Food, Self, and Society

Hey guys.  I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated this, but I apologize for that – I was in Montana for a week presenting at a conference.  Anyway, while I was there, I saw several presentations and posters about various food elements, and topics related to food.  I was very interested in these, so I went to see them.  I won’t really talk about specifics, because in all honesty I don’t think they are completely relevant (at least, not here).  However, it made me wonder – why am I so interested in this topic?  Why am I seeing it all over the place all of a sudden?  The answer to the first one most certainly has to do with this class – my interest was formed due to the class.  But what about the second one?  Have these topics interested people for years (I know they have) and I’m just noticing them now (which I am)?  Or, has the movement really exploded in the last few years?  I realize I’m not being very clear about this and what I mean here, so allow me to explain.  There was a great deal of “locavore” mentality to be found in the Missoula, Montana area.  The mall (tiny in comparison to some of the ones we have around here in the NYC metro area) had a store that focused almost entirely on locally grown food.  And, one of the best steaks I’ve ever had, I had there, and noticed that on the menu they made a big deal of noting that the cow or steer or whatever it is had been grass-fed somewhere within the state of Montana.  It was wonderful, and after reading Singer, I can at least feel good about eating THAT particular steak.

Here’s looking to the future.  Until then, my friends, I bid you adieu.

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PS – I accidentally tagged this as “uncategorized” as opposed to putting it in my “food” category, so it didn’t get forwarded to the class food blog at the time I wrote it.  My mistake.  Sorry!

PPS – Next time, I’ll write about airplane food.

Just a note to let you know that I’ve enabled comments on this blog (as opposed to rerouting potential commenters to your individual blogs), so now it should be easier for you to comment on each others’ posts. Also, I’ve also added a tag cloud to the navigation bar to the left. Enjoy!

In my last post, I ended my rantings by wishing that Sunnyside would become a “real” neighborhood. Apparently people in high places and by that I mean NY Magazine already feel that it is. As I waited on line at CVS, the title “The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York” caught my attention and I flipped through the magazine wondering if any neighborhood in Queens made the cut. To my surprise and delight, right under Park Slope and the Lower East Side were the letters s-u-n-n-y-s-i-d-e. Yep, Sunnyside is now “officially” one of the top 3 neighborhoods in NYC which makes me feel about 3% cooler.

Now on to food. I was strolling the aisles of the library yesterday waiting for a title to grab me when I noticed the name Mark Bittman on the spine of one of the books. I recalled his name from the NY Times food blog “Bitten” which I thought was clever considering his last name, get it? The title of the book is “Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating” and hoping to expand upon my meager collection of scary food books I decided to rent it out.

Once home, I cracked it open and began to read. First of all, I like Bitten’s writing style better than Pollan’s but then again I wanted to hate Pollan from the second I heard of him for some reason. Perhaps because he’s so popular? Or, is it because he’s bald? I’m really not quite sure but anywho Bittman skips the animal farm portion which everyone knows the horrors of and focuses on the amount of energy used in animal production. He makes the case that overconsumption has led to a ton of stress on the environment and our bodies. Bittman also addressed my big fear of not getting enough protein if I were to not eat animal products. I’m not sure who drilled the notion of protein deficiency into the American psyche but it has definitely been a concern of mine.

After reading this entertaining book through, I have decided to challenge myself by going “vegan” for two out of three of my daily meals and not buying/eating anything that is sugary or processed when I’m out. I would completely cut out the sugar but I’m realistic and know that everytime I’ve tried this I have miserably failed. And besides, when I’m home the options for sugary/animal products are limited to the box of biscotti, six eggs and three yogurt cups that I bought yesterday. Monday through Thursday should be OK though when I buy my daily iced coffee (soy milk, no sugar) I will seriously miss the accompanying sweets. I’m more worried about Friday and Saturday when I’ll be in Chicago for a conference. Yes, I, a mere mortal will have to face that table where all types of cookies are laid out staring me in the face and inviting me to take just one bite…

For spring break I traveled to Belgium with my family. My cousin Joey is studying in Brussels for the semester and his family was going to visit, so a whole bunch of us jumped on the bandwagon. All together there were 10 people roaming around Belgium trying to become as cultured as possible while still having a great time. The flight there was around 7 hours long, which wasn’t that bad seeing as I had my Sudoku to keep me occupied and my brilliant neck pillow for cat naps. It was a night flight and we got served dinner. We had the option of chicken or pasta, or something vegetarian. I always go with the pasta, I never trust individually packaged airplane meats. The meal came with a salad, cheese and crackers, and a water cup. I felt a little like Ed Norton in Fight Club, with all the individualized items. The meal looked something like this:

It actually wasn’t that bad, but of course it was nothing compared to my homemade manicotti

We got a little breakfast on the plane, some juice and a muffin, not quite a meal, but enough to tide us over. When we landed we had to take the metro into the center of the city. As soon as we got off the metro into the central station, up the escalator to go outside, we smelt the most delicious scent. Waffles! They were beckoning us to them. The Belgians have two kinds of waffles, one is covered in a sweet glaze and the dough is a little thick – it is often eat at dessert or as a treat during the day. There are street vendors everywhere selling waffles as we sell hot dogs in NYC. You can put almost any topping you like on them – ice cream, whipped cream, fruit of all varieties, chocolate sauce, nuts, and the list goes on. They are absolutely delicious. I had one almost every day, and went for the chocolate sauce because the Belgians are well known for their chocolate, and I could eat the sauce out of a bowl by itself, it was that good. Here are some waffles my father and I got our last night there:

The other type of waffle was more of what we think of when we hear Belgian Waffle. It is crispy on the outside with a fluffy inside. Usually they are in a rectangular form and can be eaten for breakfast or dessert. I ate mine for lunch because I was just dying to try it. I am a pancake and waffle lover, so I was in heaven.

Belgian food has been majorly influenced by French food, so they eat a lot of croissants and baguettes for bread. Our lunches were frequently on baguettes, with a wide range of sandwich fillers from grilled ham and cheese, to omelets, and sea food. Most of the food was very familiar and I didn’t encounter anything I haven’t seen before. I was surprised at how many Italian restaurants there are. My cousin said that since it’s so easy to travel between countries in the EU, many people relocate to different places and that most of these restaurants are run by real Italians. We ate at an Italian restaurant once and the food was excellent. The only thing that threw me was the presence of mushrooms in lasagna. It wasn’t labeled mushroom lasagna, it just said lasagna and it had a ton of mushrooms in it and in the sauce it was covered in. I wound up trading with someone else because I’m not the biggest fan of mushrooms – I don’t like the texture.

The Belgians are famous for chocolate, and there’s no question as to why. All types of chocolate were much better than American chocolate, most likely due to the fresh ingredients and lack of preservatives. One of the fancier chocolate stores told its customers to eat the chocolate within 8 days otherwise it would go bad. That chocolate was expensive and exquisite.  — The people of Brussels had a strange obsession with this statue called the Mannequin Pis. It is a little boy who is peeing into a fountain. He can be found on magnets, t-shirts, bottle openers, and made out of chocolate, as seen here:

This cracked me up, although I don’t know why it’s such a big deal there. A national symbol in a national delicacy. Yummmm.

There were also some more artistic chocolate sculptures, like this dragon, that reminded me of the food network challenge to make fashion out of chocolate. I’m sure the Belgians could do it!

That’s it for part one, wait for more deliciousness in Part 2!

Yesterday morning I woke up fairly late, around 12, for my 2 o’clock seminar class. I love Tuesdays because nobody is home when I wake up and I can cook whatever I please without having to listen to complaint about how bad the apartment smells. I woke up with an empty stomach that was growling “FEED ME!!!”  So, I went to the ktichen to see what I could make for breakfast, even though it was half past 12 in the afternoon. Here is a list of things I found in my kitchen for the sole purpose of a deliciously filling breakfast that would make any French person or diabetic cry: Pancake mix, chocolate chip cookies, whipped cream, vanilla ice cream from costco, eggo maple syrup (which anyone could hardly call syrup), and of course my savior, Nutella. So I started off by whisking the pancake mix in with water and two eggs. After that I added the chocolate chips to the mix, along with some vanilla extract. Don’t ask me why, but I always see chefs use vanilla extract when they are making a desert mix, so I thought “why not!?”. I cooked the pancakes with a generous amount of butter. The mix gave out 4 flapjacks. Basically, I piled on a couple of scoops of ice cream, some maple syrup, and the whipped cream to top it all off. If you are wondering what I did with the Nutella, then you should know that I smeared a generous amount on the flapjacks before poouring the maple syrup, Yum! If this was ever on a menu at a restaurant, it would be called the “gut buster”. I actually couldn’t even finish the damn thing. I hung my white flag up about 3/4th of the way through, and threw the rest out. I always feel guilty throwing food out in the garbage. After the breakfast that should have been a brunch I felt full and tired, and a little horrible for feeding my body such unhealthycarbs. This is definitely a breakfast that SHOULD be shared and SHOULD be eaten no more than once a month. The concoction was amazing, an explosion of different sweet flavors in my mouth. The only thing that made me feel good about eating this was that the pancake mix was whole grain and supposedly ”healthy”, but ironically I turned it into an unhealthy guilty pleasure. Im just thankful for having a fast metabolism and burn most of what I eat through swimming.

For Spring Break I visited Jamaica with my family and stayed at a resort. We were in Ocho Rios, which is located along the Blue Mountains and every thing was beautiful. The resort was all-inclusive and what that meant above all was that my family and I ate like royalty. Every night was a banquet! We had the option to eat from a variety of foods and people walked around handing us a cold beer or smoothie at any hour that we were on the beach or by the pool or in the lobby or just idley standing around. In fact, the only place that there wasn’t someone to hand me a smoothie was after I got out of the shower, haha just a joke! We hung out on the beach in the daytime and at lunch we ate barbequed jerk chicken and jerk pork that was made in a little hut on the beach. Since this food and society class goes with me everywhere, I am also happy to report that all of the foods were indigenous to Jamaica! I also found my new favorite drink: honeydew juice and I recommend it to everyone. It cooled my body down after one glass and I believe that it ought to be this summer’s blockbuster hit drink!

Last week while we watched “Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the all-American Meal” I was eating a chicken sandwich. I soon realized that this was not a very good idea! The film discussed the industrialization of the food specifically the meat and poultry industry. While the imagery of dozens of chicken carcasses rolling along on a conveyor belt was enough to make someone lose his/her appetite, what did it for me was the dark little shacks that the chickens were grown in. Seeing as I am a firm believer in the healing and overall good qualities of the sun I thought that this was the most inhumane thing that you could do to a living being. But, the realities of the things going on inside of the dark little bungalow turned out to be worse. A chicken farmer spoke out about how the way she was asked to tend to the chickens had ultimately affected her health. On account of the hormones and antibiotics that she was required to administer to the chickens, she was now allergic to most antibiotics. She explained that the purpose of the hormones is to quickly grow the chickens. Accordingly, the chickens develop from the size of a chick to a full-sized chicken in a matter of weeks and their bones can’t support that so many of them have fractures or are unable to move around. I’m not a chicken farmer so I don’t know what chickens need to grow and live on, but I do know that in some karmic way whatever the chicken’s body has experienced in those couple of weeks of torture that it is kept alive before it is slaughtered for food will manifest in the substance of that juicy chicken sandwich that I was eating at the time, so I threw it out.

Very few significant things happened this week as far as food goes. The one story I do this is blog worthy is my pesto story. This past Saturday my mom and I decided to make some pesto together. We went to the nearby farmers market on Roosevelt island and bought fresh basil, walnuts, and garlic. The parmesan cheese and the olive oil we already had. Since we didn’t have a food processor, we used the blender instead to mix everything together, which worked just as well surprisingly. We didn’t really have a recipe, just some show my mom saw on food network. After we made the pesto we let it cool in the fridge. That night we made pasta with pesto and it was amazing. I’ve had pasta with pesto before but the pesto was always store bought. Tasting the pesto that we made can easily exacerbate the different between homemade and not homemade. I have really began to appreciate home cooking more these past couple of weeks. Not only does it save money, but it also tastes so much better. I can attribute this change of diet in my schedule. I’ve had so much more free time lately that I don’t need to rush food. Sometimes it is important to collaborate with someone to make a meal. There’s nothing better than making food with someone else and eating it. Another dish I like to make form scratch with my girlfriend Sue is apple pie. What better way to learn how to make apple pie than by following the instructions in the Joy of Cooking cookbook. Since apple pie is traditionally an American dessert, a traditionally American cookbook is perfect. The process of making food and then eating it makes me appreciate the food that I’m eating even more. I find it funny how many people don’t realize that they tend to care about food more if they took part in making it. It comes as no surprise that someone would enjoy a slice of apple pie they themselves made as opposed to a restaurant. I don’t want to sound cheesy, but that whole “love is the missing ingredient” bologna is true to me!

Hey guys,

I was browsing through the NY Times Dining & Wine section, on the website, and found this article.  I thought it was really interesting, so I’ve brought it here to share with everyone.  Enjoy!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/dining/07induction.html?ref=dining&pagewanted=all

Well, guys, I knew it had to happen eventually.  I gave in, and had McDonald’s at the mall yesterday.  The intention had been to go to Taco Bell, so yes, my temporary ban on fast food would have been over.  But to be fair, it was one of the 5-layer burritos they’ve been advertising for $.89… so it would have been worth it.  Except that for some reason, they don’t have that at the mall and were going to charge me nearly $4 for the same thing.  I tried to find a cheap item on the menu, and that was impossible.  I stormed off, in search of better, cheaper food.  There was literally nothing to get for a small budgeted meal (Nathan’s was suggested, but their value meals were no value  – again, the byproduct of the mall, given that the value meals at the Coney Island location are most certainly worth it.) except Burger King, and McDonald’s.  I chose the latter; they had a better dollar menu.  Of course, their advertising worked on me, and I went for the large fries and large drink to get a .99 cent Big Mac.  But whatever, I enjoyed it.  I’m still going to avoid fast food for as long as possible… but once in a while, I’ll deal with it.

The one thing I did not enjoy about the meal, however, was the crowd in the restaurant.  This by itself would not have been so bad, were it not for the women sitting at the table next to my sister and I, talking about the various things wrong with the bodies of other women in other subdivisions of their ethnic group.  It was disgusting – just leave people alone, first of all, and second of all, I’m here to enjoy my meal, not to listen to your conversation.  I realize that these are close quarters and a very informal environment, but please, try to keep your voice down.

Finally, there’s my upcoming trip to Montana, with 4 of my classmates at CSI and 8 other Macaulay students.  I’m very excited about this, and ordinarily I’d be gushing with details, except that it’s relatively late at night right now and I hadn’t meant to get to this topic anyway (to be honest, this post just kinda grew away from me, so to speak… my mind tends to keep going, a lot.  Sometimes that works to my benefit, sometimes it doesn’t.).  The point is, we need to be at the airport by 6:30 am, and will not be arriving to our destination (whether that means the hotel or simply the city of Missoula, I don’t know) until approximately 15 hours later.  Going in and out of airports and airplanes all day means airport/airplane food.  I’ve never really had a bad experience with either, so I’m not really complaining… I just think it should make for some interesting experiences.  I’ll update you when I get back, though I’ll probably post here again before I go (no guarantees, though).

Until then, my friends, I bid you adieu.