Slowing Down (or, Helpful Meal Ideas from a Jean Skirt)

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Time and food are bedfellows.  And since women have walked away from the stove and into the office, strategies designed to help us manage the interplay of cooking and time have multiplied.  Slow Food, fast food, 30 Minute Meals, Super Fast Dinners Grown on Your Rooftop in Brooklyn, Lunching Entirely On Homemade Pickles – there are a wide variety of options out there, some of which are hopelessly but quaintly unrealistic.

So in the next three posts, we’ll examine ways to couple time and food, and talk about why they make sense. Or not.

I had the very good fortune of being able to attend the Salone de Gusto in Turin Italy, which is a massive yearly celebration held by the Slow Food Movement. I pigged out in a ridiculous way, didn’t even go to see the Shroud, and still have nightmares about how I looked when I tried on a stretchy denim mini-skirt at a boutique just down the street from the convention hall.  The puzzling thing is that I still bought it.

Just a small part of the Salone

But gluttony and subsequent curvaceousness aside, this was a real opportunity to get to know food.  The event is held in a massive convention centre, and there are literally four football fields worth of individual producers offering samples of food they have grown with their own hands.  In another venue, there are days and days of seminars offering education in specific ingredients – you sit around with people from everywhere on earth, but mostly Italy and France, and compare the relative virtues of, for example, small-batch honeys cultivated in different climates.

Honey

There were cheeses so moldy and funky they looked like stuffed animals. Growing, breading, and then deep-frying vegetables seemed to be popular.  And there was pork.  Lots of pork.

(“You maybe ate a little too much pork…” whispered the top button of the denim miniskirt.)

Porschetta!! (“Noooooooooo…said the jeanskirt”)

Mega Parma

Heirloom Apples – Not as popular as Porschetta

The whole idea here is to slow down, to savour each bite, and to celebrate farmers who are doing it right.  It’s about the long-simmered ragu, the artisanal loaf, and taking back food from the factories and chemists.  It’s a truly worthy movement shepherded by a lot of people who care about what you eat. You should attend if you ever have a chance – this year’s event is coming up on October 25th.

Nevertheless, I wonder if it is practical to slow down in a world that’s speeding up like a rocket. I adore the baker with the sourdough starter and I admire the farmer who knows his cows by name.  I just wish, really, that one of them could come over to my house in between my night shifts and tell me what to make for dinner.

(“Salad…lots of salad…”, suggested the denim mini from the Skinny Clothes storage tub under the bed)

Death by Omelette

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Even though I am health-conscious, I have been known to occasionally indulge in Hollandaise sauce.  I use my omelette pan often. I really, really like breaking the yolk of a poached egg and watching the 273 mg of cholesterol it contains ooze all over some tender-crisp lemony green beans.

So it was with a degree of alarm that I read a recent CNN Health article stating that, “…eating egg yolks can accelerate heart disease almost as much as smoking.”

This sounded peculiar to me.  Eggs were once vilified, but several recent high quality research studies have demonstrated that eating eggs in moderation is perfectly acceptable.1-3  In fact, eggs contain many fantastic nutrients, and are an affordable source of lean protein.

So then what’s with the comparison between egg yolks and smoking?  How could something coming out of a chicken’s vagina be nearly as harmful as carcinogen-laden, lung annihilating, designed to addict you and then kill you cigarettes?

In the interest of my wonderful homemade aioli recipe, I decided to dig deeper.

The CNN headline is based on a recently published research study by an acclaimed cholesterol researcher, Dr. J.D. Spence of the University of Western Ontario. Spence and his colleagues took a group of patients who had strokes or mini-strokes and asked them to estimate how many eggs they ate in an average week.  They also measured the amount of atherosclerosis plaque in these patients’ blood vessels.  Then they matched up the amount of plaque with the number of egg yolks, and concluded, basically, that eating egg yolks is really bad for you.4  CNN ran with it.

The leap between the evidence and the headline skips over a few very important aspects of the study design.  Primarily, the information gathered by the researchers was very limited and failed to consider many of the other lifestyle choices that determine good health.

Let’s play out an example using the case of two sixty year old men, Bob and Martin.  Bob rolls out of bed, hung-over from the dozen beer he drank before passing out the previous night, takes a hit of crack as a wake-me-up, then fixes himself a two egg omelette.  He also scarfs down some bacon, some cheese, and why not -  a few breakfast sausages. He then sits on his couch all day, rubbing his not insubstantial belly and watching reality TV.  He masturbates every day at 4 PM. Appetite hence stoked,  he orders a Super-Sized fries when he goes through the drive-through at dinner-time.  He eats all by himself in the parking lot, washing it down with a large soda.  Later that night he orders delivery of the Big Bob Multi-Meat Pizza, named after him by the local pizza joint in homage to his devoted patronage.

Martin, on the other hand, should be the picture of health.  He has some oatmeal and fruit for breakfast, stays active throughout the day, and makes sure to eat plenty of vegetables that don’t come out of a deep-fryer.  He keeps the size of his belly under control by consuming alcohol and sweets in moderation.  He and his wife eat fruit for dessert.

Unfortunately, Big Bob and Martin both have mini-strokes.  They see a stroke specialist, who asks them how many eggs they eat every week.  Big Bob says he eats eggs every day, but Martin never eats them.  Big Bob also feels really relieved that no one asked him about the crack, or the beer, or the reality TV, or the sausages, or the fast food, or the soda.  If they don’t ask, it must not be important, right?

The specialist measures the amount of atherosclersosis in Bob and Martin’s blood vessels. Bob has way more, a sign of bad things to come. We conclude that it must be from the eggs. In the interests of getting the research published, we gloss over the fact that Bob and Martin have both had mini-strokes, despite the significant differences in their lifestyles and the amount of plaque found in their blood vessels.

When researchers limit the information they collect from their study subjects, they equally limit the conclusions they can generate from that information.  And while all these details are outlined in the medical-ese of the research publication, they get lost behind the large-font headlines forecasting death by omelette.

Considering all this, comparing eggs to cigarettes is simply unfair to egg-producers and to anyone who enjoys eggs a couple of times per week as part of a balanced diet. I won’t be throwing out my omelette pan any time soon.

For humane local egg sources, visit this Humane Society webpage.

References:

1.            Ascherio A, Rimm EB, Giovannucci EL, Spiegelman D, Stampfer M, Willett WC. Dietary fat and risk of coronary heart disease in men: cohort follow up study in the United States. BMJ. Jul 13 1996;313(7049):84-90.

2.            Djousse L, Gaziano JM. Egg consumption in relation to cardiovascular disease and mortality: the Physicians’ Health Study. The American journal of clinical nutrition. Apr 2008;87(4):964-969.

3.            Siri-Tarino PW, Sun Q, Hu FB, Krauss RM. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. The American journal of clinical nutrition. Mar 2010;91(3):535-546.

4.            Spence JD, Jenkins DJ, Davignon J. Egg yolk consumption and carotid plaque. Atherosclerosis. Aug 1 2012.

UnBurger – A Fortunate Misnomer

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It used to be that every time we drove by UnBurger my darling brown husband would cluck softly and gently shake his head.  I imagine his elderly Indian aunties make a similar noise when they drive by a burger restaurant in Bangalore, but for very different reasons.

My husband will solemnly acknowledge his Hindhu birthright, but when he visits India he beelines for the golden arches and devours the sacred cow in the form of a Maharaja-Mac.

So the UnBurger clucking arose more from his concern that the ‘Un’ implied meatlessness – would the burgers contain beef, or would he be tricked into eating a cleverly sauced reconfiguration of tofu on a bun?  A recent vegetarian burger experience left him with irreparable psychological scars.  He resisted UnBurger for a long time.

I admire UnBurger as much for its concept as for its food – they emphasize locally sourced ingredients and offer plenty of healthy options.  Mercifully, the vegetarian options do not contain stealth tofu.  The menu is focused but whimsical and allows for plenty of personal customization.  Everything is cooked fresh to order by college kids who actually give a damn.

The beef burgers, which can be swapped out for the more local and less fatty bison, range from neat-and-tasty to rich-and-sloppy.  Chicken fillets are brined before grilling, meaning they stay plump.  The Tropic Thunder (with chicken, pineapple, and chipotle aioli) is my personal fave. In fact, the carnivorous options are so tasty that my husband actually volunteered to try the vegetarian burgers, and neither the Great Falafel or the Bella Mushroom burger disappointed us.

You can choose a standard Signature bun, multi-grain bread, or lettuce wrap for your patty.  They’re all good, but I personally dislike the mechanics of the multi-grain option – the toppings squirt out the other side when you take a bite and the blunt edges are aesthetically off-putting. The fries are fresh-cut and can be dunked into a range of creamy sauces.

The salad sides are fine.  Just fine.  I’d stick with the Edamame.  Everything else seems a bit thick: the Caesar dressing is heavy, the Asian slaw needs a daintier cut, and the Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod 8-grain energy salad is on the dense side. Body Break!

However, these minor criticisms are weightily offset by everything else that’s great about UnBurger.

And the final opinion from my darling? “Un-burger – great burgers, terrible name.”

And I think my brown burger-connoisseur is right.  The name is misleading – these aren’t UnBurgers, they’re everything burgers should be.  It’s McDonald’s that should rebrand.
Unburger on Urbanspoon

Ummmmm…..Hi?

Posted on by zollipop
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Sorry for skipping out for a year. I had some serious moping to do.

Loss and trauma can make a girl all mixed up. So mixed up, in fact, that she can confuse passion and obsession and give up on the things she adores the most. I thought, in my fog, that my love of cooking was an obsession, a distraction, an unhealthy tic.

Never one for grey zones, I did a really good job at losing my appetite. During the worst times, I was sick to my stomach frequently – a rejection of comfort and nutrition brought on by the combination of terror and too much wine. My beautifully curated spice collection wound up in a box and my darling husband unflinchingly endured months of takeout. My precious cookbooks? Also boxed, as a result of a chain of events that still doesn’t seem totally real to me.

But here we are now, because slowly food brought me back. I started cooking again with some ambivalence, an indifferent flip of the spatula here and there. I begrudgingly admitted that my Smoked Chicken and Curried Cast-Iron Potatoes were really tasty. I began to notice a correlation between my improved mental health and what made it to the dinner table.

And that’s when I knew that in my fog, I had made a mistake. With several good meals under my belt, I realized that obsessions destroy us, but passions make us whole again.

So, hi.

Cheers.

Posted on by zollipop
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A funny thing happened in Paris:  I went there in August, shortly after my last post, looking for food.  I was down in the dumps and I figured some solid French meals would cheer me up.

Then, walking down a cobblestone side street in the Jewish Pletzl, I lost my appetite.  I don’t just mean for the imminent meal (falafel, what else?) – but I lost my craving for the ‘next great meal’ in general.  I considered the possibility that I was depressed.  But I don’t think that’s it, exactly.

Rewind fifteen years: I’m sitting on a hand-me-down couch from my grandparent’s basement, in a city far away from home.  I don’t own a cookbook, but I do own a TV.  The TV is sitting on a cardboard box, draped in a scrap of cloth from the bargain bin.  The cloth is brown with lighter brown stars. I have just been dumped by my boyfriend and it’s Friday night, so I am watching TV by myself.

But I have just made a bowl of the proverbial homemade chicken noodle soup, and each slurp calms my frazzled soul.  So much so that when the budget allows it, I buy a set of good quality pots before a new couch or a TV stand.

And then came the cookbooks, dozens of them, hundreds of them.  Phenomenal meals (if I do say so myself) came out of my kitchen.  Men arrived. Men left, or more often were asked to leave, but the meals kept coming. Eventually one man, a truly wonderful man, arrived and stayed.  He too likes my cooking.

I started writing about food, researching things like perogies and bacon with librarian-like meticulousness. For a time, I was obsessed with pearl barley.

Through phyllo dough and cheese fondue and roasted eggplants I set things right in my world – I added and subtracted and tinkered and stirred, and always came out with something tasty in the end.

But in August, something went really wrong, something too big to contain in a pot on my stove. And my need to tinker and stir, well, that evaporated, right along with my desire to write about it.

It really happened in an instant, right on that side street in Paris.  Poof! I plunked down on a stoop, cried a bit as passersby averted their eyes, then I went and ambivalently ate a falafel.

In the four months since then, I have thought a lot about my relationship with food, and I have come up with some ideas. Ideas which, in my mind, are too private and precious to write about in bite-sized snippets on a blog.

So I thank you, sincerely, for joining me for appetizers over the past two years. And for your tremendous and unexpected support. I’m done here for now, but I do hope you’ll join me for the main course, which should be ready to eat in a couple of years.

Cheers.