Week 23: Treat Meat as a Flavoring or Special Occasion Food

I can do this.  Today is Tuesday, day 2 of week 23. Yesterday the only protein/meat bi-product I ate was eggs. One container of Trader Joe's egg white salad over raw broccoli, eda mame and a giant pile of arugula for brunch.  A giant bowl of ramen with veggies and a poached egg for dinner (hondashi broth which is fish based).

Pollan notes in this chapter that, "vegetarians are healthier than carnivores". I think this statement is ridiculous. I don't know anyone who is a carnivore. Even my meat loving German Shepherds are not carnivores. As a matter of fact, almost all vertebrates are omnivores. Pollan's statement is silly.  Because we are omnivores the statement cannot hold true in any way. Of course humans who are true carnivores would be less healthy than a vegetarian, because even a vegetarian would come closer to the diversified diet that our bodies have evolved to be suited for.  The counterpart cannot hold true, certainly, for our carnivorous vertebrate cousins the lion, the tiger and the bear. Surely these carnivores are not less healthy than their bohemian radical pinko friends who abstain from the hunt?

At any rate, Pollan strongly advocates for an omnivorous diet in which meat is simply an accessory to the meal, and to a lifetime of meals.  He calls this type of vorism flexitarianism.  OK. This we can do despite the silliness of his semantics.  For dinner tonight (after eating the leftover ramen, no egg, for lunch) I am going to steam the broccoli in the fridge, toss it with garlic in hot olive oil and sprinkle with parmesan cheese. I can go an entire week without meat as a main course. Not a problem. I will let you know later in the week how I fare. If you are listening.  A fallow blog gathers lots of moss but very little readership.

Leafy Lunches

Thinking about food and food victimization all day yesterday after my post stating that lunch was, "on upper management", implying I was dietarily victimized by what someone else chose for my lunch. I have a car. The offices in which my cubicle is located lies equidistant between a Trader Joe's and a Whole Foods.  Instead of hormonally hoovering two pieces of pizza and a Caesar salad (as chosen by aforementioned management), I hopped in my hoopty and headed for TJ's.

Lunches the rest of this week:

• One container Egg White Salad (xantham gum, created as a by-product during the fermentation of sucrose and glucose, is used to help maintain emulsification, in other words to keep oil from separating from the rest of a mixture).
• Large pile of arugula leaves.
• 3/4 cup raw broccoli.
• 2 tablespoons eggplant hummus.
• Galeo's Miso Caesar dressing (literally nothing unrecognizable on the label).

This week will be an empowered week of leafy salads with lean egg white protein and lots of fiber. FTW.

Week 22: Eat Plants, Mostly Leaves

Last week I started off a day late and a dollar short after a long overly fun weekend in Lake Havasu City (spending literally no time in White Trash lake).  So, I am on the train again.  For a very early breakfast I ate a couple handfuls of fresh Rainier cherries and later Chobani Greek Yogurt.  For lunch, half a chicken sandwich and a large green salad. (Hormones are dictating that I inhale anything and everything within hoovering distance, so this felt like self control. And lunch was on upper management, so I did the best I could with what I had.)

I have prepped nicely for the next few days.  Tonight, we are grilling small cuts of beef marinated overnight bulgogi style. With the small cuts of meat (maybe 4 ounces per person after grilling), grilled corn on the cob salad with pasilla peppers tossed with lots of organic arugula (leaves).

Tomorrow: pork loin chile verde cooked in the crock pot with broccoli, squirted with lots of lemon juice from my prolific giant sized lemon producing tree. This recipe cooks a lot of pork loin, and most likely I will freeze some in small portions for lunches. BTW, I consider broccoli leaves. The leaves and the entire tree, as a matter of fact.

Wednesday:  Cooking spicy Italian turkey sausage in tomato sauce has become a habit. Something so easy my husband can do it quickly and deliciously hopefully encouraging him to do more cooking in the future. I have served this in the past over cous cous, polenta, etc.  Wednesday I plan to serve it over strands of spaghetti squash.

I haven't planned for the rest of the week, and this does seem kind of like a hard one.  A lot of advance planning needs to happen so I don't end up eating the exact same lunch I ate today the rest of the week. I am thinking of bringing salads with some lean protein and a bottle of my favorite dressing (Galeo's Miso Ceasar), because that's more tempting than any delivery option.

Getting Bloggy With It

It's been 76 days since my last post in this blog, which means halted this eating experiment for about 10 weeks or so, setting my time table for finishing back aways. However, my disinclination to finish part one coupled with my desire to move onto part two should set me ahead a few of those weeks. Let me explain.

I stopped in April at Week 13. The next few weeks reiterated more of the same: eat foods you can picture in their raw state (14), get out of the supermarket (15), buy snacks at the farmer's market (16), eat foods that have been cooked by humans (17,do zombies still count as human even though they're in a post-humanoid state?), don't eat food made by people wearing protective gear (17), came from a plant eat made in a plant don't eat (18), it ain't food if you got it in a drive through (19), can't be called the same thing in multiple languages (20). The problem is I got the point loud and clear in the first 13 weeks.

And the point made many subtle changes in my diet. I shop at the farmer's market more. I eat drive through far less although on occasion I succumb when traveling, and I am only drinking diet Cokes on occasion when I need some caffeine. No more non-dairy creamer or soy milk creamer. I take my food to lunch everyday even when lunch is being provided. Etc, etc and on and on.

Facing blogger burn out for a multitude of reasons on my other and main blog over the last few months didn't help me stick to this project when I was at a point in Food Rules that felt as though Pollan were beating me over the head with sticks taken from his soap box.  I am ready to start again, skipping forward to Part II, Week 22: What Type of Food Should I Eat? (Mostly Plants).

And so it continues.

Week 13: Eat Only Foods That Will Eventually Rot

Interestingly, in this rule one of the things Pollan notes will happen during processing is that Omega-3 fatty acids get removed from many foods because it attracts insects, fungi and bacteria. So we all dutifully take our Omega-3 supplements while eating processed food. We are strange creatures, humans. One exception to the "eat things that rot" rule is honey with a close to infinite shelf life.

Already, I started today by eating peanut butter for breakfast. And not the freshly ground kind you need to stir every time you use it, the kind I was annoyingly raised upon. I probably ate the worst kind you can buy. Glorious peanut butter with jelly swirls. Don't grocery shop when you are hungry. Eat something before going in the store. I shopped yesterday after an intense day of teaching with very little time to eat only a sad, dry orange and a container of greek yogurt. < 400 calories before a 3 o'clock grocery shop means things like peanut butter with jelly swirls ends up in your basket. (D had requested peanut butter, and hence my foray away from the periphery!)

In my defense, I did make lentil soup and roasted baby and sweet potatoes for dinner last night. We have boatloads of beautiful leftovers. :-)

Shop the Periphery Easter Supper

No better way to celebrate your lack of faith by celebrating the rebirth of spring for everyone.

T brought the main course, I did these roasted artichokes from the Zuni Cafe cookbook and something fun for our salad.

First, trim the chokes. Most cooks complain about the difficulty of trimming an artichoke, but I don't find it that laborious. Be sure to have a dog or two at your feet and some good music on, or in my case sports on the TV.  I use kitchen sheers to trim the pointy ends of the leaves, chop an inch off the very tip top and the bottom inch of the stem.  Then, use a paring knife to cut just underneath the heart, and a spoon to scoop out the parts of the heart that are too hairy and pointy to eat.

Dip the chokes in water and lemon juice to keep the open flesh from turning brown and par-boil for about 4 minutes. Next time I will par boil a little longer as these came out undercooked after their initial roasting time and had to go back in the oven.

In addition to the oilive oil, pepper and sea salt I threw in on top of the artichokes before they went in the oven, I added the finely diced rind of one of my preserved lemons from Week 3. Before and after roasting, the rinds are wildly delicious, sweet, citrus and salty all at the same time.

Both my cooking guests took one of the lemons home in a non-environmentally friendly plastic bag. I tried the environmentally friendly zip bags from Whole Foods. They suck ass.

Roasted artichokes with garlic, sea salt and preserved lemons. Artichokes: produce section of grocery store. Lemons: my backyard.

Hello.

My name is Liz and I am a reality TV addict.  I have not accepted that I cannot change this, not 100% sure I have the courage to do so, and I haven't reached ability to accept it yet. However!  Chef's Academy did affect what we ate for Easter dinner this year.  Chef Novelli taught his charges how to make parmesan cheese baskets. They were so cute! And a lot of what Chef Novelli did looked beautiful and seemed simple in construction.  Here, a video of the basket from Bravo.   

I also used the recipe from Fine Dinings blog for comparative analysis.

I baked the cheese about 10 minutes or so, not on silicon or parchment but on my insulated cookie sheet sprayed lightly with olive oil.  I did not add any truffle oil or seeds to the grated cheese. After about 10 minutes, I pulled the tray out and gently lifted the slightly soft, slightly brittle cheese from the tray and draped it over a couple pint beer glasses to make the basket shape.

Et, voila! Parmesan cheese wedges: back wall of grocery store in gourmet cheese section.

For the salad, I prepped finger bowls of bleu cheese, sprouts and green onion.

T brought greens from her CSA box, and tore them with her tiny hands into tiny bite sized pieces. Note to self: I need a salad spinner.

My Easter Basket!  Thanks, T!

T's leg o' lamb.  She bought this at Whole Foods in Hollywood, if I recall correctly. Ingeniously, she had the butcher cut the entire shank from the leg and rewrap it more evenly around the bone and secure with string. This helps the meat cook more evenly. It's not quite as caveman fabulous, but it's gorgeous to look at and more effective.

T used a Gourmet magazine recipe.

Rosemary, Lemon, and Garlic Leg of Lamb with Roasted Potatoes Gourmet | April 1996

2 large lemons, zest of 1 removed in strips with a vegetable peeler 1/4 cup fresh rosemary leaves 3 large garlic cloves 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice 1/2 teaspoon salt a 7-pound leg of lamb (ask butcher to remove pelvic bone and tie lamb  for easier carving) 2 1/2 pounds small red potatoes 3 tablespoons minced fresh chives Garnish: fresh rosemary sprigs and lemon wedges Preheat oven to 350°F. Cut off and discard pith from zested lemon and cut off and discard zest and pith from other lemon. In a saucepan of boiling water blanch zest 1 minute and drain in a colander. Cut each lemon crosswise into 6 slices. In a small food processor blend rosemary, garlic, zest, 1 tablespoon oil, lemon juice, and salt until mixture is chopped fine. With tip of a small sharp knife cut small slits all over lamb and rub rosemary mixture over lamb, rubbing into slits. Arrange lemon slices in middle of a large roasting pan and arrange lamb on them. Roast lamb in middle of oven 45 minutes. Quarter potatoes and in a saucepan cover with salted cold water by 1 inch. Bring water to a boil and cook potatoes, covered, 5 minutes. Drain potatoes in colander and in a bowl toss with remaining tablespoon oil. Arrange potatoes around lamb and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Roast lamb and potatoes, stirring potatoes occasionally, 55 minutes, or until a meat thermometer registers 140°F. for medium-rare. Transfer lamb to a cutting board and let stand 15 minutes. Increase temperature to 500°F. and roast potatoes and lemons in one layer 5 to 10 minutes more, or until golden. Transfer potatoes and lemons with a slotted spoon to bowl and toss with chives. Transfer potato mixture to a platter. Serve lamb, sliced thin across grain, with potatoes, garnished with rosemary and lemon wedges.

Lamb: butcher department, left hand wall of grocery store. Rosemary: T's garden.

Easter supper.

One lone freesia.

Ang and J joined us and brought the sweets!  Raspberry lemon tart with almond crust. Very nice.

My favorite, key lime pie with shortbread cookie crust. Um, not happy I had to share. Which means it wasn't good, it was GREAT.

Tiramisu. Not so great, Whole Foods. Dry in the middle and not boozey enough.

And this nut tart was beautiful in our minds, however there was no caramel or chocolate in the middle. Just a pile of nuts with a trace of chocolate drizzled over the top. Meh.

Sweets: Whole Foods deli aisle along the right wall.

Congrats, Ang and J, on the reinvention of your relationship. We wish you the very best.

Week 12: Shop the Peripheries of the Supermarket

I became introduced to this method of shopping when jumping on the Zone bandwagon back in 2000. Think about your supermarket, which looks more or less like this. Walk in and immediately head to the left, strolling through produce. Toward the back corner are luncheon meats and sometimes a bakery (I detest grocery store bakery items), and along the back wall are gourmet cheeses, eggs, dairy and sometimes non-dried pastas and Italian sauces in plastic containers.  Along the other wall, maybe as you turn the back corner, is seafood and the butcher department. Typically (thankfully) booze is located along the shelving facing the walls so you needn't worry about having to veer from your path for your red, red wine, make me feel so fine.

While there is plenty of room for misguidance by staying along the periphery, (processed cheeses, meats with nitrates, non-dairy creamer, Lunchables, and so on) you also stay away from anything in a big box, brightly colored packaging (Kraft cheese-like products not included), and overly processed carbs.  I managed to lose a fair amount of honeymoon weight by shopping this way for six months or so and playing loads of tennis.

By following Pollan's rules thus far I have definitely managed to eat a lot healthier in the last 4.5 months or so. I am eating way more veggies than I used to, lots of fruit and almost no processed carbs with the sole exception being pasta once a week or so.  I have not, however, managed to lose any food blogger weight despite a very regular exercise program. I think my (un?)healthy booze consumption is a key protagonist in this issue.  Booze and I may be taking an intermission for a few weeks as all this running, spinning and kettlebelling, while making me firm and increasing my cardio capacity, isn't making a dent in the outer layer of foodie fat.

Zuni Cafe's Kale & Poached Eggs

For the first time this week I cooked out of a Christmas present from my mom, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook.  A big fan of Zuni from when I lived in SF during the 90's, I still enjoy stopping in on a Sunday morning for brunch and a Bloody Mary with the paper straw and minced red onions.  In a Passover state of mind (whatever that means for a waspy girl), I decided to use my roast chicken carcass to make stock then allow myself to be inspired by Judy Rodgers.

For the stock, I threw in the remains of my roast chicken and whatever veg I had on hand: broccoli, an onion, entire daikon radish, garlic, etc.  Covered with water, added a little salt and let simmer away on a medium-low heat while I napped the late afternoon away.

      

I came away with lots of lovely stock to use for immediate cooking and froze one cup servings in zip lock plastic bags for further use later in the spring.  I freeze lots of things this way. Ratatouille, homemade pesto, ice cream, gizzards, etc.

     

In response to the great beef ingestion (indigestion) of March 27th at Totoraku, I am focusing intently on vegetables the rest of this week.  I chose to be inspired by boiled kale and poached eggs, however, instead of boiling the kale in water as the recipe calls for I boiled it in fresh chicken stock.

I also decided the meal needed some carbs for my tennis playing maniac husband and some broccolini for good measure.  At the store, I noticed a box of "express polenta", or polenta that cooks in under two minutes. I can only assume there was some extra processing done to the corn meal to make it absorb water faster, and since last week's challenge was to avoid food pretending to be something they're not I went for regular corn meal.  (It's not like polenta is overly time consuming to begin with). Kale, olive oil and broccolini also made it into the cart along with cara cara oranges (my fruit obsession du saison), new potatoes and Fage yogurt.

  

Start by sauteing a minced onion in olive oil, add garlic and chile pepper flakes at will.  After the onion reaches a rich translucency, saute the heaps of kale until it wilts into a thick mass of greenery. You will be surprised at how much kale can fit in your pot as you wilt it a little at a time.

Cover the kale with liquid, lid the pot and cook for about 30 minutes.  At the end of the thirty, I took the lid off the pot and allowed some of the liquid to reduce.

Typically I make polenta with water, I learned somewhere years ago that this is the way peasants make their polenta in Italy, and normally I see no difference to veer from the norm except in seasoning.  But with fresh chicken broth in the kitchen (a rarity I tell ya), I went thataway.  At the end I added a drizzle of olive oil for some extra richness. No dairy.

Quickly blanched the broccolini, the sauteed in olive oil, rosemary and a little garlic.

I no longer use a fancy egg poacher. I had one when I first got married and used it often, but damn it was hard to clean. Eff that. Into the bin. Now I simply poach them in an almost simmering water bath with balsamic vinegar then gently flip them with a slotted spoon.

Sprinkle a little parm on top of the warm polenta for some cheesy pop without a lot of dairy weighing you down.

And while my poached eggs may look more irregular than the ones served atop your Frisee au Lardons at Anisette on Sundays, they are just as tasty.  With this meal, I have adhered to several of Pollan's call outs: avoid advertised foods, the low-fat and lite, foods claiming to promote good health on their labels and the unpronounceable.  The really great thing about the meal, aside from the flavor and its quality as leftovers for lunch this afternoon? I didn't set out to meet one of more of Pollan's advisories, I actually just craved kale and poached eggs.  This could be contagious.

Week 11: Avoid Foods Your See Advertised on TV

Pollan theorizes that the best way to avoid overly processed foods and the current processing trend du jour is to avoid the marketing of said foods. Hence, don;t eat food you have seen advertised on TV.  He writes that more than 2/3 of food advertising is spent marketing processed foods, thus I would posit you only need to avoid 2/3 of the food you see advertised on TV.  He also mentions that common sense would tell one that we needn't avoid foods like prunes or almonds, both advertised quite heavily on TV. Naturally, I might add that given a little reading about whole foods and clean eating, one might not need this book at all.  However!

Week 10: Avoid Foods Pretending to be Something They Are Not

Margarine, non-fat cream cheese, soy-based faux meats, artificial sweeteners, non-dairy creamers and so on.


I am more or less at the point where I am doing this anyway (forgetting the cheese-like food product incident of last night).  I gave up my soy milk creamer because of phyto-estrogen in an attempt to hopefully ease my raging PMS, and in turn gave up my coconut milk creamer due to inconvenience and weird stuff in the ingredient list. I returned a couple weeks ago to the OG half and half of my youth for my tea.


I am scratching my head thinking where in my current diet I might be eating something masquerading as something else, but I things are going pretty well in this area.  I also think I will have that last crab stuffed poblano for lunch today.

Week 9: This Process is Not About Perfection, Clearly

Josh's Crab Stuffed Poblano Chiles

Makes 4

1 ½ pounds of crab legs (Josh prefers the large crab claws)*

4 large poblano chiles

1 egg*

½ cup panko breadcrumbs*

1 chopped Serrano chili

1 tablespoon (or to taste) of cumin*

1 tablespoon (or to taste) of chile powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Crushed red chile flakes (to taste)

2-3 tablespoons of chopped fennel*

2-3 tablespoons of chopped green onion*

Cheese-to taste-we use Casero or Cotija (sliced)*

Mix the crabmeat in a bowl with all of the above ingredients.  Set aside.

Wash chiles and cut a 3 inch rectangle out of the top, save the cut out portion.  Keeping the seeds intact, put some of the cheese in the bottom of each one.

Stuff the crab mixture on top of the cheese and pack into each poblano.  Put another slice of chees on top and replace the cut out portion to form a lid.

Bake in a 350 oven for 25 minutes with a foil cover.  Remove foil and bake for another 20 minutes uncovered.

* items changed for convenience not for quality, all exchanges slightly compromised the wondefulness of the original recipe. But WTF.

 

This blog is not about perfection. This blog is about trying to consciously make better choices, exploring the reasoning behind Pollan's madness and when and why it does not work in my life. It did not work yesterday.  To start, I ended up using canned crab.  Canned crab, in addition to crab, contains citric acid (used as a preservative), calcium disodium edta (used in crabmeat to retard crystallization), sodium pyrophosphate (used as a buffer and emulsifier) and sodium sulfite (to prevent discoloration).

Why not just swoop on over to the next closest grocer and buy my regular king crab legs? I buy them about once every month or so to eat with lemon or a little miso salad dressing. Because. I flew in Sunday afternoon from Detroit and boy, were my arms tired. I worked a long week and then the entire weekend. Good work, but work nonetheless. I was released to work from home early Monday afternoon by KT, my boss-ish and a really good human. At any rate, on the way home I ended up at the ghetto Von's very close to my house and even though it has improved in contents and presentation in the last few years, it is still not the best market. But it is the closest market. I wanted a shopgasm at the hip and groovy loft local Ralph's downtown at 8th and Flower but a GD CHP made me miss my exit by not letting me move over to the right on the 101 heading north. Bastard.  Anyway, in the middle of grocery shopping a tsunami of fatigue hit, it was all I could do to grab a few more items and get home before narcolepsy set in.  I had great eggs at home from the yup-mart...Nutri-Fresh Fertile Eggs from Chino Valley Ranchers.  Locally produced, a blurb from their website,

The hens that produce our Nutri-Fresh Fertile eggs are fed the same diet as our Veg-a-Fed and Humane Harvest (diet with added vegetable seed, grain, soybean, and limestone meal, we have eliminated the need for fish and animal by-products that are commonly used for commercially produced eggs) producing hens. These hens however, have some roosters living along side of them and with their help produce naturally fertilized eggs. We never use artificial insemination for our fertile eggs, only the way nature intended. These fertile eggs are produced in both white and brown and are packaged in the same recycled cartons as the rest of our products.

Non-organic fennel, I used more than the called for three tablespoons. I wanted some crunch and some lift so I added about .5 cup.

Maybe 5 TBS of only the green parts of the green onions. Below, see my iPhone. I usually read Barbie's recipes from my iPhone while cooking. She always sends them as attachments.

I threw in two of the Chino Valley Rancher Eggs, one didn't seem to be enough to really hold the mixture together. Out of cumin, I used instead cayenne and ancho chile powder. And also, out of breadcrumbs I tossed in about two tablespoons of plain flour for a little volume.

These poblanos were gorgeous. 

I couldn't figure out why, at a grocery store in a latino neighborhood, that a chile I recognize as a poblano was actually labeled pasilla, until I got home and read this thread on Chowhound. I do know, from working at a trendy Tex-Mex restaurant in Sacramento in the 1980's, that a pasilla is not too spicy to eat stuffed and roasted. Now I know poblanos and pasillas are one and the same.

And then there's the cheese choice. Le sigh.  I forgot to buy cheese in my state of abject exhaustion.  And we didn't have cheese at home. We have a cheese product. D likes Kraft fat-free processed cheese slices, everything this week of eating is against. Fat-free, preservatives, over-processed, over-packaged, over-etc.  And one thing the ghetto Von's has going for it is an abundance of beautiful Mexican cheeses. Major Food Rules fail. Nevertheless, I placed a few slices down on the bottom of the peppers.

Next I stuffed the peppers with the crab mixture.  If you have small hands like me, you can really get in there stuffing all the pointy ends and crevices with crab and whatnot.  That was fun.

These turned out delicious and super conservative calorie-wise.  A couple caveats.  Caveat #1: Do not bother with the fake cheese. I couldn't taste it nor detect it texture wise in the outcome. Get some delicious Mexican cheese or even a spicy jack. Or don't bother.  Caveat #2: In my oven the cooking time was not sufficient. Mine turned out about 10 minutes too crispy. Maybe Josh and Barb's oven is a little hotter than mine. Josh's were just the right balance between a touch of crispy freshness and roasted soft velvety chile. I wanted mine a hair more roasted.

Despite it all, they were easy to make and super good. We ate these while drinking a Zotovich Family 2006 pinot noir from Santa Rita Hills.  Personally, I suggest you get Jeff from Rosso to get this for you.  Now, onto week 10!