Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Too Much

Our country has gotten really fat--troublingly, uncomfortably fat. Michelle Obama is worried. The CDC is worried. Parents are worried, doctors are worried. Even the military, experiencing a shortage of healthy-weight young people to serve, is worried. Or are they? Just saw this post on Eater about Guatanamo having a giant fast food mothership on it.

Also, just saw a piece on ABC about how we're making our pets obese as well. The culprits: over-feeding our animals as a substitute for love and the amount of crap pet food companies are loading into the food. n.b. the piece is called "Heavy petting," because apparently someone over there loves a good pun as much as I do.

A buddy forwarded me a link to an article about CSPI's Xtreme eating awards--which go not to competitive hot dog eaters but to restaurants that offer single servings that contain enough calories to feed a small family. This makes me really mad, it does.

I think about too muchness a lot. I sometimes joke that I am like a cow that you have to bring back from pasture because I will keep eating and eating. I am a completer. Leaving anything behind feels strange, so I empathize with the eater who finds themselves at the Cheesecake Factory polishing off a 1,400 calorie dish. Why the F is this restaurant serving such a thing? Wouldn't it be more economical for them to serve something smaller? Oh right, food is cheap.

I read all these stories (above) in the past week alone. With a few episodes of "Biggest Loser" and Jillian's new ridiculous weight loss show thrown in. I cry when I watch those shows, mostly because they have been genetically engineered to bring women to tears (like sugary, fatty foods engineered to make us crave them), but also because I see people trapped in a world where the food cards have been stacked against them, where too muchness is the easiest choice in every direction.

Monday, June 07, 2010

Going great together

The combination of strawberry and rhubarb is so perfect, only nature could have invented it. Which is to say, by being ripe together at the exact same time, may be nature's way of saying "yo, you could eat these together."

For this reason, I decided making a dish with both radishes (pink lady variety) and peas was a very good idea, even if I couldn't picture how it might turn out. For good measure, decided to throw in spring garlic. Totally excellent combo--one greenmarket trip, one dish.

For the record, am still exploring what/who I go great together with.

Quinoa with spring garlic, radishes, and peas
(2 small servings)

3/4 cup quinoa
3 pieces spring garlic--white bulb up to light green--minced

1 small onion
3-4 tbsp olive oil
salt n pepa
1 cup white wine
1 cup water
2 cups shelled peas
1/2 bunch radishes, trimmed, sliced in half

  1. Saute onion and spring garlic in 2 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat
  2. pinch of salt with that as you soften until translucent
  3. Add the quinoa (which you have already rinsed several times)
  4. Add the wine, bring to a boil then simmer for a few minutes until wine evaporates
  5. Add the water, bring to boil, then cover, lower heat to simmer
  6. Let cook for 20 minutes or so
  7. While that's happening, heat up the remaining olive oil in a pan
  8. Also, bring some salted water up to a boil (this water is not in teh recipe above)
  9. cook peas for 3 minutes
  10. Brown radishes in heated oil, a minute or two on each side
  11. When quinoa is cooked, and when peas and radishes are cooked, mix 'em all together