Okay, clearly I lied when I said I would have a real post soon

And I'm thinking I might have to give up the conceit that I am actually blogging here. While I ponder, here's some stuff to read.

Okay, it's been awhile...

...and I will have an actual post sometime remotely soon.

But there have been a bunch of interesting things published lately that I wanted to share.

The New York Times seems to be obsessed with food politics this week.

And here's yet another reason (if you needed one) to cut out processed foods: they can give fatal illnesses to the folks who work in the processing plants.

The word of the day is "orthorexia."

oh-are-tee-aitch-oh-are-eee-ex-eye-ay.

orthorexia.

No, I don't really think I'm orthorexic. I ate a frackin' burger the other night (it was organic/humane—and the first meat I've had since I had that spate of cravings, which, oddly, seemed to abate just when I was getting ready to embrace them).

But it's a fine line. I certainly think obsessively about food, where my next meal is coming from and what it is, and what's okay for me to eat, ethically and for my own personal health (not long-term health, though— more the fact of how I will feel after eating whatever it is). Too much thinking can drive me crazy. But not enough thinking makes me beat myself up a bit. And then I am all too aware of just how self-indulgent it is to even be spending so much energy on this topic.

The other day I had a 45-minute conversation/negotiation with my mother about what she is willing to serve (not veggie matzoh ball soup) and what i am willing to eat (not factory-farmed roast chicken) at the Passover seder I'll be home for next week. Sheesh.

Now that the week of obsessively documenting my food movements is over...

Since starting this blog I've been meaning to post more about the rules, how I developed them, how they shift over time, how much I stick to them (or, more to the point, don't), and why I have them in the first place.

This is all feeling extra important right now, because

1. in cataloging every single thing that passed my lips last week, I realized how very uncommitted I have been to my rules lately, mostly in the realm of where cheese comes from.
2. I have been craving meat, after about a six-month period of being grossed out by the very idea of it.
   

And I need to think really carefully about how I'm going to handle it. Periodically over the time that I've been eating this way, I realize that I'm either shifting my beliefs in a certain area, or drifting away from my intentions—and generally what I do in response is to shift my guidelines to be more in line with my evolving beliefs, or recommit to my rules and make a conscious effort to do better. Right now I'm having a lot of internal conflict over what's both realistic and ethical (as well as not overly rigid and full of self-denial, which for me—as I think I've said—is a really, really bad combination).

First of all, I want to point out that the rules can easily be divided into two types, and it makes a huge difference to me which kind of rule I'm breaking. There are the no-factory-farmed, local-only rules, which are about ethics: How is my food being produced, and what kind of impact is its production having on others (farmworkers, animals, the enviroment generally)? Obviously I don't think that eating meat or other animal products is categorically wrong; but I'm striving for a light footprint, and that guides my decisions. Then there are the as-unprocessed-as-possible rules, keeping me away from sweets and other stuff that makes me feel like crap. Of course, there's some overlap—and there's definitely a solid argument to be made that high-fructose corn syrup is part and parcel of an environmentally unsound system—but for the most part, I see these rules as about self-care rather than ethics, so breaking them is really just about whether it's worth it to me to maybe get a sugar headache from those Ginger-Os, or have a food-additive hangover from that snack mix.

So, on the first kind of rule: Why not just be totally vegan and be done with all the hairsplitting and hamster-wheeling about which cheese is okay when? Well, aside from the fact that I don't think I could stand to cut any one thing out of my diet completely (least of all some things I love love love and depend on nutritionally [more on that in a sec]: eggs, yogurt, or cheese), the fact of something's vegan-ness doesn't mean it was ethically produced or environmentally sound. (There's tons of vegan junk food that is overpackaged, overprocessed, and over-everythinged that's wrong with our industrially based food system.) So, basically, it fits in just fine with my ethics to eat some organic yogurt that came from pastured cows on a relatively small farm about 60 miles from where I live instead of some soygurt made from soybeans that were grown absolutely no closer to me than the Midwest—and maybe as far away as China. (Not that I don't use soygurt in the filling of my vegan lasagna—or that I always know where the soybeans that went into my tofu came from.)

And sometimes the rules conflict with each other: Meat substitutes are rilly frickin' processed, so where does that leave me when my choices are meat or fake meat? And what about French cheese? It's much more likely that French cheese isn't factory-farmed (not like all of Europe's agriculture is small-scale and sustainable, but it's a damn sight better than here)—but, duh, it violates the local rules pretty bad.

And then there's the whole nutrional-dependence thang. I really do think I need animal protein sometimes (usually eggs, less usually cheese, and, rarely, meat). Some people do well on a vegan diet, and some don't. I do well as a mostly vegetarian—but I know more than a few folks who get anemic, chronically fatigued, and generally nonfunctional if they don't eat meat often enough. Where's the right balance between needs, wants, and ethics?

Clearly (at least, what's become clearer to me while writing this entry, which by the way has taken three days—only partly because I've had more work this week than the last two), if I recommit to my animal-product-sourcing rules (i.e., quit eating at the Parkway and the Mexicali Rose so much and make a more serious effort to eat vegan when I'm out), then I can indulge these meat cravings at some of the lovely places near me that serve sustainable and humane meat.

Surely I'll have more—too much more—to say about this later.

Shopping, cooking, and eating: day 7 (the final diary day!)

I thought it was going to be a 100 percent eating day, but I did end up in a grocery store after dinner. Here's the list:

• the other apple I bought on Saturday
• two mandarins
• some of the Indian potato stew I made yesterday, over rice from the rice cooker; I thought this would hold me to dinner, but it didn't, so while out at the café working, I had to eat...
• a "raisin bran" muffin, which was the only thing that wasn't basically cake or pastry; doubtless it had some refined flour, but it didn't give me any refined-sugar headache or anything
• a bunch of corn chips that came with my friend/work buddy A.'s burrito (please note that this is not the same A. at whose apartment I ate lots of things on day 2)
• huge glass of genmai cha and a refill on the hot water with the same teabag (the café version of the bottomless cup, essentially)
  
• then, dinner with my date, D. (of the crag rangoon–infested meal with the other A.): a cup of lentil soup and a piece of (white flour) bread that was kinda herby and very soft, yum
• some nachos (chips, black beans, salsa, cheese, sour cream, a pepperoncini on top that he didn't want so I ate it happily)
• part of a quesadilla (white flour tortilla, cheese, salsa, with ample evidence that there was meat grease [mmmmm...] on the grill where it was cooked)
• a glass of house red
  
• post-dinner shopping trip: Fig Newmans (low-fat, which was not my choice but D.'s 'cause the full-fat ones were also wheat free, and he rejected the barley flour therein); Tuscan three cheese–flavored Kettle Chips (also per D.), Pirate's Booty (my idea), six granny smith apples (D. insisted on six even though I assured him I would be at the farmers market many times before he was at my house enough times to eat six apples, but whatever; they're from Washington, which is not that far away)
• midnight snack: some Fig Newmans and a couple of the chips, which were not good—too sweet; give me salt and vinegar any day

Not really a banner day for my food choices. Thank gawd this diary week is over. As much as I relish the obsessive documentation of everything I put in my body, it's a little...much.

Shopping, cooking, and eating: day 6

No shopping today.

Cooking and eating, in order:

• bottomless cup of green tea
• leftover roasted veggies from last night
• a navel orange (not the one I bought yesterday but one I bought last Tuesday, or was it Saturday?)
• the last two of the eggs from D.'s chickens, fried sunny-side up in a little olive oil, and two slices of toasted Russian sourdough (I don't really count this as cooking, but yes, I fried the eggs and toasted the toast)
• a tangelo
• one last hamantasch (yes, that really is the singular of hamantaschen, and no, I didn't know that either until yesterday)
  
• a kiwi
• cooked an Indian-style stew (this can be made with any veggies you have around that you think would taste good; I use different things each time, and this was what I had today that seemed right) to eat for lunch tomorrow and over the whole week:
  1. Chop a medium onion.
  2. Heat some olive oil in a smallish soup pot or large saute pan or saucepan over high heat.
  3. Add a few cardamom pods, a couple teaspoons of fenugreek, and a generous tablespoon each of cumin seeds and mustard seeds.
  4. When the seeds start to fry and burst, add the onion. Add salt. Turn the heat down if necessary to keep from scorching.
  5. Chop some garlic (I used four cloves today) and add them to the pot with a generous amount (a tablespoon or two?) of ground cumin and a smaller amount of coriander, and an even smaller amount of turmeric.
  6. Don't burn yourself on the side of the pot, right on your wrist tattoo, while adding the spices. Oops, too late.
  7. Add a bit of water to the pot to keep everything from burning, and turn it down again.
  8. Chop three potatoes and add them to the pot along with more salt.
  9. Separate cauliflower into florets and add to the pot.
  10. Add a big can of garbanzo beans, drained, and then add some water—you can add enough to cover all the veggies, if you want it relatively wet, but I'm not looking for anything super-soupy today so I am going light on the water. If I had veggie broth I would use that instead, but I don't.
  11. Wash a bunch of chard, chop the stems, and add them to the pot.
  12. Simmer for a while, and when potatoes are tender, chop the chard leaves and add them, too.
  13. Simmer a little more and then taste for seasoning. Correct seasoning and simmer some more.
  14. Stick in it the fridge for tomorrow's lunch and beyond. It keeps well and will be even more flavorful after sitting overnight.
  
• cooked some rice in the rice cooker
• (back to eating now) some dried apricots and Ak-mak crackers, oh I love them so
  
• a mandarin from yesterday's market
• a piece of none-too-crisp celery out of the crisper dipped in some peanut sauce I made for a party several weeks ago (that stuff has so much garlic in it, it keeps for months)
  
• some broccoli sauteed with the remaining tofu I marinated on Friday, over some rice from the rice cooker

UPDATE:

• some Mary's Gone Crackers, black pepper flavor
• one of those chocolate truffles I mentioned the other day
• two veeeeery theeeeen slices of Russian sourdough (untoasted), spread with the very last of the Earth Balance
  

Last night I dreamed of Earth Balance

No joke: a huge half-full tub appeared in my fridge alongside the small almost-empty one that's already there.