Food
This is an anecdotal Table of Contents for the posts about food. You can also access the food posts from the FOOD category in the drop-down menu to your right.
There will be LOTS O’ posts about food. It’s one way my son, Johnny, and I work together on The Dear John Cookbook project (working title). It’s been in the background for over six years, but now we’re putting some serious energy into it. It’s a book to teach young people how to feed themselves cheaply, nutritiously, deliciously, and simply when they go out into the world. It is NOT a recipe book. It’s more like a system, a series of concrete steps you can take to simplify the process.
He’s in the big city working on the front lines with youth at the pragmatic end of the challenges. I’m on the island writing in my ivory tower. He runs into a problem, we talk about it, then I can address it here. It’s the perfect combo. He has neither the time to write nor as much experience as I with this subject. I don’t have the energy to herd groups of feisty youth on a regular basis any more. And I do have vast experience. I’ve been eating for so long that I qualify for Social Security.
So far you can find:
The Power of Food . . . personal and socioeconomic issues surrounding food
The Power of Food More info on our project and a link to a great interview that outlines some of our challenges with it.
The Power of Food #2 is about how foods from our childhood can carry across continents and decades to welcome us home. And after a special, private request, I posted how to make my Grandma’s Chicken and Dumplings. Okay . . . so it’s not at the high end of “health food” but it has two virtues: it is real food and it hugs me and almost everyone else in my family in Grandma’s arms.
Getting Real about the High Price of Cheap Food links to a Time Magazine article about industrial food production. It’s meant to start you thinking about the choice you make every time you put something in your mouth and to encourage you to start exercising your power as a food consumer.
There is a series of three articles on SPAM® I posted after reading that their sales were up as a result of tough economic times: SPAM more expensive than sirloin steak? is self-explanatory, and YES, SPAM WAS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN SIRLOIN on the day I visited my local QFC store except in one size package; SPAM® a treasured icon . . . but should you eat it? includes the great Monty Python SPAM skit and my answer; and THE SPAM® SCAM which starts the discussion of how we perceive processed foods to be “cheap” but that may not be the reality. We get taken in by advertising.
Dense Salads
Opportunistic eating #1: dense salads-chicken Noshing, dense salads defined, how to make a basic chicken salad.
Dense salads continued . . . Pithy review of the previous post, how to make curried chicken salad.
Dense salads . . . 100 ways or more distills the method and has a chart to help you start thinking of throwing together a dense salad from whatever you have on hand and have it be delicious. Choose one from column A, 2 or 4 from Column B . . . etc.
Yogurt cheese dressing instead of mayo A definition of real yogurt and how to make yogurt cheese.
A refreshing “slaw” . . . a generalized method for making a refreshing ’semi-dense’ salad with what’s on hand.
Onion salad??? Yep and it’s delish!! is yet another dense salad, but unusual. And it is surprisingly lovely.
Veggies and Pasta
The zucchinis are coming . . . let them be cake explains a streamlined process for baking cakes and gives a chocolate cake recipe to practice on, and Marilyn’s Zucchini Chocolate Cake simple style is a simplified version of the above recipe.
Roasted veggies once a day . . . is about a simple, quick, delicious way to prepare many kinds of veggies . . . so easy and versatile that you can eat them every day.
And there are a couple of delicious and unusual pasta dishes: Roasted “spaghetti sauce” which is one of the few “inspired” dishes that I made up (and it is very good if I do say so myself) and Yogurt and Garlic Pasta which is a refreshing, delicious and unusual dish . . . taught to me by a Greek lady.
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This movie looks intriguing: Food, Inc.
http://www.foodincmovie.com/
Yes. I know of this film but haven’t seen it. I’ve been interested in the sociopolitical, economic and environmental aspects of worldwide food production since the 70s. It is, after all, one of the few things we actually need. I’m thrilled that the discussion is moving into mainstream consciousness in this country. All of Michael Pollan’s books, Alice Waters’ work, Mark Bittman’s book, FOOD MATTERS, Barbara Kingsolver’s ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE . . . I think this attention is wonderful. We’re taking baby steps toward ensuring our survival.
I’ve also been fascinated forever by the sociopolitical, economic and environmental aspects of worldwide fresh/potable water resources. Don’t even get me started on that! We need water even more than we need food.