Category Archives: Food Matters

food politics, philosophy, essays, and issues

10 Food Blogging Trends That Need to End

1. Rehashing the rehashed recipes ad infinitum…

Here are some food trends that have been done to fucking DEATH: bacon, candied bacon, bacon jam, doughnuts (the new cupcake), kale chips, buffalo anything, pulled pork, quinoa, bacon in desserts, red velvet anything, chocolate chip cookies, cookie dough anything, loaded baked potato soup, green smoothies, anything with chia seeds, s’mores anything, homemade marshmallows, and sweet potato fries just to name a few. You’re just following the fumes of trends that have been driven into the ground.

2. Photos of food spilling and dripping over the sides of dishes.

It’s not arty – it’s gross. It makes my fingers feel sticky and rather than wanting to grab a spoon or fork and eat your food I want to grab a sponge or a dish towel and clean up after you.

3. Stuffing cookies with candy or other cookies.

Stuffing food inside other food. This over-the-top stuffing of food inside other food has become one big gluttonous denial that heart attacks and diabetes could happen to YOU.

4. Supporting the packaged crap industry

There is apparently a continuous contest to see how many ways one can cram processed crap into their home baked goods. Disposing of whole bags of fun-size candy bars in a cake recipe is sick and needs to stop. Please refer to #3.

5. Hyperbolic food writing.

We get it – food can be emotional for some people. Suggesting that a single dish of food is “life changing” is ridiculous. Talking about food as though it can heal all the wounds of life is also ridiculous. Be real. Stop trying to flog emotions out of us with the promise of life-changing pasta. We’re not simpletons.

6. Striped paper straws

Time for a new prop for food photo shoots involving any kind of sweets or sweet beverages. My eyes are so tired of seeing the same striped straws everywhere. What annoys me about them aside from their ubiquity is the “old fashioned wholesomeness” bloggers seem to be implying as if jaunty little straws can neutralize the potential for heart disease and obesity represented on the endless parades of plates piled high with processed-crap-stuffed baked goods.

7. Fondant.

Fondant doesn’t taste good. The first rule of food is that it should nourish your body. The first rule of food worth talking about is that it also taste good. If it neither nourishes nor tastes good it doesn’t matter how pretty it is, you may as well be sculpting cakes out of play-dough.

8. The evils of “mouth-feel”

Never describe to me how food will FEEL or ACT in my mouth (or in yours). The second you start talking about food in people’s mouths I am imagining masticated food and that makes me lose my appetite which is the opposite of what your writing is trying to accomplish. It’s not funny. It truly grosses me out. I don’t want a “party” or an “explosion” of any kind IN MY MOUTH. So get out of my mouth, please, and keep me out of yours too.

9. Fluffy cake flavored drinks pretending to be martinis

Calling any beverage in a martini glass a martini. It’s not the glass that makes it a martini – it’s the use of gin + vermouth that makes it a martini. The only other version of a martini that’s still a martini is vodka + vermouth. If your drink contains anything else – it is most definitely NOT a martini so give it a new name.*

10. The cast of characters ingredient shot.**

Unless you plan to not have an ingredient list with your recipe (which would be a dumb move) no one needs to see the ingredients all grouped together on your kitchen counter. It adds insult to injury when every item in the photo is labeled – it suggests that your readers are so new to the world that they don’t know what butter looks like. Trust me – we know it when we’re looking at eggs just like we understood what you meant when you listed “2 eggs” in the ingredient list.

*A splash of olive brine and a garnish of an olive or a lemon twist are the only other variations allowable for the drink to still bear the name “martini”. If you’re using flavored vodkas – it’s not a martini.

**My friend Sarah’s words for it. Brilliant.

Foraging for Walnuts Brings Me Back to the Beginning

2 Replies

I’ve been foraging for blackberries my whole life. I also remember picking gooseberries on Mount Shasta when I was a small child. I used to find and eat miner’s grass and also sour grass. Things I learned from my mom. But it wasn’t until I moved to the JC neighborhood in Santa Rosa that I really became a forager in earnest. I rediscovered my love of picking wild blackberries and the first year in Santa Rosa my friend Sharon and I learned to make blackberry jam together which started my love of food preserving. I was taking classes at the Junior College and walked to school from my house early in the morning for math class. After the first storm that year I noticed walnuts on the ground.

I know a walnut when I see one. Who doesn’t? The Stemples had several walnut trees in their back yard and they always had huge bags of walnuts in their mud room. The truth is – I never really liked walnuts. They were “okay”. I’d eat them if someone put them in baked goods but I always wished people would stop putting walnuts in their cookies because I thought it ruined them. When I first saw the walnuts on the ground I wasn’t that excited about them but I was curious to know if all walnuts are edible and if you could eat them fresh out of the shell or did you have to do something to them? I picked up a few and carried them around with me. Eventually I ate one of them and didn’t get sick.

The walnuts were all over the ground and I started picking them up as I walked, filling my backpack with them. I still didn’t really like them but I couldn’t resist collecting them. Something clicked (I think it’s called OCD) and the repetitive activity of collecting nuts and hoarding them in my garage was soothing and fun and addictive. So I ended up with an enormous quantity of them. All picked up from my neighborhood streets. It was free food. Food I didn’t like, of course, but FREE. And satisfying to collect.

Eventually I had to force myself to stop. A person who doesn’t like walnuts doesn’t need a year’s supply of them. I decided to try eating them in different ways to see if I really didn’t like them. What I discovered is that I really dislike walnuts in baked goods. Period. I won’t shun your gift of banana bread with walnuts in it, but only because I’m used to my mom baking nuts in everything and I’m pretty polite about gifts. But I’ll wish you hadn’t polluted your banana bread with walnuts. I tried walnuts in other ways and discovered that I love them lightly roasted and put on salads. When you do that they remain crisp. To me – an uncrisp nut is an abomination. I also discovered that I love candied walnuts – just to eat out of hand or on a pear salad. Deborah Madison introduced me to walnut sauce and it is one of my favorite sauces in the world. It’s creamy and rich and wonderful. I make it very smooth – no grit.

Every year for 5 years I collected a year’s supply of walnuts and ate them all. I was lucky that when I lived in Oregon a dear friend of mine had access to free walnuts and gave me tons of them because there weren’t a lot to forage in McMinnville. But I missed foraging for them myself. I missed the yearly activity that signaled deep fall. They nearly always start falling after the first real rainstorm. Which we just had a few days ago. While foraging for olives with my friend Sharon she mentioned that she was finding walnuts on the ground and I very nearly dropped the olive project to go collect nuts.

Instead I stuffed down the panicky feeling that I would miss my chance to gather nuts and hoard them in my tree trunk… and waited one whole day to go out looking for them. Yesterday Chick and I walked to my old favorite walnut trees and I gathered a bag full. Many of them are smaller than I like but will still be good. Chick didn’t think much of the walnut collecting. She would much rather forage for poop. Still, she did her best imitation of a patient dog and I felt right again. Like time is flowing in the right direction after being stopped for years. I know I keep saying shit like this – but it’s true. This is where it truly started for me and to walk the same path I’ve walked year after year to the same trees, trees that I’ve come to think of as quiet personal companions, it makes me feel like I just found something that’s been lost. It feels wonderful. It feels peaceful and makes me happy.

Once you get into the foraging mode it’s impossible not to see food all around you. Or to wonder about things that MIGHT be edible. To someone. This old cactus in our neighborhood caught my eye yesterday as it has caught my eye every time I’ve walked by it in the last 12 years. But this time I saw it differently.

Are those “prickly pears”? Can you make jam out of those? And is this the kind of cactus you can make nopalitos from? CAN I EAT THIS CACTUS?

I wouldn’t dream of trying to take any part of it because it is a masterpiece in this yard – it is clearly not food hanging over the sidewalk waiting to be plucked at by strangers. Taking any part of this plant would be grand and mean theft. But it amuses me how you look at things differently after years of foraging.

Cheers to my fellow foragers out there!

Things I’ve foraged for so far:

blackberries

gooseberries (only the once but it was memorable)

miner’s lettuce

sour grass

walnuts

elderberries

nettles

plantain

rosehips

hazelnuts (for others, I hate hazelnuts)

Indian plum (my friend Nicole introduced me and Max to it – it’s a leaf that tastes like a cucumber)

mushrooms (not very successfully – I did find an old bolete, an old chanterelle, and Philip and Max found me a lobster mushroom)

Chipmunk Disorder Flareup (collecting food for the winter in full swing)

Flipper’s Burgers, Caffe Trieste, and Mo’s in San Francisco

Extreme Picky Eating: Criticism and New Ideas

4 Replies

(These are the remains of one of Max’s breakfast “cookies”. I often find little piles of rejected bits on Max’s plate. This is a vast improvement on when he used to simply reject an entire plate of food if there was one bit of what he considered disturbing wrongness on it.)

This past week Max met his new pediatrician in an appointment to discuss options for dealing with his bloody noses which have returned in force. During that appointment she told us that he’s a little tall for his age and a little heavy for his age. Due to his being in the 95 percentile for his weight she told us she has to discuss diet and exercise. I told her that diet is difficult with Max because he’s an extreme picky eater. She asked what he eats and on being told she launched into a lecture about how a diet made up completely of empty carbs is really unhealthy. As if I didn’t know. I then explained that his eating habits are related to his OCD which makes eating very problematic for him. This did not, apparently, register with her as an important fact to consider.

She went on to ask me if I have read the labels on cheese puffs – a nutrition-less “food” – and I assured her that I am an avid label reader and am aware of everything that is in (or isn’t in) the food my kid eats. I reiterated that there are few foods Max will eat and that at the end of the day it’s important that he eat something rather than nothing. She told me she wanted to make an appointment for me with the nutritionist.

And that’s when I got angry. But I held it in and told her I knew exactly what my son SHOULD be eating to be healthy – that it wasn’t a question of knowing what a healthy diet is but a question of what my son is willing to eat. She turned to him and asked him if he understands that the way he eats is going to lead to many diet-related health problems like diabetes and heart disease.

Right then and there I knew I was going to get a new pediatrician for Max. Trying to scare a kid with OCD into eating food that tastes like goat pellets by telling him the alternative is horrible sickness – is ineffective. Shaming a parent of such a kid is not going to make the kid eat better either. The worst thing is that I believe she assumed that I must eat the same way I feed my kid because I’m obese. I LOOK like a person who doesn’t know what a healthy diet is. I LOOK like a person who lives off of diet soda and Doritos.

My concerns about my son’s physical health are constant and upsetting to me but one thing I know for sure: badgering Max to eat differently or forcing food down his throat that makes him want to throw up is not good for his mental and emotional health. Food is as stressful a topic for him as it is for me. I want his physical health to be better but I have to constantly balance that against his over-all well being and the quality of my relationship with him.

We’ve been very fortunate in most of Max’s pediatricians over the years in that they understood that a picky eater like Max isn’t being picky to be difficult – they have understood that it’s not an ideal situation and their advice has been useful and their approach has been both reasonable and encouraging. Not one of them ever assumed that my kid’s extreme dietary restrictions were a result of my ignorance of what a healthy diet is. All of them had encountered kids like Max before and knew what I was dealing with.

Best advice:

Don’t make a battle out of food with an extreme picky eater like Max.

With your average kid who is reluctant to eat vegetables it may be effective to simply keep reintroducing them to foods you want them to eat and with the idea that eventually they will accept them. Or that famous tactic of making your kid sit at a table for hours until they finally eat that piece of carrot. Or the other one where if they don’t eat what you expect them to eat they don’t eat at all – in the belief that no child will ever starve themselves to death. With average kids these tactics may work and aren’t likely to cause bigger problems. Kids like Max are at risk of developing eating disorders by making food a constant battle ground. So if your kid has major sensory issues that are limiting what he/she is willing to eat – understand that they may be incapable of overcoming their food aversions.

Give your extreme picky eater multi-vitamins -

Even this has been majorly challenging because most vitamins have a flavor and even non-picky adults recognize that vitamin-flavored things are usually not pleasant. Chewables for kids can taste good or NOT. Max would accept chewables for a while and then they would start to taste bad to him. Some never passed muster in the first place. Eventually he begged me to get him vitamins he could swallow. I prefer natural vitamins but these are HUGE (even the ones for kids) and taste NASTY. Even to me. Max thought I was trying to kill him with the horse vitamins. After trying to find flavorless swallowables I finally went back to chewables and made him try the ones from Trader Joe’s – he’s been taking these without complaint for the past few months. Fingers crossed he continues to take them without complaint.

Never give up offering healthy food options to your picky eater -

It’s exhausting trying to get a picky eater to try new things or old things they used to like. I give up from time to time. But I always pick up the challenge again because I love my kid and I really do want him to be healthier. I eat healthy food myself so we always have lots of produce and whole grain breads and nuts around the house. I always offer him healthy options and try to get him to try new things. Continue to be an example of how to eat healthily for your child and know that that example is meaningful even if it isn’t going to make them eat brown rice any time soon. They’ll KNOW what a healthy diet is and that will help them later on.

For the last few months I’ve had no energy to engage in the constant struggle of getting Max to eat produce and during the move and settling in period his diet has definitely reached a low level. Even before this upsetting visit to the pediatrician I was working on a plan for a renewed effort at improving his diet. I have decided to channel my anger and the shame this doc made me feel into new food ideas for Max. I’m going to jot them down here for my own sake – so I can keep track of them and not forget any of them.

Some diet guidelines to enforce (setting small boundaries and rules has worked for him in the past and it’s time to re-establish them):

Take his multi-vitamins every day.

Drink plenty of water – I don’t care if it’s mineral water or plain.

Take at least a couple of bites of something in the morning before gym class.

Eat one fruit or vegetable item a day (half an apple, half a cucumber, several baby carrots, or a handful of grapes).

Something with whole grains in it (cornbread made with whole wheat, breakfast “cookie”, slice of whole wheat bread with either ketchup or brown sugar on it – don’t care, or whole wheat crackers, or home made granola bar).

Potato chips only on weekends.

Soda only on weekends.

On to some new food ideas:

Grape and apple slushie:

he won’t drink most smoothies. He asked how come he couldn’t have a grape or apple smoothie. I explained the challenge there with regard to texture (when he says grape in this context he means concords which have seeds) and apples aren’t often a smoothie ingredient. My idea is to freeze natural unfiltered concord grape juice into ice cube trays then blend them with half an apple. The result will hopefully be a purple grape tasting icy drink that has some fresh apple in it.

Quick breads baked in square muffin pans:

he likes cornbread but won’t eat it when it isn’t fresh (it gets too dry and crumbly by the next day) and this is a problem for me. He might eat it more often if I could freeze individual portions. The problem is that he doesn’t like muffins (the puffed top not matching the shape of the bottom is the problem) and usually I make cornbread in a pie dish and do triangular slices – these are too fragile for freezing. Even if I did them in a square pan and cut them in squares – the slices will be too fragile for my purposes. I think individual square servings of quick breads might work well. I could do cornbread and gingerbread this way. I also want to get him to try a zucchini bread.

Granola bars using brown rice syrup -

He’s liked granola bars a few times in the past but the commercial ones often have high fructose corn syrup in them. When I made some at home using honey the honey flavor was too strong. Someone suggested using agave syrup or brown rice syrup – I am not a fan of agave syrup but one granola bar he liked for a while used brown rice syrup and so I want to experiment with that.

Veggie burgers -

Recently he ate a few garden burgers (the original one) but near the end of the third one he encountered a lump of something that was unpleasant and hasn’t wanted to eat them since. My mom and I also experienced this gristle-like lump in ours around the same time. Very strange. I found a recipe for veggie burgers in a Cook’s Illustrated issue that seems very promising. The only issue with veggie burgers at home is shaping them. Max won’t eat funky shaped things. My friend Chelsea told me about hamburger presses and I’m going to get one and try that.

Potatoes -

I have wanted to try making tater tots at home so that I can use organic potatoes but all tater tots really require frying. I would like to find some potato finger foods that Max would like that are baked instead of fried. My thought here is doing a kind of hash brown but in small silver dollar sized pieces. With the slightly flattened shape I can get both sides to be golden brown in the oven without frying. I also want to see if I can get him to eat and enjoy oven baked fries.

Corn dog type thing that’s got a different kind of filling -

Except corn dogs require frying. I just keep thinking of a finger food that’s got and outside grain type covering with shredded potatoes and carrots (or something like that) inside. Something he could dip in ketchup or ranch. This is not a fully formed idea yet – just jotting down the basic idea. I was thinking of things like bite-sized bagel dogs but with whole wheat bagel dough and a filling that’s a mix of things that wouldn’t be too strongly flavored or weirdly textured – again – potatoes come to mind. Yes, I know, more carbs. I’m working with what I can. I’ll take an all carb diet consisting of organic and home made food to an all carb diet that comes in packages. If I could get something like this to work out – I could start playing with adding ingredients in small amounts to add nutrients.

Peanut butter balls -

He likes peanut butter flavor. He desperately needs more protein. I’m thinking lightly sweetened peanut butter dipped in a thin layer of chocolate (he like a little chocolate but not a lot). Maybe I could mix a little bit of bran into them that he wouldn’t notice. If I could get him to eat a peanut butter ball before school that would at least be a little bit of protein to start the day off with. He’s eating peanut butter breakfast “cookies” again right now but will tire of them before too long.

That’s all I have right now. Perhaps as I try some of these things I’ll report back how they worked out.

The last thing I want to mention in this new picky eating post is that I have appreciated the comments I’ve gotten from other parents of picky eaters like Max. Recently a mom and daughter commented on my old picky eating post and it was really wonderful to hear from a picky eater who grew up and started broadening her eating horizons. She reports that she is perfectly healthy and isn’t as picky as she used to be. Thank you for sharing your stories! It really does make me feel better and also hopeful that I can get Max to adulthood without him developing terrible diet related health problems.

Extreme Picky Eating: The Beginning

Extreme Picky Eating: The Max Diet

Imwalle Gardens: the best produce market in Santa Rosa

2 Replies

So the farmer’s markets here in Santa Rosa are filled with produce I can’t afford to buy which is a huge disappointment. $5 per/lb for green beans is not in my budget. Neither is eggplant for $5 per/lb or even eggplant for $3 per/lb. $5 for a tiny head of lettuce? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Tomatoes can’t be had for less than $2 per/lb but most of them are upwards of $3 per/lb. Cucumbers are $2 per/lb here – I expect cucumber to be no more than 50 cents each! Corn is between 75 cents to $1 for one ear. ONE EAR OF CORN. Only some of this is organic. The green beans weren’t (I saw organic ones for $4 per/lb).

So I’ve been shopping the regular grocery store. The good news is that it’s not difficult to get mostly produce grown in California. In Oregon it’s much more difficult to get mostly Oregon produce at the big grocery stores – but who cares when they have such great farmer’s markets with produce being sold for really reasonable prices? The bad news is that even at big grocery store prices when produce is on special it isn’t affordable enough to can such produce in large quantities. While I’ve been hearing about all my friends’ food preserving escapades I’ve become increasingly jealous. I don’t feel right not preserving food at the end of summer. I was getting pretty bummed when a friend suggested I check prices at Imwalle Gardens. I’d been to Imwalle’s years ago when I lived here before but at that time I didn’t shop there much because farmer’s market produce was still reasonably priced.

So I went to Imwalle’s expecting to be disappointed.

I was so far from being disappointed – I hit the jackpot of affordable produce and the best thing of all is that this week they had 4 for $1 corn and they sell 20# of tomatoes for $12! Both of which are grown right outside their market. They’re a regular market in that they buy a lot of produce from other growers – mostly California growers (but not small farms necessarily) but they have their own farm and grow a few different kinds of peppers, corn, summer squash, Japanese eggplants, apples, and pickling cucumbers.

Imwalle Gardens is the BEST produce market in Santa Rosa. Here are some of their current prices: $1.49 per/lb for green beans, 99 cents per/lb for regular tomatoes, $1.99 per/lb for heirloom toms, 99 cents (or less) for a head of lettuce, 99 cents per/lb for hot peppers (that they grow – compared to $8 per/lb I saw at the farmer’s market), $1.19 per/lb for organic potatoes, 99 cents per/lb for summer squash (compared to $2 or more at farmer’s market), 49 cents each for regular cucumbers, and $1.19 per/lb for pickling cucumbers.

For $56 I came home with 60 lbs of really gorgeous tomatoes and 80 ears of super tasty corn. That was my first visit.

Yesterday we went back and got another 60 lbs of toms, 2 big bags of organic potatoes, some Hungarian wax peppers and some jalapenos, big bag of green beans, 6.5 lbs of pickling cucumbers, 2 heads of lettuce, big bag of zucchinis, big bag of onions, and a big bag of heirloom tomatoes for $67.50.

Here is their corn growing right outside the market.

So if you live in Santa Rosa I highly recommend that you shop at Imwalle Gardens for your produce. Some great super local produce, lots of California produce, reasonable prices, and all the staff is super nice. Imwalle’s is my new favorite place in Santa Rosa.

Imwalle Gardens

685 West 3rd Street

Santa Rosa, CA 95401

(707) 546-0279

The Days of Yore When Life Was Simple and Gran-paw Wasn’t a Bigot

6 Replies

Remember the days of Yore when life was simple and people were just good and wholesome and no one ever got murdered and food came fresh from the farm every single day and Grandma baked pies 365 days a year and no one had cancer or polio – SHUT THE FRONT DOOR! – you mean all that talk about polio crippling thousands of people and two world wars and a devastating economical depression and segregation were all LIES fabricated to sully the memory of the true glory of Yore?

I really want to love Mary Jane’s Farm magazine. I love that Mary Jane Butters is a champion of organic farming and growing food and enjoying antiques and doing some stitchery while sipping juleps on the porch swing at the end of another idyllic day on the farm where all the pigs are clean and your back never goes out and every minute of the day is a wonderful new memory being made that you will stitch onto your memory quilt for your family to snuggle und – dammit. Every time I read her magazine I feel the magnetic pull of the nostalgia it’s drenched with like heavy perfume that stays in your nostrils long after its trails have been cleared away by fresh air. I get annoyed. That magazine is painting a rarefied world where everything is in romantic soft focus and wisdom is everywhere to be snatched up and adored and nurtured and I’ll tell you something, if that’s what you’re looking for in life you better brace yourself for disappointment because it doesn’t exist.

I try to remind myself that this is how lots of people feel reading fashion magazines. I love fashion magazines because I know it’s all about inspiration and design rather than the reality of what most people need from their clothing and what most real bodies look like. I am unbothered most of the time by the unattractively skinny models because I am not fatter or uglier just because they are showing me their bones, I know this. I don’t feel pressure to be skinnier because that’s what the fashion designers are showing me – I feel pressure to get skinnier because I’m obese. True fact.

Mary Jane’s Farm is exactly like a fashion magazine for the homesteading crowd – it’s presenting a fantasy of cozy farm life and romanticizing the “Days of Yore” meant to inspire everyone to slow down and enjoy life more and reconnect with our pasts and get old fashioned. Get in your pretty lil apron like Gran-maw and make your luv a cup of roasted chicory just like Gran-paw used to enjoy on the back stoop after the early morning tilling was done even though you know your grandma was a shrew and your grandpa still regrets the civil war and the end of slavery and uncle Mike was inappropriate with his daughter but whatevs, that was so much better than the complication of cell phones and fast cars and city life where everyone has lost their wisdom and the good life.

I stopped buying her magazines after the first few because every time I read them I found myself wanting to swear just because the writing was so gentle and cozy and clean. No hard edges. All hard knock stories are told in a dear and sweet way with such wholesome nuggets – dammit. I can’t talk about this publication without slipping into that kind of grating fake nostalgia. The only reason I’m bringing it up today is because my back is in pain and I was in bed doing nothing this morning so I pulled a stack of magazines from my bookshelf to weed through. And I found the last copy of Mary Jane’s Farm that I bought a few years ago and I got sucked in by that mesmeric soft focus and then it just made me want to say mother-fucker in rebellion. I don’t ever use that expression even when I’m swearing in earnest. So I found myself thinking about why I’m so irritated by that kind of vision of homesteading and it’s because it’s much too idealized and I’m an urban girl with some sophisticated thoughts and tastes and I like the modern world and I like that I have plumbing and running water.

I’m interested in urban homesteading not being a farm girl. I’m interested in keeping old skills alive that are still useful in a modern setting. I want to dispense with all nostalgia for life that wasn’t romantic or mellow or remotely “simple”. I don’t value all that gentleness, it just grates on my nerves. I like people who live loudly and honestly and brazenly and swear when they crush their thumb with a hammer and laugh at themselves when they get out of hand. It’s what I want to bring to my own site. It’s what I want from others.

Yet I don’t want to destroy the enjoyment others have of Mary Jane’s vision, her cozy interpretation of life as it could be, or her gentle stories, because it’s just another way to find the same value in life that I am looking for (self sufficiency, organic living, and growing things). I want it edgy and raw while others really need the quiet and sweet. Let’s say it’s a case of respecting her gifts and what she’s bringing to a lot of people while knowing that to keep that respect healthy I just need to go my own way and tip my hat to her at the fork in the road.

So what tone am I looking for? What inspires me and excites me? Check them out:

Bad Mama Genny – She’s outrageous, funny, takes care of a bunch of cats even though she’s horribly allergic to them, and she makes cheese and booze. What the hell else do you need to know about her? I really want to live next door to her.

Hunter Angler Gardener Cook – His writing is rich and poignant and has made me cry. His posts on foraging are useful and thorough and he is solely responsible for making this vegetarian respect hunting.

The Midcentury Menu – Here’s nostalgia with the proper humor and edge to carry it off. There is no vintage recipe too disturbing for her to tackle and force her husband to taste.

Hunger and Thirst – I became a fan when I read this blogger’s funny post about the greed of mushroom hunters. Lots of foraging and written in a very personable way.

Aunt Peaches – Craft and DIY publications can get precious pretty quick. I love any person who can make anything from anything and not be too cute or too cozy about it. Aunt Peaches is funny, clever, down to earth, and not afraid of offending.

Thank You for not Being Perky – It’s all right there in the title. Curmudgeons unite against the eternally happy curs we have to yell at every day! Minnie swears, she’s honest, she grows vegetables, sews swimsuits, crafts, and is never smug and never precious. Her stories about parenting are similar to mine and that is a rare thing. She’s super cool and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her in person and spazzing out at her.

Now I have to go ice my back and watch episodes of Futurama with Max. Philip is moving down to California ahead of us on Sunday and has a job interview on Monday. Instead of freaking out I am thinking about how I can make good use of my time left in Oregon and the first thing on that list is to go morel hunting this weekend so I can take part in an urban homesteading challenge that Hank Shaw of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook is doing with his friends of Sustainable Eats are putting on this month – check it out: Take The 2012 Urban Farm Handbook Challenge*

*Sustainable Eats authors wrote the Urban Farm Handbook and are doing a challenge this whole year, a different challenge every month with prizes for entering contests. I haven’t been following it because I didn’t know about it until now.

Defining My Dairy-Free Cooking Challenge

6 Replies

On August 1st, 2012, I plan to stop cooking with dairy for a year.

All meals I make at home for me and Philip (and my mom) will be dairy free for one year. Philip and I aren’t going dairy free, just our meals at home. He’s still going to put half and half in his coffee. We’ll still eat dairy at freinds’ houses and out at restaurants. We’re still going to eat eggs (which are not dairy). I’m still baking with dairy. I don’t intend to become vegan and I don’t intend to ever give dairy up completely. What I want (and won’t do unless I make a real commitment to myself) is to reduce my dairy consumption by 75%.

I want to learn to cook and enjoy eating food that does not have cheese, butter, or milk in it. It’s that simple.

I eat “too much” cheese. I am very fond of saying that there is no such thing as too much cheese but that’s a lie. I know that for my best health I need to eat a lot less cheese. Cheese needs to become an occasional treat. Something I eat with reverence rather than a favorite food I eat at nearly every meal.

I refuse to disclose how much cheese I currently eat a week.

It’s not just about my figure and my arteries either. In thinking about this whole cooking challenge I talked with a vegan friend and did some online reading about the carbon footprint of dairy products. Of meat. Of poultry. I thought that by eating local dairy I was doing really well as far as sustainable eating was concerned. I was incorrect. I was concerned that not eating dairy would result in a less sustainable diet because I know that for me I would need to increase the tropical fruits and nuts in my diet to be satisfied. (To replace the deliciousness of cheese and yogurt and butter. Not because it is necessary for nutrition. It’s not.)

I have often said that a life without cheese is not worth living.

I’ve said the exact same thing about beer.

But I wouldn’t miss cheese half so much if I could make a lot of coconut milk curries. If I could eat even more avocados than I do. If I could buy bananas and fresh pineapples. If I could make sauces using cashews. Avocados are my only constant tropical splurge. I only allow myself to buy coconut milk once in a while. Pineapples and bananas and cashews – never. I haven’t bought a cashew in many years. And I LOVE them! Oh! And dates. I haven’t bought dates in years. I love those too!

I read a lot of vegan food blogs and I’ve got to tell you that the vegan sites that don’t use tropicals do not entice me. The most enticing vegan recipes feature avocados or coconut milk or cashew sauces. I could give up cheese for a while for those things. But then the food I eat will all have traveled more than I ever will and that’s kind of galling.

It turns out that all dairy (local or not) has a substantially higher carbon footprint than any imported produce does. Did you know that? It’s a question of how much energy it takes to raise the animals (to feed them, house them, pasture them – if they’re lucky enough to get any pasture time) and then how much more energy it takes to process them and store them. Animals that are as big or bigger than human beings eat a shit-ton of grain. That grain has to be grown for them. There are often lots of pesticides involved. It’s difficult to measure and compare the carbon footprints of different foods so there are definitely varying reported numbers but one thing is consistent among all the estimates: meat and dairy have a considerably higher carbon footprint than any imported or domestic produce. Period.

So what I’m beginning to discover is that eating sustainably isn’t just a question of where it was grown or how much poison was used to grow it or how many miles it had to travel but also how much energy it takes to feed your food and then process it in factories. It’s complicated.

Here’s my new model of sustainable eating practices prioritized:

Non-GMO foods – these are just as devastating for the earth’s diversity as directly poisoning ourselves and the soil is. This is bad-ass evil shit. If you don’t care about anything else, you should care about this.

Major reduction in meat and dairy consumption (including eggs) – because having to grow food for your food takes an extravagant amount of energy. Produce crops need water, light, and compost but compost is naturally produced by the scraps of other produce. It’s also free if people (farmers and individuals) are doing it right. Plus there’s the whole animal treatment issue. If you are a person who really needs to eat meat then just consider eating smaller portions of it at meals and maybe eating a few more meat free meals a week and buy your meat/eggs/dairy from local and sustainably raised sources. It really does matter. Every little bit matters. You’ll make a difference just within these parameters. If you can afford organically and sustainably and ethically raised meat then you’re probably rich but you’ve got my automatic admiration for making such awesome choices.

Local – this is still important but more flexible than I realized in comparison with the dairy/meat/eggs group. Every one of us needs to support our local farmers as much as possible so that when China decides to declare war on us we are still capable of feeding ourselves. Support local SMALL organic farms first, then local small non-organic, then support the big local organic farms, but never support the corporate non-organic ones. There’s nothing in it for anyone. Do this: locate all your local farmer’s markets, before you plan your weekly menus or shop anywhere else, go to your weekly farmer’s market every single week it’s open and base as many meals a week as you can on what is available there. Buy all the produce and other locally produced foods you can from your local farmer’s markets. That means you’re supporting your local economy FIRST and helping local farmers and food producers to thrive in a tough economy and that means they’ll consider selling to you (a familiar weekly face) before strangers in a post apocalyptic event.

Organic – because poison is just killing everything and everyone and everyone’s fertility. Except for the Duggars. Yes, organic can sometimes be cost prohibitive. So pay attention to the dirty dozen list when you can’t buy all organic. I’m not going to judge you. I can’t buy all organic either.

Cheapness – we spend a larger proportion of our income on our grocery budget than we do on transportation. We don’t have much money and we have a lot less because we choose to eat good quality food and support local farmers and food producers and we also don’t buy a lot of processed food (except for Max’s stuff). It is our belief that the most important thing you can spend money on is the food you put into your body. Food and water are the most necessary resources humans consume. Without them we die. Without a car? You only think you’d die without a car. But since we’re pretty broke most of the time we try to buy things in bulk, we grow some of our own food, we pick large quantities of produce at u-pick farms to preserve.

I will include links to some of the reading I’ve been doing. I will be doing some more reading. I’m not starting this challenge to myself right away because I’m maximally stressed out trying to find Max a new doctor on his new lousy insurance so I can get him tested before the end of the school year. I also need to research vegan cookbooks and find a couple that will be inspiring to me (must have tons of delicious inspiring photographs – why are so may vegan cookbooks skimpy on the photos or have depressing looking photos?) and I need to get my house in better order.

I’m looking forward to expanding my cooking skills and broadening my repertoire.

Maybe in my next post I’ll talk about all the jerks out there who are sick and tired of everyone getting all worried about the earth. But only if you’re in the mood for a fight.

The Carbon Footprint of Food (Graphic)

A Vegetarian Diet Reduces the Diner’s Carbon Footprint

Food’s Carbon Footprint

The Most Harmful Foods for the Environment

And if you’re interested here’s a link to my previous post on this subject:

Vegan Versus Local and Spring Cleaning

Food Trends: Cookies are the New Peanut Butter

2 Replies

For years Americans have been desperately searching for an alternative to peanut butter that would be more like eating cookies and less like eating something that could be described as being “healthy”. This whole American obsession with healthy foods has gone out of control. Not even peanut butter packed with sugar and processed to a dreamy smoothness could beat the doldrums gripping the American breakfast table. And then a miracle of processing occurred:

Source: bakingbites.com via Angelina on Pinterest

Suddenly the sun was shining again, Americans began to enjoy breakfast again! There is nothing you can bake that wouldn’t be made better with a little cookie spread! Picky Palate has been the leading Biscoff trendsetter and moms across the country are thanking her for breaking the myth that cookies are “dessert”:

Source: picky-palate.com via Angelina on Pinterest

But just when you thought life, and by that I mean breakfast, couldn’t get better, Buns In My Oven has gone and brought the concept of cookies for EVERY meal to a whole new level. Meet the Oreo Spread:

Source: bunsinmyoven.com via Angelina on Pinterest

It’s like black gold. It shimmers on your toast like the most expensive caviar. It positively sets your body up with the proper energy to face the most exhaustive day. No one will ever be able to say you don’t eat “right” in the morning again! All you have to do is hand them this miracle of macerated cookies* on a wholesome slice of bread and they will never argue with you again.

I can’t wait to see which iconic cookie will next succumb to spreadable glory!

*After all, it really is a lot of work having to chew cookies yourself, with cookie spreads you get all the great flavor of the cookies without the irritation of having to chew them.

Food Fight: The Real Vegetarian

6 Replies

What does it mean to be a vegetarian? Am I a “real” vegetarian? Are you a real vegetarian? Does being a vegetarian mean I do no harm to any living beings? Do vegetarians have to sign contracts and be evaluated by an official jury to become “real”?

In my last Food Fight post I outlined how I eat in detail. I mentioned that I’m a vegetarian and I also mentioned that I eat eggs and cheese and that my feelings are a little mixed about it because eating cheese supports the meat industry and I’m not keen to do that yet I have not chosen to draw my line there at this point in time. Renee, a commentor on the last post, brought up some other details about the dairy industry which I felt were valid points. But then she told me I can’t call myself a vegetarian because I eat cheese and cheese is made with rennet (enzymes from a cow’s stomach).

Dictionary definition (Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary): A person who does not eat or does not believe in eating meat, fish, fowl, or, in some cases, any food derived from animals, as eggs or cheese, but subsists on vegetables, fruits, nuts, grain, etc.

There you have it. Some vegetarians (like myself) do eat food derived from animals but don’t eat the flesh of animals. I can most definitely call myself a vegetarian and I most definitely am NOT a vegan. I don’t think it can be more clear than that.

I was raised as a vegetarian from birth. It’s the way I eat. I didn’t choose to be a vegetarian in the first place but later when I tried eating meat and fish and fowl I made a conscious decision to remain a vegetarian but NOT because I love animals. I did it because it feels natural to me to eat the way I was raised. It suits my body. I feel good when I eat this way. I like it. Meat is gross to me. I’m sorry if it disappoints anyone to know that I didn’t choose to be vegetarian for noble reasons. Actually, I’m not sorry. Eating is very personal and I chose what’s right for me. What’s right for me includes eggs and cheese.

My concern for the well being and kind treatment of animals is very real and very strong. But it’s important to reiterate that I don’t think eating animals is wrong. If it’s wrong for people to eat animals then it’s wrong for lions to eat gazelles. If lions can’t eat gazelles, they die off. Nature made many animals dependent on eating other animals and in the natural setting the way the food chain is set up helps maintain a balance of animals and insects that works. Nature also made many animals into omnivores, giving them the edge of not being dependent on one type of food. Humans are such animals. Just because we can choose not to eat meat doesn’t make it wrong for us to choose to eat it.

I take my cues from nature. Humans are omnivores and as far as anthropologists can know – they always have been. I choose to be an omnivore who doesn’t eat the flesh of animals. I respect other people choosing to eat animals and I equally respect other people who choose not to eat any food derived from animals. The only thing I don’t choose is to ignore how animals raised for food are treated and cared for. There is a respect inherent in nature between prey and quarry. In the distant past of human history that respect was inherent in us. It is only in our more recent history that we have disconnected from our more natural relationship with animals as food. People used to have to work harder to have their meat. A human having to kill the meat he/she eats is a lot more respectable than going to the grocery store and buying a slab of animal flesh any time you want it. So we’ve lost our way and have, through overpopulation, ruined the balance that nature designed to keep the earth healthy.

I care very deeply about the treatment of all animals but that doesn’t mean I think it’s wrong that they are used for food. When Max rescued a baby garter snake we fed it tadpoles from our little pond. I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t love hunting out those babies and offering them to the snake but I knew, as all people must know, that a snake is not a vegetarian creature and it would be entirely wrong to impose on it a diet it can’t survive on. So we fed him the tadpoles and knew that it was nature’s circle of life in action. But those tadpoles, until we snatched them out of the pond, lived a natural life. The frogs who live in that pond were not put there by us. They found our pond and chose it as their habitat. My point is (in case it isn’t obvious) is that those tadpoles weren’t raised in a tank in my house under unnatural conditions and they were eaten by their natural predator.

There’s one last point I feel it’s important to make: if you are a vegetarian because you don’t want to cause any injury or death to other living beings, you are fooling yourself to think that you can eat in such a way that you never cause harm to other living beings. Every single person on earth who eats food, no matter what diet they choose, causes injury and death to other living beings. It is 100% impossible to farm vegetables and grains without also causing collateral damage to mice, rabbits, frogs, voles, snakes, gophers, and sometimes the larger animals whose natural habitat we’ve claimed for raising crops pushing them to new territories where they sometimes starve to death as a result. Most people don’t care about insects but even if you’re growing food organically, as I do, there are casualties to insects and sometimes small creatures. When I was working in the community garden a few years ago I was weeding and accidentally speared a frog with my weeding tool. I don’t know if it was fatal or not. I picked the poor fellow up and put him out in the adjacent field of tall grasses. If I, a careful and caring gardener, can injure a frog while weeding, imagine what all those tractors and plows and harvesters are doing to the other little creatures.

We all eat at the expense of other living beings. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact of life.

Where you draw the line is for you to decide. Vegans do considerable less harm to other living creatures than meat eaters do, but everyone has blood on their hands. I think the main thing to focus on is how we are treating the animals we’re raising for meat and eggs and how they’re killing these animals before they reach the dinner table. These things matter a lot.

I said that was all but there’s one more thing I need to say: vegans and vegetarians fighting each other over little details of diet is like Catholics and Protestants fighting over how to interpret the bible and the proper way to worship. The majority of vegans and vegetarians have some common beliefs and concerns and if we all want meat eaters to care about the ethical treatment of animals then it won’t do to fight each other. There will always be meat eaters, there is never going to be an entire planet of vegetarians and vegans. People are omnivores. What is an obtainable goal is to inspire all meat eaters to care how their meat is raised and to inspire meat eaters to eat less meat over all of it can be raised humanely. This should be a shared vision between all people.

I am a vegetarian. Please don’t tell me where to draw my line. Please consult the official definition of vegetarian before telling people what they can and can’t call themselves.