Cheats

45. Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.
72. Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods.
79. Treat treats as treats.

So... I've been cheating a lot.

Accidentally! Accidentally! But still cheating.

See, I LOVE Rule 45. Pollan says we should feel free to indulge in anything we make with our own two hands, because most junk food, like fried chicken or chocolate cake, is time and labor-intensive and will, therefore, be a self-regulating system. But when Pollan gave the all-clear, I he seriously underestimated my dedication to junk food.

I two jobs and over 50 hours a week right now, but still I've managed to come home, think, "God, all really want is a cake," and somehow find the time to actually bake a cake.

Most recently I made Miraculous Matzo, which you could also probably call matzo crunch or matzo brickle if you wanted to sound less silly. It's a ridiculously easy and disgustingly delicious recipe: basically melted brown sugar and butter poured over matzo. Topped with chocolate of course. If you're like me and you have a lot of matzo leftover from Passover that you don't know what to do with, trust me, this is it.

Image from www.davidlebovitz.com

So I made probably a metric ton of these sinful cookies in about 20 minutes flat, and now everytime I walk by the fridge, I reach for a cookie: Michael Pollan said I could! I made it, so he said I could eat as much as I wanted!

But a little part of me knows I'm cheating.

There are still Rules 72 and 79. Treats are still treats and snacks are fruits, vegetables, and nuts. NOT a piece of toffee every time I walk by the fridge.

But it's not any rule or intepretation of that rule that makes me think this is a cheat. Because if you play the semantics and spin it just right, you can still make a case for my more lax, cookie-friendly interpretation of Rule 45. What makes me sure I'm cheating is the what I feel after the cookie-gluttony has subsided. It's not guilt, exactly, but it's still a kind of disappointment. I didn't eat that cookie because I chose to eat it, I ate it because it was there, and I really, really wanted to. There was no consideration there, no awareness.

What's the lesson here? I think it's that the rules are only so worth so much. Even with so many of them so carefully drawn-out, each and every one is still subject to innumerable interpretations. And if you want to know if your interpretation is a good one, you're not going to find that in a book. Because a big part of eating well - of what Pollan is on about - is being mindful and aware of how we consume. Have I really thought about what I'm eating today? Am I being honest and careful and kind to myself with this choice?

I know, I know, easier said than done. But in the toxic culinary environment we've created for ourselves, we can't afford to eat mindlessly. So we've got to try. And sometimes, when you look at a cookie, the answer to those questions is no. But sometimes, I think it's important to keep in mind, the answer is yes.

And in that spirit, if you want to make Miraculous Matzo for yourself (and you should), here's how. The variation I used is from David Lebovitz's blog, and is just perfect:

MIRACULOUS MATZO
Combine equal parts brown sugar and butter and heat until they start to bubble. The recipe I used called for one cup of brown sugar and one cup of butter, though I felt it worked better when I used 1 1/2 cups of each. (And yes, that means I made this TWICE.) After the mixture starts to bubble, pour it onto a cookie tray lined with parchment paper and matzo and then bake at 350 about 10 minutes, until the mixture starts to darken. Take it out, pour a cup of chocolate chips on top IMMEDIATELY, let it stand for about 5 minutes to let the chocolate chips melt and then spread them across the top. Set it the fridge to harden and, hooray! Miraculous matzo.

**Note. If you don't have matzo, but still want to make these cookies, you can substitute Saltines. I can tell you from experience that this works great, and the cookies are Amazing.**

Break Time

After a long and grueling 46-day period, I'm taking a short break from blogging to catch up on the rest of my life. I haven't abandoned the rules, not for a moment. I'm just taking a short breather from writing about it, to do things like, you know, taxes.

Following a brief spring cleaning of my life, I'll be back next week with your regularly scheduled programming.

See you next Monday!

Day 43

More on meat, and then I'll shut up about it. (Probably.)

Maybe I'm hyper-aware because of this project, but I keep seeing articles about the relative benefits and health risks of eating meat. Mostly the latter; it eating meat might still be the order of the day in contemporary American society, but if my Facebook page is any kind of social barometer, thinking it's cool is hopelessly passe.

To begin with, I'm very intrigued by this article that drifted my way, because it's a very intelligent argument in favor of synthetic meat products, which Pollan specifically condemns. Mark Bittman, by the way, is the same author who wrote the previous amazing NYT article about meat to which I linked last week.

The article argues that eating meat (again:) is not a healthy choice for our bodies or the environment. The author is optimistic and excited about new, more realistic fake-meat products. With fake meat this good, he posits, even died-in-the-wool meat-eaters will be eating less of it. Which is good news for us and the planet.

Pollan, on the other hand, argues that anything that's one thing masquerading as another thing (that is, vegetables masquerading as meat) is bad news from the start. Why? Because anything that is made to feel, look, and taste like something it's not has, by very definition, been highly, highly processed. And we all know how Pollan feels about processed food.

So the question is, what, exactly, is so bad about a little processed soybeans anyway? If you ask Bittman, food made out of nothing but soybeans and other veggies is practically a God-send.

And if you ask Michael Pollan, the answer is, we don't know, and that should be enough. "Nutrition science is, to put it charitably, a very young science," says Pollan in his introduction, "[It's] approximately where surgery was in the year 1650 - very promising, and very interesting to watch, but are you ready to let them operate you?"

A fair point, MP, but by those same standards, an innumerable amount of things in our everyday lives are a "very young science": cell phones, X-rays, microwaves. We trust doctors and scientists everyday to tell us, "This is perfectly safe," without even seeing a full generation that has lived and died not knowing a world without that science. If we trust some guy to say, "Look this big plastic box is pumping radiation into your food in order to heat it, but don't worry, it's totally not going to give you cancer; we did a study," trusting that same guy to say, "This food may look different, but it's really just the same soybeans people have been eating for hundreds of years, so it's completely fine," is no big thing.

And then there's also this little Huff-Po Op-Ed gem that essentially likens eating meat to smoking cigarettes. Which I think is a bit extreme, but in its defense, it has some fair points. There was a study conducted at Harvard a few years ago that everyone - my buddy MP included - loves to cite, clearly linking the consumption of red meat to mortality rates. It's hard to refute that evidence - although some have tried, citing unreliable information-gathering, and a failure to distinguish between cattle that were grass-fed and those that were corn-fed and factory-"grown."


Personally, I think that if you look at the nutritive difference between corn-fed and grass-fed beef, as well as the high rates of antibiotics and hormones found in factory-raised livestock, it's clear that this is an important distinction. Still, it's necessary to recognize that these are important points.

But I have a hard time getting behind it. And it's not because of the grass-fed argument, and it's not because of the data collection methods. It's basic, gut instinct when I think about how I feel when I include meat in my diet vs. when I don't.

And it's the fact that people have been eating meat for thousands of years and seemed to do just fine. You know when don't seem to be doing just fine? Right now. Heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death in America, with diabetes not far behind, making this century the first time in human history that the top two causes of death are largely influenced by lifestyle choices, as opposed to accidents or communicable diseases.

It seems profoundly counterintuitive to blame meat for this.

To eat meat or not to eat meat? To embrace imitation meat products as a health- and eco-savior or to denounce it as part of the problem? In situations like this, I think the best we can do is make the choice that feels right and pray that in the end good intentions count for something.

I know what I choose. What do you think?

Day 40 (So I've Been Thinking)

I'm at Day 40 here, which is kind of a milestone, so I've been thinking.

With six days left to go until Easter, I thought I'd be pretty much through all the food rules on the blog at this point. Turns out, I'm not even halfway through.

These 40 days have also been an exercise in back-tracking, amending, and re-evaluating; it's been a constant stream inside my head of After thinking about it, I really shouldn't be doing this and, you know, maybe I should start doing that. In hindsight it's unsurprising, but it has nonetheless changed the rhythm and intention. Instead of being six intense weeks of full-stop dietary changes, it's gathered steam slowly. So many things - like joining a CSA and trying my hand at homemade condiments - I feel like I just began. It certainly doesn't feel like I've been doing this for a month and a half - not for real anyway.

So I've got to keep going. I think I'll keep plugging away until I get a chance to write about all 83 Food Rules - or until it really, really feels like I'm doing this for real, no cheating or forgetting or taking shortcuts. Whichever comes last.

...

Now that I've said it, I'm a little overwhelmed. If I'm going to be honest with myself, I'm a little terrified of this project stretching out in front of me with no forseeable end to it. But I've started it, and ending it next week would feel to much like giving up now. I've got to see it through.

(Oh Lord, what have I done?)