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?)

Day 36

26. Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food
27. "Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs and other mammals]."

These two rules essentially address the same concept: the less meat in one's diet the better.

I'm conflicted on this concept. On one hand, I get the idea that, as Americans, we tend to believe that a meal = one big honking piece of meat and some other stuff, which is not only misguided, but actually completely backwards. Human beings aren't meant to eat so much meat, and until the combination of rising affluence of the United States and completely whacked-out federal subsidization of the meat industry, we didn't. It was too cost-prohibitive.

(Side note regarding that chart: Michelle Obama's crusade for healthier childrens' diets completely baffles me. What is the point of her campaign when at the very same time US government tacitly supports this massively unhealthy way of thinking and eating through its subsidies?)

And according to this totally bad-ass article from the New York Times that EVERYBODY should go read RIGHT NOW because it explains exactly what is so toxic about the overly meat-dependent diet, Americans eat twice the daily recommended intake of protein, and almost all of it from animal protein. World meat consumption has also doubled since 1961.

So I'm also all for reversing that way of thinking. I mentioned earlier that I try to make a habit of asking myself if there is just one vegetable I can add to every meal. By the same token, before preparing each meal, I ask myself if there is any way I can make it without meat. I also strive for and tally my "vegetarian days," days where (duh) I eat no meat whatsoever. Actually, today looks like it's shaping up to be a vegetarian day. An apple, homemade granola and yogurt for breakfast, salad and homemade pasta for lunch, and leftover huevos rancheros for dinner. Go me!

So, I totally, totally get that that's important. But, on the other hand, there comes a point in observing this rule that I can no longer see eye to eye with Pollan.

Pollan claims that vegetarians, as a rule, are "generally healthier," than meat-eaters, and I'm sure this is true. I'm sure there's a study out there somewhere, that proves it. Here's what I know: I was a rubbish vegetarian. I ate too much bread and cheese, too little protein. I also was (and am, if I'm going to be completely honest) not nearly creative enough or generous enough with my use of fruits and vegetables. In the words of my co-worker, who could not have said it better than me: "I was a vegetarian for a while - I got so fat and so tired."

So Pollan specifically advocates only eating meat in about two meals per week, leaving a whopping 19 vegetarian meals to figure out every week.

Now, for me, reduction in my consumption of meat came naturally for me, especially in the beginning, before I had had a chance to stock up on meat from local, non-industrial sources, because of the observation of Rule 30 (Eat animals who have themselves eaten well.) I thought maybe, as a more mature and thoughtful eater, that I would be better at being a vegetarian than I was as a teenager. That might be true up to a point, but I could also see a dozen bad vegetarian habits that I was falling right back into.

So, now that I've been to the co-op and the fancy local deli and I have an ample source of acceptable meat, I've slackened the reigns considerably. My personal goal is to have at least two vegetarian days per week, and eat meat with only one meal the rest of the time. I don't always succeed, and when I don't I'm not too hard on myself, but I think it's safe to say that this is the goal; this is what I find reasonable.

I had to be so lax about The Rules, especially in the middle of a project dedictated to observing them as strictly as possible, but I really think I'm in the right here. When I began eating meat again at age 20, I felt the effects immediately. I was less tired, more focused, had more energy. I didn't feel weighed down all the time.

I'm not one of those people who are all, "your body will always tell you what to do." In fact, I have not observed that to be the case at all. My body doesn't speak very clearly most of the time. So when it DOES, I feel obligated to listen.

After all, Pollan himself says in his introduction that food science is still relatively new. "Nobody knows what's going on deep in the soul of a carrot to make it so good for you," and, by that same token, nobody must know exactly what is going on deep within my body that makes meat so important to my health. But I know it's true. So on this rule, MP, you and I are just going to have to part ways.

Day 34

I have to share my breakfast - inspired by the food from Farm and Table. It was so successful I had it almost every morning this week. As most everyone knows, I'm working for an new restaurant in town that is not only amazing and exciting in lots of different ways, but also falls really perfectly in line with what I'm doing with this project. Also, our food is pretty undeniably amazing.

One of the items of the brunch menu is a traditional New Mexican staple, which, shamefully, I had never heard of before, called atole. Atole is a kind of cornmeal porridge made from toasted masa and here in New Mexico, it's made specifically from blue corn masa. When I tried it for the first time at Farm & Table, it was (unsurprisingly) amazing, so when I saw a bin of atole flour at the co-op while cruising for new, rules-happy meal, how could I not take some to try?

Finding a recipe online was a little difficult, since it turns out that New Mexican atole is different from traditional atole, but when I finally found one that looked right, I was surprised and skeptical about how quick and simple was supposed to be. It's basically just flour and water:

Ingredients
1 cup blue corn meal
2 cups milk
2 cups water
Sugar to taste
1/2 tsp salt

Directions
Mix blue corn meal, salt and water and bring to boil, stirring constantly. Add milk and stir until thickened. Serve hot and add sugar to taste.

See? And it actually was that easy. AND it only took about 5 minutes, AND it made enough to last the entire week.

Now, I know what amounts to a bowl of flour isn't exactly the best way to start a morning, and as a result this sadly won't turn into an every day thing, but atole is a very traditional food and thus, in my opinion, falls into the category of Rule 48 (Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks), and thus, in my opinion, gets the thumbs up. Or maybe I'm just trying to justify continuing to make this delicious food.

Because, most importantly, it tasted great.

I added a little maple syrup, some walnuts and some strawberries, but the possibilities of how to dress it up are endless. My friend Monica used to add cinnamon sticks and cardemom pods to the water she boiled our oatmeal in - I'm wondering how that would taste with atole. I bet it's amazing.

I'm not sure how readily available blue corn atole flour is outside New Mexico, so this might be just a completely worthless post if you're located outside of the Land of Enchantment. But I think I've seen this brand sold all the way out in New York, so don't lose hope! It's definitely worth looking into.

Day 31

25. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.

Speaking of plants my Harvest Baskets from Skarsgard Farms have starting coming and Oh. Em. Gee. They are the best thing in the entire world. It's like every Tuesday, Santa just brings me a gift of fresh fruits and vegetables and leaves it on the front door. It is SO exciting; I get giddy on Tuesday mornings when I realize they're coming today.

The first week in the CSA, I put a cabbage in my harvest box, partly because my cousin Claire has a delcious and simple recipe for coleslaw (cabbage, carrots, vinegar, salt) but mostly on a whim, because I really have no idea what to do with a head of cabbage.

Later in the week, because of my own self-imposed, possibly-excessive rule to only eat bread that I have baked myself, I found myself in a frustrating bit of a bind. I had delicious mayo that I had taken the time to make over the weekend. I had delicious tomatoes from Skarsgard Farms. I had amazing sliced deli meat that I had taken aaaaalll afternoon to go up to Keller's, the fancy meat shop with a wide selection of local/small-farm products. The only thing I didn't have was bread.

And I really wanted a sandwich. Plus (surprise, surprise) I was running late, and I just wanted something I could grab and eat with me on the run.

So, long story short, I decided to make lettuce wraps instead, and use the leaves from my cabbage. Truthfully? I thought this was going to be a total disaster. Oh God, I kept thinking to myself, this is going to be a sad, sad lunch. I thought the cabbage would taste weird and overpoweringly cabbage-y, the inside would be bland, and the whole thing would be a wet, sloppy, slimey affair, as all my experiments with lettuce wraps have been in the past.

A ham sandwich, wrapped in cabbage leaves

I was. So. Wrong. These lettuce wraps were amazing, and held together like magic. Cabbage leaves! Who knew! I went through a phase in college when I was obsessed with the South Beach diet (don't judge), a time during which I tried my hand at a lot of lettuce wraps and they were always limp and pathetic excuses for meals. Apparently, sturdy cabbage leaves were all I needed.

Inside, I threw some homemade mayo, some dill weed, smoked ham, tomatoes, avocado and shredded carrots. The shredded carrots were another bonus: as a part of my mission to eat plants, as Pollan instructs, I make sure to take time during the preparation of every meal to think, "Is there some way for me to add just one more vegetable to this plate? The carrots were my extra vegetable here - not something I'd usually put in a sandwich, but with the lettuce wrap, it seemed like it made sense - and it did. The carrots were a subtle, crisp, fresh addition to the wrap.

But I think the mayonnaise is what made it stand out, although when I told Farm & Table's head chef about the mayonnaise in my creation, he gave me a look of total confusion and possibly even personal offense that I would do something so unpleasant with my food. So what do I know? All I know is that I made a lettuce wrap and I thought it was going to be awful, but it was fantastic instead.

A more artful cook would have found an attractive and/or edible way to keep them rolled shut... me, I used rubber bands.

In fact, now that I know how sturdy and how mild cabbage leaves are, I'm ready to stuff all kinds of stuff inside there. A turkey caprese cabbage roll, for example, with smoked turkey, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, basil and balsamic vinaigrette. Or a chicken fajita cabbage roll, with peppers, onions, and grilled chicken.

Needless to say, I sort of felt like I had won the jackpot. Not only did I find a healthy, flavorful, filling alternative to a sandwich, swapping the bread for cabbage makes me feel like I've taken a HUGE step closer towards eating mostly plants.

Which is a big deal to me. I make it a point to eat vegetables and fruit with every meal, and since starting this project, I always dig into the vegetables first. Still, Pollan doesn't just say "eat plants," or even, "eat plants with every meal." He says, eat MOSTLY plants. I have to admit, despite my best efforts, I still think of vegetables as a side - there aren't a whole lot of plates that utilize veggies as the main dish that I would feel totally satisfied eating. But by adding cabbage and carrots to a fairly common lunch of mine, I can add at least one to the list. And it's important, despite my shortcomings, to keep striving.

Mostly plants, Leigh. MOSTLY PLANTS.