As I mentioned in my last post, I’m scaling back my writing for this blog as I move towards developing my music blog, where there’s a fair amount going on. I hope you’ll take a look over there and subscribe if you haven’t done so already and if what you see interests you. I’ve also done a couple of posts recently over at my Intentional Conservative blog, so if you’re interested in politics you can head on over there. (You can also follow me on my personal Facebook page, which has nothing personal on it at all—it’s composed entirely of political articles, mostly by conservative writers, some by conservative Christian writers. Good stuff, I have to say.)
But I’ve been meaning to post something here about this whole let’s-slow-down-food-prep-and-consumption idea. If you’re homebound and looking for something to do, of course you’re all in on the slow-food idea. If you’re holding down a deemed-essential job and maybe also juggling child care, my hat is off to you and I fully recognize that you may have less time these days for nourishing yourself and your family. I don’t have any magic answers for those of you in that situation, I’m afraid.
I do want to make the point, though, for those who have any space in your lives at all, that convenience/snack/junk food is insidious for any number of reasons. (This is not to imply that busy people are living on Oreos and Doritos, just that the equation is different for them and that I’m not qualified to give advice in that area.) One idea that’s not always addressed in the list of negatives about processed, pre-prepared food is that you can consume it so quickly. It’s not just “fast food” because you can pull up to the window and get it right away but because you can eat it right away. You can suck down a shake in no time flat. You can scarf down French fries while you’re driving, using only one hand. You can put the bag of cookies on your desk and eat them one after another.
I was really impressed with this (perhaps rather obvious) thought while I was eating my umpteenth salad for lunch recently. Remember the baby kale post? Well, you can see that the salad in the picture is made with that. It has, in addition, half of a big apple, sliced, some crumbled blue cheese (bought at Costco, cut into chunks, and stored in the freezer) and toasted walnuts. (I sorted some out of a batch of granola I made recently, but raw ones are just fine.) I used one of the salad dressing variations that I’d made and stored in the fridge—I think this particular one was made with apple cider vinegar. (When I looked up the baby kale post I realized that I had included this identical salad there, except with a somewhat different dressing. But it’s so, so good that I feel no guilt for posting about it again.) Take another look at this salad dressing page to see my basic recipes and the variations I’ve developed. Right now I have sitting in the fridge the last of a batch of homemade ranch dressing, a batch of fruit vinegar/walnut oil/poppy seed dressing, and my Asian-inspired vinaigrette. They’re all just delicious, and they keep very well. I should follow my own advice and put a sticker on the ranch dressing container with the expiration date of whatever dairy ingredient I used, but I think it’s still fine. The others should keep pretty much indefinitely, as the egg is cooked and they have substantial amounts of acid in them—lemon or lime juice and various types of vinegar. The Asian dressing was used yesterday on a Savoy cabbage/deli shredded chicken (from Costco and frozen in small amounts)/roasted peanuts/chow mein noodles salad that was, like, so scrumptious I can’t even begin to tell you about it. I think I have one more Ziploc bag of that chicken in the freezer, so I’ll be having more of that salad soon.
Here’s the thing: All of these salads take awhile to eat. Prep time is somewhat minimized on the spot if the ingredients are ready to go. I sit at the kitchen table and read articles on my laptop while I’m eating, but I do try to pay attention to the great flavors and textures. And when I’m done, I’m done. We also have some clementines in the fridge and are trying to eat those up in a timely fashion. Guess what? You have to peel them and pull the sections apart, getting rid of the excess pith if you’re a wimp like me. You have to do some chewing. While they’re much easier to eat than regular oranges, they’re not instant. And yes, I do cave in and eat a few chocolate or butterscotch chips once in awhile, but not often. And they’re not something you can really just eat and eat. I try to count out a below-25-grams-of-sugar ounce or so, savor them, and let that be it.
So just some thoughts for you to consider. Weeks or months from now we’ll (mostly) be back in our normal lives—I hope. Wouldn’t it be great if we’d changed our eating habits for the better and that change carried on into the future?
Here, by the way, is a listing of the salad greens that I’m leaning on more and more:
The aforementioned baby kale
Savoy cabbage—so much better than regular cabbage for salads! Napa cabbage is also good, but I find that you can’t slice it up too far ahead of time as it seems to get bitter.
Green leaf lettuce—we like this better than romaine
It’s a pretty short list, isn’t it? I probably should branch out more. Even the leaf lettuce is fairly sturdy. Once I’ve taken off the outer leaves, torn the usable leaves into pieces, washed them and spun them dry and rolled them up into paper towels and then put the whole bundle into a plastic bag, it can last several days before the edges start turning brown. The unwashed head, depending on how fresh it was to begin with, can last five days or so before you really need to prep it and eat it.
So that’s it for now. Hope it’s helpful as we all try to tweak our eating habits and use food well.