Fixin' Supper

I’m off on a quest to read a book a week in 2010. In classic overachiever mode here, I’m going to start with the book I read the week of Christmas 2009, In Defense of Food.

Some of you may be shocked I haven’t read this book already, since it ties in with a lot of what I believe about how we should eat. Honestly, when it came out, I read the reviews and thought, Yep, I agree, and didn’t feel the need to read it right away since I suspected Michael Pollan was just preaching to my choir.

But Ashby received the book for Christmas this year, and I quickly appropriated it.

I did enjoy it, and I highly recommend it to you if you are interested in the food-industrial complex or if you’re trying to eat healthy and local. Pollan does a nice job of de-myth-ifying lots of what we believe about food, showing us how conventional wisdom came to be — why we think eating low-fat is good, or why we think carbs are bad — and showing that many of these common assumptions are half-truths at best.

I found one thing frustrating about the book, though. While Pollan spends a lot of time debunking common food assumptions, he does not devote time to his own original research about food. And he’s up front about that, by the way — it’s not a hidden agenda. But I just found myself wanting the same rigor applied to what we ought to know about food, as he applies to that which we think we know, but don’t.

Ah, but part of his point is that we haven’t done the research, and/or don’t yet have the technology, to understand how food really works. At any rate, I found this book a nice companion to Marion Nestle’s What to Eat, long my bible for food-related questions.

I learned today that my friend Reggie Crowder passed away on Sunday. Reggie owned Dee’s Q, the neighborhood roadside barbecue stand that I’ve loved for 4 years. If I remember correctly, Reggie told me once he opened Dee’s in August of 2004. I saw it for a few months on my way home every day, before I finally tried it. And it was love at first bite. I quickly learned why: Reggie grew up in the next town over in West Tennessee, and he cooked his barbecue just like I remembered it from home.

Nashville’s a bit of a hybrid barbecue town. You can find a little bit of everything here. I have the pleasure to have known many kinds of barbecue, thanks to friends and relatives who live all over the barbecue states. So I’ve had your brisket, your vinegar-base, your heavy, sticky sauce. And while I don’t even often turn down mustard barbecue [but really, South Carolina, is that right? I think not.], my love remains the West Tennessee barbecue of my childhood. A bit of sauce, but not too saucy. Tomatoes and vinegar in the sauce, but not too much of either. You should be tasting the meat here, not the sauce.

So once I happened up to Reggie’s stand, I came back again and again. I even ate barbecue a few times during my two vegetarian stints [first things first, people], and I’d stop by just for some of his fried okra, too. My whole family loved Reggie and his barbecue, even the ones who live out of state. I guess the home-folks connection helped, but the barbecue was critical, too.

My dad and I saw Reggie in the late fall, and he told us he’d had quadruple bypass surgery last summer. When he died, Reggie was 45. Just bad luck in the gene pool is all you can say there, I guess. He was doing well when I saw him this fall, but I understand from a friend he’d been back in the hospital recently.

I just hate this. Reggie was one of the nicest guys you could hope to meet. And he was living his dream with Dee’s Q. I don’t have anything profound to add here. I’m not one to go around saying how this is God’s will or whatever. I think the universe is random and capricious, but most days I’m glad to be part of it. Today’s not one of those days. I am grateful to have known Reggie Crowder. Peace and good barbecue to you, my friend.

Previous posts on Dee’s Q:

• No one cooks when they’re moving
• The last post on barbecue

More people who love Dee’s Q

• The Nashville Scene/Best of Nashville 2008
• The Nashville Scene/Review May 2008 [includes pix of Reggie and his family]

At work, my friend Barbara and I are in the same CSA — we’ve both been enjoying great produce from Delvin Farms all summer. New this year in the Delvin Farms boxes: Some of the most amazing potatoes I’ve ever eaten.

We were discussing today how we’ve both enjoyed the potatoes but have actually felt a little overwhelmed by them. We’ve gotten about 3 lbs. a week for the past few weeks. I hope they don’t stop sending them anytime soon! But we’ve both felt the need to be creative.

Here’s the potato salad I made last week.

3 lb. potatoes
1 red bell pepper
1/4 c. capers [or less. I LOVE capers.]
1/4 c. dill relish
1/2 c. mayonnaise
1/4 – 1/3 c. brown mustard
1/4 c. tarragon vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel and dice the potatoes. Boil until barely tender. Mushy potatoes will ruin potato salad! Let potatoes cool.

Whisk together mayo, mustard, vinegar, salt and pepper.

Dice bell pepper, and mix with mayo, relish, potatoes and capers.

This is a pretty low-sauce potato salad.

Shelling peas

Today Jacob and I went to the farmers’ market. We found the rarest of finds — peas in the shell. You can frequently find shelled butterbeans in the summer, and often shelled peas in the spring, but to find them still in the shell! Wonderful.

Peas in particular must be the freshest of fresh. When you pick peas, all the sugar in them begins converting to starch, and it doesn’t take long. You really need to eat them within a day or two of their being picked or they won’t be sweet.

So we bought our peas-in-the-shell and brought them straight home for shelling. I was impressed, but even 2yos can help with this.

Then I slightly adapted a recipe I found on 101 Cookbooks. Here’s what I did:

I shelled and rinsed my peas. I boiled a pot of water with a little salt, and I dumped all the peas in for 30 seconds exactly. Then I strained them and rinsed them with cold water to stop the cooking.

For each cup of peas, I added
1/2 c. toasted pine nuts
1/2 c. parmesan cheese
Salt
Lemon juice
1 T. olive oil

And whipped the whole thing up in the food processor.

  Pea pesto.

We couldn’t stop eating it.

• Meat
  But you knew that already
• Coke of any kind, but especially Diet Coke.
  It’s either corn syrup, Nutrasweet or Splenda. I’m thinking any of ‘em could kill me.
• Frozen, processed food
  Still eating plain frozen vegetables when fresh aren’t available
• Canned food, except tomatoes
  Have to see how many I can put up this summer
• Store-bought potato chips
  As of last night. I “borrowed” the deep fryer my sister was sending to Goodwill. I made homemade potato chips. Both the 2yo and I died and went to heaven. Not buying store-bought again. Ever.

About a year ago, I read What to Eat by Marion Nestle. What a great book — Nestle, a nutritionist and researcher, examines the food industry from top to bottom — Meat. Seafood. Dairy. Fresh produce. Canned. Frozen. Corn syrup. All of it. She doesn’t condemn it all — but you walk away from the book knowing so much about where your food comes from. If you’re like me, you won’t like it.

So, I’ve been trying to reduce the hands [and chemicals and machines] that have touched what my family and I eat. Please don’t misunderstand — our food industry is in so many ways just a miracle. We’re producing so much food in America, so much that I’d hazard to say a substantial percentage is going to waste. The “starving children in China” that we were warned about as children are still starving in some underdeveloped country [or down the street...real hunger still exists in America, in Nashville, but that's another post], and we’re throwing food away as fast as we can buy it. Or eating more than two people need in any given day.

So in the midst of such abundance, it seems wrong to me to either waste food or to treat it as a commodity. I’m trying instead to view it as a great blessing, and treat it with reverence. If the food is junk, it’s not worthy of me or my family. It has to taste good and be good to meet my standards.

Not to say we’re perfect in that — we had fast food the other night. I’m still struggling to deal with the time required to make every meal nourishing and reverent. And work full time and be president of a nonprofit board and be really, really involved in two other nonprofits and did I mention, I’m a mom to two kids?

But I’m not trying to have a whinefest here. Instead, just saying, we’re paying more and more attention to what we eat. And being more purposeful about it.

When I am able to cook again, I can assure you the menu will include squash. Right now at my house, I have

• 3 acorn squash
• 5 butternut squash
• 2 spaghetti squash
• 2 zucchini

I have promised the 8yo she can choose the first meal to be cooked on the new stove. This is all manipulation on my part. Despite my efforts, she eats more junk and less nutritious food than I’d like, and sometimes seems to go for days subsisting on the occasional tub of applesauce.

Any hope of her choosing some of that squash for her meal? Somehow I doubt it.

However, she has — after a lengthy flirtation with the idea — declared herself this week to be a full-time vegetarian. Both her father and I have made an effort to educate her on the fact that that will require her to actually eat vegetables.

Her reply: I like artichokes.

Eight-year-olds can muster up quite a bit of scorn when they try. I then urged her to get a paper route so we could afford to feed her year-round.

I’m not sure I could properly explain the marvelous bounty I got today from my CSA. I could barely lift the box, for starters. The veggies are coming in now, big time. If you work with me, show up early tomorrow and get your pick of the homegrown vegetables I don’t like and/or have too many of: eggplant, cabbage, cucumbers and possibly some squash.

But for the moment, I’m off to the kitchen. I ordered special a 25-lb box of tomatoes, for the purpose of freezing them for this winter. Here are the instructions I’m following to freeze the tomatoes….so simple.

I’ve done this before in years past, but never on nearly this large a scale. I feel sure a lot will have to come out of the freezer to make it happen. I need to get serious about finding a second refrigerator/freezer.

  Worth the trip to Texas

When Cole and Summer learned that one member of our group has a thing for Dr. Pepper, they arranged to bring these special bottles Sunday night to the Salt Lick. Made only in Dublin, TX, at the oldest existing DP plant, these bottles contain Dr. Pepper made with cane sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup.

Can you tell the difference? Yes. It’s a fuller flavor, and it feels heavier in your mouth. Also, delicious.

Read this.

Go, and eat thou likewise. Local food — from small-scale, independent, organic farmers, if not from your own backyard — won’t expose you to problems like this. Do you really want your food to come shrink-wrapped from halfway across the country?

Just three more days til Tomato Fest ’06. I just wanted to let you all know, there is no point in  your entering the tiniest tomato contest, because we have the winner over here. Be sure to come by Bongo Java at noon on Saturday to see us claim our prize.

What? You want to see the tiniest tomato? Forget it. It’s remaining safely ensconced in its undisclosed location until the judging.