It’s been quite some time since I’ve posted here, never mind blogged regularly. I haven’t been cooking much that’s interesting, so I’ve had a shortage of things to blog about. The past few months have been tumultuous. I left one job, and started another – and even though everything has gone smoothly, and I’m very happy in my new job, I’m only now settled in enough to feel my stress level  going down. Nathan has been embroiled in a massive project at his job. And on top of that, our basement flooded last month, then we had a hurricane and lost power for several days (surprisingly enough, the hurricane was after our flooding), and the repairs have only recently been finished.

With all that happening, cooking has been far down my list of priorities. But now, fingers crossed, I’ll have spare time and energy to devote to food again, and to blogging. Better yet, we’ve found a way to force ourselves back into our cooking-good-food routine: the Unprocessed October Challenge.

I learned about Unprocessed October last year, but didn’t feel like participating. But the idea is simple enough, and perfect for me right now: eat only unprocessed foods for the month of October.

What does “unprocessed” mean? It’s flexible (and you can make your own exceptions), but the founder of the event suggests: “Unprocessed food is any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with readily available, whole-food ingredients.”

There are a lot of words in there that you could qualify or quibble over. Here’s what I want it to mean for me: cooking a lot, from scratch, using mostly whole and local ingredients. Eating nothing refined, no preservatives, no chemicals. Spending time in the kitchen, having fun, and maybe even making things from scratch that I would normally buy. As a bonus, I’ll eat healthier, because if I want something unhealthy, I have to make it myself, and with ingredients that are at least more wholesome than if I bought something processed.

It won’t be a drastic change in our habits… at least, not from what our habits were a couple months ago. We’ll be getting back into the comparatively good habits we usually follow.

We will make some adjustments, though, and lay down some new rules. We will read ingredient lists for everything we buy. If it has ingredients we wouldn’t have in our own kitchen, we won’t buy it. We’ll cook with whole grains. Most “white” food is out: no white flour, sugar, or rice. No corn syrup, high fructose or otherwise. No cookies unless we bake them, but also no store-bought granola bars or energy bars (which we usually keep on hand). For me, no visits to Kripsy Kreme, which my new commute takes me past every morning – no matter how long a day I expect to have. If we eat out (which should be rare), we’ll have to choose very carefully where we go.

Beer, wine, tea, and coffee are all okay, but a pumpkin latte from Starbucks is not. Store-bought tofu is probably okay. Store-bought seitan is probably not. Most cheese is fine (in fact, I make my own cheese regularly, and hope to do so this month). Chocolate will depend on the ingredient list. Spices, oils, and most other common cooking ingredients are fine.

I think avoiding white flour will be the hardest part. It’s not much of a problem at home, because I can happily cook with whole grains, but white flour is in almost every food you buy. Lunches and snacks will be difficult. (I expect to eat a lot of salads for lunch.)

We’ll also be making some specific, planned exceptions. We’re going to a lot of events month: one wedding, several parties, a 2-day conference for me, and a trip to the Renaissance Faire, where everything is guaranteed to be processed (and fried). I have no intention of starving myself or refusing food at these events.

Mostly, I’m looking forward to cooking and baking much more than I have been. I’d like to make things from scratch that I don’t normally make time for: homemade pasta, cheese, bread, granola bars, and maybe even seitan. If this experience forces me to cook more, it will be a win.

Also in the New York Times, Michael Tortorello tries to start a garden with foods from his kitchen.  There are two “surprises” in this article that shouldn’t actually surprise you, if you think about it.  The first is that a whole lot of foods in your kitchen – spices, beans, fruits – are basically seeds, and you could in theory plant a bunch of them and make them grow.  (This is the same surprise I feel every time I open a seed packet of peas, beans, or dill: “Hey, this is the stuff I cook with!”)

Unfortunately, the second surprise is that most kitchen foods have been specially treated – irradiated, freeze-dried, etc – especially to keep them from sprouting and growing.  Some of the fruit has even been bred to have tiny, non-viable seeds.  That’s why you would bother to buy packets of seeds in the first place, instead of planting your spice collection in the ground: seeds are cared for so they’ll grow up to be plants; their kitchen counterparts are supposed to stay food as long as possible.  It’s logical, because food producers don’t want their products to start sprouting when they meet moisture, but it does mean that the food we eat has been removed rather forcibly from its own lifecycle.

The best way to plant your garden from your kitchen, is if your kitchen came from your garden.  Seed-saving is a big part of organic gardening and farming (though it’s too involved for me, with my tiny patio garden), and if you’re careful about how you grow your vegetables, you can in theory save their seeds for next year’s crop.

Have you ever tried saving seeds? What about planting food from your kitchen?  I can’t say that I ever have.

The blogger in me wants to wax eloquent on the lessons of this comic, but really, that would be missing the point.  Key takeaway is: if that’s the cookbook you’re working with, and it’s keeping you from cooking, get a new cookbook.  Also: never buy something called “mango lard juice”, even if your crazy cookbook asks for it. Just say no.

What a great show that could be! It would take the concept of showing that “anyone can cook” to a new level. In her video, Celia says she talks to a lot of people (sighted and non-sighted) who think they can’t cook. Celia’s a great example of overcoming whatever barriers (real or imagined) stand between a person and learning to cook.

It’s made me think about what the challenges would be in cooking without sight.  Dropping things would be hard – I would make a big mess. You’d need to be extremely organized, not to mention disciplined about using what you buy and cleaning out the fridge (lest you discover something really nasty hiding in the back). I’m sure there are many challenges I haven’t thought of. But the most important sense in cooking, I think, is the sense of smell.  Smell and taste – not appearance – is what really tells you if fruit is ripe, or if the cookies are done, or if you’ve got the balance of spices right. I bet Celia uses her sense of smell much better than I do.

If you’d like to see this show become a reality, please go vote for Celia!

So I understand why folks are excited that Mario Batali is instituting Meatless Mondays at all of his restaurants – but I’m extremely skeptical of the way he’s doing it:

So how’s Mario going to do it? Every Monday every one of his 14 restaurants will serve at least two vegetarian options, whether entrees or pastas or pizzas. [...] With this simple gesture, Mario will send a powerful message to other chefs and restauranteurs that we can all start the week right by eating our veggies.

Two vegetarian options? One day a week? That’s hardly a radical statement for a chef who claims he’s “a big believer in the Meatless Mondays movement.”  If that means that most of his restaurants don’t have at least two vegetarian options on other days of the week, that’s awfully disappointing to me.  Plenty of restaurants – even ones that don’t claim an environmentally friendly focus – have a whole section of the menu that’s vegetarian. The Meatless Mondays movement is aimed at educating the home cook. Restaurants should be able to do better.

Since I’m a vegetarian, I have to be selective about what restaurants I go to, and unless I’m with meat-eating friends, a place with only two veggie options doesn’t usually make the cut. And I know plenty of meat-eaters who like to eat meatless dishes on a regular basis.

So what is Mario Batali really trying to do?  Is there some reason he won’t make a stronger stance on providing meatless options?  Forget Meatless Mondays – I’d like to see every restaurant have meatless options every day. That would be a real “powerful message”!

What do you think?  Has Batali gone far enough? Or is this more of a publicity stunt than a substantive change?

Recently, Peggy Orenstein wrote an editorial arguing almost the opposite: that growing one’s own food (and, in her examples, raising chickens and bees) could be fulfilling and empowering to women who chose not to work, but wanted something more meaningful than housework to fill their days.  She calls it femivorism.

I’m intrigued, and I can see the appeal of staying home and spending time working the land.  At the same time, it’s again framing “putting dinner on the table” as the woman’s responsibility – this time, with a much higher bar for what “dinner” should be.

What do you think?  Can cooking and gardening be empowering for women?  Or does the local food movement need equal participation by men and women to avoid leaving women with an unfair share of the burden?

I say: all the more reason to cook a real dinner!

Allow me to explain.  Working is often stressful.  It wears you out.  You work hard, think hard, and try to get things done as fast as possible.  When you’re cooking, none of that matters.  You can lay out your ingredients, chop them one at a time, as fast or slow as you want.  You can stir pasta into boiling water, or saute an onion, and your brain can take a break.  There is nothing in the world more meditative than sauteing an onion.  If you find something better, just let me know.

Better yet, it’s a visceral experience.  It’s real.  It engages all your senses.  If you work in front of a computer all day, you may find yourself missing the experience of working with your hands – I often do.  When you cook, you can feel the texture of a firm tomato or the heat of a ready frying pan, smell the intoxicating aroma of garlic in olive oil, taste… well, if you’re alone in the kitchen, taste whatever you want.

Sure, cooking can be stressful, too.  You can spill things, burn things, rush to get everything assembled.  But not tonight.  When you’ve had a long day, you’re going to cook things you love, and they’re going to be easy and fun, because you know them inside and out.  No stress – just good food.

After all that, you get to eat, and I don’t even need to tell you how much better your dinner will be than whatever you were going to microwave.  At the end of a long day, you have all the more need of a meal that’s actually healthy and satisfying.

If you get the impression that I’ve been working a lot lately, you’re right.  And it might have something to do with my lack of recent blogging, too.  But for all that, I’ve been cooking dinner on a fairly regular basis, sometimes throwing together a quick and easy meal (pasta with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella is my summertime standby, and I could eat it every day if I had to), sometimes doing something a little more elaborate.  The other night I made salsa, roasted some peppers, and made quesadillas, which made me really happy.  And while I’m not always in the mood for cooking after a long day, sometimes it’s just what I need.  I hope it helps you out, too, when you need it.

It helps that the two main characters are both adorable, endearing, and played as human with all their strengths and flaws.

Of course, I can’t help but compare myself with Julie, the intrepid young writer who decides to blog her way through Julia Child’s cookbook.  Here I am, writing a food blog (albeit one with an entirely different angle and aim), and hoping to change the world in some small way.  I, too, struggle with finding the discipline to cook and blog after a long day at work.  Where Julie blogs to escape from her job, I’m fortunate to like mine and find it challenging – which means I have a balancing act of finding time, energy, and creativity for both.  On the other hand, I don’t have anything like Julie’s dedication or work ethic – I’m happy if I can crank out a couple interesting posts a week, while she averaged better than a recipe a day.  I honestly can’t imagine that kind of achievement – a masterpiece in its own way.  But I certainly relate to the excitement and frustration of sharing your thoughts, sending them out into the void, and hoping that they give someone a little meaning.

So I left the movie feeling a little shabby, but also deeply inspired – to blog, and to cook.  Tonight, I did both (and some work around the house, to boot) and that’s a nice feeling.  Tomorrow I’ll share what I cooked.  It’s not French; I’d have loved to cook something French after that, but somehow French cooking doesn’t really lend itself to a vegetarian diet.  (Or does it?  Would it be blasphemy to vegify Julia Child’s recipes?)  But I did cook something delicious, and slightly ambitious!  You’ll have to wait and see what…

If you’ve seen Julie & Julia, comment and tell me what you thought!

I’m a little baffled.  I can see how the flavors of ginger and green tea would go well together (ginger green tea is delightful, I think).  And if ginger ale usually tastes more like high fructose corn syrup than ginger (there is in fact no ginger listed in the ingredients), it’s still an interesting thought, an intriguing combination of flavors…

…except that this new product sounds suspiciously like a marketing invention to me.  The ad I heard wasn’t talking about the great taste.  It was talking about the health benefits, all those great antioxidants and the other legendary properties of tea.

So ginger ale is now… a health food?  It’s good for you?

Really?

Ginger ale is still full of sugar (high fructose corn syrup, in this case).  It’s still soda.  It will still rot your teeth and make you fat, just like other sodas.  Only in the marketing world can you take something really bad for you, add a bit of something good for you, and think that the result will be good for you overall.  That sounds suspiciously like the apparently widespread belief that organic cookies are healthy.  Wishing doesn’t make it so.

So if you want green tea in your ginger ale, go for it, but don’t delude yourself. My advice: if you want the health benefits of green tea, go drink some green tea!

It’s a no-brainer if you really think about it: how can organic cookies, made with real sugar and butter by a company that can afford an expensive government certification, be healthier than a tomato grown without pesticides by a small farmer who can’t afford a certification, or even a conventional (non-organic) tomato grown with pesticides?  But the word “organic” has come to signify health in our minds, even as it’s being diluted by companies that practice the letter of the organic certification without the spirit, which would involve a more holistic view of creating healthy food.

I agree with Bittman on the best way to improve your health and the environment: cook more.  Use fresh, unprocessed ingredients.  Get more fruits and vegetables into your diet.  If cooking seems too hard or time-consuming, check out the posts below for some quick and easy, relatively healthy meals.