a fan of fast food. When my husband was out of town, I coveted the fast food because I forgot how to cook for one person.

But I've given it up.

In one fell swoop, I stopped eating fast food after the first few pages of "The Omnivore's Dilemma." I've also stopped drinking soda--I haven't touched one in about a month. This Southern gal has even foregone the sweet tea. The result? I feel 10 times better about myself, and I've lost close to 10 pounds in that month. I'm more energetic. But the funny thing? I didn't accomplish any of that by starving myself. I just made a conscious decision to try to get off the Western diet (that is, one of processed foods and large, fatty portions) as much as I could. I eat less. I pay attention to when I'm actually full, which happens (as it turns out) well before I finish everything on my plate. I've started cooking more with whole, local foods.

Which leads me to this post: I decided over the weekend to endeavor to make a dinner using local foods to the extent possible. The dinner? I decided on spaghetti with meatballs. That meant the meatballs included only local, grass-fed and grass-finished beef (from Shadowchase Farm, a farm committed to producing grass-fed and grass-finished beef; we've since decided to order a family pack from them to stock our freezer), the sauce was homemade using ingredients that came without a bar code, and the spaghetti would be made from scratch.

Fortunately, I will say I have loved to cook since I was young. To me, cooking is therapy and probably speaks more to my obsessive compulsive desire to control things. But I love it. To me, this dinner was something I looked forward to making all week long. On morning runs, I would think about the ingredients to use, how to prepare everything just right.

Of course, I was daunted by one ingredient: the homemade spaghetti. You see, I love all things dough, but never has dough returned the favor by being easy on me in terms of recipes. I'm intimidated by making bread, and the thought of having to make something that requires kneading and resting makes me nervous.

Which is probably why, no, the spaghetti didn't turn out as well as I hoped. It was edible, yes, but it wasn't a quality consistency. I went into the recipe intimidated, and it showed in the results. Was it a disaster? No, not hardly. It just means I need more practice. The recipe I used was fairly simple (except I subbed in unbleached whole wheat flour because, well, I wanted whole wheat pasta). The eggs I used were from a local produce stand that sells the eggs on behalf of a local farm. So, my intentions were good in terms of the ingredients used--I just need to approach pasta-making the next time with more confidence, a better recipe, and (ahem, if anyone is so inclined to purchase it for me) a pasta machine (no, I don't have one, so I thought I could get by with rolling the dough by hand and slicing with a knife).

See? They totally look like pasta noodles.

I am happy to say, however, that the meatballs more than made up for the iffy pasta. Using one pound of the local beef from Shadowchase, I mixed in one egg (again, using only local eggs), about 1/2 tsp. salt, and freshly cracked pepper. I've never made meatballs before, but I've watched enough cooking shows to know that, if you want them to bind together well, it's best to use breadcrumbs in addition to the egg. I wanted to use some herbs, and I definitely didn't want to use store bought breadcrumbs, so I found the best of both worlds: a bit of leftover olive rosemary bread from a local bakery. I just sliced up the bread and popped it into a food processor to make about 1 c. of fresh breadcrumbs, tossing those in with the meat mixture. I rolled the meat into about 1.5" balls and placed them into the refrigerator to chill (I've found chilled meat works best when cooking patties or meatballs).

Meanwhile, I heated a large saute pan and about 1 tbsp. olive oil to medium-high heat and brought about 6 quarts of water to a boil in a separate pan for the pasta. I placed the chilled meatballs in the heated saute pan, cooking for about 6 minutes on each side, then turned them around the edges to brown. When finished, I removed the meatballs to a plate and tented them with aluminum foil to lock in the heat.

Overnight I had thawed some leftover homemade pasta sauce, so I poured that straight into the pan I used for the meatballs. I brought the sauce to a simmer over medium-low heat, then placed the meatballs into the sauce and covered, simmering and stirring occasionally for about 20 minutes.

It's important to note that, if you make homemade pasta, it takes much less time to boil the noodles. So, when my water came to a boil about 10 minutes before the meatballs and sauce were done, I poured in about 1 tbsp. salt and a drizzle of olive oil (to prevent the pasta from sticking together or to the pan), and boiled the pasta for about 6 minutes.

The result:

I'm sorry--there's no way for me to make spaghetti look edible in pictures.

A side just included shredded lettuce topped with cucumbers and cherry tomatoes, both purchased from the local farmer's market.

This way of cooking is, yes, a learning curve. It's not simple, but I've learned that actual food itself isn't simple. It's a process, it takes time. But you know what? I don't miss the processed, fast food or drinks. At all. 

The Potpourri: Quesadillas, Grass-Fed Beef, Farm Fresh Eggs

So some more catching up to do, I suppose. I'll start with a pretty straightforward meal we made a few nights ago: a Jack Cheese and Peach Quesadilla. I followed this, for the most part, verbatim (excluding only the cilantro because it's just not my favorite). I also used chicken tenderloins grilled with a salt, pepper, and chili powder seasoning as opposed to the rotisserie chicken suggested in the recipe. I grilled the chicken first, then kept the bit of chicken drippings warm so that it could be used to grill the tortillas and give them a bit of seasoning.

Sides included roasted potatoes (just quartered white new potatoes patted dry and tossed with roughly quartered onions; seasoned with salt, pepper, a touch of cayenne pepper, and chili powder; roasted in the oven at 425 degrees for about 25 minutes, tossing halfway through roasting time) and fresh tomato salad (tomatoes purchased from the produce stand, including Cherokee purple, a pink tomato, and a striped tomato, tossed with some olive oil, white wine vinegar, cumin, salt, and pepper).

See that green stuff? Yeah, picante habanero sauce, baby. Tabasco doesn't cut it for me anymore. Pretty sure the hubby blacked out for a few minutes after consuming one potato doused in the sauce.

Now, onto the more complicated recipes. I've become extremely involved in reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma," a book that has dramatically changed the way I think about food. I don't want to give a book report here, but it's an eye-opening, educational book. It is not a diet book but, instead, a book urging its readers to step away from the Western diet. In essence (at least to me), it is a non-diet book, a guide to quit a diet, in fact, that is obscenely affecting our lives. The Western diet, in a nutshell, is the quintessential American diet, one underlined by fast food and convenience instead of Slow Food (a movement quintessential to Italians who, despite their consumption of wine and what we consider fattier foods, are healthier because of the very way they eat and view food, or their relationship to food). The horrors of what we choose to ingest are positively overwhelming and, as a result, I have not touched any fast food nor any sodas in the weeks I have been reading Michael Pollan's diatribe. (In fact, I've lost more than 6 pounds by taking to heart Pollan's lessons, combined with running.) Overall, I am trying to make a conscious effort to become more, well, conscious of what it is I am eating. I can point to countless paragraphs in "The Omnivore's Dilemma" that just make sense (all of it, actually), but I will spare you: all I can say is, if you want to change your eating habits, go buy or check this book out from the library. For my part, our household grocery shopping habits are changing, and I am starting to lean more on a local produce stand, the farmer's market, and local meats. I want to know what it is I am eating, where it came from, its origins, something that is at the very heart of Pollan's book. You just can't do that at the grocery store. So, starting with baby steps, our meals have evolved (thought not completely as you will see) to have an origin that is local, not one whose only story is a barcode and a distribution origin of god knows where.

To start, I made a homemade lasagna Monday evening. This comprised a spaghetti sauce I made from scratch using tomatoes that were grown by the hubby's great-uncle. The sauce was simple: I just poached about 13-14 whole tomatoes in boiling water for about a minute to loosen the skins, peeled off the skins, squeezed out most of the seeds, and gave them a rough chop. I sauteed some peppers and onions (both of which came from the local produce stand just down from my house) in olive oil (sadly, I have not learned to make olive oil yet), added the tomatoes, seasoned, and tossed in some tomato paste (something, again, that came with a barcode from the grocery store; but I will learn how to make it from scratch one day).

Next up: the all-important meat. This is where I came to respect Pollan's book because he does not make a case for vegetarianism (something I tried for three years and failed at rather miserably). Instead, he makes a case for becoming a better, healthier meat eater: by learning where you get your meat and ensuring that meat came from, well, happy cows, chickens, pigs, etc. Happy cows are not the product of industrialization, a process that feeds corn and grain and, yes, animal byproduct to fatten a cow more quickly than nature ever intended. That, my friends, is a food chain that is full of petrochemicals, of pesticides, of toxins that us humans consume as well. No, happy cows are grass-fed cows because that is what nature intended. (Or, as Alton Brown pointed out in a recent episode of "Good Eats," you never see cows grazing in a cornfield, do you? That's because it's NOT NATURAL!)

So off my soapbox....where was I? The meat. We made a trip about a week ago to a local cafe called Mikie's 7th that serves sandwiches using the grass-fed beef raised on a local farm called Shadowchase Farms. We picked up a few pounds of their pre-packaged, frozen beef after a delicious burger (seriously, grass-fed just tastes better, and is actually leaner in fat; more expensive, yes, but look at it this way: if you spend more, you're more likely to ration out the meat, thus eating less meat in the long run). So, the next part in the lasagna was the use of that beef, which I just seasoned with a bit (and I mean just a dash) of salt and pepper and browned over medium heat. I then added the homemade spaghetti sauce and used some extra tomato paste to thicken up the sauce as needed.

I boiled some lasagna noodles (again, something that came with a barcode, but I'm determined to cut out that middleman and learn to make my own pasta the next go-round), and started layering the meat sauce, noodles, and mozzarella cheese (okay, I don't know how good I would be at making mozzarella, but I tried to use the least-processed cheese I could find at the grocery store). I baked it all off at about 325 degrees until the cheese was a golden brown.

Lasagna, starring grass-fed beef.

Okay, I may turn this into a novel by the end of this, but next up was the classic "Breakfast for Dinner." Last night, after reading a particular passage in "The Omnivore's Dilemma" about the production of eggs that end up on the grocery store shelf, I promptly trashed half a dozen eggs that were purchased from Kroger because I could not possibly put in my mouth something obtained from so hideous a means (and yes, you could argue that those poor chickens lived their squalid lives in vain to give me eggs that I just threw away, and trust me, I had that internal dilemma, but I couldn't bring myself to eat them). I vowed to go get some fresh eggs that had a transparent story (that is, the lady at the produce stand could tell me from where the eggs came [the farm]). I started at the farmer's market, but they were fresh out of eggs. Instead, I came home from the farmer's market with some local cherry tomatoes, garlic bulbs, fresh farm butter, and cheese curds (yeah, I have no idea what to do with those, but they're quite tasty). I relied on the produce stand for my fruit for dinner and the fresh brown eggs.

So, the menu: French toast (using 7-grain sourdough bread purchased at a local bakery; and yes, that is another ingredient I am determined to learn to make from scratch), bacon (sadly, this was the stuff bought in the grocery store, and this time around, I couldn't bring myself to throw it out; next time, no bacon unless it's local), scrambled eggs and fresh fruit.

I started by making the French toast batter: three farm fresh eggs whisked with about 1 tablespoon of milk, cinnamon, a dash of nutmeg, and a dash of salt. I dunked the sliced sourdough into the batter and let it sit for a few minutes to absorb. Meanwhile, I sauteed the bacon until a slight golden brown and removed to drain on a paper towel. I poured out most of the bacon grease, saving just a bit for use in a few minutes. I preheated a grill for the French toast and whisked together another three eggs with a bit of milk, salt and pepper and poured them (over medium-low heat) into the skillet with the touch of bacon grease, stirring occasionally. I then grilled up the French toast and plated it all, serving it with the farm fresh butter, and voila!

There will be much more to come in later days as I get a better grasp on realizing the origins of our food and how to incorporate that into our meals. It's definitely a challenge to make a conscious effort to quit the Western diet, but I have to say: I've never felt better and more conscious of what it is I am eating, something to which we should all pay more attention before our healthcare costs and overall health skyrocket beyond control. Seriously, pay attention to what you eat; care about where it originates. It's worth your time.

Catching up. Again.

Damn, I'm way behind again. This month has passed too quickly.
So, instead of bogging this blog down with all of the dinners we've made the past, well, almost month, I'm going to hit the highlights. Which, for the most part, will be the entrees. If you want tips on the sides (which were pretty basic across the board), just send me a quick note.

So, first up: Chicken and Guacamole Tostadas.

Nothing too revolutionary here, but I'm getting drawn more and more to the simple yet flavorful. It's a basic principle in my favorite cuisine, Italian, but it can easily be implemented in any recipe. For this recipe, the simple guacamole was the standout. I like guacamole, but I'm not known to pig out on it. But this....this I could have eaten in bulk, with or without tortillas or tostadas. I did make a few basic changes to this recipe. First I cooked some split chicken breasts seasoned with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika because I am not the biggest fan of the rotisserie chicken in the grocery store. I'm not totally against it, so if that's all you have time to do, go for it. Secondly I omitted the cilantro, because I am one of "those people" who just do not like that herb. To me, it tastes like dish soap. Again, go for it if it's up your alley.

Next: Crunchy Lemonade Drumsticks.

This is perhaps the oddest mix of ingredients I've used in a while, but the results were tasty. I particularly liked this recipe because it had the texture of fried chicken without the unhealthy side effects of frying (instead, it's baked). If you're like me, you'll start making this recipe and, halfway through, will really start to think, "What the hell? This is going to be interesting." But stick it out to the end--it's worth it. I'm a big proponent of Panko, and while you don't necessarily think of an Asian-inspired ingredient meshing with the old standby of country-style chicken, it works. It works very well. My only issue was in the baking. In the original batch, I went with what was recommended in the recipe (baking the chicken on top of a rack placed on top of a baking sheet). It kind of worked, meaning one side turned out perfectly golden. The other side, even with the use of copious amounts of cooking spray, stuck to the rack and required the use of a pair of tongs to pull off and reassemble the skin. Which is not ideal. The second time around (which was the next day using a new batch of drumsticks and thighs) I decided to omit the use of a rack over the baking sheet and instead used a parchment-lined baking sheet. This worked only a tiny bit better. I was still pulling skin off of the sheet when I went to flip the meat. So, next time I make this, I may just be using a glass casserole dish, non-lined. We'll see how that goes.

Finally, Roasted Pepper Pasta.

The salad wanted center stage. But the pasta is in the background.

Again, this is a relatively simple recipe. I highly recommend roasting the peppers as instructed, as well as the garlic. Sure, you can buy both already processed and bottled in the grocery store, but where's the fun in that? (Plus, god y'all, I've gotten sucked into Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has burrowed itself into my brain and is starting to affect all of my food choices and has made me question the "efficiency" of buying what is in the grocery store; I'm contemplating a completely separate blog to discuss this book. But I digress for now...) Go pick up some peppers from your local produce stand or farmer's market along with some garlic and roast it as suggested in the recipe. Seriously it only takes 8 minutes. Worth it.

Seriously, just roast the peppers and garlic. Don't cop out and use the jarred stuff. Be connected to what you eat!

Anyway, I omitted the almonds in this one (I had plenty of crunch from the roasted peppers) and also opted not to rinse the rigatoni after boiling because, I don't know, I always thought it was a sin to rinse off pasta and all of the good starches that keep the sauces sticking to the pasta. That's just me. You do what floats your boat. Overall, we found this a very light but flavorful pasta--definitely worth keeping in the recipe "index."

Oh, and just kidding about that pasta being the final recipe in this post. I'm going to throw in a dessert, something we rarely eat now (except for fresh fruit). I decided to make a granita, a very light, Italian-style dessert.

The first time in years we have used our martini glasses. Though doesn't "Mad Men" make it look ridiculously cool?

I used 2 c. of pomegranate juice (you can use whatever juice you like) in which I dissolved 1/3 c. sugar over medium heat (the mixture does not need to be boiled, just stirred frequently until the sugar is dissolved). Remove from heat and add 1/4 c. lime juice (this will produce a pleasant tartness and a very cool sheen effect). Pour the mixture into a glass casserole dish. Set in the freezer for about 5 hours total; every hour or hour and a half, pull the granita out of the freezer and run a fork through the mixture to break up the granita so it does not set into an ice block. I served these in chilled martini glasses. Simple, easy, and flavorful.

As mentioned, I plan to do a post about The Omnivore's Dilemma as soon as I can get my head wrapped around everything it teaches. It's a lot to digest, a lot to absorb. But I think for the better.