Recently Heard on the Internets

My father always says, "You can't have it fast, cheap, and high quality. Pick two. If you want it fast and cheap, it's not gonna be very good. If you want it fast and good, it certainly won't be cheap."

-- commenter on Serious Eats' post about the brou-ha-ha surrounding the recent discovery that Taco Bell's "beef filling" is only 35% beef, 5% below the FDA requirement that it be 40%.

Three Basic Recipes for Everyone

You've heard me rave about Mark Bittman before. I make no bones about the fact that I love him, his food philosophy, and his very simple "anyone can do it and everyone should" approach to cooking.

Well here's another example of why. He recently wrote an article about how few people in the U.S. actually cook, or even know how, and how that is a national problem that needs fixing. If we want healthier Americans, lower healthcare costs, healthier food systems, and a healthier planet overall, we're going to need to teach each other to cook.

He acknowledges the truth that most of us, these days, are not being taught how to cook or even about food by our parents. That idea of passing down recipes and cooking lessons from generation to generation has mostly gone the way of the Dodo bird. Maybe some of us are lucky to get one or two recipes from our parents, but that's about it. It's not like we grow up knowing how to instinctively put together a menu or shop for the right ingredients or throw an impromptu dinner together at the last minute.

So Mark is making an attempt to right that wrong, but giving us three very basic recipes that we all ought to know how to make -- WITHOUT a cookbook. And I agree with him: that once you have a few recipes (be they these or others) that you can confidently cook consistently on your own, you're well on your way to being a home cook. You can extrapolate and make your own recipes and dishes by riffing off what you already know. You will no longer need to order takeout or make a run for the nearest fast-food "restaurant."

As he puts it:

Make these three things and you’re a cook. And with luck and perseverance, these foods will crowd out things like (to single out one egregious example from hundreds of its competitors) KFC’s Chicken Pot Pie, which costs about $5 (so much for the myth of cheap fast food; a terrific meal for four can be put together for $10); contains nearly 700 calories, more than half of which come from fat; and has well over 50 ingredients — most of which cannot be purchased by normal consumers anywhere — including things like “chicken pot pie flavor” and MSG.

By becoming a cook, you can leave processed foods behind, creating more healthful, less expensive and better-tasting food that requires less energy, water and land per calorie and reduces our carbon footprint. Not a bad result for us — or the planet.

So without further ado, here are Bittman's Three:

1. Simple Stir-Fry (and really, the variations on this are truly ENDLESS)

2. Lentils and Rice (or very easily beans and rice; my Black Beans & Rice is ridiculously simple)

3. Chopped Salad (check out Robin's School Garden Salad for the most divine dressing ever)

Changing the Food System

I thought (my hero) Ruth Reichl's recent blog post on Changing the Food System offered fascinating and new (to me, anyway) perspectives and ideas on how to really enact this change that needs to happen.

And it was a beautiful hall, all carved antique wood, where Marion Nestle, David Kessler and I sat down to discuss the politics of food and health care....

We are all agreed on these basic facts. The question is, what do we do about it? And that’s where the most depressing part comes in. Because these politically connected people (David, after all, was the FDA commissioner who took on cigarettes), both believe that there are only two paths to political change. Campaign laws must be rewritten to prevent large corporate contributions. And the first amendment must no longer be interpreted as protecting advertising as free speech. Until that happens, political change is not possible.

I'd never thought of these before. But when I really think about it, it does make sense. It also kind of blows my mind...things I once thought of as totally un-related (obesity, factory farms, broken food system and large corporate contributions and advertising protected as free speech) are, clearly, very much related.

And so it goes.

Change might be longer in coming than we thought. But I still believe it will happen. Because it must.



P.S. If you are in need of something great to read over the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, may I recommend the extraordinary Ms. Reichl's books? They are captivating, wonderfully written, all about food, and are auto-biographical. They are so good. I wish I hadn't read them so I could read them all over again. I suggest starting at the beginning and working your way to the present, though you could always do it backwards, as hubby did -- though not on purpose. Just worked out that way. And he did not enjoy them any less because of it. So really, just read them, no matter the order!

We can either pay the farmer or we can pay the hospital

http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-09-24-11-year-old-schools-us/

Where Is My Milk From?

In the midst of the truly disgusting and scary egg contamination recall, other vulnerable foods spring to mind.

Namely, dairy! Check out this neat little tool* to help you learn as much as you can about what is often all-too-mysterious: the actual origins and processors of our milk.

Especially as someone who frequently shops at Trader Joe's (though I only ever buy organic dairy, no matter what store I'm shopping at, because of...well, all of this), where, as part of their low-price dealio, they take products from name-brand outfits and put them under their own TJ's labels, this is a huge help to me. Using this handy little tool, I discovered that a lot of their dairy is local to me and from reputably organic producers, like our beloved Nancy's Creamery -- which is a huge relief and wonderful thing to know!


* Confused as to where to enter in your code? It's right on the milk carton -- I totally missed it the first time!

Avoiding the Dirty Dozen

The Environmental Working Group just released their new Shopper's Guide to Pesticides. Have you seen this? Do you use it? If not, I highly recommend.

I try to be as conscious of the environmental and health impacts of the food that I eat, cook, and serve as possible. But the truth is, it's simply impossible to eat all-organic, all-local, all-sustainable, all-ethical ALL of the time. Well, perhaps it might be possible if I had a million dollars in the bank and didn't work and had the land space to raise chickens and have a huge garden. Then I might have the time and the resources to be able to make that happen. But I would still have to limit at what restaurants I ate, and I am okay (for now, at least) with not imposing such strict limitations on myself and my family.

So what I'm saying is: knowing what I know about the brokenness, filth, toxicity, and inhumanity of our food systems, and as someone who wants to eat as healthily and as safely for our planet as possible, I still need to compromise and make choices.

And nowhere is that more important than in the grocery store.

When I make my weekly meal plan, I also make up a grocery list and head to the store to stock up for the week. Sometimes a recipe will call for, say, red bell peppers. And sometimes I will buy them, if they're not grown and flown in from Chile or New Zealand (because for me personally, I've drawn the line there -- I won't support that much fossil fuel being used to bring me a bell pepper. Plus they never taste the way they should -- and why would they? They've traveled a looooong way to make it to my store).

But if I do buy them, I will only buy them organic. If the organic ones are too pricey (because OMG red or orange bell peppers are freaking expensive!), I'll either choose to buy the smallest one I can find, or pass and find some kind of a substitute, like a (usually cheaper) organic green bell pepper.

Why? Because bell peppers are on the Dirty Dozen list!

Check it out -- EWG has put together two lists:

THE DIRTY DOZEN
The top 12 vegetables and fruits that are the most susceptible to and carry the most pesticides on and in them when they are grown conventionally. So these are the 12 that you will want to go out of your way to be sure to buy organic. These are listed in order of "dirtiness," with 1 being the worst (ie, most full of pesticides).

1.  Celery (Who knew?! This is news to me -- and glad I know! I love me some celery sticks with peanut butter.)
2. Peaches
3. Strawberries
4. Apples
5. Blueberries
6. Nectarines
7. Bell Peppers
8. Spinach
9. Cherries
10. Kale and Collard Greens
11. Potatoes
12. Grapes (Imported)

THE CLEAN 15
These are the 15 fruits and vegetables that retain or carry the lowest amount of pesticides. This is where you can make your compromises if you need to buy non-organic. These are listed in order of "cleanliness," with 1 being the best (ie, least full of pesticides).

1. Onions (Yay, because for some reason, organic red onions are wayyy expensive here at some times of the year. I'm switching to conventional next time I shop until their price goes down.)
2. Avocado (Also yay because a) I loooove avocado and b) sometimes organic avocados are not even available in the store.)
3. Sweet Corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mangos
6. Sweet Peas
7. Asparagus
8. Kiwi
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Cantaloupe
12. Watermelon
13. Grapefruit
14. Sweet Potato
15. Honeydew Melon

I was surprised to not see bananas on the Clean 15 -- I was under some mistaken assumption that they were on that list. I am now switching my banana-buying habit to organic-only.

If you're wondering how much pesticides really get into your system and how bad they really are for you (in other words, how much should you pay attention to the Dirty Dozen or the Clean 15), you can read the many, many reasons why or here's a brief summary of what EWG has to say about it:

Some of the most toxic food pesticides have come off the market in the past 15 years. But some pesticides considered safe now will invariably be restricted in future years. Chemical agribusiness interests might assert that pesticides in food are perfectly safe, but the reality is that many pesticide uses that are on the books as safe today will be found unsafe by EPA in the future, based on new science, new understandings about the mechanisms by which pesticides can harm the human body, or strengthened policies for health protection within the agency itself. 

EWG research has found that people who eat five fruits and vegetables a day from the Dirty Dozen list consume an average of 10 pesticides a day. Those who eat from the 15 least contaminated conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables ingest fewer than 2 pesticides daily. Concentrations of organophosphate pesticides, including chlorpyrifos and malathion, in elementary school-age children’s bodies peaked during seasons that they ate the most produce. Conversely, exposures fell to non-detectable levels in just 5 days, when they switched from a conventional diet to eating exclusively organic foods.

So how about you? If you find these useful, you can download a PDF to print out and then cut out your own little card with the two lists. I've got mine in my purse for when I go to shop. And if you're an iPhone user, you can download their app to take it with you!

Amen

Michael Ruhlman is spot on. Amen!

We can’t expect big business to have our best interests in mind, nor expect the media to stop ringing the all-in-one Salt-Is-Bad! Fat-Is-Bad! alarm bells. Big companies want to sell us their goods any way they can. If they can take advantage of our confusion about how to eat, they will, rubbing their hands and chuckling with delight.... I blame us for being stupid.  It’s our own damned fault. We need to stop paying for lies and start paying more attention to what we’re eating.

Ultimately, our eating habits -- good, bad, or ugly -- are our own responsibility. Yes, manufacturers need to change their ways. But the only way they will is when it becomes profitable to do so. In other words, when we as the consumers change our habits, both in regards to eating and purchasing.

Here's to reading the fine print....