Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Shopping, cooking, and eating: day 2

First things first. The update on yesterday's dinner: J. and I went to see Little Children at the Parkway instead of roasting vegetables. So I ate a Left Turn at Albuquerque Combo, which broke three of the rules, but not in the worst way. (This ridiculously named dish is a basket of veggies—broccoli, carrots, cucumber, cherry tomatoes—with olives, pita, hummus, baba ghanoush, and some kind of ranch-esque dip. The pita was white flour, the dip had dairy of unknown provenance, and the cucumber and tomatoes doubtless came from Mexico.)

Oh, and since I was soooo hungry by the time we got to the theater (and I knew the food would take a while), I also had a bowl of popcorn. At the Parkway they do it right: air-popped with real butter (yeah, okay, I know: dairy of unknown provenance; but really, I think no matter what it's better than the usual factory-produced chemical fake butter you find in most movie theaters).

So. Day 2. No shopping at all. This morning I used my rice cooker to make some of the rice I bought yesterday, and roasted all the veggies I was going to roast last night (procedure [too simple to even call a recipe]: cut brussels sprouts in half/broccoli and cauliflower into florets/sweet potatoes and parsnips into chinks; smoosh it all around with some olive oil on a cookie sheet; roast at 500° for 12 minutes; stir/turn all veggies; roast for 6-10 more minutes).

So far I have eaten:
  • a bowl of the rice I bought yesterday, with some olive oil, salt, and pepper (breakfast)
  • a bottomless cup of the same green tea I drink every day
  • a bowl of roasted veggies with more rice (breakfast part 2)
  • more roasted veggies (lunch)
  • I also attempted to eat an orange out of my friend A.'s fruit bowl, but it tasted like a grapefruit that someone puked on, so I spit it out and threw the rest away, which is something I never, ever do
Dinner is a big open question right now.

On a completely other topic—well, not completely—someone just hipped me to this cute lil video about real vs. fake food.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Shopping, cooking, and eating: day 1

So, my friend J. requested a week's worth of diary entries to explain how I shop and cook (I added the eating part). I think she'd like to cook more, so she wants to see how it works for me, logistically. I'm rilly lucky to have a flexible work schedule (I mostly work from home), and a standing appointment that brings me two blocks from the Berkeley farmers market every Tuesday afternoon. (I also like to spend Sunday mornings squeezing fruit and ogling vegetables at the Temescal market, but usually that's more recreational than practical. Hey, you can stop laughing now.)

So I am obliging J.

Shopping for today (all at the farmers market; sometimes I stop at Berkeley Bowl afterwards if I need olive oil, toilet paper, whatever—but today I didn't):

  • a couple pounds of fingerling and yukon gold potatoes (it's frackin' cold and wet today, I'm thinkin' stew or roasted veggies) from Arthur Davis, who also raises free-range chickens that lay lovely eggs
  • a loaf of Russian sourdough from Vital Vittles, my bakery of choice (they use all whole grains)
  • two tiny little blocks of firm tofu from Hodo Soy (their tofu is great and priced the same as most other organic tofu you'll find in the supermarket; their prepared foods are amazing but way spendy—I do recommend splurging on the tofu meatballs or the sesame tofu strips every once in a while, though)
  • some brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and kiwis from Swanton Berry Farm, the only strawberry farm in the U.S. that's both organic and union
  • some tangelos from a far whose name I don't remember, but Oh My Gawd these are some of the best citrus things I have ever eaten
  • a bunch of red chard and a bundle of parsnips from Riverdog Farm
  • a 20-pound bag of brown rice from Massa Organics; I first had their rice when I got some through Eatwell Farm, which was my beloved CSA before I was able to get to the farmers market regularly—it is the best rice ever, and you can scoff at that description until you taste it
So far today I have eaten:
  • two unbelievably delicious eggs that my new friend D. gave me from her very own chickens (thanks, D.!), fried sunny-side up in a little California-produced olive oil I bought at my local overpriced grocery store, with two pieces of cornbread toast
  • a bottomless cup of wild berry plum green tea (not as fruity as it sounds)
  • a tangelo from the same farm I bought from today (though this was the last one from last Tuesday's run)
  • a navel orange I bought Saturday at the Ferry Building in San Francisco while on a farmers-marketing date
  • an old, old apple with some peanut butter smeared on it
My friend J. (a different friend J. from the one who requested the diary...maybe I'm going to have to start making up names for my friends) is coming over for dinner; my plan is for us to roast a bunch of veggies (the cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and potatoes I bought today, along with a sweet potato and some broccoli I already have) and eath them with rice and maybe some tempeh. But who knows? We might make a tofu curry, some beans n' greens, or something else—or we might go out. Stay tuned.

Monday, February 26, 2007

And this morning I feel kinda...poisoned.

Though it's less likely the fault of the beef enchilada than the three vodka gimlets that came earlier in the evening, I'm not feelin' so great this morning. I wish I were still asleep.

Today: oatmeal, broccoli, brown rice, oranges, emergen-c, green tea. Seriously this time. I mean it.

I had a 100% vegan Sunday—

But my Monday has gotten off to a less-than-auspicious start. And it's not even 1:00 a.m.

See, tonight I found myself needing to have dinner at midnight, and there's only one place I know where that can happen in a way that's at all appealing: the Mexicali Rose. Nothing there's vegan or even remotely not-factory-farmed, but I figured a cheese enchilada would be better than going to bed hungry.

So I get there, settle in with my magazine and my big basket of the best chips on earth, and place my order: one red enchilada with cheese, along with the usual insane mound o' rice and beans. When it comes, it's all good and cheesy on top. Like a cheese enchilada should be. Except when I dig in I find that it's not cheese inside, it's ground beef.

Of course, I could send it back. I ordered cheese. Getting the totally wrong food is pretty much the only reason I would ever think it's acceptable to send something back. And I have actually sent things back before (okay, one time) when they had meat in them and weren't supposed to. But I don't. And, moment of truth: It was only a teeny-weeny bit because I didn't want to be a pain in my waiter's ass. Part of me was pretty psyched. Even though I thought the ribs would last me a good six months, I was happy to be eating the beef—especially since I didn't have to have any ethical conversation with myself before ordering it. Because I didn't order it.

Friday, February 23, 2007

And then the lunch that made me want to start writing...

Yesterday I ate a big plate of meat for lunch. Barbecued ribs from Flints, to be exact. Not organic, not locally or sustainably produced, not at all in line with anything about the way I say I eat.

And. It. Was. Good. Not just that, but I felt good afterwards, too. I've been recovering from a nasty bout with the zombie flu, and my energy has been looooow. A big plate o' meat seemed like just the ticket.

And I had already been planning to eat some meat: curried goat with my new friend D. I was justifying this because, hey, there's no real goat industry in this country, so the meat is likely produced on a relatively small scale. And, of course, with handy-dandy rule no. 8. I've only eaten goat a few times in my life, but damn is it tasty. And you don't see it around the menu every day. When D. and I were having our first lunch together two weeks ago (I kept it veggie then, but not vegan—we were at the Mexicali Rose, where absolutely nothing at all is vegan; I guess in the last post I forgot rule no. 9, which is: If you've gotta eat, you've gotta eat, and you might as well like it), I mentioned a taste for goat, and she told me about her favorite Caribbean place not too far from my house. Obviously we had to go.

Anyway, the goat place was closed. Apparently it's run by stoners. No surprise they run late. We tried another Caribbean place, but it was closed, too. The sign on the door said they were catering some reggae show in Santa Cruz.

By then I was starving (I skipped breakfast in preparation for the heavy meatiness), and primed for meat. D. was thrilled that Flints was still around and might actually be open. It seemed like fate.

And I ate the ribs and I was happy—even though your very much face-to-face with what meat is when you're eating it right off the bone. There were sinews. That tasted good. Oh, my.

As a pretty extreme example in the long line of things I choose to eat that I quote don't eat anymore unquote, it's makin' me think: Is it chickenshit of me to say I have these rules when I break them so much? How can I balance my own needs with the needs of others (meatpackers, farmworkers, people who live near polluting feedlots, cows) and with my own ethics? Am I just not trying hard enough?

Okay, the background...

Several years ago, just as I was cutting down my sugar consumption and learning more about the evils of things like hydrogenation, shipping vegetables around the globe, food additives, and factory farming, I had a new coworker who was superhardcore in her commitment to veganism and whole foods (as in unprocessed things, not the union-busting grocery chain). We started talking endlessly about the politics and ethics of food choices (and the connections between those politics and seemingly unrelated social justice movements), the health benefits of unrefined food, what looked best at the farmers market, and tasty cooking ideas.

Then another friend made a deal with me: We would do the vegan whole-foods-only thing for a month, cooking and eating together and keeping each other on track, and he would never eat fast food again, ever. So for one month I ate no white flour, no refined sugar, almost nothing processed at all. Lots of brown rice, beans, roasted vegetables, tofu stir fries, etc.

And I felt so much happier and more energetic that I realized I could never go back.

Back to the processed stuff, that is. Just not getting that midafternoon need-to-put-my-head-down-on-my-desk-and-nap feeling was enough to keep me on board with the brown rice, whole barley, whole grain bread, and everything else. And I've always loved vegetables, tofu, and all that. Sure, the sweet tooth was a real issue, but I discovered that the less sugar I ate, the less I wanted it. And things that I used to love started to taste waaaaay too sweet for me. Especially at first, I was so motivated that passing up candy and mass-produced baked good was frickin' easy. (Homemade things, well...harder. More on that later.)

The animal products were a different story. Not actual meat; I'd already been a once-a-month-or-less meat eater, and I'd gone through many vegetarian periods. My problems are cheese, yogurt, and eggs. More accurately, cheese, yogurt, eggs, and rigidity. See, I need some flexibility in my rules, since in my world food restrictions can start with "no animal products" and end up at "you are allowed one piece of toast with a milligram of peanut butter spread on top, and a cup of tea" pretty durn quick. And so I avoid anything that smacks too much of virtuous self-denial, a hallmark of my high-school eating disorder. Or maybe it's just too hard for me to make sacrifices. Urgk. Balancing all these ethical questions is haaaaaard.

I started calling myself an aspiring vegan, but sometimes that's not too accurate, because how hard am I trying if I buy cheese twice a month?

So. What are my rules, then, anyway?

  1. Local (and organic) whenever possible. This is when I feel especially lucky to live in the Bay Area: I shop for produce mostly at farmers markets and choose what to cook based on what's there. (If I need something specific for a recipe, I spend a lot of time reading supermarket signs trying to figure out where things came from.) If I'm choosing between conventionally grown and local and non-local but organic, I go with local.
  2. No factory-farmed animal products. From a practical perspective, this means Straus organic yogurt, Niman Ranch meat (oh so rare), cheese from the folks who make the incredible Humboldt Fog, and any eggs or cheese I can get at the farmers market. And, um, this is the rule that I prolly break with the most frequency.
  3. Unrefined grains only, unless nothing else is available. Brown rice, whole grain breads, lots o' oatmeal, quinoa, millet. I discovered that I hate amaranth, though. I'm not superfanatical about this rule—there aren't that many tacquerias that have brown rice (and don't kid yourself, even those "whole wheat" tortillas are mostly white flour), and though I prefer Chinese and Thai places that serve brown rice, sometimes they just don't. And I'm not passin' up the garlic noodles at Sunflower, which are totally refined.
  4. Minimally sweetened things only. Um, most of the time. When people bring delicious homemade brownies to a potluck, I'm not gonna grill them about what they used. I'm not that much of a tool. I don't think. When I bake, I use brown rice syrup, agave, maple syrup, and sucanat. Okay, I know that last one is still basically sugar, but...shut up.
  5. Absolutely no hydrogenated anything. This one's not that complicated, since anything with hydrogenated anything is going to have so many other anythings that I don't want to put in my body. This one goes along with—
  6. Read labels carefully and know which weird ingredients are really fucked-up, and which ones aren't (xanthan gum is okay, disodium inosinate, not so much).
  7. When you're a guest in someone's house, eat what's put in front of you. I'm not comfortable making people accommodate my weird and complicated rules.
  8. And the one that makes it all possible (and possibly meaningless, and definitely complicated): If you really, really want to eat it—go ahead and eat it.