what should i eat?

the man behind two of the loudest books of the past few years, and whose name appears in this blog maybe more than any other, managed to release a book this past holiday season without creating much of a stir. yes, that man. michael pollan.

food rules: an eater's manual is very simple in its premise. it's an attempt, in sixty-four rules, to help you answer the question that's constantly asked every day by all of us, "what should i eat?" only this time, the answer doesn't come down to a sandwich from subway or a buritto from chipotle, but rather an actual answer to the question: what should you eat.

and so, some rules:

18.

don't ingest foods made

in places where everyone

is required to wear a

surgical cap.

19.

if it came from a plant,

eat it; if it was made in

a plant, don't.

20.

it's not food if it arrived

through the window

of your car.

21.

it's not food if it's called

by the same name in

every language.

(think big mac,

cheetos, or pringles.)

the murderer aaron burr and a cold glass of milk

another food find in the la times. and this one, on the single beverage i've had more of than any other in my life.

yup. milk.

it's funny, because so many years later, when i think about the aggressive milk ad campaigns i grew up with, this is the one that i associate with best. and like the kid in the ad, i drank milk, and drank more and more of it, going through gallon after gallon every week, and by the time i was a sophomore in high school, was taller than my dad and all eight of my uncles. i think i drank the stuff because i thought it was cool, something that could make me bigger and stronger so easily, and like the ad says, "it does a body good." in retrospect, the ad had a long-term effect on me, though i doubt that was the primary goal of the ad campaign in the age of hi-c and kool-aid and yahoo and squeezits. you'd have to assume milk and dairy farmers just wanted to grab a foothold with young kids like me.

so here's to taking it to the next step with milk, thanks to the la times. my relationship with milk is always evolving. for a while i went on a skim binge, but then read michael pollan and was convinced there's just nothing natural about literally skimming the fat from a natural product. when that happens, it becomes something different than the milk it originally was. at the same time, i drink far too much milk in order to fall all the way back to whole milk, which if health didn't matter to me, is what i'd be drinking. but, it's fatty. no doubt. so we are buying 1%.

but then what about soy and almond milks? and so too goat's milk? there are so many different sources of milk available, and in the age of vegans and vegetarians, alternatives are easier and easier to find. so what's influenced your perspective on milk? is it even that big of a deal to you? or is it something you'd be willing to learn more about? the article really hits on things you'd never have known, and yet are undoubtedly worth knowing.

kind of frightening how much is being revealed about our foods that's been held from us, right?

milk cultivation is one of the oldest human practices that combines the domestication of animals, the cultivation of a product, and the human consumption of it, especially as a beverage, which then became so much more when it became the base for making cheese. the fact that we still drink it as much as we do, that's pretty cool, don't you think?

and here's raising a glass of the cold stuff, which we now buy exclusively organic, to my favorite milk ad of all time:

the one that started it all with two simple words: got milk?

doompadee doo

the market is still on the rise, with 10,000 points square in its cross hairs, but the economy's downfall has posed a question worth at least considering: have we become too sloppy in how we invest? globalization is a nice word, and it seems to fit the natural human ambition, which is to dream big, doesn't it? as silly as it might seem, take charlie and the chocolate factory for example.

here's a story that exemplifies globalization, with wonka's golden ticket promotion gripping the people of the world from end to end. the obsession and greed that follow are what feed the story's satire, which as a whole serves to antagonize our beloved hero: sweet and innocent charlie bucket. in the end, greed is shown the boot by pint-sized orange men who sing, and it's the innocence and selflessness of the hero who savors the day. somehow, despite the truths in such a simple story, i have a hard time believing that many of the parallels in charlie bucket, despite the prophetic tendencies of the rest of roald dahl's story, will cross to our current predicament, and its outcome.

but why not? for all i feature on local foods and small farms and taking a step back to do things the old, and sometimes anicent, fashioned way, how many people are actually following suit? michael pollan is scheduled to speak at the university of wisconsin tomorrow evening, no doubt to capacity attendance, the sentiment of which is echoed in the linked article above. but despite the call for solidarity and support for pollan by the state's farmers, for how many people will his words be nothing more than a thought provoking tickle? a gentle humph at such brilliant and simple ideas that mount so great against the ease and cost-friendly ways of corporations and supermarkets and mass-produced commodities. it's nice that we have people like michael pollan who think so progressively, because the world does need its great thinkers after all, but isn't that the extent of their worth these days? a tickle?

well, not everyone is content to settle for just a stimulating tickle. and apparently, inspiration is not yet extinct. meet the slow money alliance:



relatively speaking, this is a toddler of an organization. it's only just barely hit the ground and though its press coverage has reached a national and widespread scale (time, wsj, la times), its legs have not yet been found, moving at a crawl—though rapid—on its hands and knees, its first step still yet to be taken—which is said not to be critical, but rather with a heart heavy of hope.

the slow money alliance, which piggy backs in many ways off the much entrenched slow food usa, is a non-profit organization of investors, for investors, who fear capitalism has gone too far. but membership and participation require a thing that rebukes all things capitalistic: the return on your investment comes to you not in dollars and cents, but in the restructuring of our food systems and economies. a charlie bucket of an idea, if you will. it's a charity of sorts, aimed not at a specific demographic or targeted area, but rather the prospective future we all face. and it's groundbreaking.

founding members and advisers stretch a wide and necessary spectrum of backgrounds and expertise. there's richard rominger (former deputy secretary at the department of agriculture); jack acree (co-founder terra potato chips); neil chrisman (former managing director at jp morgan); paul dolan (winemaker, fetzer vineyards and mendocino wine company); and wade green (former editor of newsweek, ny times magazine, the saturday review), to name a few.

but i fear grassroots operations like the slow money alliance, which is based out of my old hood in brookline, mass, won't receive the type of support needed to combat corporate dollars and current infrastructure. the as-of-now goal is to gain one million signatures in accordance with the group's principles, one of which draws from paul newman once saying, "i just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer who puts back into the soil what he takes out." paul newman of course returned profits of his newman's own line to charity, a total that stands at over $270 million to date. but is that enough? seriously, will that even make a dent?

unfortunately, the power of persuasion lies in the hands of the media. people do as they are told. sure, free thought and interpretation exist, and there are those who definitely utilize that free enterprise, but for change to happen, there is no doubt that people will have to be persuaded. and not modestly, but overwhelmingly. convincingly. and hopefully before it reaches the point of too late, when there's no other choice, and persuasion becomes synonymous with necessity.

and it's going to take a lot more than michael pollan appearances at universities and farmers dressed in green and grass root organizations based out of boston.

it wasn't so long ago that a person didn't travel more than ten miles from his or her home over the span of their lifetime. absolutely, there's no going back to those times, but shouldn't we at least explore the advantages to the bubbles that spawn from locally sustained and supported agro-economies? maybe, just maybe, there's something to this slow money idea, and starting small will have a much larger impact.

michael pollan's done it again

there he is, yet again, creeping within the remains of the orb of the national spotlight that was meant to shine elsewhere. he's sneaky, but dammit, he's doing just what it is that we need.

an op-ed piece in today's new york times by michael pollan picks right up on where the pulse of this country is beating so rampant:

"to listen to president obama’s speech on wednesday night, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in america is the system itself — perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed."

his thesis, it seems, will cover what one would think a michael pollan piece would never cover. something other than food. well, yet again, that just wasn't the case.

pollan narrows the health care problem in our country down to one major catalyst. we're too damn fat. and you know what, he's right. we've all seen the numbers, and he repeats them: one in three americans born after the year 2000 will be inflicted with type 2 diabetes, which draws a direct correlation to obesity. and he than draws a correlation of this to the neo robber barons of today's health care system:

"as things stand, the health care industry finds it more profitable to treat chronic diseases than to prevent them. there’s more money in amputating the limbs of diabetics than in counseling them on diet and exercise.

i'm sorry, but that is disgusting. does reading that not fill you with rage? our health is the key to our longevity, but our health is the one thing that we have little control over. we haven't been trained, nor taught enough, to prevent disease, which is what grants us more control over own bodies. our longevity. so, as we stand, bad things will happen. and when they do, as pollan is so blatantly broadcasting, people are making money. a lot of it. which for me was a revelation, like pollan had lifted the veil from the dream that is the american way of life, and revealed a corrupt and plotting network of profiteering puppet masters, dancing their hands with strings attached while the puppets weave through a maze of cackling flames.

how many steps removed are we from a controlled society like the one drawn up by aldous huxley in a brave new world? you see, there's a fallacy that i'm realizing is true. money trees? they do exist. they're us. we are the money trees.

"as for the insurers, you would think preventing chronic diseases would be good business, but, at least under the current rules, it’s much better business simply to keep patients at risk for chronic disease out of your pool of customers, whether through lifetime caps on coverage or rules against pre-existing conditions or by figuring out ways to toss patients overboard when they become ill."

but, dare i say it, if things were to change. if the president were to succeed. if this government were to properly function... look at these numbers:

"a patient with type 2 diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. insurers will quickly figure out that every case of type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. suddenly, every can of soda or happy meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits."

all of a sudden, our health becomes a premium for these guys.

if insurance companies no longer view a ban on sodas and fatty foods as a threat to future profits, then we're suddenly finding ourselves in a system where preventative measures of health are promoted. can you imagine a chicken nugget or a can of soda as a threat to these big insurance companies? and the persecution of that junky foodstuff that would follow? it'd be enough to rise senator mccarthy from his grave.

and most importantly i think to pollan, and so too for myself, he finds a way to link all of this, which is a topic far too large for the several hundred words he'd written or i am writing now, to the focus of our food consumption to a far more regional and local scale than the one that currently thrives:

"recently a team of designers from m.i.t. and columbia was asked by the foundation of the insurer unitedhealthcare to develop an innovative systems approach to tackling childhood obesity in america. their conclusion surprised the designers as much as their sponsor: they determined that promoting the concept of a 'foodshed'— a diversified, regional food economy — could be the key to improving the american diet."

can you believe that? childhood obesity, and the american diet, best combated by a regional food system? somehow, it's all coming full circle.

the pandemic that's plagued the kitchen

when i cook, it's an unrehearsed and impromptu series of miscalculated actions that eventually add up to a meal. i cook on a whim, picking things at random in the grocery aisles that give me that gut feeling of yeah, this'll work, and doing the same when i get home. if i'm marinating a protein, i open the fridge and wonder what might enhance and build upon what i've got. orange juice, mustard, soy sauce, chocolate. loose tea, even. i just go with it. like i said, unrehearsed and impromptu.

my favorite way to cook, if i have the time for it, is to braise. when i braise, i like using liquids that some people would probably find absolutely revolting. i might draw on inspiration from the classic recipe of a dish, utilizing technique and methods, but substituting for my own crazy ingredients—like i did last christmas when i made a short rib crostini for a family party or last june in cambridge when we had some friends over for a farewell dinner.

any traditional recipe for short ribs will have you start the beef off by browning it in the pan, followed by the vegetables—which will always call for a mirepoix—in the fat drippings from the beef, and then throwing it all together and topping the whole thing off with either chicken or beef stock, and a hearty red wine. this always makes one of my favorite meals, but i just can't bring myself to go at it this way. i was never diagnosed with a.d.h.d. as a kid, but i don't know, cuz i just can't handle going by the book. my mom jumps out of her skin when she touches cotton balls, and i do the same when following recipes. it's like bill murray in what about bob?, gill the goldfish hanging from his neck, just not able to get on that greyhound bus.

so instead, like bob, i liberate myself.

for those christmas crostinis i browned the beef in butter that i richened with duck fat and used leeks and parsnips and shallots as my flavor base. to braise, i poured in guava juice and a touch of ginger ale and, because it's just too hard to replace the richness of a stock, chicken stock. for whatever idiotic reason, i never took a picture of the final result—but for imagination's sake, i topped the beef off with a mint, pineapple and pomegranate salad, pineapple juice and honey that i reduced to a thick syrup, and crème fraîche. maybe i went overboard with the natural sweeteners on the thing, but that's where i always find myself. i love big flavors, especially those i can draw from fruits. and i either have an incredibly kind and thoughtful family that looked out for those gentle and oh so sensitive feelings i have, or they went over well, because everything was eaten, and seemingly happily so.

but, i wouldn't wish my way of thinking in the kitchen on anyone. there's no process to the way i work. it's simply just madness. but, the one thing i will say, is that it keeps me in there for a long, long time.

before the release of julie and julia a couple weeks ago, the nytimes magazine ran a lengthy piece titled "out of the kitchen, onto the couch" written by michael pollan, who has single handedly not only lifted the country's food iq, but helped give rise to the buy local, your farmer is your neighbor movement. in it, pollan questions the amount of time we spend in the kitchen, especially in lieu of the food boom on tv. ordinary people, who twenty years ago had to put in near seventy hour work weeks to make a comfortable living cooking food, are now hot, celebrity commodities. even in the picture above you can see a giada de laurentiis cookbook that alicia and her roommates displayed in their kitchen, giada a commodity of the instigator of this whole thing, the food network. so we sit for hours watching paula dean work her southern charm and budding chefs haul it in the kitchen on top chef, but yet, pollan asks, the average person doesn't even spend thirty minutes a day in his or her own kitchen? it's a matter of blatant hypocrisy.

in the season premiere of mad man last night, after receiving a long-awaited promotion, a character calls his wife and to celebrate, asks her to make a reservation—no request, just a surprise, he says. dining out, here, is a cause for absolute celebration. both of my parents have told me that eating out was a rare occasion growing up, and these are two people who grew up on opposite ends of the country. but neither of them would be afraid to tell you that raising me and my brothers, we ate out with consistent frequency—though the difference is, and this rings true for the character's wife in mad men as well, my mom did spend several days a week in the kitchen, cooking a dinner that would be ready when my dad came home from work in the evening. so what's happened? why are we becoming so obsessed with food, literally raising the thing on so high a pedestal as to make it a phenomenon, that we worship those who cook and study it, yet fail to do the same ourselves? why is that we shell out our money at the restaurants of the celebrity chef, rather than attempt to emulate what it is they practice?

where did the days of home pickling go? the passing of summers spent in the kitchen between parent and child preserving fresh berries? cooking is not a thing that requires heat and a plate and a set table. our conception of cooking has drastically narrowed, and we've forgotten what it is to feed off the land we've been given. our focus is far too manufactured, manipulated over time via media and advertising and the passed and continued phenomena of food. is it so absurd to purchase a juicer, and not even an electronic one, but a classic, prism shaped juicer, so that when coming home with those oranges from the farmers' market one might make fresh. squeezed. orange juice?

my time in the kitchen is spent as a nutjob. i work with a one-track mind, always thinking several steps ahead, the intent to hone in on how best to heighten the flavors of what i'm working with. and this, by nature, takes a lot of time. i don't do this to follow what i preach, nor what michael pollan says, because i think it might, and should, be the next wave of the food phenomenon. rather, i do it because it's instinctual. it's the nature of the thing. i simply cannot help myself.

i'm all for whole foods. i feel comfortable buying my meat and seafood and produce there, and trust it to be organic and local as succinctly labeled. but there is a brand new whole foods in lincoln park that we shop at, and the thing is huge. there is an espresso bar next to a beer bar up front and by the cheese and wine, there is a small cafe where someone is always on hand to pour flights that are paired, fittingly enough and if you so choose, with cheese. there's also an extremely large food court, with far more than just the signature whole foods pay-by-the-pound spread, which explains why the market itself is so large. there's a culinary rainbow of foods to choose from that literally equates to whole-foods-fast-food. and doesn't that seem so wrong that the sound of it doesn't even make any natural sense? near the close of his article, michael pollan is told that takeout from supermarkets is the wave of the future. well, the arrival has begun.

we're in danger of being even further removed from the creation of our own food. but the danger in this will never be apparent, because given the increasing speed of the world, the ease of what's been presented to us is just too much to pass on. fast food is so passé , but food courts in organic supermarkets that make food fast? sign me up, right?!?

michael pollan calls for an exorcism of sorts of julia child, the american cook who learned the ways of doing so from scratch, in the home, and how approachable she made it all seem. and the thing is, it is approachable. and it's also doable. i'd love to see a movement away from the ease of buying prepared food, away from the hype and glamour of the celebrity chef, and back to my father's parents who for several summers moved their family to a new york farm. back to my mother's parents who plucked the oranges from their three trees and poured the squeezed juice at the breakfast table, then offered a large paper bag full of more of the fruit for us to take home.

my methods might be unrehearsed and impractical, but nothing i do ever brings me closer to the process of raising and maintaining our foodstuff. we all care about longevity and health, so shouldn't the food we eat be treated with the same delicacy and care we give to our bodies? despite their status, i bet if you ask the celebrity chef this same question, they'd hands down agree. the difference is, given their ability to do so, it's time to start doing something about it.