May 3, 2005

• All I Want is Food and Creative Love
  © The Author, 2005

  The United States Department of Agriculture thinks I eat 900% more veggies a day than I need to. I’m almost eating as many fruits as I need, but I’m way behind in the bread and meat department. The new Food Pyramid has me figured out: I’m a vulture at the Farmer’s Market but I’m nearly too broke to afford the beans, lentils, milk, and eggs at the grocery store once I’ve finished salivating at the veggie stands, let alone have any dough left over for bread and meat. But I don’t mind. I like my veggies. I like digging into a good spoonful of all natural peanut butter (that’s right, I like the goopy, messy, greasy kind best!), or scraping together a handful of soy nuts, or munching away at beans and legumes at dinner to acquire my daily dose of protein. Typically I eat a bowl of oatmeal in the morning, a salad and fruit at lunch, and a “fancy” salad at dinner. I always thought this made me a pretty healthy gal, but the new food pyramid seems to think otherwise. The new food pyramid wants to sell me lots and lots and lots of meat.

  Besides the outrageous cost, another, very secondary factor in my reluctance to buy meat is those damn PETA ads that tell you all sorts of things you were better off not knowing. I’ll try not to ruin your appetite here, but I will tell you this much: every time I am standing am standing at the butchers case, I dry heave quietly to myself as I remember a grotesque PETA video that my friend sent me in an email. It featured a bunch of fat assed turkeys suffering from a bad case of mange struggling to make it to their food bowl. You see this was quite a challenge for one turkey in particular because there were about a zillion other turkeys (literally—a zillion), all the size of woolly mammoths crammed together in an area the size of my cubicle at work. Also, it didn’t help matters that this little turkey’s legs had broken clean in half under the weight of his gargantuan, hormone fattened body. I’m sure that’s not the worst PETA has to offer, but I refuse to see anymore or read any more. It’s too nauseating.

  So am I a vegetarian? As a rule, if I’ve got to stomach buying the meat raw and cooking it I am. But I’ll order a good piece of bleeding veal at a restaurant any day, as long as someone else is paying.

  For those of you who haven’t gone online to check out the new online food pyramid for yourself, I highly recommend it. Instead of a formulaic diet (because formulas are devil spawn), it calculates your age, height, weight, activity level, and what you generally eat in a day. The only thing that it’s lacking seems to be the capacity to scan in pictures in of your parents. Then it could tell you how to avoid their nastier traits and to gauge your metabolism. I’d be interested to see what this feature would say about me since my dad is slightly smaller than Jobba the Hut and slightly larger than a sumo wrestler, while my mom is barely visible when viewed from the side (I know my mommy dearest would appreciate it if I mentioned that he did not look like this while they were together, while she has only gotten more gorgeous over time).

  The only downside to the new food pyramid is that it triggers my inner conspiracy theorist. When I put my demographic information into the computer and then check a list of foods I’ve eaten that day (many are name brand, you will notice—oatmeal does not exist apparently if it is not Quaker oatmeal) and my email address, I get the sneaking suspicion that Uncle Sam is whoring my dietary habits off to the marketing departments at Kraft and General Mills. What is to stop them from telling me that I need to consume 900% more fruit roll ups when the economy is suffering from low fruit roll up purchases? You never know—those things are made out of petroleum, I hear. ::smile::

  Anyhow, for those of you whose visit to http://www.mypyramid.gov/ come away with advice to eat more veggies, here is a recipe from a girl who apparently eats way too many of them. This salad is of the “fancy” variety, and it is suitable as a meal at dinner if you haven’t gone for a run that day and have been sitting on your ass in a cubicle, growing staler and lardier by the minute. In fact, it’s what we ate tonight!

  Bon Appetite!

  Beats, Beans, and Cheesy Treats

  2 beetroots (don’t buy the canned kind—they’re gross!)
  1 bunch of baby Spinach (the trendiest of all the veggies right now)
  1 clove of garlic
  1 tbs capers (drained)
  1 small handful of pine nuts (also called Pignoli if you’re Italian or me pretending to be)
  1 lb green beans
  Some yummy goat cheese (I cant measure this for you—I don’t know how much cheese you like!)
  1 tbs olive oil
  1 tbs red wine vinegar
  Some freshly ground pepper (note: if you use the pepper, you have to grind it like Dana Carvy in the Pepper Boy SNL skit. Your mantra must become, “would you like the fresh-a-peppa?” If you can’t live up to that, then you can’t include the pepper in the recipe. Sorry, that’s just the way it has to be.)

  Boil some water in a big pot. While that is happening, give your beetroots a good scrub—they can be filthy. Get your garlic out and chop it up really small with your big knife that looks like it belongs in a horror film—you know, the big, pointy triangle one. Be sure you give the garlic a good smash with the flat end of the blade (all pointy, sharp bits pointing away from you) before taking the skin off. Rachel Ray taught us to do that on the Food Network. It “releases the aroma,” but more importantly, it makes you look like a pro chef.

  Okay. Your water is boiled now, so put your beets in the pot and cover it. Let it boil like mad for 30 minutes. While that is happening, get another pot and bring another batch of water to a boil.

  While the water in pot #2 is working up to a boil and pot #1 is rockin’ away at your beets, clean up your green beans. Rinse them really good and snap off any weird looking bits, which are generally found at the tips.

  Alas! Your beans are clean and your pot #2 is furiously churning. Add the beans to the pot, cover, and reduce the heat.

  While pot #2 is cooking your green beans, get a little fry pan and put your tbs of olive oil in it and warm it up. Add your garlic and stir a bit. Then add your pine nuts and capers. DON’T LET THESE BURN! That will ruin everything. Last time it happened a t-rex was trying his hand at a new glaze for his brontosaurus burger and the garlic burned and it caused extinction. So don’t even try it! Watch it like a hawk who is curiously interested in pine nuts and garlic until it is browned but not burned and then you will turn back into a human and transfer these goodies to a nearby bowl, where you will whisk a bit of red wine vinegar into them with a fork.

  Now, shut off the burner for the beans (no—they haven’t been cooking long—mushy beans are yucky!), and dump the whole thing in the spaghetti strainer you have magically waiting for you in the sink. Now put the drained beans back in their pot.

  Go fetch your beetroots. Drain them and run cool water over them for a bit, then let them just chill (literally—they need to cool off) for a bit.

  Get your baby spinach and arrange it on two plates (oh yeah—I forgot to tell you—this only serves about 3 people at best and I make this for my malnourished husband and I). Arrange a small handful of beans on each plate. Top this with the un-burnt caper/garlic/pine nut concoction.

  Oh look! Now the beetroots are cool. Go to them with some paper towels. Rub them with force. No, not malice—I said force—they are slippery and if they squirm away from you while you are maliciously rubbing they will land on your clothes and stain them! And then everyone would know that you wear the same pants to work everyday because while you may have more than one pair of khakis, you defiantly would not have more than one pair with a matching beet root stain on them. Anyhow, when you do this rubbing, the skins will rub off on the paper towel and you have two naked, pretty beetroots. Cut the ends off, and quarter them. The beetroots should be still a bit warm, but not scalding unless you did this step too soon because you are a masochist who likes manhandling hot veggies.

  Now put a bit of beetroot atop each salad and add your goat cheese crumbles.

  Happy eating!

  What foods do you dig?

  • 10:40 pm
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