Food Inc. Trailer

Funny--I posted about contaminated chicken today before I read Lukas's comment on my post about buying locally, in which he talked about health risks from eating overly processed foods.

This is definitely, definitely a concern for the conscious organic/local buyer, and one I meant to address more explicitly by now, instead of just in ambiguous references to the chemicals that are put in our food. Unfortunately I don't have the time right now to go into it, but will leave you with this: a trailer to a documentary that came out this past summer called Food Inc. While very propaganda-y and one-sided, it is eye-opening as to the present grip corporate agribusiness has on America and all the different ways it affects us: economically as buyers, as workers in these slaughterhouses, our relationship with animals, our health and weight, our relationship with farmers.... I could go on. And will, later, I promise.

Unsafe Chicken Trends

Lovely. Found out via a post on Well that two out of three broiler chickens (which are pretty much any chicken raised for consumption) are contaminated with either salmonella or campylobacter bacteria, which can both cause food poisoning, but the latter can lead to "meningitis, arthritis, and Guillain-Barré syndrome, a severe neurological condition." (Read the rest of the post here.)

Argh. This is pretty much why I've cut back on meat in the past year or so. I mean not just bacteria; there are other factors too, particularly that raising animals for human consumption requires so much more energy--both in feed and fossil fuels--than just growing plants. But I haven't become a vegetarian yet because... well I guess because I don't believe in diets (and vegetarianism or veganism is a form of a restrictive diet.) Because I know myself too well: if I want to eat meat, I will. And anyway, it's not the meat itself I disagree with--it's the way it's raised, butchered, transported, etc. (If, years after declaring vegetarianism, I was at a small farm and they butchered a chicken that they raised from an egg--you'd better believe I'd want some.)

And it doesn't matter to me to be able to say "Oooo I'm a vegetarian/vegan," like it's some sort of a badge to wear. And I know it's not to everyone; to some it is a deeply personal and value-laden commitment. But I can't help thinking that to some, the trendy aspect is a bit too alluring....

Brussel Sprouts: we meet again.

Yesterday I traveled with my mom through the picturesque woods of Chardon, Ohio to go to my aunt Donna's house/alpaca farm for T-Day dinner, and it really was grand. I told her on the way back how much more I enjoy family get-togethers as I get older, and how I really wasn't a big fan of them as a kid because my cousins are either five years+ older or five years+ younger. I was stranded in no-man's conversation land.

But now I can relate to everyone on some level or another. And now there is an adorable BABY SYDNEY (courtesy of my cousin Jen) whom I love in all her squirmy poopy goodness. First baby in the family since I was barely a not-baby myself. It is glorious. And she is too.

But on to the food. Pretty basic yet delicious: turkey, smashed taters, baked yams, cranberry sauce, stuffing (which I didn't eat), zucchini and yellow squash, Waldorf salad (which is just a fruit salad with apples, grapes, walnuts, and celery all mixed up in mayonnaise or yogurt), pumpkin bread, and brussel sprouts.

And mid-dinner I realized something very important: Despite every forked attempt, despite the valiant efforts of butter, I cannot like brussel sprouts. My aunt has a vegetable garden in her backyard so she went out and picked fresh brussel sprouts immediately before cooking them (she either boiled or steamed them I believe? I was in the living room at the time so I'd have to check my sources on that one), so I was like Okay, I have to give it a shot (again.) I mean they're so fresh! And my mom and aunts were talking them up, so despite the pleas of my fellow b sprout-hating cousins not to sell out, I tried one. It was sort of how I always remembered it: like a stronger, almost nuttier tasting broccoli, but bitterer. My mom said she always thought they were sweeter, so I tried a few more for good measure. Regardless of what they really taste like, my gag reflexes were acting up by the end. That was the clincher. Had to will myself not to yak all over the table.

So, childhood vegetables hated:
Asparagus. Now lovelovelove.
Brussel Sprouts. ...Sorry dude. Maybe if presented in the tastiest package ever, to the extent that they barely resembled their former selves. But I think that might be cheating.

Pilgrims and (real) Indians

Although my stepmom dragged us by our pigtails to Middle Eastern restaurants and other foreign-like places when I was little, I didn't really start appreciating the rich spices of the Orient until I came to college. (I know, pretty typical: "Hey guys! Let's go get Indian and smoke a hookah and drink cheap red wine and discuss Nietzsche's effect on post modernism, because we go to college!" I mean I guess it's better than that other option: trudging through a sea of Natty Light and sweat and bad decisions in the basement of some fraternity.)

Now I am admittedly not very learned in the vast array of Indian dishes, but I do love me some curry. And I found a video from Mark Bittman's blog over at NYTimes (can't embed it, sorry) in which he makes a simple turkey curry from bird-day leftovers. He also throws in some spinach in the hopes that it might resuscitate you from the throes of a meat-and-carbs induced coma.

The intro is a bit wacky and over the top zen-like, but if you can get over that, the recipe seems to be good. I've never actually looked up the recipe for curry so had no idea it was just rice milk, tomatoes, and spices like cumin, coriander, and turmeric. Pretty simple; maybe I'll have to host a little curry party to try it out. (That's how you get your friends to come to your apartment when it's not within walking distance--lure them with treats.)

reasons for buying local: status or values?

Although a little dated (it's from last summer), I just ran across an article in the NYTimes about a guy in San Francisco who started a company that will till, plant, and harvest a garden in the backyard of city-dwellers who want local food but don't want to get their shiny new jeans dirty. Apparently this is a growing trend of business start-ups, tending to the locavore needs of people with means:

Or you could just have your private chef handle all your local food needs. At their Hamptons summer house, John and Lorna Brett Howard want to eat almost exclusively local, which means that in place of one trip to the grocery store, their chef, Michael Welch, makes several trips to farm stands and the fishmonger. 

“What I’m seeing with my clients is not the trendiness or the politics,” Mr. Welch said. “They are looking only at taste.”

I can't help but wonder how right Mr. Welch is about that trendiness statement. After reading a column written by our own Joel Lovell about the Greenmarket in Brooklyn, and this level of self-righteousness he can't help but feel radiating from the fat wallets of its customers--that just because you have the money to pay $28 per pound of biodynamic grass-fed steak does not mean you are a better person--I really think trend has got to have an active role in this situation. The same way some people start shopping at J. Crew and Banana Republic when they start making money; not really because the clothes mean anything more to them deep down, but because they represent some level of "making it".

But, this is the thing: I shop farmer's markets and I've never experienced this feeling. I mean, they're just stands set up in a parking lot--about as modest as you can get. Most of the people shopping don't look rich to me. If anything, most people are toting bike helmets or bandanas and Birkenstocks. And the food isn't any more expensive. I could get a basket of 5 or 6 apples for 3 or 4 bucks, a head of romaine for $1.50; all in all I spent less at farmer's markets than I would have at jacked-up Giant Eagle or (even worse) Whole Foods.(Maybe these economic and social differences are attributable to differences in cites--I mean, Pittsburgh is not New York.)

And I guess now would be the time to mention that I do not shop at Whole Foods, which Joel mentioned along with the Greenmarket. I went there once with my mom and sister to find gluten-free pizza dough for her, and my eyes nearly bugged out of my head when I saw the price for just about every single thing in there. We left and went to Trader Joe's instead and found that, while a smaller store, they had a lot of the same lovely atypical and organic foods, but without the fancy labels and price tags. (Their produce is not local, but that's why I go to farmer's markets.) The employees dress in Hawaiin shirts, some have piercings and combat boots and jet-black hair, some are about as typical blond crew-cut American as you can get. And while I do see a few Mercedes roll into the parking lot, the clientèle is a diverse mix, and most look middle class. It's just super laid back.

So I guess maybe these self-righteous feelings arise not from the act of buying local or organic foods, but the motives for buying it and how much it costs. If you do it just because it's associated with a status of comfort--having the money not just to feed your family, but to feed your family the best of the best--or because a bunch of your cool friends are doing it, I can understand holier-than-thou concerns. But it's a little different for me. My friends generally do not shop at the places I do, so I go by myself. Actually, I've been teased for eating "weird foods" (lovingly, I'm sure,) so it's sort of been an anti-trend for me. And I do go to satisfy a certain taste for fresh, healthy foods, but it also has to do with peace of mind; doing what little I can to support a type of system that I feel better about than corporate agribusiness. And the peace of mind I get from knowing a little more about the food I eat; what's in it, where it came from. It's not really more expensive, but it does take extra travel and planning, so I guess it's a tiny bit of a commitment. It's personal, it's political, but mainly it's about values.

West and East lie the Health promise land

Today Forbes.com released a list of all fifty states ranked from healthiest to unhealthiest, based on "22 indicators of health, including everything from how many children receive recommended vaccinations, to obesity and smoking rates, to cancer deaths." Healthy is a very vague and broad term, and therefore hard to measure quantitatively, in my opinion, but of course I wanted to know how we stacked up.

About average, it seems: Pennsylvania is 28th. (For family: Ohio is33rd. And for Joel: New York is 25th. Smack dab in the middle.)

Number one was Vermont, while Mississippi held up the rear. Interestingly enough, California only came in at 23rd. Maybe there's more good actors out there than we thought. 

But Colorado, the state I was born in and spent my first 4 years, showed up at 8th. Must be something in that Rocky air.

Quality ingredients to shove up your gobbler

Remember when I said I was going to start a series decoding the chemically-sounding ingredients in common foods? And how I posted one entry? And haven't since? Yeah. Well, that's mainly because (believe it or not) that entry involved about 4 or 5 hours of work total. It was grueling, in the instantaneous blogosphere. I have since shied away from such research-heavy endeavors, leaning on personal anecdotes that, while taking at least an hour to write (the lengthier, more introspective ones at least), are so much easier. On my brain.

But I'm not satisfied with just these types of posts because there's a big world out there and other people talking in it that should be heard. That's blogging, right? So several days ago I thought, "I need to subscribe to health news, or just get disciplined enough to read it daily."

So I did. Well, just right now. I guess "once" isn't really "daily" (yet); whatever.

The New York Times, besides being regarded as a modern-day dinosaur by the Daily Show in one of their always-hilarious sketches, has a website that is really more of a labyrinth of news and blogs and multimedia and other things with words that is intimidating yet alluring. Its most prominent health blog is Well, which I mentioned in the Pollan post. Now, Well is extremely informative, and it would probably benefit me to read it regularly, but my only problem with it is a lack of personalness or personality or humanness. I.e. it reads like news, not really like a blog.

But nudged next to Well on the Health and Fitness homepage is a weekly series (a blog? is it in the paper too? I'm not sure) called Recipes for Health.

Jackpot. If there's one thing I'm lacking, and know damn well I'm lacking, it's recipes. Maybe because I'm only 21, don't have a family or boyfriend to cook for, a lot of money to spend on food, etc. Maybe I'm making excuses (probably). But that doesn't mean I shouldn't still talk about it!

This week, in lieu of Thanksgiving, the writer Martha Rose Shulman posts an alternative recipe for stuffing. Now, I have always been a big anti-fan of stuffing. I'm not sure why except I think it was one of those things I tried as a child and then just decided I hated. Maybe because it cooks inside the carcass of a dead animal and even at seven something about that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe because it often has random animal parts in it that you would never see anywhere else on a dining room table (Dear, can you pass the liver?), parts that I am not particularly comfortable ingesting.

But this recipe has no necks. Just some veggies, herbs, spices, almonds, chicken stock and--best of all--wild rice. If you've never had wild rice, please do. My sister and I made enchiladas with it once and it was phenomenal. Wild rice, besides the color appeal, is not as sticky and mushy as white or brown rice, and nutritionally it is a tiny step above brown with 2 more grams of protein and a few less calories. But mainly it's pretty.

And in my book, pretty beats full o' chicken parts. This is something I might actually be able to stomach. Except--I'd probably make it the vegetarian way. No turkey ovens for me.

the bread machine of wonders

Last year my mom cut gluten (part of the wheat germ) out of her life, because her doctor thought it may have been causing the debilitating migraines she had been suffering several times a week for decades. Well, it ended up being attributable not to gluten, but to a hormone called progesterone, but I still got a bread maker out of the deal.

My mom has had this machine since I was a kid, but she got a new one because this one was gluten-contaminated. So I told her (asked politely) to hand that sucker down.


I don't know many other people who have bread machines, but everyone should, because these things are quite nifty. They combine the best of both worlds: the ease of minimal effort and the wholesome satisfaction of eating something you yourself made. I mean it when I say these things require no baking skills. Or mixing skills. You just measure ingredients and pour them in the pre-formed bread pan. The machine does the kneading and rising and baking for you.

And, of course, there's health benefits from baking your own bread, but if you already buy your bread from a baker or minimally-processed whole-wheat loaves from companies like Brownberry, it is primarily a feel-good look-what-I-can-do thing (like when you give quarters to the Salvation Army Santa... you walk away smiling because you are such a good person but how much change is a few quarters gonna bring?) But, if you're eating squishy white bread, you'll definitely be doing your body a preservative-free favor.

I make it with a ratio of 5 parts whole wheat flour to 1 part bread flour (because it doesn't rise as well with all whole wheat... but once I drag my ass to a health food store and buy gluten, I'll make it 100% WW.)

But when I was a kid, my mom used to bake white loaves for the PB & J's she packed in my lunch. I can't remember if I voiced my distress at the time, but I hated it. Not because it tasted bad (it didn't) but because it looked different. And all the prying judgment-filled eyes of my peers noticed, and everyone asked why it looked so funny, and while I still ate it, I would hold my sandwiches under the lunch table, embarrassed, wishing I could just be like all the other kids with their pristine, blindingly white Wonder Bread.

Because even kids know this is weird (although this is wheat... so imagine it a few shades lighter):

And this is normal:

Which, now that the years have stacked up, strikes me as quite an odd dilemma in the life of a kid. Who cares what your bread looks like? I also got teased for having (and eating) apples in my lunch. Is this food-related ridicule universal? I went to elementary school in an area where a larger-than-average percentage of adults were poor and pretty uneducated, and for whom the struggle to be able to tame hungry little bellies overrode the need to make sure that sustenance was healthy. (Or, perhaps in some situations, the culprit was more ignorance and contentment with ignorance than lack of money. That's worth arguing.) So most of my friends ate a lot of Little Debbie or her generic counterparts. Was it different in more affluent areas?

This is dipping heavily into a topic I'd like to discuss more in depth at a later time--how to feed kids healthy things they'll like, and what factors other than taste affect their detestation of certain foods. Because, whenever the day comes, you can bet my kids will be carrying the same funny-looking sandwiches in their futuristic lunch pails that I carried way, way back in the prehistoric 1990s.

farmers r us

All ye Pitt students: A new club called Plant to Plate started this week at the University. Unfortunately, I missed the first meeting because the Pitt News reported that it was being held Thursday, when really it was Wednesday. My global studies professor also forwarded my class an email from Marc Schutzbank, the creator or coordinator or voice of the program..... about 5 hours after the first meeting ended. Epic fail much?

Regardless, here's the e-mail:

If you're reading to get involved in a new organic farm here in Pittsburgh - then here's your chance. Plant to Plate, a new organization developing connections between what we put in our stomachs and into the ground, will be clearing some of the land this Wednesday on November 11, 2009 from 12 - 4. (Directions Below).

The idea is this. Food is confusing, it comes from somewhere - usually Giant Eagle. It's grown far away, pumped with chemicals and then shipped here to Pittsburgh so we can buy it. That model just does not make the best tasting food - which is why we're giving you a chance to grow your own. Come work on our plot of land and the time that you put in will be paid back with boxes of produce that we grow in the farm. We just need your time.

Where: 5271 Forbes Ave It's a quick walk up Forbes past CMU. Take any 61 or 59U and get off at Plainview and walk 1 block down the hill. It'll be on your right. 

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Let you know more as I know more.

<3 pEaNuT bUtTeR!~!~!~

When I found out I had high cholesterol, one of the things that was suggested was to eat more oatmeal, or anything made from oats. (I know we've all seen the Cheerio's commercials about lowering your cholesterol if you eat like 500 bowls of Cheerio's every day for the rest of your life.)

Which, you know, was no big deal. Oatmeal's good. But--my idea of "oatmeal" was a sugar-doused flavored product. Even when my mom made me real Quaker Oats as a kid, I put a lot, a lot, of brown sugar on it. Like it was essentially sugar with a coupla lone oats tossed in.

So what to do now? How to make it appetizing without reversing the health benefits? I started by adding raisins, which plump when you cook them and add some natural sweetness, but I couldn't help but sprinkle a packet of Splenda on there too. When I became a little more informed and thus wary of artificial sweeteners, I stuck to just raisins. And it was okay, but I honestly had to force myself to make it. Like I would never wake up craving it, or even really wanting it, but I would shove it down my gullet anyway, reminding myself of its artery unclogging powers.

Then this past summer, I was at Kelsey's house one morning and she was making oatmeal for me, her, and her boyfriend George. When she asked George what he wanted in his, he said peanut butter. I remember doing a double take. Peanut butter? In oatmeal? I asked her who the hell she thought she was mixing these two things. She laughed at me.

Since then, I've embarked on a love affair with the union of these two previously disparate foods. I was already shacking up with peanut butter, have been for a long time. But now oatmeal's invited, and for the first time I really want him there.

If you've never had this, and you like peanut butter, I'd definitely recommend giving it a try. I mix about a half cup of oats with a cup of skim milk (but you can make however much you want) and usually just pop it in the microwave, but if you are cooking for more than one person, I'd recommend the stove. Then mix in about a tablespoon of peanut butter while the oatmeal's hot and it will sort of just dissolve. This breakfast has about 18 grams of protein (if you make it with skim milk, which I don't know how anyone eats it with water without barfing), about 335 calories, and, yes, about 11 grams of fat, but only about 1 1/2 grams are saturated; the rest are either polyunsaturated or monounsaturated (the good-for-your-heart kind.)

And if you use almond butter instead of pb, its extra monounsaturated fats serve up a double whammy sucker punch to lower LDL cholesterol (the bad one). Unfortunately, almond butter is a quite a bit more expensive. Thus far I have only picked it up wistfully in the grocery store, set it back on the shelf with a sigh, and slowly pushed my cart down the aisle, looking over my shoulder with big, cartoonish eyes. Someday, we will be united.

Food, we need to talk.

Thinking about that last post, I'm brought back to Pollan's rules, and the one I said was my favorite:

"Don't create arbitrary rules for eating if their only purpose is to help you feel in control."

I knew this was my favorite because of my disregard for dietary rules, but I don't think I explained that disregard fully in that post or this blog (realized this when Ben suggested I post my own rules and I thought "Ooo ... that's exactly what I wouldn't do.") And I think I didn't express it explicitly because I didn't wholly understand why I don't like rules in the first place. I knew they didn't work for me. That they were frustrating. But it didn't come into full view until last night, when I realized that I didn't like them because dietary rules and restrictions often put the blame on the food itself, not the way we eat the food or why we eat it the way we do. They don't recognize that people's relationship with food is deep and intimate, and by simply removing and replacing some items you are only addressing the shiny, approachable exterior of the problem.

For example, all of last year I lived under this guise of "Well I eat pretty healthy foods most of the time, so even though I'm a little overweight, I'm okay." Then sometime over the summer it hit me that my problem wasn't necessarily what I ate, it was how much. I'm an overeater, often emotional, always because of lack of self-control. And I knew it deep down the whole time, I just ignored it because I wasn't emotionally ready to address that aspect of my relationship with food.

What was my breaking point? I don't know. Living on my own. Buying my own food (you eat more, you pay more!). Growing awareness of what "wasteful" really means, and how much I waste (both in the trashcan and in an already-full belly). Gaining respect and ownership of my own body and self. A new-found sense of control, I guess.

Which is what diets are, really, an attempt at control, but all too often for external reasons. I have to lose weight to look good in that bikini, wedding dress, etc. So we do it the way we've been taught to control anything: with rules. No more chocolate. Maybe instead of targeting the individual foods we eat, it's better to look at our relationship with that food. Why do you like the foods you like? Why do you not eat certain foods? How much do you really know about what you are putting in your body? How much do you care? If it's very little, why?

So I won't give you, if you are someone who is unhappy with your relationship with food, rules on what to eat and what not to eat. That's entirely subjective and, anyway, it takes a lot of time to grow to love certain types of food, something I don't think nutritionists take into account. What I will give is advice on perspective.

• Think of "diet" in its original definition, meaning what we eat. That's it. Over time it's been morphed into this temporary quick-fix to a problem that can't be fixed quickly. Think of a change in diet as a gradual, continuous slope. 
• Your life, your happiness, should be your reasons for this change, as opposed to events or milestones. The latter is too frivolous on its own to uphold any serious changes. However, if a graduation or a wedding is merely a catalyst to ignite changes that you've been aching for deep down, this is fine, as long as you address the deeper reasons. Simply wanting to look good in pictures is not enough. 
• Go slow. If you eat a lot of fried foods and decide you're going to stop completely and only eat steamed or grilled, you will get frustrated. If you go to the gym for the first time in 10 years and say I'm going to run a mile, you will be disappointed. Listen to your body, and if you're out of breath from walking on the treadmill, great! Stick with that and gradually build up. 
• If you can't love your body yet, at least respect it. One day it will become love.

skinny jeans manifesto

About a month ago I received a voice mail from my dad: "Uhh... we're taking things to Goodwill and I'm bringing that bag of clothes you left in the basement." Panic and immediate call back: "No, Dad, those aren't Goodwill clothes, they're just clothes I don't really wear anymore but I don't want to get rid of yet, please don't take them." Pause. "What's the difference? If you don't wear them, get rid of them."

Whether my reasoning got lost in translation because of differences in gender or age, I'm not sure, but I didn't expect him to understand. (Will Smith was totally right.) Sure, that bag was filled with both too-tight jeans and old band t-shirts inscribed with angsty quotes that now make me cringe, but they had not yet sunk to the level of no return. There was still hope in some of that cotton.

And good thing, because about an hour ago, after lugging the bag back from his house, I experienced one of the greatest moments ever recognized in the history of womandom: I fit into my pre-college (and pre-weight gain) jeans, no shimmy necessary.

I've never experienced this elation. When I lost my childhood chub, it was because I grew vertically and just, well, straightened out I guess. My weight didn't actually drop. Since then, any weight losses were subtle and were countered by puberty-induced changes (I have hips now? What are these?). Because of all these other directional growths, my pant size has only gone up, not down.

Now, I know that I've said many times that I think it's important to focus more on over-all health than a number on the scale, and I'm sticking to that. (In fact, I have no idea what I weigh right now. I don't own a scale.) But--by this I don't mean that weight doesn't matter. It does, especially when it's in either extreme. So then what do I mean by this little credo of mine?  Well, it's sort of two-fold: what matters more than getting down to a certain weight is why you want to lose that weight and where you plan to go after you do.

For one, there is a colossal, often-overlooked distinction between wanting to lose weight to look skinny and thus more attractive (an externally-motivated desire) and wanting to lose weight to be healthier (internally-motivated). And for me, it took completely dismissing weight loss as a goal altogether to finally lose weight--counter-intuitive, I know, but this mindset worked. This seems like a difficult place to get to mentally, especially as a single twentysomething woman who would like to, you know, attract a nice potential-husband someday. But it's not, because my decision had nothing to do with the way I look: I wanted to get Healthier, and if Skinnier decided to tag along, so be it. Because of this, losing weight was even more satisfying; it was like an extra treat, the prize at the bottom of the cereal box.

But I wasn't always like this. I have countless memories of shocking glimpses in the mirror, tears streaming down my cheeks, scribbled lists of all the things I was no longer going to allow myself to eat. All such diet ventures have hitherto been failures. And perhaps rightfully so, because besides being superficial, they were punishments assigned during fits of anger toward myself, my body: "You let yourself go, now you have to suffer." All totally unrealistic. They were like those year-long grounding sentences issued by fired-up parents during high school, the ones that made you turn your head and snicker because you knew it was never gonna last.

Same with those diets, only this time it was my bad habits doing the snickering. Once my frustration toned down, so did my will to eat only salads for lunch, order from the "lite" menu at restaurants, pass on pizza with friends, etc. Everything about these "diets" was painted negatively: How many calories can I burn, how many can I cut out. These restrictions were so suffocating that when I didn't immediately see results, I gave up, thinking "Well if I'm not going to lose weight, I may as well eat what I want."

I focused on a tenuous destination, not a long-term journey. And as corny as it sounds, being healthy really is a journey, in that it is one little step after the other. Don't plunge in and expect to know how to swim; you have to toe the shore and allow your body time to accommodate. And it will. I found that the more healthy foods I tried, the more I craved them. Same with exercising. That my body loved me for it; I could feel it in my lungs and my stomach and my muscles and my heart, without a doctor telling me so.

And today, I felt it again in the empty space between my skin and the waistbands of those jeans. Without a guy's approval.

the mother of all grains

A friend asked the other night about the vegetable I mentioned on my blog, so I said you mean collard greens? and she said, "No, that other one.... that qu--something."

What she was referring to is quinoa (KEEN-wah), which is eaten as a grain; thus my confusion. I realized I wrongly assumed while writing that post that just because my family is used to eating something, and I've seen it talked about in health magazines, doesn't mean everyone knows about it. Slap on wrist.

A mini bio, then, on my little buddy of a grain:

First of all, quinoa is a leafy plant similar species-wise to beets and spinach, but unlike these veggies, the leaves aren't generally eaten--just the seed, which is cooked in the same fashion as grains like rice and couscous. (So, ironically, my friend was absolutely right in calling it a vegetable, even though it caused me to stare at her blankly for several seconds.)

But quinoa has a definite one-up over these other grains because it has an unusually complete amino acid structure, making it an ideal high-protein choice for vegetarians or vegans or just people like me who shy away from relying too much on the flesh of animals. Plus it's got fiber and minerals and wouldn't ya know!--it's delicious too. Unlike the sometimes dry texture of a grain like bulgur wheat, quinoa is light and fluffy and easy to digest.

Besides nutrition, quinoa are also steeped in rich history. They were first harvested by the Incas and are still grown in the Andes--i.e. in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Chile. So although this grain is relatively new on the American health food scene, it is ancient to South Americans, who have been eating this "mother grain" (which is what quinoa means in Quechua, the language of the Incas) for thousands of years.

Now, I hope you are thinking "hm, well Kayla where can I purchase this tiny miracle?" and the answer is at virtually any grocery store. There is a downside though--the price for quinoa is a bit steeper than that of rice or bulgur (seems like if you want nutrition in this country, you better expect to cough it up) and it's only increasing along with demand. I've had my two 12-ounce boxes of quinoa for months--*cringe* shows how much I cook--and honestly cannot remember how much they cost, but I did a little calculation of what is sold on Amazon (they really do sell everything! hotdamn) and it seems like it's around 5 bucks a pop. But--a little perspective: there are 8 servings per box, thus it's still less than a dollar per serving.

So hold off on that golden arched value menu and buy something you won't wanna throw up 10 minutes later! Your belly will thank you.

chef I am not

Someone asked once, a long long time ago (like a few weeks), whether I cook or not.

The answer is yes and no.

To me, saying "I cook" denotes a pattern, a regular occurrence. Which it is not. Also, to say "I cook" indicates recipes, and ingredients, that result in prepared "dishes". These are rare.

What I do cook, rather, are separate foods, which I often combine post-stove top. Like tonight: I sautéed some tofu in olive oil and soy sauce, boiled some quinoa, and steamed/simmered some collard greens with olive oil, onion, garlic, salt, and pepper.

My cooking is pretty simple. Usually because of lack of time, necessary ingredients, and confidence in my multi-tasking culinary abilities. Thus, I tend toward things that you put in a pot on the stove and let sit and there you go: food.

But honestly, I'd like to get more complicated. I'd like to learn how to cook things that involve lots of spices and ingredients, things like the Indian dishes my vegan friend Ashley makes. Savory things.

Before that happens, I need to find someone to cook for. Because currently my only client is lazy and hates doing dishes.

In My Fridge

There Is Food.