Asparagus Soup - Adventures in Eating Real Food

2009-10-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

That's right. I'm giving my baby up. I need to focus on my school work anyways.

Search the Blog

2009-05-11T20:53:00.001-07:00

I've been looking into a way for readers to put a search box on the blog. The obvious choice is to put Google Custom Search on the main page, but unfortunately the caveat is that Google gets to advertise on my site. So instead, I am including step-by-step instructions on how to search the blog from google.com.

Go to http://www.google.com
Type in site:adventuresineatingrealfood.blogspot.com followed by your search term
For example, if I wanted to search for "potassium sorbate", I would go to Google and search for site:adventuresineatingrealfood.blogspot.com potassium sorbate.

Packaged Foods

2009-04-25T23:09:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, (almost) everyone at one time or another, relies on packaged food, whether the package is labeled Hostess or comes from a farmers' market. As a general rule, however, the more sustainable the packaging, the better the food.

At one end of the packaging spectrum is vegetables from your garden. This produce, you should not be surprised to learn, does not come in a package. Perfect!

At the other end are these "all-natural" chocolate chip cookies I once bought at the supermarket. The package you see is a cardboard box, but once you open it, you see non-recyclable transparent plastic wrap around the cookies in a plastic tray. And the kicker? Between each individual cookie lay a round piece of wax paper.

I've established a hierarchy of packaging based on energy and resource intesnsiveness, presence of chemicals, ability to biodegrade, and ability to be reused. The list starts from best to worst.

No packaging. Seriously. Just avoid it if you can.
Reusable bottles. Claravale Farms uses glass bottles for milk that the buyer brings back to where the milk was bought. The farm washes the bottle and reuses it. Also, glass does not leach.
100% post-consumer recycled paper packaging. Why is this so high on the list? Because it is both recycled and compostable. You can put in the garden!
Recyclable aluminum and glass. These materials can be recycled over and over again, and don't leach.
Recyclable plastic. I'm reluctant to even mention plastic. It is not sustainable, sometimes toxic, limitedly recyclable at best, and oftentimes not recycled at all. Avoid bringing plastic into your home, really.
Non-recyclable plastics. These are about as pleasant as mercury in the arm or Chuck Norris in a thong. My only advice is to avoid it.
Packaging involving multiple layers of non-recyclable plastics. I would relate this to watching multiple Chuck Norris's dressed in thongs kill plane crash survivors. Perhaps that was graphic, but it was necessary.

Remember: bring your own bags to the farmers' market, avoid plastics, reduce/reuse/recycle, and compost!

Day 43 - Eggs, DLT, Meatballs

2009-04-21T22:29:00.000-07:00

Breakfast: scrambled eggs, with my favorite recipe, on organic whole wheat bread. Unfortunately, at my fantastic trip to the farmers' market, I did not find eggs, as I was expecting to. However, I also missed the dried beans and mushrooms, both of which I needed, so perhaps the eggs were hiding behind the beans. I also ate a conventional California mandarin. Yum!

As you may, or may not, have noticed, I was not satisfied with lunches at school. Also, I stumbled upon this, so I think it will be a while before I go back to eating cafeteria food. Maybe when they make the leaps that schools in Berkeley did years ago. Regardless of what percent of cafeteria food is organic (I'm fairly confident that statistic rests at 0% currently), or for that matter digestible (that's probably closer to about 80%), I am making my own lunches now. ConAgra and Tyson can suck it.

So, for lunch today, I had a DLT: Deli, lettuce, tomato. The lettuce was from a farmers' market bargain bag. And I think I know why it was a bargain bag. It lasted only two days. (Speaking of which, I will be posting a guide to the farmers' market soon.) The deli I used was pastrami. I actually think it was from Aaron's aka Agriprocessors, the evil kosher meat company. Well, they're not evil anymore. Supposedly. I'm just counting down the days until KOL Foods West gets going, so I can have my meat and eat it too.

Along with the sandwhiches, I had a farmers' market tangelo.

We had more meat for dinner. Both my parents are on high protein diets when it comes to dinner, so if we want to eat together (which we do), we end up eating meat a lot. Less than we used to, but it is difficult to consume a lot of protein without diversifying the diet away from eggs, cheese, and tofu. Right, so we had meatballs in heavily processed spaghetti sauce over allegedly, but not really, whole wheat spiraly pasta.

It's not that I'm sick of "Da !@#$ am I eating?", I just have something else to talk about: The Raw Milk controversy. I bought some for the first time at the farmers' market from the claravale farm booth, but without my father's express permission, which I will take the blame for, since I knew he would be unhappy about it. What's wrong with raw milk, you ask? It's not clear, really. There's no solid proof it's remotely dangerous.

For instance, the number of illnesses caused by raw milk from organic grass-fed cows in plenty of open space and away from waste is reportedly zero. And yet, the FDA has waged war on raw milk. Personally, I think they have better things to do, like regulating solid waste in feedlots, soil erosion in the US Corn Belt, poor hygiene in factories leading to outbreaks of salmonella and E. coli, use of antibiotics on healthy cows, hens in battery cages, depletion of water tables, and, well, need I continue?

Here's what happened with my milk: since I was sick several times this semester, I am not allowed to drink. I have a quote "weakened immune system", which I don't believe is true, but should it be, it was probably caused by my history with industrial milk, a product shown to lead to weakened immune systems. It's a catch-22 as far as I can tell. So, half in protest of industrial milk, half in protest of my parents' what-I-believe-to-be-fallible logic, I won't drink pasteurized milk until I am allowed to drink raw milk. I will be topping my Weetabix with organic, vanilla flavored soy milk instead (and sugar, most likely. Weetabix is pretty tasteless without sweetener)!

Other news: I will be joining my local Slow Food Convivium, and starting a club at my school for sustainable food advocacy and appreciation.

New Guides

2009-04-21T22:21:00.000-07:00

Changes are coming to Asparagus Soup. I've started two guides, Asparagus Eats and Asparagus Endorses. Asparagus Eats is designed to help you make the right choices about eating out, produce, and other groceries. Asparagus Endorses brings you products that I find especially forward-thinking. For example, Organic Pastures is a raw milk dairy farm with perhaps the most pristine standards for dairy production anywhere in the world (and certainly in California), and Equal Exchange is a company that brings foreign goods from organic farms free of slaves (yes, still a big problem) and free of trade issues.

You can find these guides at the sidebar to the right. They will be regularly updated. Expect a segment on raw milk coming up in Asparagus Eats.

The Argument for Eggs, and Where to Find Them

2009-04-16T17:25:00.000-07:00

If you've read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, or perhaps Grist lately, then you know you don't want conventional, liquidy, stark white shelled, and available-cheap-all-year-round eggs. Why not? Uh...watch. You don't even want "Free-Range" Organic eggs if you can help, because, as a contrast to what their name suggests, they are actually rarely allowed outside their cages, and when they are, the closest they get to a pasture is a single square meter of dirt. Not soil, not grass, just dirt.

No, ideally what you want is this: eggs that are seasonal, colorful, and healthy. You can get them from farmers markets (but far from every one. You need to actually go to one and look.) and some CSA boxes (like this one). As we already have a box that we are very happy with, we are not about to switch, but if you haven't started your CSA yet, you should at least consider receiving one with pastured, farm fresh eggs. In most people's cases, we just need to find eggs at a farmers market. The next time you are at a farmers' market find eggs and ask how they're raised.

And stop buying this crap. If you' buy your eggs from Trader Joe's like I do, and don't have pastured, farm fresh eggs available for whatever reason, make sure to get Trader Joe's brand eggs.

Matzah Meal Pancakes

2009-04-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

4 eggs

1 cup matzah meal (for k-for-p and organic, look here).

1 cup water

1 t. salt

butter as a grease

some topping

Servings: 1-2 Time before you get to start eating: 15-20 mins

Add the ingredients above together in the order listed. That's important, the order matters.

Then just grease a large skillet (with plenty of butter) over medium heat and make about four pancakes. They should be pretty large, so you will probably want to do this in two go rounds with the frying pan.

When they're finished, serve as soon as possible with some form of topping. You can use any type of preserve, jam, jelly, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon sugar, syrup, greens sauce, cheese sauce. Really, the recipe is so simple, you can eat the pancakes for any meal, and with any topping. Personally, I used grape jam, but I think next time I'll do something with fresh strawberries.

This recipe receives the Asparagus Soup Seal of Sustainability. Sort of. The matzah meal has to be handled with care, but it is available (if you ignore food miles...shh).

Day 36 - Pancakes, Untitled, Turkey

2009-04-14T23:04:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I didn't actually have pancakes. They're "matzah meal pancakes"! Y'know, it's Passover. You can find the recipe here. Simply add a full carton of eggs and matzah meal.

Now the reason I called lunch, well, untitled, is that there's really no name for it. I sort of threw everything at arm's length together and heated it in the microwave. What do I mean by that? A base of whole wheat matzah, topped with shredded cheese, pretty finely chopped broccoli (from the CSA), chopped mushrooms, and herbes de provence. I made two. They actually tasted really amazing. In the future, I will leave more time, and use the oven.

We ate leftovers from the seder for dinner: boiled potatoes, turkey with gravy, canned jellied cranberry sauce, steamed broccoli, and canned peaches. Peaches in April! A delight, even if they were canned.

As it happens, I know what matzah is; but I am not sure that everyone else does. So instead of "Da !@#$ am I eating?", we'll be discussing what da !@#$ all the Jews are eating.

The story: This is how its told. When the Jews were finally freed from bondage in Egypt, they started baking bread. Then Moshe (or Moses, if that's how you know the name), comes running through the city, yelling something along the lines of, "We gotta go! Now! We gotta go now! Go go go!", so all the Jews just grab their half baked bread and beat it. Since the bread didn't have time to rise, it was just this cracker sort of thing. Over the years, it became a symbol of being freed from bondage in Egypt, and now, when we celebrate Passover, we eat it instead a bread for a week. Which is why all my posts have matzah in them. It tastes like a cross between a saltine and a cracker, in case you're wondering.

How to make it: Mix flour with water. Stab a lot with a fork to allow it to bake quicker in the oven. Bake at a really high temperature for less than 18 minutes. It has to be less than 18 minutes.

Better yet: buy it pre-made, so you don't end up eating burnt, tastless crackers shaped like abused clouds. I've been there. You don't want to be.

Wait! Where do I get organic, local matzah if I am not supposed to make it myself?

Eh...sorry. The Jews are a little backwards on this one. Outside of Chicago, Dayton, and extremely rich communities lacking taste buds (as in they're willing to pay a fortune for organic shmurah matzah which tastes even worse than the usual stuff), there really aren't a lot of options. Here you can find the few there are.

One dinner left for this Passover, and then I'm heading over to The Basin (hopefully).

Matzah Egg

2009-04-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

1-2 eggs, depending on your preference

1/3 T. unsalter, organic butter

1 t. kosher salt

1 board of matzah

Servings: 1 Time before you get to start eating: about 10 minutes

Wash the matzah in warm water for a few seconds. Spread on the butter, then sprinkle on the salt. Break up the matzah into pieces into a bowl.

Soft boil the eggs. Here's how I do it: start with boiling water. It doesn't need to be rolling, it just needs to be boiling. Place in the eggs, and make sure they're covered. Leave them there for about 3 minutes. When you take them out, they'll be hot to handle, but you won't hurt yourself. Hold an egg in one hand and crack the wider end (where the air bubble is) with a spoon. Start peeling away the shell until you can just get your spoon in (so use a small spoon). Then just scrape out the yolk and white from the inside into the bowl.

Mix up the matzah with the egg, and voila, breakfast.

This recipe does not receive the Asparagus Soup seal of sustainability. I just can't find organic matzah, let alone local matzah. If you want to make it when it is not passover, use organic crackers or just buttered and salted toast.

Day 34 - Matzah Egg, Tuna. Chicken

2009-04-12T22:53:00.000-07:00

Ack, look! Two types of meat in one day! I didn't even realize until now.

Matzah Egg...what is it? Well, as you may well know, we're right in the middle of passover, so I had to do something with matzah. To make matzah egg, you soak a matzah in warm water, spread it with butter and salt, break it up into a bowl, and top it with a soft-boiled (free-range organic) egg or two. I botched it, for what is perhaps the fifth time, by not boiling the egg long enough. I almost always manage to do something wrong. You can find the recipe on my blog.

For lunch I made tuna salad with the canned stuff and mayonaise, then spread it on whole wheat matzah. Is that better than white matzah? Not much I guess. On the side I washed and peeled the rest of the baby carrots from the newest CSA.

We went to a pot-luckish dinner with some other families in the area, so I did not have much maneuvaribilty with what to eat. Simply put, I ate everything. Brisket, chicken, roasted potatoes, cilantro salad, spinach pie, steamed broccoli, sauteed mushrooms, cake, fruit, and probably a couple other things. We brought the cilantro salad. I think I'm welcome to the occasional dinner where I eat whatever I want...and at least everything was homemade and fresh.

In the conventional Gefen mayo was potassium sorbate (and EDTA, but you already know all about that). "Da !@#$ am I eating?"

Function: stops yeast from reproducing, effectively preventing fermentation or spoiling.

Used in: wine and grape juice to prevent fermentation. The more alcoholic the wine is, the less you need, so grape juice (or my mayo <__>) needs far more than a 14% alcohol pinot.

Structure: found in solutions as K+ ions and ascorbic acid.

Apparently, somebody tried to get potassium sorbate authorized as a seed coat for preserving soil elements (I couldn't say how that works) in organic production, but thankfully the review panel shot the chemical down as completely synthetic, which it is. According to one of the reviewers, who has a Ph.D. in food science and nutrition and a minor in biochemistry and is an organic processing consultant, organic inspector, and nutrition researcher, synthetic potassium sorbate production is not environmentally sustainable. The chemical can be derived from blueberries, anyways, so why make it synthetically?

Asparagus's call: if you know that the potassium sorbate you're eating is from blueberries, fine, go ahead. If you don't know, get something else to eat. And just so we're clear, it will probably be effectively impossible to know. Sorry about that.

Upcoming Environmental and Foodie Events

2009-04-10T12:05:00.000-07:00

Asparagus Soup now has a calendar! See it at the very bottom of the page.

For more information, click on the event. Look into later months and check back later as I add events.

Day 29 - Coffee, Quesadilla, Pizza

2009-04-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

I had a fever all day from a virus (I think), so I did not have much of an appetite, but when I did, I would eat anything.

For breakfast, I could only stomach coffee (I have no idea what kind or from where), and a tangelo we bought at the Mountain View farmers' market on Sunday.

This means that when we went to Whole Foods for lunch, I was hungry enough to eat a cheese quesadilla, with guacamole, chunky tomato salsa, and lettuce. I mean this was a big quesadilla. I also bought a pretty deep cup of potato & leek soup.

After this, my appetite never really returned...I only ate a single slice of pizza from Pizza My Heart for dinner.

As far as "Da !@#$ am I eating?", we'll be delving into the tangelo, as it is perhaps the least straightforward food I ate today. Which is saying a lot, because about a week ago I was enjoying some sweet calcium disodium EDTA.

Anyways, the tangelo: it came about by the hybridization of a mandarin orange with either a pomelo or a grapefruit. If you taste one, like I did today, it tastes like a mandarin orange, and it is bursting with juice like one, too. But it is pretty large, so you can see where the other part of its ancestry shows. This cross may originally have been accidental or intended, nobody knows. Why? Well, it happened 3,500 years ago at the very least, and that is at the fringe of history.

In summary: the tangelo tastes good. Enjoy.

O/L Restaurants

2009-04-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

My dad had asked me to do some research on restaurants in the area where we could eat out and get food made from organic or local foods. So I did the research, and this is what I found for the area. I've listed the restaurants by how organic/local it is:

Ideal

Parcel 104 2700 Mission College Blvd. Santa Clara, CA 95054
The Basin 14572 Big Basin Way Saratoga, CA 95070

Great

Country Gourmet 1314 S Mary Ave. Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Birk's 3955 Freedom Circle Santa Clara, CA 95054
Manresa 320 Village Lane Los Gatos, CA 95030
Garden Fresh Vegetarian Restaurant 1245 W. El Camino Real Mountain View, CA 94040
Theo's 3101 N. Main St. Soquel, CA 95073
La Fondue 14550 Big Basin Way Saratoga, CA 95070

Better than most

Whole Foods Market (there are a ton)
Mudai Restaurant 503 W San Carlos St. San Jose, CA 95126
Aqui Cal-Mex Grill 1145 Lincoln Ave. San Jose, CA 95125
Blue Sun Cafe 324 W El Camino Real Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Chipotle (again, there are a ton)
Alvarado Street Bakery 500 Martin Ave. Santa Clara, CA 95050
New Leaf Community Market Boulder Creek, CA 95006

Print this off, put it on your fridge, and the next time you want to go out to eat, choose one of these places (if you live by me. If you do not, see the list of websites that follow). Do you know of any other places to eat O/L?

How to find O/L restaurants? Start with these:

Day 21 - Cereal, Falafel, Brisket

2009-03-30T21:53:00.000-07:00

Watch The Beautiful Truth if you have not already done so (I have, as of Friday). From what I've read, it makes sense. Actually. Thank God we can cure cancer.

Unfortunately, I was in a rush this morning, so I settled for an unadorned (besides the nonfat milk) bowl of Trader Joe's 9 Whole Grains cluster somethings. I can't remember the name, as it's like the longest name of any cereal ever.

Falafel is amazing. I don't know why it tastes so good...but it does. Perhaps it is related to the fact that it has varied so little from its original form. The processors haven't laid their filthy hands on the food yet. Anyways, that's what I ate for lunch.

Dinner: finally my food gets interesting. We're cleaning out the CSA box before our next one on Wednesday, so I made mashed turnips. I sliced the baby turnips, steamed them for about 10 minutes (I would reccomend closer to 6-8 minutes), mashed them up with margarine (use butter, trust me), salt & pepper, and garlic powder. I tasted a slice raw, and it tasted almost exactly like a radish slice, but after steaming, the turnips tasted far more like cauliflower. I mean, if you had told me I was eating cauliflower, I would have believed you. Also, I made a salad of orach, baby romaine, bell pepper, cucumber, and cabbage. Everything was organic, and the orach and cabbage were from the CSA box.

It would take all the time in the world to explain why margarine is bad. So rather than sit here and bash ConAgra, corn monocultures, hydrogenation, artificial flavor, the FDA, and food additives in general, let's talk calcium disodium EDTA, an additive in the margarine I used. The box says it is there to preserve freshness, but I will do my own research. "Da !@#$ am I eating?"

Injected as drug to treat lead poisoning. The calcium is displaced by lead in extracellular fluid. The resulting lead disodium EDTA is excreted in urine.
The FDA has specified that calcium disodium edta may be used in oleomargarine not exceeding amounts of 75 parts per million. This small allowance probably accounts for the use of other preservatives in the margarine I used.
According to Wikipedia, the preservative would really only preserve the artificial yellow color. It's just one additive in a chain of food additives that all need each other for the margarine to remotely resemble food.
EDTA stands for ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. It is in such widespread use it has emerged as a persistant organic pollutant (POP). These pollutants can cause death and several illnessess as well as the disruptions of human body systems. Exposure to POPs can also lead to cancer and neurobehavioral diseases.

Enjoy your margarine!

Disclaimer

2009-03-29T19:25:00.001-07:00

The views expressed in others' comments are not my personal views.

The views expressed in websites linked to by my blog are not my personal views.

I am not liable for actions taken upon reading my advice.

Research presented in my blog may be discovered to be faulty.

Nothing in the blog may be automatically considered to be truth.

Comment Rules

2009-03-29T19:19:00.001-07:00

You are encouraged to comment.
Just don't post spam. I will delete it if it looks like anything like spam.
No memes. I'll keep those off the blog also.
Keep comments relevant.
And be nice.

Alright, I think that's in order. E-mail me if you have questions.

Day 17 - Cereal, Satay Noodles, Blintzes

2009-03-26T22:38:00.000-07:00

I woke myself up at 4:30 AM today to work, so when I was finally able to remove myself from my textbooks, I indulged in Trader Joe's 9 Whole Grain Crunch or whatever they call it. I say "indulged", because the cereal is pretty processed. Corn syrup and modified food starch are among the ingredients, for instance. Tomorrow I know I'm doing something with cottage cheese, peanut butter, blackberry jam, and bananas, but I am not sure how they all will fit together yet.

In foods class, we made satay noodles (with Skippy. Can you spell hydrogenated soybean oil? Euch.), but the dish did not come out fantastically, so I do not believe myself to be doing any disservice by not posting the recipe. If you're wondering about the chili, the recipe is coming...

I placed myself on dinner duty again. We're still in the midst of a freezer tirade, so I really only had to heat the blintzes up, as far as those are concerned. I did make some fresh salad from the CSA box goodies (same ingredients as yesterday, except I added some mushrooms which were about to go bad). I dressed the salad with organic extra virgin olive oil and apple cider vinegar, but the vinegar did not tast that good, so I'll be picking up some organic balsamic in the next couple of days.

For "Da !@#$ am I eating?", I've chosen an old favorite. Since today is the first time since starting my diet that I had partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (as far as I know, at least), I'm taking this oppurtunity to bash the stuff. What's wrong with it, you say? Well...

trans fats: this is where they come from. Even if the nutrition facts say "trans fats 0g", chances are the product still has trans fats. They are basically normal fat molecules (which we need) grossly misshapen.
trans fats inhibit the body's ability to digest essential fatty acids (which we need), interfere with the functions of cell membranes, have zero nutritional value, and can quickly lead to obesity.
of all hydrogenated oils. hydrogenated soybean oil can be considered the worst, as it has been shown to depress the thyroid, making the body more sluggish and obese.

To avoid hydrogenated vegetable oils (at all costs), don't ingest food that lists hydrogenated anything as an ingredient. Recently, manufacturers have begun using the terms "monoglycerides" and "diglycerides", because, as consumers, we're beginning to avoid anything with hydrogenation in the name. But these are hydrogenated oils, so don't eat these either.

Day 16 - Cereal, Chili, Burgers

2009-03-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

Foodwise, today was one of my best so far.

I diced a few conventional strawberries (it's hard to get fresh local fruit in March), and dumped them in my organic corn flakes with nonfat milk.

Lunch I made in foods class: vegetarian chili. The ingredients were conventional, but pretty much unprocessed. The chili tasted amazing topped with shredded monterey jack and green onions. I'm posting the recipe.

WE GOT OUR FIRST CSA BOX TODAY! Escarole, chantenay carrots, orach, leeks, baby turnips, cabbage, mei quin choy, lettuce, and parsley root.

I ripped some of the escarole and orach up into a salad with a diced yellow bell pepper and half a cucumber. Dressed the salad with miso dijonnaise salad dressing and topped it with slices of the chantenay carrots. It tasted so fresh! After the salad, I had veggie masala burgers fried in Mazola oil (personally, I would suggest butter). I ate the burgers on a bun with muentster and a large lettuce leaf.

Orach: "Da !@#$ am I eating?"

First of all, it's pronounced like Iraq, except with an "O". It is very similar to spinach, except it tastes a little milder (in my opinion), is much more purple, and it can survive under frost much better. For more information, check out the Two Small Farms newsletter.

Day 15 - Toast, Nachos, Ravioli

2009-03-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

Today I did not make out amazingly (nothing O/L, really, and I didn't drink enough water), but tomorrow I get our first CSA Box, which will greatly facilitate my new diet.

I toasted up Trader Joe's whole grain bread, and spread on this gourmet blackberry jam I bought from Draeger's. When we start getting fresh fruit this summer, I plan on preserving it for the following winter. Trader Joe's didn't have any organic whole grain bread besides a quote "artisan" bread that had nuts, and dried fruit, etc. so I settled for conventional. I might add it was made with stone-ground wheat, which is ideally what to look for, because it means the nutrients were not removed.

Lunch was nachos again. Ha.

We're still in clearing-out-the-freezer mode (until Passover), so for dinner, we just heated up a frozen portobello mushroom ravioli from about a year ago. The pieces had molded together in the freezer, so it was more of a huge chunk of filled pasta than any distinguishable ravioli. Over it, I put heavily processed Prego marinara sauce, a product protected by the first amendment. I will make sure we don't buy it again.

In the Prego, was what Campbell or another processor has christened "vegetable oil (corn and/or cottonseed and/or sunflower)". Which seed oil was in my sauce though? "Da !@#$ am I eating?"

Since 1911, when Proctor & Gamble patented Crisco, a solid of oil from cottonseeds, researchers have figured out ways to make vegetable oils cheaper, less flavorful, and less nutrient rich. Campbell, the processor that made my Prego, like Kraft, Nestle, and other major processors, processes tons of seeds every day to get energy-rich products. Oils from the seeds are partially refined to get the carbohydrates, and Campbell finishes the job, refining the oil from the seed cotyledons until the flavor is gone. Then, they mix the oils from every type of seed they process, and call it "vegetable oil". When we finish off the rest of the processed marinara, I'm making my own.

Esek-fleisch Recipe

2009-03-23T22:11:00.001-07:00

We're talking meat balls. The most flavorful, delectable meat balls.

1 large onion, finely grated

1.5 lbs. chopped meat (like you might use for hamburgers)

1 cup sugar

1/8 tsp. sweet & sour salt

water (enough to cover the meat, once in the pot)

Boil water, then add the grated onion, sugar, and sweet & sour salt.

Loosely pack the meat into meatballs, then drop them into the boiling mixture. At this point make sure the meat is totally covered by water. If there's insufficient, add more. Stir.

Bring the mixture to a boil, then lower heat to lowest or almost lowest setting. Cover pot, and let cook about 80 minutes. Stir regularly.

Place covered pot in refrigerator over night.

Before eating, skim off fat from the top with a spoon or spatula, then reheat.

Notes: Eat over egg noodles, challah, or just in a dish. Make sure the liquid does not go to waste, by pouring it over noodles as a light sauce, or soaking it up with challah. Honestly, the liquid may be the best part.

This recipe receives my Asparagus Soup seal of Sustainability (but you still have to use local onions, organic sugar, and local, grass-finished beef).

Day 14 - Raisin Bran, Nachos, Esik-fleisch

2009-03-23T21:16:00.000-07:00

Breakfast was Post Raisin Bran in non-fat milk again. After the box is done, I'm buying organic raisin bran, alright? I am still deciding what type of milk is the best until I am able to get organic, raw milk from grass-fed cows (doesn't that sound dreamy?), milk I need to get my hands on. Currently, I'm looking into Organic Pastures, but I haven't figured out how to get it without walking into Whole Foods (aka whole paycheck) or ordering it by UPS. We'll see.

I bought lunch in the cafeteria. Today's vegetarian option was nacho chips with beans, salsa, cheese, and sour cream. It's not really okay, but I'm trying to get breakfast and dinner going smoothly before I begin packing my own lunches. At least the cafeteria lunch is pretty natural.

For dinner, we heated up leftover esik-fleish (I'll explain in a minute) over Manishewitz egg noodles with a romaine-based salad on the side. I topped the salad with Miso, Ginger & Wasabi salad dressing.

Now, esik-fleisch. My mother got the recipe orally from her mother, who heard it from her mother, and so on and so forth. I know it tasted great, but "Da !@#$ am I eating?". I'm posting the recipe so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about, but what does the word even mean? "Fleisch" is German for meat (I don't think it's a stretch from "fleisch" to "flesh"), but I've had some trouble finding a definition for "esik". According to Yiddish Dictionary Online, "esik" translates to vinegar, but as there's no vinegar in the recipe, I'm inclined to think that "esik" can be more loosely translated as sour. Restaurant Pasternak in Berlin, Germany defines the dish as "stewed pieces of beef in sweet-sour cream and plum-sauce", so sour could be an appropriate word. All I know is it tastes amazing. Get your grass-fed beef, organic sugar, and local onions out for this.

Day 13 - Eggs, Pizza, Chicken

2009-03-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

I tried to make two (organic) eggs sunny side up, but soon after cracking the eggs into way more butter than I needed, I burst both yolks. What I ended up with was scrambled eggs, except the whites were cooked a little longer, and the whole glop never became properly scrambled. After sprinkling with salt & pepper, laying between two fat slices of leftover Semi-Freddi's challah, and taking the first bite I immediately called them "eggs of the gods", they looked and tasted so good.

Unbelievable what you can discover by accident. Apparently, I didn't come up with the concept, however. In perhaps one of the most magnitudous coincidences of culinary history, I discovered while reading March 2009 GQ (p.202), that this is the way eggs are supposed to be scrambled: too much butter, break the yolks in the pan, don't mix too much, and then sprinkle with salt & pepper.

I'm still taking credit.

I followed with a less eventful lunch: Trader Joe's Tomato & Pesto Pizza, a dish that cannot be considered environmentally friendly by any account, but I'm only 13 days in, so there's still a lot of food to eat up. If it's not green, but still healthy, and we've bought it already, I'm not doing any service by throwing it away. I will call this the first amendment to my Food Policy.

Dinner lies in the future. We're planning on heating up chicken sczheczwan by some no-name frozen foods brand. It too is protected by the first amendment. I am not exactly eating any chemicals today, so my daily "Da !@#$ am I eating?" shout out goes to chicken broth, what I can consider the most processed ingredient in the frozen chicken dish.

To make chicken broth yourself, you basically just simmer chicken meat in water, until the flavor comes out. It has more water than chicken stock, but is otherwise similar. The packaged stuff, like Swanson Broth is pretty much the same, except they use massive vats, useless scraps of bones and meat, and coagulants to clean out sediment. Swanson even offers organic chicken broth, but if you need to use broth for a recipe, it is better to make it yourself.

In other news, after 16 years, I've decided to get rid of our garage fridge-freezer unit, hopefully this spring. Also, this Wednesday we are picking up our first CSA box delivery, so expect more news on that.

Day 10 - Eggs, Waffle, Pasta

2009-03-19T00:11:00.000-07:00

I didn't eat breakfast today. Or lunch.

OK, fine. I ate brunch.

At Holder's Country Inn, I ordered poached eggs, whole wheat toast, waffle, and fruit. Yeah. It was a big meal. I'm pretty sure the only thing organic/local (O/L) was the organic maple syrup from Lucky I snuck in. But even that was from a supermarket (sorry I.e). I'm learning that most restaurants are not effective food mediums for the good stuff.

Speak of the devil: we ate dinner out too, at Frankie, Johnnie, and Luigi Too, an Italian place. I ordered fettucini (with salmon, spinach, tomatoes, and alfredo). I actually made almost the exact same dish last year, so I'm not sure why I went out to eat. For dessert, I picked up a slice of extremely decadent chocolate cake from Draeger's, this gourmet supermarket. With the cake, I drank multiple glasses of nonfat milk.

Unfortunately, since I really do not know what was in any of my food today, because I did not make it, I'm finding it difficult to even do a "Da !@#$ am I eating?" So I'll make lemonade out of these lemons. Da !@#$ is nonfat milk? I mean, last time I checked, you can't just take stuff out of food and not replace it, right? So what do they put in nonfat milk?

Right. Apparently, the only thing added to nonfat milk is vitamins A&D. On a related topic, because there is less fat, there's more protein; but on the other hand, the fat is probably good for us (why else would it be in there?), so it's not clear what reason there is to drink nonfat milk rather than whole milk. Except that the nutrinionists reccommend it, and that's not a reason at all, considering that it was nutritionism that put us in this bloody situation in the first place.

Let's look at the numbers: say people have been drinking milk for anywhere between 5 and 8 millenia, which is what scientists estimate, based on the evolutionary adaptations we have developed to drinking milk. For at least 5 to 8 millenia of those 5 to 8 millenia, humans drank whole milk. Why should we change that practice now?

Day 9 - Cereal, PB&A, Corned Beef

2009-03-17T19:06:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. Cereal? That breaks at least 3 rules, right? (Actually, I.b, I.c, II.a, II.e, just off the top of my head.)

The cereal in question is none other than Post Raisin Bran. And the way I justify it is that it's from whole grain, and I use to have cereal everyday, so I'm not about to stop now. Just have less of it, and have better cereals. Small steps, I always say.

For lunch, I was in a rush, and I couldn't find anything great in the house, so I had a sliced conventional apple topped with organic peanut butter from Trader Joe's. What was particularly great about this particular butter of nuts is the fact that it has one ingredient: peanuts. That's it. Just organic peanuts, unblanched, unsalted, and unadulterated. Oh, and tasty too.

In honor of St. Patrick's Day (I'm not Irish or even remotely related to Irish, but I am American), we ate Meal Mart corned beef on dutch crunch rolls (from Le Boulanger) with Gulden's Spicy Brown Mustard. As sides we had a bright orange heirloom tomato and boiled cabbage with lemon. Probably should not have had such a meat-centric meal, but it's St. Patty's Day (and it tasted really good). In the corned beef was sodium erythorbate, something I could not honestly describe to you, which bring us to "Da !@#$ am I eating?"

Sodium erythorbate- a salt of sodium and erythorbic acid. Used in processed meat, as well as in soft drinks. Keeps meat pink, improves flavor stability and prevents the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines. Produced from sugars in plants rich in sugar, like cane, beets, and corn.

Day 8 - Bagel, Flatbread, Blintzes

2009-03-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

I have on days and off days. Today, I'd say I tended to lean towards an off day.

For breakfast, I had a toasted onion bagel with plain cream cheese. Except for some obvious basics, like flour, onion, milk, and cultures, I don't actually know what was in the food.

For lunch, I had half of this bake-it-yourself tomato and basil flatbread from the freezer section at Trader Joe's. I had the ingredients, but I threw the box out and I don't really feel like running to the curb to get it back from the recycling bin. Before eating, I did make sure I recognized everything, which I did. Tasted pretty good, ahaha.

For dinner, I started with a salad with romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, steamed asparagus tips (leftover from my cream of asparagus soup, the recipe of which I got from a vegetarian cookbook), cucumber slices, and a oriental vinagrette. As a main course, I ate cheese blintzes from the frozen kosher section at Lucky. Seeing as they had quite a lot of stuff no-go on my diet (for instance, enriched wheat flour, modified corn starch, locust bean gum, and others), I am now inspired to make my own. I found a recipe in a Jewish American cookbook for blintz loaf, so hopefully I'll make that in the next couple of weeks.

Anyways, my mentioning locust bean gum brings us to the first daily segment, "Da !@#$ am I eating?":

locust bean gum- a polysacharide (a long chain made of sugars) made of the sugars galactose and mannose. It is extracted from the endosperm of the seeds of the carob tree Ceretonia siliqua, which grows in Mediterranean countries.

The ancient Egyptians used locust bean gum to bind the wrapping of mummies.
In more recent times is is used as a thickener in salad dressings, cosmetics, sauces, as an agent in ice cream that prevents ice crystals from forming, and as a fat substitute.
In pastry fillings, it prevents "weeping" (syneresis) of the water in the filling, keeping the pastry crust crisp.

Food Policy - The Rules

2009-03-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

I.        Eat Food
a.       Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
One:         Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting.
b.      Avoid foods products that contain ingredients which
One:         are unfamiliar;
Two:         are unpronounceable;
Three:    are more than five in number;
Four:        or include high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
c.       Avoid food products that make health claims.
d.      Shop the peripheries of the super market, rather than the middle.
e.      Actually, just get out of the supermarket whenever possible.
One:         Shop farmers’ markets and find community-supported agriculture (CSA) box service.

II.      Mostly Plants
a.       Eat mostly plants, especially leaves
b.      Meat should be a side-dish or a flavoring for a plant meal.
c.       You are what you eat eats too.
One:         Buy good meat in bulk and keep it in a separate freezer
Two:         Good meat means chickens were “pastured” and beef was “grass-finished”
d.      Eat like an omnivore (vary the species in your food)
e.      Eat well grown food from healthy soils
One:         Organic or its un-USDA approved equivalents from local farms
f.        Eat wild foods when you can
g.       Be the kind of person who takes supplements (except you don’t have to take supplements)
h.      Eat more like the French. Or the Italians. Or the Japanese. Or the Indians. Or the Greeks.
One:         That is, subscribe to culinary practices based on culture and tradition
i.         Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism
j.        Don’t look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet
One:         The diet is greater than the sum of its parts
k.       Have a glass (about 1) of wine with dinner

III.    Not too much
a.       Pay more, eat less
One:         Don’t go back for seconds. Hara hachi bu: Eat until you are 80% full.
b.      Eat meals. Don’t snack.
c.       Do all your eating at a table.
d.      Don’t get your fuel from the same place a car does.
e.      Try not to eat alone.
f.        Consciously consult your gut.
g.       Eat slowly
One:         As in literally, and as in Slow Food, rather than Fast Food.
Two:         Say a blessing before and after every single meal or snack.
h.      Cook, and if you can, plant a garden

April 16th Update: If you think you still don't know what "real food" is, see here.