Since Sundays are often pancake days, here’s a very cool blog for inspirtions, Jim’s Pancakes.  I mean, seriously.  These are cool.

Laura at 11D has a post up about the challenges of having a healthy lifestyle, especially cooking a meal at home every night, when you’re in a family with 2 jobs, 2 or more kids in activities, etc.  My own semi-challenge of cooking randomly through Cooking Light’s Dinner Tonight cookbook, a cookbook full of healthy, but easy meals, has been interesting, and I’ve thought about whether I’d do this if I worked full time.  Here are some thoughts, both on my own cooking, and on Laura’s post.

First, because of the challenge, I plan a whole week’s worth of meals.  Generally I plan on 4-5, knowing that one night we’ll eat out or slap together sandwiches at home.  I include in my grocery list snacks and fruit for lunches and often deli meat for weekend lunches or quick dinners.

Second, because I don’t work, I can shop during the week.  Going to the grocery store on a Monday at 1 is miles better than going any weeknight just before dinner time (which was a common occurrence back when I was working).  If I returned to full-time work, I’d do the shopping on the weekend, likely earlier in the day, and probably make it a family event, taking one kid or the husband to help.  The kids are actually great in the grocery store.  They’re 10 & 14, so I let them loose with half the list and they go hunting and gathering while I’m in the deli line or picking over produce.  I can also go to the farmer’s market when it opens at 3 instead of rushing around to find parking or picking over leftovers at 6, just before it closes.  I could easily send one or both kids with some money and a list.  And they’ve done that before.

Third, I’m not starting my cooking at 5:30 or 6, the minute I step in the door.  When I worked, I would literally throw my stuff down somewhere, grab a glass of wine or beer and start pulling out ingredients and preheating the oven (if I had something planned, which I sometimes didn’t).  If a meal takes a little longer, I can start at 4:30 so that it’s done by 6.  Or whenever I need to.  Today, for example, I need to get some meat into a marinade around 3.  I could never do that if I worked.

So those are good things.  We can eat healthier in part because I have time to plan, shop and cook.  But fourth, my grocery bill is through the roof.  Before, I bought whatever was on sale.  Some months, I could keep my grocery bill for the month around $400-$500.  According to a book I’m reading right now, the USDA recommends $650/month for a family of four.  Currently, with my focus on grass-fed met, organic everything, and buying whatever ingredients I need, I’m spending double what I used to.  Go ahead, gasp.  I did.  Part of the difference is made up from not eating out.  We order pizza once a week or every two weeks, around $30 for all of us.  Mr. Geeky eats lunch out, but I eat at home, so all the money we used to spend on that is going into to groceries.  Can we afford this?  So far, yes, and Mr. Geeky and I agree that buying the food we’re buying is not only good for us, but hopefully good for local farmers, the earth, etc.  But, there are a lot of people, even people with similar incomes to ours, who would never spend what we do on groceries.  They may have higher mortgages or car payments or private school to pay for.

Laura, and many of her readers, raised the issue of picky eaters.  When I was growing up, we pretty much ate whatever was on the table.  And my mom had a rule that even at guest’s houses, we had to take three bites of something we had never tried or thought we didn’t like before declaring we weren’t going to eat it.  My sister was a very picky eater.  She wouldn’t even eat pizza.  She survived most of her childhood on vienna sausages and ketchup.  No extra meal prep for Mom and she was pretty happy.  Mom still tried to get her to eat something, but there was always vienna sausage to fall back on.

When Geeky Girl got to be about 6ish or 7 and Geeky Boy was 10/11, we instituted a rule that if you weren’t eating the prepared meal, you had to make your own, parent-approved dinner, usually a peanut butter sandwich.  You were required to try the meal first before barging off to make a sandwich.  While we’ve had a few situations where one or both kids have ended up making a sandwich, generally the work involved is enough to get them to try whatever’s on the table and most of the time, they like it enough to eat it.  What’s also helped with Geeky Girl, who is by far more picky than Geeky Boy, is that she helps me cook every night.  Geeky Boy has helped on occasion as well.  Once you know what’s in something, you tend to be more inclined to eat it.  We made a soup the other night that had broccoli, spinach and edamame.  It was the greenest thing you’ve ever seen.  If I’d just put that on the table, no way would Geeky Girl have eaten it.  But since she helped make it, she ate a whole bowl.

It’s taken a long while for me to develop any kind of routine about cooking and really getting my head around what it takes to make more than just a piece of meat with heated frozen veggies or pasta and jarred sauce.  I think I could shift the work if I were employed, but it is certainly nice to have the time to make these meals.  I agree with Laura, though, that someone needs to write the book about how to eat the way Pollan, et. al. suggest when both parents get home at 6.  Most cooking shows and books aimed at that audience doctor jarred and canned items, which may be better than fast food, but just barely.

Here it is, my interview with Chef Anne.  Worst Cooks in America‘s season finale is tonight at 10 on The Food Network, and they’re taking nominations of worst cooks for the next season.

One thing that cookbook authors don’t usually think about is what the home cook can reasonably find in terms of ingredients.  If chile paste is what the recipe needs, then that’s what they’re going to put in the recipe and often they will offer no substitution.  Chile paste was one ingredient I had difficulty finding for this Asian Beef Noodle Salad recipe.  I also couldn’t find the noodles.  I ended up using rice noodles instead of the bean threads the recipe called for.  Our grocery store used to carry a good collection of asian ingredients, but now they mostly carry those dried meals that you just add water to.  And they do not taste good.  I found both the chile paste and the noodles at another store near one of the kid’s activities.  In my post Thanksgiving post, I lamented the sorry condition of the grocery stores in Mr. Geeky’s hometown, where you could barely find produce.  I wasn’t looking, but I’m sure you couldn’t find fresh herbs much less chile paste.

There are 2 stores where I’d be likely to find all kinds of bizarre ingredients–Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.  The problem with both is parking.  It is impossible to find parking at the Trader Joe’s.  It’s next to the Farmer’s Market and there’s enough parking, I’d guess for maybe 50 cars.  Way not enough.  Whole Foods has even less parking and the way the lot is configured means there’s a traffic jam upon exiting.  I swear my blood pressure goes up whenever I go to either place.  I think the solution for me is to actually write or call the store manager of my current store and tell him or her that I want more asian ingredients.  I’ll let you know how that works out.

There’s also the issue of seasonality.  Technically, I think, nothing is in season here as far as produce goes, so I’m buying red peppers, knowing that they at best come from California and at worst come from South America.  I don’t know which has the worst carbon footprint, but I think about it.  And then there’s the issue of quantity.  Fresh herbs at the grocery store come in huge bunches.  A recipe calls for 2 teaspoons.  You end up with tons of leftover dill or cilantro.  In my house, it gets thrown away eventually.  This has happened with lettuce and other produce that you have to buy in set quantities but of which you’re only using a small amount for a particular meal.  I’ve tried to use some of those ingredients in lunches or other meals and it’s worked to some degree, but still it’s an issue.  My solution for herbs is to plant them this spring.  I had rosemary, basil and mint.  I just need thyme, cilantro, and maybe a couple of others.  At the farmer’s market, produce comes in smaller packaging or no packaging.  I can get a sprig of lavender and not a whole bunch.  Lettuce heads are smaller and most produce can be bought singly (true in the grocery store too of most things).

This week’s recipes include some beef and pork, which I’ve ordered from the farm and I’ll be picking up on Wednesday.  Honestly, it’s not that much more expensive than the grocery store and I just feel a lot better about the product on many levels.  I wonder, once spring rolls around, how much of my shopping I can do from the farmer’s market.  If I organized my recipes by season, perhaps most of it.  Sounds like a good challenge!

So far, the RNG meals are going quite well.  As I wrote earlier, the first two meals were a success.  We then had stuffed red peppers, which were quite yummy.  The cabbage on the side was especially and surprisingly good, though I will say that in the future, unless I’m getting it from the farmer’s market, I’ll buy the preshredded cabbage.  It’s just a pain to shred by hand.  Wednesday, we had leftovers.  There was some soup, one pepper, and a meal from before the great experiment.  Geeky Boy and I had a quick sandwich.  This was primarily because I had a PTO meeting and putting together a meal would have been difficult to do before the meeting.

Thursday, we had a chicken salad.  The recipe originally called for shrimp, but Geeky Boy is allergic to shrimp, so I substituted chicken as the recipe suggested.  There are several shrimp recipes in the book.  I may have to substitute or make GB something separate when I make these.  It’s a challenge.  This was a tasty salad, though I’d say that it would be better in the summer since it’s served cold.  I used a store made (organic) roast chicken.  I boiled the carcass afterwards and made a chicken soup out of it for lunch over the weekend.  The salad had plenty leftover as well, and I ate it for lunch. Yum.

Friday, we ordered pizza.  Geeky Boy had a friend over, and it was Friday, good time to break from the routine.

Saturday, I made scallops with Chipotle-orange sauce.  These were really yummy.  Everyone liked them a lot.  Geeky Girl was at a friend’s house, so she didn’t get to try them, but Mr. Geeky and Geeky Boy gave them two thumbs up.

Yesterday, we had sandwiches, which were by far the easiest thing I’ve made.  They’re easy enough to make for lunch.  We skipped the tomatoes on the side, but in summer, fresh tomatoes in a salad would be yummy.

Tonight, we had pork tenderloin.  I think this was my favorite so far, but I’m a sucker for pork tenderloin.  But the pepper crust gave it a nice zing that was cut slightly by the sweet sauce.  It was a nice contrast.  One thing I noticed, though, was that I had to cook the pork almost twice as long as suggested.  It was nowhere near cooked when I checked it at the suggested time.  I cooked it for another 15 minutes and it was perfect except for one especially thick piece, which I left in for another 5 minutes or so.  The sauce, too, took longer to reduce than I expected.  They said five minutes.  It took 15.  Also, I left the shitakes out of the veggie stir fry because I didn’t have time to reconstitute them.  Plus, I don’t think the kids would have liked them.  The veggies were still tasty.

Overall, I’ve been enjoying making different things and the family is enjoying tasting them.  We seem to have food leftover at almost every meal, which can either be eaten for lunch or configured into another meal.  But, we’re not saving a huge amount of money this way, for sure.  I made a trip to the butcher, where the meat was actually quite cheap, but scallops were not.  The pork tenderloin I got from the grocery store this time, but will probably get from the farmer’s market guy next time, which means it will cost me more.  Most of the time, I’m a mess in the kitchen.  These meals are designed to cook fairly quickly, so everything is happening at once.  More than once, Mr. Geeky and the kids (who do the post-meal cleanup) have commented on the state of the kitchen after I have cooked.  I try.  I do, but I need to get better, I guess.

I hope to try to do these one at a time, so that I actually remember the meal better.  It seems like a nice way to end the evening.

Tonight’s meal was this couscous, along with a salad and the strawberries.  The recipe is for a single serving, so I multiplied it by 5 and had tons leftover.  The kids both tried it and Geeky Boy declared it pretty good, but found the olives too strong for his taste.  Geeky Girl only had a few bites, but loved the strawberries.  I’ll definitely make it again, but it’s probably best eaten in summer, when strawberries and basil are in season.

I know the picture isn’t great.  I’ve been reduced to using my iPhone since my camera got stolen back in June. Sigh.

So, I’m not making any resolutions this year.  I have in the past kept a few resolutions, but inevitably, I can’t make half of them and reassess when the school year begins.  I have four million things going on anyway–a book project, a new class to teach, articles to write, a 60-mile walk to prepare for.  I don’t think I need to set any more goals.

But, I am continuing to think about food.  I watched Food, Inc. over the break, which just added to my frustration about the food industry.  I also read Cleaving by Julie Powell and watched Julie and Julia.  And Mr. Geeky gave me a fondue pot and cooking lessons and I bought myself yet another cookbook with a gift certificate.  So food is on my brain.  I’m continuing to try to buy food responsibly, locally and organically.  But, it is difficult.  The meat producers that come to Farmer’s Market in the spring and summer allow preordering and delivery in the winter.  But, because I wasn’t paying attention, I missed this weekend’s dropoff and will have to wait until the 20th to get more.  I’m paying a visit to a local butcher this week in hopes of finding grass-fed meat.  It would be more convenient than the once or twice a month deliveries.  And, of course, no veggies or fruits are really in season right now, so at least in the winter, I’m probably breaking a few rules.

The cookbook I got is Cooking Light‘s Dinner Tonight collection, which are recipes for complete meals that are generally a bit healthier than what most of us tend to eat.  I used to have a subscription, but let it lapse and have since been visiting their web site regularly.  But I do like having a book to work from as I learn new recipes.  Usually, when I get a new cookbook, I just flip through it and pick out a few things to make.  But I wanted to be more adventurous than that, not shying away from things that I wouldn’t normally be drawn to.  So I went to a random number generator and generated a few numbers that referenced pages in the book and decided to make those recipes for the next couple of days.  Last night’s recipe was Potato, Leek and Corn Chowder, which I served with garlic breadsticks and a salad.  It was quite tasty and perfect for a cold winter’s night.  The recipe calls for fresh corn, which is impossible to find this time of year, so I went with frozen instead.  I suspect fresh corn would make this a super yummy dish, so perhaps I’ll reprieve it in the summer.  On deck for later this week is a couscous meal and stuffed red peppers.  Yes, there will be posts, and maybe even pictures.

I also want to try to eat out more, but that requires more planning and of course, more money, so I’m still thinking about that.  But there will definitely be more writing about food.  I’m nothing if not eccentric in my topics!

I’m continuing my obsession with trying to eat better, and it’s been challenging, but not impossible. I’m not worrying too much about produce for the moment. I’m buying most from the farmer’s market, but have picked up bananas and avocados, which are obviously not local. The kids and the husband are giving me some grief about this whole project, but since I’m the one who buys and prepares the food around here, they’re stuck with it. As I mentioned before, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what I’ve been able to pick up at my local store. But there are still some things that are hard to find. Cereal, for example.

Last week, I bought the store’s organic brand, which met all my real food criteria. Today the first morning anyone ate it, and no one likes it. I’m not really a cereal person, so if I have to forgo cereal, I’m good with that. But the kids and the hubby, they live on cereal. Almost all of it has crap in it, mostly sugar. Luckily, my kids have never been into sugary cereal. We have binged on occasion on Frosted Flakes, but literally, that’s like once a year. I grew up on Sugar Corn Pops myself, but can’t stand it now. It’s like having dessert for breakfast. Bleh. So I broke down and bought Multigrain Cheerios, which happens to be their favorite and aside from some monoglycerides, have natural ingredients. (In case you’re wondering, monoglycerides are emulsifiers commonly used in baked goods to add volume and smoothness.)

So I’ve added another rule to my list. We have to like it. The whole point is to enjoy eating, and by all accounts, it’s healthier to enjoy what you’re eating and to enjoy it in the company of others.

A rule Pollan mentions that I didn’t bring up before is not to buy food with announcements about how healthy it is for you and most cereal has those: things like “made with whole grain” and “heart healthy.” And now there are about to more such labels, according to this article (hat tip: Mike Smith at Change.org) The reason to ignore such claims on the front of packaging is that front of packaging labeling is not well regulated and the guidelines are set primarily by the food industry itself rather than a completely disinterested group of people. The food industry doesn’t always have consumers’ best health interests in mind. That Fruit Loops can get a “Smart Choice” label should tell you something.

I’ve just returned from my post-vacation grocery run. I wanted to follow my new rules, and actually, it wasn’t that hard in many cases, thanks to my store’s new brands. Sadly, the web site gives little information about them, but I checked labels dutifully, and many of them really do only have natural ingredients. I especially liked the Via Roma brand. The sauces have tomatoes and garlic and spices, a little sugar. Ragu, for the record, lists sugar as its first or second ingredient (haven’t bought it in years, so I can’t remember exactly). It’s not Ragu, but I do remember a brand with a lot of sugar in it. When I finally read the ingredients, I quit buying it.

What I’d like to see is grass-fed beef and reasonably-priced organic poultry. I’ve never found grass-fed beef, and the organic poultry has been removed, replaced with Green Way poultry, which says nothing about how the chickens were raised, so I didn’t buy it.

As a bonus, I only spent $80. But I did only buy about half of what I normally do. We’ll see if it lasts.

Image by lorda via Flickr

Last week, I devoured three books about food. First, Julia Child’s My Life in France; second, Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food; and third, Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia. All were delightful in their own way. It was a bit jarring to go from Child’s autobiography to Pollan’s description of the crap we Americans will put in our body. I have mentioned here before how I love cooking and eating, so going through these three books was soul satisfying, though not quite as soul satisfying as cooking and eating a good meal.

Child’s book was a good book to start the vacation with. I’m sure her autobiography paints a specific picture of her, but the picture I got was of a woman who loved life and lived every moment with gusto. Whether she chose cooking or flower arranging, I think she would have thrown herself in full force. I very much enjoyed her descriptions of Paris. Her apartment was mere blocks from the hotel we stayed in ourselves and a stone’s throw from Mr. Geeky’s conference. I recognized streets she described and even some market areas. It was a nice reminder of our own time in Paris. But more than that, her descriptions of food and wine and the joy she expressed in sharing meals with friends and family were really wonderful. She makes it sound as if her whole life was spent eating and drinking and laughing with friends. She doesn’t, of course, as she also talks about working on the book and subsequently the tv show. Her energy for both is amazing and inspiring.

Pollan’s book is, in many ways, a tribute to the kind of cooking and eating Child espouses. Even Child laments the processed food she finds upon returning to America. I especially liked Pollan’s rules for eating toward the end of the book. They’re simple and easy to follow. I immediately applied them to buying a loaf of bread, though the fewest ingredients I could find in any loaf was 7 (Pollan recommends no more than 5), but I could pronounce all of them. He admits that eating as he recommends is likely to be more expensive and says that it’s a shame that that’s the case. He says, though, that if you can afford it, you should eat organic and local and non-processed food as much as possible. Though it doesn’t get much ink, he also talks about enjoying food and seeing it as something to be experienced with friends (a la Julia Child) rather than as simply fuel. It’s nice to be given license to ignore the low-fat, low-carb crap the food industry throws at us. I’m just gonna eat food from now on. And apparently, not worry about saving money on it. If there’s one thing I do wish he and others would work on is figuring out how to get rid of some of the subsidies that are making it so cheap for companies to make really bad food (and food that is bad for us), because until it’s cheap for everyone to eat real food, we’re going to see more health problems and only the relatively wealthy will avoid them.

Finally, Powell’s book was a fun read, more fun than I thought it would be, and I suppose, because I love Meryl Streep, I might have to see the movie as well. I never read Powell’s blog, though I know some of you out there did and liked it and were disappointed with the book. The whole project does seem a little gimmicky, which is what, apparently, Julia Child claims it is. But in the book, but apparently not in the movie, this upsets Powell immensely, as she sees the project as giving her life meaning, as a way of finding out who she is and escaping the anonymity of her corporate job. Which is, sort of, what Child was doing in France. She had, by this point, identified with Child in a way without really quite realizing and still trying to maintain some distance, so having her project labeled as a stunt by the very person she identified with had to be a blow.

Unlike the other two books, Powell’s book is not really about food, though there are many descriptions of cooking food and eating food, that’s not what it’s about. It’s more about soul searching, about the ups and downs of life. You can sort of argue the same thing of Child’s book, that her book is also about finding oneself, trying to separate oneself from the masses. But Child’s book is less individualistic than Powell’s and less about ego and success. Not that Child doesn’t have some ego in her, but she seems to recognize more than Powell does, that her friends and family have contributed to her life in significant ways. That may be her age (Child was in her late 80s when the book was being written) or it may be the times. Child’s lesson, taking heart in your family and friends seems more important somehow in the end. Powell does recognize this in the end and she does take joy (her word) in some of what’s happened in the course of her project, but that somehow it doesn’t quite match Julia’s life–not yet, anyway.

All three books left me with renewed gusto to cook more and eat well and maybe invite friends over to share it all with.