The Omnivore's Dilemma

I picked up a copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma recently at my local library, and I must say it's a very eye-opening read. For those who don't know, The Omnivore's Dilemma is an examination of several of the paths taken by the food we eat; specifically the industrial path, the organic paths, and the foraging path. So far, I've gotten past the industrial section and am deep into the organic part.

The industrial section puts forth the thesis that pretty much all the processed food we eat (and in the book, "processed" extends to pretty much every conventional food item) derives from the massive quantities of corn that are grown by agribusiness every year. It goes into great detail about the governmental policies that have led to an oversupply of corn, and how the food industry goes about reducing that surplus. A review online had the comment "you'll never look at corn the same way", and I think I have to agree. Generally speaking, I subscribe to the shopping philosophy of "buy most of your stuff from the outer-rings of the market, and very little from the middle", so I don't buy a lot of what we usually think of as "processed" foods. Unfortunately, if the book makes you want to try and avoid corn in your food, you can't get away from it when you eat any kind of animal product, either. I don't know that "depressing" is the right word, but it does seem like something's a little out of whack with our conventional food supply.

Unfortunately, the organic section really doesn't do much to lift a reader's spirits. Apparently, a lot of the organic farms are very similar to conventional industrial farms in how they generate their product, and much of the marketing and labeling effort of organic foods goes into producing an aura of "feel-good"ism that probably isn't true. For example, the author talks about free-range chickens grown by a producer in California that only have access to "free-range" for a two week window of their (very short) seven week life span, and that most birds don't even range/forage at all. The feeling I get from the book is that if you're organic and want to make real money, you kind of have to buy into the conventional food industry model.
Pollan's description of "big organic" makes me wonder, though, about taste tests comparing organic to "processed" products (like tomatoes, or chickens), and how much selection bias plays into results where the organics win. I mean, from the book, the way an organic chicken lives sounds an awful lot like how the Perdue chickens my grandparents raised lived.

That's about as far as I've gotten. It's a good read, and it's compelling stuff. At the end of the day, I don't know what the answers are to the way we eat. Much like Fast Food Nation, the book gives you an overwhelming amount of information about how bad things are, but little (at least so far) in the way of solutions. Maybe the rest of the book gets more into that side of things, or maybe it's enough sometimes to describe a problem, and let others solve it. I don't know.
But I do recommend the book.

Running...

When my mom died in the spring, one of the things that stuck with me from the experience was the time I spent talking to my Uncle Larry about running. Partly, it helped to keep my mind of what was happening, and partly it served to motivate me.

My uncle is a big time runner, having run in the Boston marathon, the New York, the Marine Corps, and a bunch of others. I, on the other hand, am a very casual runner. My fitness routine (until recently) could be described as "go to the gym a couple times a week to lift weights and do about 20 minutes of cardio". It's enough to keep me sort of fit, but I'm certainly not in the shape I was in 15-20 years ago. But during the funeral, we talked a bunch about running, and I mentioned how I wanted to run a marathon (and oddly enough, at the last funeral I went to, I said the same thing). I think he must've figured it was a lot of talk, since something he later sent me in an email stuck with me, which was "you get to be a good runner by running".

Anyway, I put off and put off getting serious about running, and one day, I guess I snapped.I went and signed up for the City of Oaks marathon here in Raleigh (November 2, still plenty of time to train for the half, if anyone of the 3 people who read this are interested!). I figured if I paid my money, I'd have a more powerful incentive to train than if I kept putting it off, and I also knew that it's pretty easy to say "someday, I'm going to..." and to let that stand in for doing.

It's been a long 12 weeks (I think) of training, and it's hard to believe that I ran 12 miles today as my "easy" day prior to running 18 next week. I guess I'm fitter, and I have to admit, I enjoy getting up at the crack of dawn, going to Umstead Park, lacing up the shoes and running a looong way. It's a nice slice of time where I can contemplate and think "deep thoughts" (of which I have plenty lately), and zone out to a certain degree, becoming one with nature and all that jazz (when I ran during Hanna, I remember coming upon deer who just looked at me like "what the hell are you thinking", and even though I was 10 feet away, they didn't even budge)

I guess if I were to say why I'm doing it, it's probably because my parents were never the most active people in the world, and the last years of Mom's life were spent in and out of the hospital. I'd like to think that if they had been more active (and to be honest, alot of her inactivity was due to various illnesses, not because she was a couch potato or anything), she might have had a better quality of life. But anyway, I guess I'm attempting to avoid a similar fate (and I plan on living a very long time, thank you very much), and part of that attempt is to be a lot more active.

I usually don't get all introspective or confessional in this blog (it is, after all, a food blog, not a "crying in my beer" blog), but I guess it's the runner's high talking.
I'll write about things like breaded chicken breasts and "how to build an immersion chiller" later to make up for it, I promise.

Simple Pleasures

After a long day slaving over a hot desk, simple pleasures are often the best. One of my favorite things to make for nibbling on while I cook dinner is this simple tomato salad.
I don't know how classic of a combination it is, but the salt, pepper, olive oil and vinegar tossed with tomatoes evokes for me memories of growing up, when my parents would grow tomatoes on the back deck, and we'd eat them sliced, dusted with salt and pepper and drizzled with vinegar.

This recipe isn't faithful to that youthful experience, though, since back then my parents didn't use coarse salt or freshly ground pepper, and I don't think you could even buy rice vinegar.
Speaking of which, you could sub in either balsamic or wine vinegar, but I think seasoned rice vinegar gives the exact amount of both sweet and tart (most balsamics you buy at the grocery are close to awful, IMO, and if you use wine vinegar, you'll want to maybe add a little sugar).
Adding the oil immediately after sprinkling with salt will prevent some of the salt from dissolving (since salt will not dissolve in oil), which adds a nice texture, in my opinion. If you don't care for it, just let the tomato and salt to sit for a minute to let the salt dissolve.

Dave's Simple Tomato Salad:
1 large tomato, as good quality as you can get
kosher salt
fresh ground pepper
~2 tbsp olive oil
~2 tbsp seasoned rice vinegar

Chop tomato coarsely, and put in a bowl. Sprinkle several pinches of kosher salt (to taste) over the chopped tomato, dust with freshly ground pepper, and then drizzle with oil and vinegar and toss.
Let sit for a few minutes (to let the salt pull some of the juices from the tomato), and then toss again. Enjoy.


quote of the day:
"Yes, this is my singing voice. It's not just cheap irony" - Art Brut - 'Formed a Band'

And.... it's good!

The verdict on Fleet Foxes: it's a great album, and exactly what I need to get thru this Thursday morning.

Music Wednesday

It's 12:38am, it's now officially Thursday morning, and I'm a little too wired to go to sleep.
What to do? The obvious answer, buy music.

I've been wanting to get the Fleet Foxes album for the longest time, so that's what I'm going with.
I'll post later my thoughts. I think their song "White Winter Hymnal" is great, so I'm guessing the whole album is as good.

Hey, edamame!

A gardening friend of mine gave me a boatload of fresh veggies last week, and in the flood of tomatoes, corn, and zucchini, I was given a big bag of edamame.
Rather than eat them the sushi bar way (where you boil the pods in salted water, and then shell them at the table/bar like peanuts), I decided to make a salad out of them:


Edamame salad:
2 cups edamame
zest from one lemon
1/2 med onion, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
juice from 1/2 a lemon
1/2 - 1 cup corn
1/2 c fresh chopped dill
seasoned rice vinegar
grated parmesan
salt
pepper

This started as my rendition of a salad that Mark Bittman ("The Minimalist") had in the NY Times last week, which was just beans, oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, parmesan and mint. Well, I couldn't find any mint, so I went with dill, and then when I tasted it, I thought it needed something more, and I realized I had 2 ears of corn leftover from the night before, so I added that for kind of a "succotash" thing, and then I added a little vinegar to make it less lemony and more pure acidic.

But anyway, it was pretty good, and I finished it off today with my lunch, but I had a tomato that needed to be used, so I chopped that up, and dumped that in too. I think the tomato made the difference. (I wish I had a pic of that, but oh well.)

Ad hoc...

One of my fondest food memories of all time is the time I ate at the French Laundry in 1998. Since then, Thomas Keller has slowly built a restaurant empire, and one of his restaurants is named "Ad hoc". The premise is that every night, there's one price fixe menu. You don't like what they have that night, too bad.
I mention this, because if you sign up for the mailing list, they'll send you the night's menu every day. Since I live in Cary, NC, and Ad hoc is in Yountville, CA, there's not much chance I'm going to be eating there very often, but it's pretty cool to read the menus, if only to get ideas for meals and dishes.
For example, last night, their menu had "melted wax beans" on it. Since I had no idea what that meant, I sent them an email asking what it was (is it beans tossed in melted butter? what?). They were nice enough to reply (so my hat's off to them for that), and they explained that they are slow-cooked beans, until they're very soft (and I'd assume melty).

I'm going to have to try making that. I can already see something like beans with some bacon, or thin-sliced ham (or prosciutto, or pancetta), slow cooked, with maybe a little diced tomato and onions...

But anyway, lots of restaurants nowadays have mailing lists, and they're a great way to keep informed of special events, special menus, etc., and I recommend checking them out.