Backyard Farm

Thought it would be worth posting this before I move. Here are some pictures of the chickens (and bunny) at the house in which I'm currently living in, here in Oakland. I've previously posted about fresh eggs from said chickens. Not only do they produce good food for humans; they also provide hours of entertainment! I will miss them for sure!

Speed and Soda, We're All Glutons (UPDATED)

According to a new study:

In the Seattle area, a region with an average obesity rate of about 20 percent, only about 4 percent of shoppers who filled their carts at Whole Foods Market stores were obese, compared with nearly 40 percent of shoppers at lower-priced Albertsons stores.

That’s likely because people willing to pay $6 for a pound of radicchio are more able to afford healthy diets than people stocking up on $1.88 packs of pizza rolls to feed their kids, the study’s lead author suggested. 

“If people wanted a diet to be cheap, they went to one supermarket,” said Adam Drewnowski, a University of Washington epidemiology professor who studies obesity and social class. “If they wanted their diet to be healthy, they went to another supermarket and spent more."

This doesn't surprise me. It's an achievement, in a sense, that food scientists have been able to make calories as cheap as they are, meaning fewer people starve. But those cheap calories make people fat and sick.

But this graf caught me as bizarre:

Instead, he contends it’s because healthy, low-calorie foods cost more money and take more effort to prepare than processed, high-calorie foods. In a separate study two years ago, Drewnowski estimated that a calorie-dense diet cost $3.52 a day compared with $36.32 a day for a low-calorie diet. 

$36/day for a "low-calorie" diet? I don't question that cheap calories are as cheap as they claim, but I'd be curious to know what they consider a low calorie diet, and why it costs so much. I contend that it's entirely feasible to eat healthy for $10-20/day, possibly less. That's still prohibitively expensive compared to a calorie-dense diet, but you don't actually have to shop at Whole Foods to not be fat.

UPDATE

I could only track down the report's summary, which doesn't mention how they arrived at their figures for diet costs. However, I did come across this interesting infographic:

But the averages for the higher-end stores is because they carrier more high-end products. How do costs of their low-end products compare to the costs of low-end products at Safeway or Albertson's? In my experience, Safeway tends to be hideously overpriced. But purchasing from the bulk food sections of nicer supermarkets can be very economical for some products.

I'm getting off topic. But glancing at the chart again, notice how, not including Fred Meyer, fruit and vegetables prices don't vary to highly at many of those stores.

On another interesting note, the study also finds evidence that "food desserts" are not necessarily to blame for lack of nutrition. The study reports that people chose a supermarket based on price, not on proximity to where they lived. 

Salmon & Fried Rice

This is actually my dinner from a couple nights ago and I have just been late in posting. It is actually pretty simple - I did a pan seared salmon along with a "modern american" fried rice - brown rice, basil, peas, corn and green peppers. Simple and delicious!

The problem I'm having with cooking inside now is the heat. It was 91 in NY yesterday and my apartment does not have AC. I've gotten to the point where the most cooking I can really do is toast bread, otherwise the kitchen feels like it is close to 100 degrees, and it probably is!

I am embarking on a search for easy dinners to make, that don't involve the stove. I do have a grill so I'm going to start to grill more often. Any suggestions?

Tuesday Night Dinner Scrounge: Braised Potatoes with Wine and Bacon

Pork Glut: FIN. Pork ribs: gone. Sausage: gone. Risotto: gone. Bacon: All but 1 slice, gone.

The past several days have been a success in skillfully eroding away at my leftover cache. For lunch, I finished the risotto by warming it in a small cast iron fry pan over a single layer of thinly sliced Yukon gold potatoes. Covering the pan with a lid, the potatoes became browned and crispy on the bottom, while the risotto was gently heated up to a creamy doneness. I was pleasantly surprised by my clever use of leftovers and pantry ingredients.

For dinner, I was mostly out of leftovers, and instead had to put a meal together out of pantry ingredients. I had plenty of small red and gold potatoes I purchased a week ago, but hadn't used until lunch. I also had an opened bottle of cheap white wine that I had left uncorked on the counter since cooking Friday's dinner. A taste of the wine revealed that it hadn't yet turned, so I looked through Bittman for some ideas to put it to use.

Through some luck, I came across Bittman's recipe for braised potatoes with white wine and bacon, a recipe that couldn't have been more perfect for the situation. I started by crisping the bacon, some garlic (which ended up burning), and the potatoes in the above cast iron pan. After a few minutes, I added in a few ounces of chicken stock I had left in the fridge, and a few glugs of the pleasantly-not-gnarly white wine, along with some salt, pepper, fresh thyme, and mustard. As the liquid cooked down, I added more wine to keep the potatoes submerged. I took the picture above about halfway through the cooking process.

After about 40 minutes, the potatoes were soft and ready to eat, and the liquid had cooked down to a very flavorful (possibly could have used some water instead of all that wine) and thick sauce. Just like lunch, a surprisingly efficient use of my leftover and pantry ingredients that resulted in a satisfying and flavorful meal.

Perfection

I think I can prepare a pretty mean steak. I've scoured the internet for a variety of methods to create the best steak indoors, as well as on the grill. I have heated my cast iron pan to scorching temperatures to get the perfect sear resulting in my smoke detectors beeping loudly.

One of the things that I have always had trouble with is getting that perfect medium rare doneness in the middle. Sometimes I reach near perfection, other times I cook it a minute too long. I think the natural progression of my cooking leads to sous vide - cooking in vacuum sealed bag in a perfectly controlled water bath. This would allow my steaks to rich that perfect medium rareness I so desire. The drawback, the cheapest sous vide machine is $450, putting out of my budgetary reach. As a result, one day soon, I am going to have to test the poor man's method of using a beer cooler and heated water. I look forward to posting about it.

In the meantime:

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/03/sous-vide-steaks-recipe.html

http://internetfoodassociation.com/2010/05/16/sous-vide/

Does this change everything?

There always seem to be various holy rules in cooking that you cannot break because tradition says so. And it's so much the way to do things that you cannot even question it. But this sort of conventional wisdom often doesn't hold up to modern, Good Eats-like analysis.

I remember when I was in high school, just starting to learn to cook, when I saw a Good Eats episode in which Alton Brown demonstrated that the quickest way to defrost frozen food was by placing it in a tub of cold water, under running cold water from the faucet. I had up to that point thought that my only options were the microwave's defrost cycle (horrible, horrible method in retrospect), or letting it sit in the fridge (although that would require so much time, that I would always have to resort to the microwave anyway when the frozen food in question was still far from thawed after an overnight stay in the fridge).

Learning to quickly and evenly defrost frozen food changed everything for me during those novice years.

So a few days ago, I was very interested to read Serious Eats' analysis of what is the traditional method to cook pasta. Everyone knows that you have to boil up a ton of water so that the water quickly returns to a boil and the pasta doesn't stick together! That's just how you're supposed to do it.

And of course, at a minimum, the water has to be boiling, right?

Right?

Well, maybe not! Follow me below the fold.

Pork glut Days 1 and 2 recaps: Ignoring the issue

Day 1 finished with me chowing on leftovers at various points during the day. Nothing too enthralling, but I began to whittle down my reserves of pork ribs and other various ingredients. Day 2 began with bacon and egg on toast, but then Hannah and I went cherry picking and strawberry picking out in Brentwood. We concluded the venture with my first visit to In N Out Burger and a marathon baking session that left us with a strawberry-cherry-peach crisp and too many cherry muffin varieties to count. So now I still have a pork glut, and now a fresh fruit and baked good glut. We'll see how this plays out.

As for my thoughts on In N Out Burger -- It was good, for sure, but the style and quality of the burger necessitates a comparison to Five Guys, which this Mid-Atlantic East-Coaster thinks is actually better. The fries and In N Out were nice, and surprisingly not-greasy tasting, and the burger was presented with as much class as I've seen in fast food presentation and could be eaten without turning into a giant mess, as is so often the case with Five Guys. But somehow, a messy Five Guys burger and their greasy fries seem more satisfying than my experience at In N Out. Although they still served a fine burger.

Pork glut: Day 1: Breakfast

Now I have a problem. A good problem, but a problem nonetheless. I have too many pork products in my refrigerator that I need to use up.

First there are the bacon and sausage I purchased earlier in the week -- only a half pound of each, but that apparently goes a long way. Then there are about four (BIG) pork ribs left over from last night. Holy god, that's like 5 lbs of pork (including bones) in my fridge, in various stages of decay. What am I going to do???

I started off this morning using a modest amount of sausage for a patty to go on a fried egg sandwich, using some leftover sourdough from last night.

And the leftovers don't end with the pork -- I still have 3 small zucchini from last week's farmers market to use, some leftover cesar dressing, a ton of risotto, and some of those rice and beans from earlier in the week (but I may have used enough of those to justify trashing at this point).

On the plus side, there probably won't be anymore "VEGETARIAN?" tags used for the next few days.

An evening of pork ribs and risotto

Last night I cooked up quite a meal for Hannah and her friend Ian. The dinner consisted of pork spareribs, risotto, and cesar salad, none of which I had cooked before. 

The cesar salad was real cesar salad, i.e., the dressing was made up from anchovies and a raw egg yolk. Here's the recipe. I should mention that the raw egg that I used was laid just earlier that afternoon in my backyard. The homeowners where I rent a room, John and Dorothy, raise two hens and a rabbit in the backyard, and the hens, Meatball and Charou, just started laying a few weeks ago. I believe Charou (the hen pictured in the banner above) was responsible for our dinner. It is pretty cool knowing that the egg in our dinner had traveled not 20 feet and was handled by only a single person. And the salad turned out to be delicious.

The risotto was a simple Bittman recipe. Since I had never made it before, I wanted to get the technique down.

And the pork ribs...the pork ribs!! Oh my. They turned out pretty rich and intense, in a wonderful way. I've been wanting to learn to cook pork ribs ever since I went to that Oaxacan restaurant in DC with Scott and Fre and had their pork ribs in green mole. I think I've decided that pork ribs are my favorite cut of pig. The combination of really flavorful, fatty and moist meat and eating off of/gnawing on the bones is my idea of food heaven.

To de-plate or not to de-plate

At most casual restaurants now-a-days when one person finishes eating their meal, their plate is immediately cleared leaving those who have not finished meals with their plates. At fine dining restaurants this is a strict no-no as it can be insulting to the other diner implying they need to be rushed.

I think that the fine dining etiquette should be applied to all levels of restaurants. This difference is especially pronounced when there are only two diners. At a table of 4, clearing one plate at a time isn't nearly as noticeable, but with only two people dining, if one person has a plate and the other does not it just appears off to me. I don't even construe removing the plates at the same time as a formal thing, but more of as an etiquette thing. Just as you should not try to remove a plate that a person is still eating from, or that cocktail that still has a few sips left. What's your take? Remove the plates as the person finishes, or after everyone is done?

Another salad

Pretty much the same as my salad for lunch yesterday, but this time with some arugula and mozzarella cheese tossed in as well. Nothing special, but I was in a rush to eat something before a job interview.

Not Exactly a Gyro

Ever since studying abroad in London and discovering the ubiquitous "Doner Kebab" I have been obsessed. The problem of course being, you can't really find them here. I was fortunate go back to Europe last fall, to Spain, where I was able to indulge in my obsession. They weren't the same as the ones in my memory of London, but they were close enough.

Back in the States, the closest acceptable substitute is the Gyro. Scrounging up what I had in my kitchen, I made a substitute for that. Taking the leftover sausage from dinner the other night, I split it reheated that, took a slice of bread, some lettuce, cucumber, sprouts and whipped up a quick batch of tzatiki sauce using leaves from my mint plant.

Not a kebab, but today, it will do.

Thank You Bobby Flay

I'm glad to see Greg is finally getting some meat in his diet. Personally, I'm a fan of the breakfast pizza. No sauce, delicious cheese, usually some bacon and a nice egg or two cracked on top.

Tonight's dinner was actually real simple. I took a couple chicken thighs, rubbed them in a left over dry rub I had from smoking pork ribs and pan fried them in some olive oil. I finally put to use a $2 mandolin I had found to julienne some red potatoes into hash browns and put together a simple side salad of lettuce and a balsamic vinaigrette.

The dry rub gave the chicken an incredible flavor, so much so I have to share the recipe:

Bobby Flay Dry Rub

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 1 tablespoon granulated garlic
• 1 tablespoon granulated onion
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon white pepper

Source: The Food Network

I like a little extra spice, so I added about twice as much chili powder and cayenne pepper than the recipe called for. I recommend you try this next time you grill some chicken or pork.

Meat-crazy Pizza

So I made a Berkeley Bowl run this afternoon on the way back from the Ashby BART station, so it was time for some meat! What you see to the left is a pizza (I bought the pizza dough, I didn't make it) with BBQ sauce, moz cheese, bacon, BBowl-made pork sausage, and zucchini. I was clearly overcompensating for a meat-deficiency over the previous 24 hours. To be extra indulgent, I spooned some bacon/sausage fat over the crust before I cooked the pizza, but that didn't appear to have any influence over the final product. It was indulgent enough as it was, though, and was completely delicious.

To drink, I had the last of my Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPAs (I can't believe I found DFH on the west coast!!!). A very satisfying meal.

Salad!

Threw together a quick salad for lunch today consisting of various leftovers and farmer's market impulse buys. From the leftovers category, it contained last night's beets, some plain pasta, and a scoop of those rice and beans. I had gotten some romaine lettuce and snap peas from the FM, and included some parm and a simple vinaigrette that I whipped up fresh.

I know Scott will continue to give me shit over the vegetarian aspect of the meal. I'm hoping to get some meat in for dinner.

What is "processed food"??

Inspired by Scott's post about dinner last night:

Although I should be eating processed foods less (WSJ article) I still can't resist a delicious italian sausage or brat every now and then. 

Sometimes I think that the "processed food" argument is as vague as a food label claiming its product has "no preservatives." Does it have salt? Yes? Then it has at least one preservative. I get that there are a lot of artificial preservatives out there that can generally be bad, but food preservation is practical for reasons which should be all too obvious. (Well, they should be obvious, but in a world populated by meaningless (but probably effective) marketing slogans like "all natural" and "no artificial flavorings," I'm cynical about people's awareness of the food they eat.)

Anyway, back to processed food. Most food has been processed in some way. Whether it's the "fresh" tomatoes in the produce section (that have been ripened with chemicals) or apples coated in wax, or flour that was milled from grains, most of the "whole" ingredients we think of are not free from our industrial food supply. Sausages are processed by combining various cuts of meats and seasoning in a grinder.

So it really comes down to: what level of processing are you willing to accept in the food that you eat? I'm at ease with most old-world processing techniques, like sausage-making. Contrast that with a bag of M&Ms, which start with corn that is macerated in some esoteric manufacturing process, some of whose by-products are then transformed into a syrupy concoction, which is then used by Mars to sweeten their cocoa, which is then coated with more corn syrup and God-knows-what kind of coloring. And along the way, there are various preservatives, stabilizers, and flavorings added as well.

The lines we draw for ourselves are iffy at best, and our rules are regularly broken. I try my best to avoid "processed foods" as well, but I mean it in the sense that I'm going to avoid those M&Ms, and have myself some fresh sausage.

Breakfast: fried egg on english muffin

This is my normal breakfast, so I'm sure it'll get old fast on here. Simply a fried egg on half an english muffin, and jam and butter on the other half of the english muffin. Served with a cup of Blue Bottle Coffee Co. chiapas coffee (east bay's finest coffee!).

For the record, I'm disappointed with Scott's praise for Panera bread. O-v-e-r-r-a-t-e-d. You live in NYC!

Scott's Sammies

I really enjoy making sandwiches - the secret is in the bread. I made this sandwich with tomato-basil bread from Panera (it's the most convenient good bread near my apartment). I figure I should try to cut back on some carbs, so I take the ingredients of a full sandwich and overload it onto half the bread.

Today's sandwich consisted of turkey, cucumbers, lettuce, sprouts, hot peppers, light-mayo, spicy brown mustard, and muenster cheese.

The sandwich was accompanied with a nice glass of home made iced tea - black tea and lemon only. Delicious.

Dinner: black beans and rice with golden beets

My food shop routine here has found itself onto Wednesdays, so tonight's dinner was a bit of a scrounge as far as protein. I had some nice golden beets from the farmer's market on Sunday (ate the greens last night) so I steamed them up. 

I had opened up a can of black beans for today's lunch salad, so I decided to make some rice and beans, made a little special by the last two shallot scapes I had left from the FM.

Nothing special or fancy, but tasted good, was filling for a meatless meal, and probably healthy. Time for seconds.

The First Supper

Tonight's dinner - Spaghetti & Italian Sausage as well as a seafood sausage which I have been seeing increasingly in stores and decided to give a try. The old school italian sausasge and pasta was great, the seafood sausage left something to be desired.

Although I should be eating processed foods less (WSJ article) I still can't resist a delicious italian sausage or brat every now and then.