Larry's Thanksgiving Contribution

Today is substitute blogger day. I'm filling in for Joy so I can tell you about the British and Canadian cooking influences that she has exposed me to over the years, since she is both British and Canadian herself. Years ago, we both really liked a Canadian show called Manic Organic where the host grew his own organic food on an Ontario farm. We also liked the Jamie Oliver programs where he cooked at (what seemed to be) his own house in the English countryside.

And when we last visited Joy's brother in Surrey, England, we learned that he and his wife enjoyed a cooking show called River Cottage, hosted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall. In the episode we watched, Hugh held up these Samosa-looking meat pie objects and said they were called "pasties" and that Welsh miners went off to work with pasties in their pockets to eat later in the day. Or something like that. All I could think about was problems with pocket lint.

When I decided to contribute a vegetarian dish to our Thanksgiving dinner, I looked through two excellent Jamie Oliver cookbooks that Joy has given me over the years. I've hardly used them, if at all, but I think they rub off on me just by sitting on our shelves.

The recipe that looked like the best match for Joy's menu was for "Baked Creamed Spinach" out of Jamie Oliver's Great Britain. I always liked the rustic look of Jamie's food — more country cottage and dinner with friends than white linens and stuffy waiters.

I didn't quite understand all of the terms in the recipe, but I certainly got the spirit. For instance, I'm still not sure what a "knob" of butter is, but I gathered I was free to go with my instincts. Also, he didn't give exact cooking times — he just said to cook the first part of the dish (spinach, cream, onions, tomato, garlic) down until it looked "thick and lovely," which was much nicer than setting a timer. The final serving called for browning breadcrumbs and cheese over top the creamed spinach. Jamie said to put the dish under the grill and let it "bubble away" for 5 to 8 minutes, or until it was "bubbly and gorgeous."

I recommend the hearty books by Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall. Next year, I might put a few pasties in my (freshly laundered) pockets and head off in my Wellies to find a River Cottage with a brick fireplace and well-stocked pantry for another fun cooking experience.

My Top Five

As Joy’s carnivorous husband, I am often asked how I put up with all that healthy vegetarian food coming out of our kitchen. (It’s my kitchen, too!)

Here are the top five reasons, in no particular order, based on our last 15 years together.

1. Onions (and garlic) sautéing in olive oil. This seems to be step one in a lot of her dishes, and I’m often greeted with this wonderful aroma when walking in the door. My brain knows what it is, but nevertheless my mouth always does a little fist pump and then asks “what’s cooking”, because I know I’ll love it. It’s a no-brainer.

2. Feta Cheese. My momma never feta me this when I was a kid. Now, I find that I love virtually ever dish, hot or cold, that has it. We get it from the Greek stand at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market.

3. Asparagus Risotto. I never knew what risotto was until I was in my thirties, believe it or not. But I sure do now. Having had it in restaurants, I can tell you that Joy’s vegetable stock is the secret to a good risotto.

4. Tomatoes and Basil. Like with the onions, this is a smell that will immediately conjure all the best sensory memories of marinara sauce, pizza, or pasta with pesto. We can pick both from our garden, and I love the smell of the fresh picked herbs as it intertwines with the more subtle tomato scent.

5. Potatoes. To me, this is the perennial comfort food. Joy can make curry or roasted root vegetables or exotic soups, and if I know my old friend Mister Potato is in there, I know I’m going to be happy.

Urban Goat Herding

Every year at tax time, Joy and I do an additional calculation on our household energy usage. With the rising price of gas, we felt it was time to become more sustainable at home, and get more serious about urban farming.

So we got a goat. Her name is Lucretia. She is a Nubian goat, a breed that has the best milk, according to the American Dairy Goat Association.

Even though people break municipal chicken laws all the time in our L.A. neighborhood of El Sereno, we wanted to be legal, so we had to learn how to apply for a city permit. In doing our research, we learned about the Goat Justice League in Seattle, where they pioneered the modern urban goat advocacy movement.

Since Joy was busy churning butter most days, I took on the job of learning how to milk Lucretia. Believe it or not, there was an iPAD app for that, which was very helpful until Lucretia chewed my iPAD, and I began to reconsider this lifestyle choice.

On behalf of Joy’s Organic Kitchen, I’d like to wish you a very happy April 1st.

Teachable Moments

The New York Times recently noted the passing of the creator of Cheez Doodles, Morrie Yohai, a World War II veteran and junk food pioneer who helped shape the Baby Boom generation – literally.

Joy’s childhood was split between England and Canada. She wasn’t exposed to the quality and quantity of junk food that I was in the USA, the Saudi Arabia of sugar.

I was to sugar what Scarface was to cocaine. We liked it white, refined, and as often as possible.

In previous posts, I’ve talked about my family’s addiction to Coca Cola and Charles Chips. But I also loved Milk Duds, Turkish Taffy, Atomic Fireballs, Ju Ju Bees, Necco Wafers, and Sugar Daddies. My parents were enablers. They never said no to sugar.

When it came to veggies, I had trauma. I could handle canned string beans and corn, sprinkled with salt, but I gagged on garden-fresh vegetables. They were squishy and irregular and smelled earthy and did not come in plastic packaging. They were not advertised on TV.

I still remember the first time I tasted vegetables like tomatoes and asparagus. Blech! My first exposure to sweet potato was in the cafeteria in 1st grade. I was revolted, and subsequently instituted a six-year cafeteria boycott, switching to a nuclear submarine lunch box instead.

I decided I wasn’t cut out for vegetables.

So I didn’t learn how to identify or eat them. And the anxiety that I carried around not knowing how to buy, peel, slice, cook or chew fresh vegetables lasted through college.

When I was talking to a friend about his kid’s football team recently, I had a traumatic Little League flashback. I was 9 or 10 years old and playing 3rd base when I got steam-rollered by a massive 12-year old baserunner because of my bad tagging technique.

That could have been a teachable moment, but my father wasn't there to pick me up, dust me off, and coach me on what just happened and how I could avoid being flattened repeatedly. I subsequently drifted, demoralized, out of Little League. Looking back, I realize I just didn't have good sports coaching.

I now see that I could have used some food coaching from my parents as well. When I reached for a Sugar Daddy, they could have said “not now, honey.” When I spit out a Brussels sprout, they could have said “Let’s try again next week.”

These days, I actually appreciate many of the scary vegetables that Joy cooks. I can tell chard from collard greens, and I like Brussels sprouts. I even know what to do with a turnip, if forced.

Too bad I missed out on all that nutrition as a kid.

Perfect Popcorn

Although Joy does most of the cooking, I occasionally take a spin in the kitchen. A few years ago, we realized that I have a knack for the P-Foods. I was exposed at an early age to potato chips and pretzels, and I also learned how to order pizza (see post of March 8, 2010).

But I can also cook a mean pot pie, as I am an inheritor and keeper of my Mom Mom Daniels’ famous chicken pot pie recipe. I may share that recipe with you someday, if you are lucky.

My other claim to fame is that I make the best popcorn in the world. It’s part culinary science and part spiritual practice. I can’t guarantee that this will work on an electric stove. If you have a gas stove, however, you are ready to rock and roll:

First – find a 3-quart saucepan or pot with a lid. If you have several, choose the one that gives the best popcorn vibes.

Second – buy organic popcorn and olive oil, along with sea salt.

Third – collect a few of the old fashioned, handle-less paper bags from a supermarket. (I use Vons.)

Cover the saucepan with a thin coating of olive oil and place four kernels of corn in the bottom – spread out, not bunched. The oil should cover about ¾ of the corn kernels. Turn flame to medium-high.

When the fourth kernel has popped, immediately cover the bottom of the saucepan with corn. Place the lid on. The popping will start soon. I recommend occasionally turning the pot, but it’s not always necessary. You’ll soon learn how level your range burners are.

When the popping passes the top of the Bell Curve and starts to slow, you can turn the flame down to medium low. If you’ve correctly measured the corn, it might begin to nudge the lip upward as it finishes.

Leave the lid on for the last few pops. Shake the pot a few times.

Now pour the exquisitely popped popcorn into the paper bag, add some salt, and then close the bag and shake, using your hips. Place the bag on the counter for a few minutes to absorb any extra oil.

If you’ve done this right, you won’t have any un-popped kernels, and there won’t be very much oil left in the pot.

Wipe out the pot without burning yourself, and repeat. Let this second batch cool and store it in an airtight container - you'll want another bowl later in the week.

Famous Vegetarians

Over the course of our marriage, I’ve gotten to observe the daily challenges (and benefits) of Joy’s vegetarian diet. It seems easy when the food is prepared at home. Not so easy when you’re traveling or trying out new restaurants with your vegetarian wife.

In looking for something entirely unrelated, I stumbled upon this list of famous vegetarians on Wikipedia.

Vegetarians always get the rap that they’re weak and sickly from improper nutrition. But Superman was a vegetarian. Hah!

Here are some golden oldie vegetarians: Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Leonardo Da Vinci, Sir Issac Newton, and Albert Einstein. I guess the veggies are good for the brain.

And here are some other people on the list: Gustav Mahler, Franz Kafka, Bob Marley, Leo Tolstoy, three out of four Beatles, Johnny Appleseed, John Coltrane.

Not bad company at all.

Analog Kitchen

I watched recently as Joy thumbed through her over-stuffed binder of recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines, and I found myself thinking that our new iPad would be a great way to store and catalog recipes in the future.

But Joy would never make that conversion to digital. Her binder works just fine. She likes clipping the recipes and physically flipping the pages. She prefers an analog lifestyle to a digital one.

The word analog in audio and photographic recording means there is a direct physical method of converting and storing data. Photographic film is analog. Vinyl records are analog. There is a direct transfer of data. Digital recording is different. It converts the information into zeros and ones and then recreates it later.

Having grown up with 45s and 33s, I distinctly remember when I first heard of the amazing new digital recording technology in the 1980s. The first digital recording I bought was “Bop til You Drop” by Ry Cooder.

After the digital novelty wore off, audiophiles realized that the old analog recordings were better. They had more depth. Classical music fans especially preferred records over cds for the quality of sound.

I think Joy believes that real food is analog. The nutrients are stored in the plant and then transferred directly to your analog body when you eat them. Simple.

Chemical re-creation of nature is more like digital technology trying to re-create something with zeros and ones. Pills don’t replace plants. Artificial sweeteners are just what they say – artificial.

As with digital recording, the chemical re-creation of nature seems appealing at first, but it can’t really replace or improve upon thousands of years of analog eating by our species.

"Better living through chemistry"? I don't think so. How about "better living through nature."

Nutbars

The first thing I do every morning is pour two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar into two fingers of water, pinch my nose and chug it down.

Joy doesn’t do this, but I’ve been doing it for years, and I’m convinced that it has reduced the number of sinus infections I get each year.

If you Google ‘apple cider vinegar’ you’ll see hundreds of websites on the health benefits of this natural elixir. If you believe a fraction of them, Hippocrates, the Roman Legion, Jesus and Christopher Columbus all drank it for health reasons.

Why did I start this habit? Well, a few years ago, Joy remarked to me that if you drink apple cider vinegar on an empty stomach it ‘alkalinizes your body’ – meaning it resets your body’s pH to its natural default level before you bombard it with acidic food for the next 18 hours.

Apple cider vinegar also contains Acetic acid, which lowers the body’s pH levels and creates an inhospitable environment for infections.

The Internet would have you believe that apple cider vinegar has miraculous health benefits. I don’t know about all that. The most balanced website I’ve found on this subject is here.

My personal choice is Bragg’s organic raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar. Check out their website - it’s quirky, with echoes of Minnie Pearl and Hee Haw. But once you get over the look of the site and read their philosophy, it’s pretty sound. Paul Bragg believed in a diet that “focused on natural live foods”.

The Bragg website reminds me of the Dr. Bronner soaps that we use. I like Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap, which he first sold from his tenement-based store in L.A.’s Pershing Square in 1948.

Dr. Bronner was crazy. He had been in an asylum the previous year. He used to give lectures on how the world would be saved by planetariums, but he noticed that people just bought his peppermint soap and left. So he started printing his save-the-world rants in microscopic print on his soap bar wrappers.

Joy uses a term – Nutbars. I think she’d say the Braggs and Dr. Bronner were Nutbars.

Joy likes Nutbars. They seem to be untainted by commercialism and societal norms. They don’t care what you think about them. They just think they’re right.

And sometimes the Nutbars are exactly right.

Check out this short You Tube Video on Dr. Bronner.

Pollan Season

In my last guest post, I wrote about my growing awareness of local and organic food advocates such as Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. Joy knows I’m still mad at her for not pointing out Jamie Oliver when she saw him shopping at the Hollywood Farmers Market last year. She’s dazzled by rutabagas, not celebrity.

Michael Pollan is on a promotion tour for Food, Inc. (see post March 2010). We’ve heard him on Fresh Air and Democracy Now, both of which can be downloaded as podcasts. He was on Oprah this week, and writes on Huffington Post about Oprah’s battle with the cattle industry. Pollan feels that Oprah “waded back into food politics” in a courageous way by having him on her show.

Joy and I both admire Pollan’s remarkable ability to fight the big money of agri-business and the meat industry armed with only facts, common sense, and a calm and intelligent speaking style. He takes on outrageous crimes against Nature knowing that he would lose his platform if he could ever be painted as shrill or extremist. He is neither.

Pollan’s interview on Huffington Post is framed with an interesting array of old photos of food producers and meat packers. There are more pictures of slaughterhouses and butchers than I would like. I won’t even show the site to Joy -- she couldn’t take it. (The pictures were chosen by Huffington Post, not Pollan.)

But if you’re a meat eater like me, these pictures force you to acknowledge the reality of the all-American meat-eating diet. Pollan isn’t a vegetarian, but he does choose his meat carefully, and eats only grass-fed beef and free-range chicken.

I used to gloss over those terms, feeling they were trendy marketing ploys. But after reading Fast Food Nation and watching Food, Inc., I find myself paying more attention to the meat that I buy. And I find myself appreciating every opportunity to listen to Michael Pollan. He certainly gets my wife’s stamp of approval.

Duck in a Tub

The front page of the Los Angeles Times recently featured a Column One piece about Alice Waters called “Yanking their food chain.” You can find it here.

Through Joy, I’ve learned some of the most notable advocates for local, organic food, and I knew that Alice Waters could be considered the Julia Child of the organic movement. Before Joy came along, the only cooking Alice I knew was from the Alice’s Restaurant song, which I heard Arlo Guthrie sing at my first concert in the 1970s. Now I can read this article about Alice and Julia and Michael Pollan and have a real understanding of the food and farming issues being debated.

Since Joy is (a) vegetarian, and (b) willing to cook for us, I’ve become a house-trained vegetarian myself. By that I mean I don’t cook meat in our kitchen, but I will occasionally barbecue it, or eat it at a restaurant. But Joy’s organic kitchen is really Joy’s organic - vegetarian - kitchen.

I watch Joy cook and help her shop at the Hollywood Farmers Market. All the extra time in the kitchen gives us time to (a) discuss food and (b) drink wine and eat cheese. Last week, I bought some Cowgirl Creamery (Point Reyes, CA) Red Hawk cheese at Whole Foods, at Joy’s suggestion, and learned that washed rind cheeses are very stinky. We had to open the windows.

I’m also the one who browses the used bookstores and L.A. Central Library for food books for Joy. (Brand Books in Glendale has a great food section.) It’s a vicarious pleasure that is slowly shifting my consciousness and habits from (a) wanting to keep my wife occupied to (b) really starting to enjoy the issues and experiences that come with a commitment to local food.

One recent summer we watched our neighbor, Jose Martinez, try to domesticate a duck. God knows where he got her, and we’re pretty sure that she returned to God, because Jose did not shelter her from the coyotes and other predators.

Joy had grown particularly fond of this duck she named Louise. Our kitchen window overlooks the backyard patio where Louise lived (and briefly swam in a Rubbermaid tub).

As Alice Waters said in the LA Times piece, Julia was a pioneer in her time; and she blazed a path that led to Chez Panisse and Joy’s Organic Kitchen. Instead of learning how to bone a duck like Julia did, we chose to photograph Louise and memorialize her short time on earth with a special edition of homemade salsa.

Food Inc.

Saturday morning, Joy and I watched one of our neighbor’s …er… let’s say ‘free range’ hens lay an egg on top of a garden shed we look down on from our kitchen window.

In the evening, we watched a Montreal Canadiens hockey game, which is part of my penance for moving her from Canada to the U.S. for marital purposes. Joy often retires early on Saturday, especially if her team has won. After she goes to bed, I watch action-adventure movies that she can't stomach. She can’t watch violence of any kind… hmm, check that… she can’t watch violence that doesn’t take place on frozen water.

So this night I watched a Netflixed- documentary called “Food, Inc.” All joking aside, I knew there was no way Joy could watch the sections involving slaughterhouses and meat packing. I've read “Fast Food Nation” and Michael Pollan and knew what to expect, and I still found this film disturbing.

The scenes of the factory chicken farms, in which chickens don’t even see daylight, stood in contrast to our neighbor’s wacky hen who laid her egg in the open air.

But what really affected me about the documentary were the scenes about Monsanto and how their high-powered attorneys and strong-armed investigators harassed and intimidated a 75 year-old seed cleaner named Moe Parr. Moe had one of the last remaining seed cleaning machines that allowed farmers to save and re-plant seeds from their own crops - a practice as old as farming itself.

The extent to which Monsanto has wielded wealth, power and influence in the highest branches of our government (and worse) Supreme Court just sickened me. To my surprise, I found myself crying by the end of the film. It wasn’t so much out of sadness, but out of sheer outrage and frustration at how money and power can lead to such devastation of our planet’s eco-system.

This documentary is important. It may not make you cry, but it’s guaranteed to enrage you. It will also support everything that my wife has been saying in this blog. You can’t fight Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland by yourself, but you can vote with your food purchases, and you can educate yourself, and you can add one more voice of opposition to the insanity and destructiveness of our corporately-run food supply system.

Screw them, I say. Let us continue to lay eggs and plant seeds and place the laws of nature above the laws of man.

What’s a guy got to do to get a pizza around here?

Welcome to the first sporadic guest blog from the husband. I’m not a vegetarian, and even after years of marriage, I’m still intimidated by many of the bizarre and protuberant plants that muscled their way into our refrigerator and forced my beer to migrate to the basement.

My mother worked in a factory when she cooked for our family in the 1960s. This was in Pennsylvania, where we were surrounded by farms and fruit stands, but all our meals came from cans. As a kid, I identified with the Leave it to Beaver episode in which June and Ward demanded that The Beaver eat Brussels sprouts. He balked, and hid them in his shirt pocket instead.

My childhood had an unlimited supply of Coke, and weekly deliveries of potato chips and pretzels from the Charles Chips delivery van. If you think I’m exaggerating, Google “Charles Chips Home Delivery.” Ah, those were the days.

When I first dated Joy, she lived in exotic Montreal and served me dinners of “Roasted Root Vegetables” on cold snowy nights. More turnips, dear? Yes, please! (Secretly, I contemplated employing Beaver’s shirt pocket tactic.)

Lucky for us, Joy also drank beer– mostly when watching hockey games. And even though she didn’t eat junk food, I noticed that she didn’t judge me if I did. Although she didn’t eat meat, she never objected when I did.

Through the years, I’ve learned to tame the food cravings. My brain whispers to me that I’m quite fond of sugar, salt, carbohydrates, and cheese. I still succumb to temptation, and also pay the piper on the bathroom scales. But as the quality of my diet increases, I see more room for a middle ground.

But Joy’s blog comes from years of taking the nutritional high road. I’m amazed at the variety of vegetarian recipes that she has tackled, and I’ve learned that they’re based on some basic kitchen practices. It all seems so simple when you see it on a daily basis, but I also see the work and dedication that goes into this lifestyle.

I still have my own cupboard filled with carbs and sweets and pizza delivery menus. They’re my “break glass in case of emergency” menus. I find, however, that I use them less and less these days , because I’m finally starting to put the Brussels sprouts in my mouth instead of my pocket.