I HAVE PROBLEMS

I realized today as I was changing our sheets that as I was ordering from my meat vendor (remember, I own a restaurant), I was in fact ordering death to a number of animals. Things like this bother me. It's also been bothering me that though I'm very proud of the food we serve, the portions are often three times bigger than they need to be (causing my patrons to overeat), we season our food (salt), I make amazing desserts (sugar), and we butter our potatoes and deep fry some foods (fat). I know, I don't hold a gun to my customers' heads and most of the time they aren't even overweight. But still.. you can be any size and be unhealthy. Anyway!


My mother tried her best to shield my family from the SAD (standard American diet), and I commend her for doing so. We had a salad with every dinner, which were often low-fat meats and veggies, my parents bought good bread, reasonable cereals, pure maple syrup, peanut butter you have to stir. One of my favorite foods today is strawberry jam, an old-hat classic for most, but as a kid we had exotic preserves: raspberry, blackberry, heck, ginger jam. Seriously: I did not try Ranch dressing until I worked for the diner down the street, and the job, coupled with my now husband, then boyfriend's penchant for fast food, and my complete lack of self-control and knowledge of a balanced diet, my food addiction got kicked into high gear.

I am a salt addict. It's the fat in most salty things that's addictive, too, but salt, salt is just different. It has such powers to enhance flavors and make things palatable or unpalatable; it causes thirst; it's essential to the body (though most of us consume far more than we need). I love sugar, too, but salt, it gets me high. I started to really be able to gauge how full I was when I started cutting back and eliminating salt in my cooking and started actually tasting the food.

I think many of us start getting used to these flavors young. We taste salt and sugar and we want more. (Chef Ann Cooper in one of her TED Talks videos says something to the effect of, "We aren't born craving potato chips and ice cream.") Our own parents are addicted to these things, and along with them, we're addicted to flour, fat, etc.

I plan on raising my kids without animal proteins in their diets, but if I weren't planning on that, I would probably model their diets on the foods I ate growing up. The only problem for me was, I was already addicted to fast food. My mouth still salivates at the hamburger, fries, and chocolate shake from In & Out Burger we'd get maybe once or twice a month; or the chicken bowls from El Pollo Loco (the chicken and pinto beans were likely loaded with salt, and I loved to add lots of spicy salsa) I ate with fruit punch; or the Burger King kid's meals we'd eat on the road to my choir practice-- my mother still regrets these meals to this day, and to this day I remember that though choir became tedious, I always loved those meals. I got high.

For whatever reason, I don't see too many heavily obese people in the area I live and work. Most people are at least normal-sized, though admittedly that's a size 12-14. 15-30 extra pounds is a lot of excess weight to carry around all the time, and the thing is, though many people are well-intentioned, there are so many products that it is overtly confusing.

Not to mention we have so much information floating around, especially in this wonderful age of the internet. There are so many products right now that it actually enrages me to go to the grocery store. I want to cry to people when I see them mulling over soda pop, "No! The diet isn't better! Well, maybe it could be! You need water! Put a lemon in it! YOU'LL GET USED TO IT, FRIEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!"; I want to punch every single box of cookies, I want to shred those bags of chips, do a dance on them, pulverize them with my feet. Not only are we wasting so much energy and ingredients on food that is completely devoid of nutrients, we are mislead by those products that promise less fat but add more sugar or salt when us poor souls are merely trying to make a well-intentioned effort to be good to our bodies.


One of the things that enrages me the most: GUMMY VITAMINS. FOR ADULTS.

 My problem is not that adults are taking vitamins. We should be taking vitamins, especially when we need to supplement food items we aren't consuming. I happily eat 6 servings of veggies and fruits a day and I still take one. My problem is that we're making things too palatable and we're not encouraging the abundance of those necessary foods on our plates.


Another things that enrages me: WHAT WE'VE LEARNED IS WRONG


... and it's getting so hard to unlearn it. I was talking to my husband's wonderful parents about how I dream of bettering our children's ideas of food. His mom told me about how in the city they live, kids are cooked fresh lunches. Now, I didn't challenge this because I know she doesn't know the exact menu but when I got home I looked up a local school's meal plan. Here's a lunch taken directly from the school's lunch menu:


Hamburger on a Bun
Smiley Face Potatoes
Dill Pickle Chips
Diced Peaches
Chef’s Blend Lettuce/Grape Tomatoes




This doesn't seem that bad, does it? But let's think about the hamburger (I won't even discuss "pink slime" but if you want to read a little, be my guest!)-- it's processed and it's no doubt frozen. It's served on a bun made with sugar and processed flour, which by the way, we eat FAR too much of. (Why is everything gluten-free? Because we've overdone it so much that our bodies can't handle it anymore.) I don't even know what Smiley Face Potatoes are but I'm pretty sure they're heavily processed (skin removed, smile inserted, perhaps breaded lightly and fried), likely seasoned with salt. Hopefully baked and not fried on site; and since most kids love it, served with blood sugar-rollercoaster high fructose corn syrup-- I mean ketchup. Pickles are probably technically vegetables in this day and age, but we'll note their high salt content, the diced peaches are likely canned, which means more high fructose corn syrup and sugar, and thank god! some fresh lettuce and tomatoes that the kids, though I prefer to be optimistic, are likely picking at (but hey! I could be very possibly be wrong).


so we have:


Meat that is now pretty much defined as toxic ( click here for the LA Times article. This one goes along the same line: Harvard doctor on Red Meat Study) on a bun which I would say has very little fiber and will probably convert to sugar quite quickly in their little tummies, processed potatoes (is this is why kids look at cauliflower and think it's onions?), salty pickles (mmmm), peaches in so much unhealthy sugar it'll make them groggy, and lettuce with little grape tomatoes. Probably eaten with high-fat and high-sugar aaaaaaaaaaaand MSG-containing Ranch dressing. YIKES. At least these meals don't bribe you with cheap little toys made by children who don't get happy meals.



I have a dream, and that is to start / be a driving force of a program (there are lots of good ones out there, actually) for local kids so that they can start learning to cook food IN SCHOOL (and then share with their families), learn what food actually looks like and how it's cultivated, and how to build and maintain a balanced diet (have them keep activity and food journals, etc.). I would like to go from school to school and from grade to grade, keeping it as local and fresh as possible. I personally don't want to do this for all of Wisconsin or even all of the U.S.-- I want to do this for the county I live in. I would like to run not only this program, but I'd like a center that is accessible for everyone, where people can come in and learn about health and what constitutes nourishment, what can make life easier for them. I'd also like to found a community farm garden in which unemployed citizens or volunteers of the county can learn to farm the food that will be sold/donated. 

Until then, I am resolving to put together a pamphlet which I can hand out to people, containing fast, easy, filling recipes and some nutritional guidance. 






What's in that picture, Marja?, I hear you asking! Let me tell you!


QUINOA SALAD-- warm chickpeas and beets paired with a cool, lightly seasoned quinoa salad. YUUUUUUUUUUM

1. Cook the quinoa. You may cook it in advance and feel proud of yourself for doing so. 


Combine 1 c. quinoa (rinse if needed) with 2 c. h2o in small saucepan. Bring to a boil on medium heat and simmer until liquid is absorbed. NOTE: A lot of grains'll tell you not to stir while it's cooking. That is bullshit. You are allowed to stir whenever you want. I find it prevents the stuff from getting stuck on the bottom.


Let cooked quinoa cool. (If you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT WAIT, rinse it off in strainer with smaller-than-quinoa holes until it's cool. Drain.)


2. Add some yummy diced veggies and toss with quinoa.


I used shredded carrots, some thinly sliced red onion (rinse the onion off in cold water to get rid of a little of that sharp onioneyness), some diced Persian cucumber (English cucumber or plain ol' cucumber with seeds removed would work too), and some diced tomatoes. Toss it up, add 2+T olive oil, some salt and pepper, and BAM. Quinoa salad. I serve this over lettuce and add


CURRIED CHICKPEAS


Heat up a frying pan. Add a little olive oil and however many chickpeas you would like (I preferred canned to homemade beans in this instance but you could do whatever you want) and sprinkle on some curry powder. Be careful if the heat is up because these suckers will POP right into your beautiful open eyes. You could wear goggles or simply put a lid on it. I went so far as to warm my beets (which for some reason makes me blush) in a separate pan with a little bit of water in it, and the whole shebang was super satisfying. 




You could very well add more olive oil or some sort of dressing, but I find a meal like this sates me just fine, thankyouverymuch. It would benefit from some greek olives and pepperoncinis but that's up to you too. The quinoa salad itself lasts for at least a week and is a really good side dish because you can just take it out of the fridge and scoop it on a plate (or put it in a cup, put the cup over lettuce, and carefully nudge the cup off, like I did in the picture). I like to make things in advance because I tend to get famished out of nowhere.



Until next time, goodbye. May we be happy, may we be healthy, may we be peaceful, may we be safe.