food museum blog

Eat Crap, Win Voters' Hearts and Minds?

In between mel0dramatic reports on lame bowling skills and memories of shooting ducks as a wee lass and all the flotsam and jetsam of American political discourse, I have noted disparagement of Senator Obama's campaign eating style. Apparently he doesn't finish all his waffles!  He shies away from fat-laden nightmares like Philly cheesesteaks ( I may be making this one up) and so on. He's not into multiple brewskies, either.

So the guy is trim, healthy, and against all the odds during this marathon primary season, he wants to stay that way and hold off the carbs. What a nutcase!  What a crappy exemplar of all that is American!

Please, superdelegates, end the agony soon so that Barry O' can take a break to revisit farmers markets and Senator Clinton can hole up in her Georgetown home tossing back whatever she damn pleases.

This tidbit from the NYT a few days back may amuse....

ps  Not getting into the use of "waffle" as a verb...

(Thanks to http://www.easywafflerecipe.com/ for handsome, healthy-looking waffle photo.)

"Cooking Light's" Gargantuan Opus

Eleven million readers! So claims Cooking Light magazine on its website. Established by Southern Progress Corp, Birmingham, AL,  in 1987, the magazine's aim is to scale back the fat in not just fried chicken--( NB--fried chicken empire KFC apparently is now offering grilled hens)--but in a wide range of traditional as well as global recipe favorites. Its approach is readable, practical, and utterly specific. And younger cooks in my family have praised the magazine's suggestions over the years.

Yesterday the company launched Cooking Light Complete Cookbook--A Fresh New Way to Cook, published by Oxmoor House, $34.95,  part of the Southern Progress group. Again, the practicality of the approach stands out. The 5-ring binder book containing 1200 recipes allows for easy removal of pages. Its surface is washable, for messy cooks like me, and the book comes with a DVD labeled "Bonus--Cooking Light Dinner Tonight Cookbook" featuring 100 recipes and multiple how to's.
( Yes, I have printed up recipes from the Internets but I have never allowed my laptop anywhere near my cooking arena, lord no. ) Calories, fats, carbs, etc., are listed at the end of each offering.

But, and here come the "buts," where's the joy? The exuberance of eating well --oops, that's another food mag---the taste, the aromas, the cultural background? Not here.

The layout begins with a section on In Season, all well and good. Then it gives a primer on what Healthy Eating is about, according to the authors, who must be congratulated on a thoroughly vetted, complicated project, mind you.   Next up are Entertaining and  Appetizers & Beverages, thereby making me feel I had stumbled into a 1950's  tome from Betty Crocker. Wha? Maybe the 21st century has reverted to home entertaining on a big scale while I was blogging--maybe gas prices are thrusting us back on cocktail hour with the neighbors. Maybe?

But having to flip through a major cookbook in search of main courses??  See-- after doing the Wasabi Bloody Marys--OY!-- and Mini Black Bean Cakes--yum, we are really salivating for dinner, and yet the cookbook offers us mega pages of BAKED GOODS next--breads, and cakes, and cookies and, and...

OK, I am possibly making too much of a fuss, but the fruit and veggie sidedishes are smack dab at the end next to substitutions and what a cup is and whatnot. The fish section neglects to inform the reader about the health benefits/sustainable issues of fish, but I suppose there's no room, sadly. And, alarmingly, an entire section of luscious looking fare is labeled Meatless Main Dishes. Please! This is so..........Betty Crocker?  Mushroom Tamales, Tomato Basil Tart, Corn Fritatta, yes. I think 21st c. Americans can handle Vegetarian Main Dishes, I really do.

I realize this is not intended to be the kind of cookbook one gets into bed with, red wine and oozing cheese on the night stand, for a sensual romp through phantasmagoric foodland.  Sitting bolt upright at my desk,  however, I utterly fell for the recipe for Swedish Limpa Soda Bread--it's seasoned with anise and orange rind. Excellent.

Congratulations, Cooking Light, on a major opus many will find perfect--the superlative recipe for Grilled Fries ( white and sweet) on p. 381 has been duly noted.   

But Has She Won New Mexico??

Hot news--In an interview with  Washington, DC, tv station WJLA, right before today's primary, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton revealed the following:

...she eats hot peppers because “years ago, I was told that hot peppers would keep me healthy.”

– “Jalapenos, banana peppers – any kind of hot peppers,” she said. “I eat them raw, I eat them cooked. I don’t whether it’s for everybody, but it’s worked for me."

(I would love to be Fair and Balanced and post additional up to the minute gustatory goodies about others running for Prez but, thus far, that's it.)

Delve Into Nutrition Data

OK, so I'm a sucker for visual aids---but if you want to know instantly the nutritional story within a Krispy Kreme glazed cruller, or a raw carrot, or a cup of  acerola juice, go to Nutrition Data and find out.

The search window works fast and well--I have n0t yet signed up for anything--and reveals pretty graphics re a food's Caloric Ratio Pyramid,  Nutrient Balance Indicator, and more. ( Don't ask me to explain any of these!)

The site apparently does explain all. Even though I am one of those who likes to eat and enjoy, rather than hand-wring over carbs, fats and proteins, I think this site is a nifty foodie tool.

( Nutrition Data info much more visually dazzling than well-intentioned label at left.)

The Med Diet--A World Cultural Treasure?

Spain is pushing for the so-called Mediterranean diet to be included among UNESCO's world cultural treasures when the list is updated this year. This is a foodie first and, by gum, we are solidly behind it. Yes! 

According to an AP report, Spain's entreaty included the following--

"We have high hopes for this endeavor and believe that the characteristics of this exemplary diet will make it clearly deserving of the distinction, which is why we will spare no effort in championing it," said a document presented by Spain to a meeting of EU agriculture ministers.

It said medical studies found the Mediterranean diet's blend of olive oil, fresh fruit, vegetables and fish, combined with a "moderate" intake of wine provides "a quality nutritional model: rich, varied, balanced, healthy and appetizing."

Let's review:

Olive oil, fresh fruit and veg, fish, VINO----( Plus some decent cheese, good bread,  and chocolate... ) Hummus? Baklava?

Sounds like a treasure to me---when I was a student in Italy  eons ago, my "grandmother" in the host family made a tomato soup I remember in dreams--I have never quite replicated it myself but one lunchtime I stopped at Albuquerque's Scalo Restaurant, ordered their tomato soup, and after one sip, was transported back to the long wooden table in the large apartment along the Arno, bending over a hot, rich, bowl of Mediterranean diet soup. How that family would have roared with laughter over their everyday way of eating being turned into an icon!

( Start your diet by buying your own olive tree ( pictured above) from Smith & Hawken--http://www.smithandhawken.com/catalog/product.jsp;jsessionid=XQIKVSAXO2BWQCTLNKFFAFIKNNVIWUPU?productId=prod22433&categoryId=cat120306)

Is Nothing Sacred? Pizza Boxes Defiled

A few years ago advertising mavens in Long Island, NY, decided to put ads for their clients on the wide open spaces that once were pizza boxes. ( In the beginning the company was called Mangia Media, as in "eat" in Italian, but since then they have ceased to have a fun name, alas...)

Recently a community in Ohio took the milk carton "lost children" ad idea and began plastering the faces of "deadbeat Dads" on local pizza boxes.

Now people in Hull, England  are hoping that putting a message from the  Primary Care Trust, the local entity that administers "national health" to all in Britain, on pizza boxes will rouse eaters whose mouths are stuffed with cheese and dough to ponder their dietary choices.

My business henceforth will go only to pizza emporiums whose boxes shriek Lousy Luigi's in red, green and white.

( Thanks to about.com for pizza box schemata.)

A Healthy Dude of Just 92

He's only 92, he's been mostly a veggie since age 15---an occasional turkey sandwich, and some grilled salmon---he eats twice a day, usually a big fruit and eggwhite breakfast at 11 am.  And he and his wife eat dinner out every night, with wine.  Oh--he also exercises.

He's Jack LaLanne, the guy who hated being the skinny dude on the beach with sand kicked in his face by the big handsome fellow with the girl. Remember those ads in the back of Tarzan comics?

( Well, I do.)

Anyway, according to Sally Squires in The WaPost, Jack is for weight training, living in the now, and his salad.

"Every restaurant near us now has a Jack LaLanne salad," (Jack) says. "It's at least 10 raw vegetables chopped, and very little lettuce." He brings his own sesame oil salad dressing and sometimes adds more hard-boiled egg whites for additional protein."

(Jack is  described as a Franco-American, a term that instantly brings to mind the now defunct  brand that specialized in mushy canned spaghetti....I think French-American is just fine.)

The Light Side of Dark Choc

When I read that dark chocolate, my best friend, was effective in lowering blood pressure,  while tea, love it it iced with loads of lemon, is not, I zeroed in on the daily portion mentioned, 3 1/2 ounces.  This ounce thing has always irritated me, other than in the liquid realm. I comprehend an 8 ounce cup and thought I understood a shot glass, which I see is often 2 ounces, with a line marked at 1.5 oz--but then again, to complicate our lives, there is such a thing as a "pony shot" , of just one ounce.

Anyway--3 1/2 ounces of DARK chocolate is apparently enough to lower BP with great pleasure and without nasty meds. The study results are here.

So what is/are 3 1/2 ounces?  According to the Iowa State University Extension website, it's a tad less than 8 dominoes, a tad more than a playing card.  Don't have any dominoes handy but in my mind's eye they seem much bigger than the amount of choc I eat each day--my usual pattern is a square of Belgian dark chocolate ( T. Joe's) in the a.m. as my breakfast "dessert," and another square or two in the afternoon, in between meals.

Having scanned the packaging of dark choc with almonds, I now see that 3 squares at 1.3 oz total, is considered a 200 calorie serving--clearly I am not eating enough!  ( The caloric content is an issue, at higher levels.........but I am gardening furiously these days.)

My BP is rising just contemplating this whole ounce annoyance.

(Thanks to www.kitchenslave.com/chocolate.htm for pic.)

Nutri Nosh?

Pushing buttons to go from tv to dvd mode last night, I noticed that those chatty QVC people on Channel 3 were eating out of little plastic-looking dishes, with an array of Nutri System packaged items strewn below them on display. ( I had a vague recognition of this brand but knew nothing about it.)   A guy was rhapsodic over tortellini with red sauce , I think. Anyway,  one buys 28 premeasured, prepared breakfasts, lunches, dinners and desserts--last night for the low, low price of $239 as compared to $289---and then toaster ovens or nukes them for one's dining pleasure. And to lose weight.

Fresh veg, fruit and dairy are up to you to provide, according to the Nutri System guidelines. But there's the ballgame!  People are buying packaged "dead" food and then adding to it all the things they should be eating in a healthy diet anyway?

Apparently among the selling points are that you need not show up at a Center to be weighed and cajoled, your privacy is assured, and you can go on-line or telephone for support 24/7.  A woman who called in claiming to have lost over 100 pounds said that "nothing else ever worked."

I am happy for that person, and yet, sad. I wonder what happens when people leave the program? Do they maintain healthy weight? Do they know how to choose and cook food, and how much of it to eat, if the package isn't doing the thinking for them?

Astonishingly, TV Food Ads Aimed at Kids are Less Than Ideal

No big surprise here as we read in the Washington Post  that half the tv ads aimed at children in the US are for food, most of it in the lousy column. After analyzing 1600 hours of tv programming either specifically designed for kids, or likely to have a large child or teen viewing audience, the Kaiser Family Foundation discovered that " 34 percent marketed candy and snacks, 28 percent were for cereal, and 10 percent promoted fast foods. No commercials promoted fruit or vegetables. " ( Duh.)

In an ideal world young people would be fed well at home, never introduced to junky fast food, and tv would be an occasional diversion.

Tra la.

You can read more at the Kaiser site here.

( Cartoon from calorielab.com)