Table Rules

73. Eat at a table
75. “No labels on the table.”
76. Place a flower on the table and everything will taste twice as nice

At least this is a dilemma I can avoid...

By the way? “A desk is not a table.” Pollan wastes no breath making that little caveat clear. Well, fine, MP, but is a coffee table a table?

It totally is.

I know, I know, that’s a totally semantic, flexible interpretation but... there’s something deeply depressing about eating alone at a big ol’ dinner table, isn’t there? Bouquet of flowers notwithstanding. I did it a couple of times and I just felt sad. I’m not one to go out and buy a bouquet of flowers just to spruce up my Tuesday night leftovers, but we do have a rather pretty bamboo shoot on our mantle that I moved over to the table a couple of times to see if it made my food taste better.

It didn’t. And it was still sad. So I said, you know what - forget the table rule. The whole point of the rule, in my opinion, is to appreciate and enjoy my food, and I just can’t do that while chewing silently and awkwardly alone at the dining room table. So screw it: a coffee table is a table.

I’ve actually had to get extremely comfortable with whole “upholding the spirit of the rule” thing, rather than upholding the rule itself, because you just can’t eat every meal at a table. I eat lunch at my desk every day because am I gonna waste 15 minutes of my precious lunch hour both ways leaving the building, heading down the street and finding a table at a nearby restaurant when my desk will do just fine? No, absolutely not.

Here’s how I see it: eat at a table = no distractions. Pay attention to what’s in front of you; appreciate it. Which is, as it would happen, also the intention behind the no-labels-on-the-table idea, and placing a flower there with you. Appreciate your meal. Respect it. Don’t ignore it or drown it out.

No TV. No internet.

If you bring your laptop to the table, it’s not a table. If you turn off your computer at your desk, it becomes a table. That’s how I’m choosing to play it.

I do make one notable exception to the no-distractions rule, and that is reading. Reading is allowed. Because, for me at least, reading is a quiet, thoughtful, introspective activity. And so that seems naturally in line with carrying out a quiet, thoughtful, introspective meal. And while I’m obviously in support of slowing down and appreciating what we consume, it seems to me it’s about as natural as a Cheeto to give my food my total and undivided focus. Eating is and should be an exercise in breathing, talking, laughing, thinking - to make it as silent and somber as a library is just silly.

What I Lack in Ability, I Make Up In Relentless Optimism.

33. Eat well-grown food from healthy soil.
81. Plant a vegetable garden if you have space, a window box if you don’t.

This seems like an appropriate rule upon which to ruminated this week, seeing as I just planted a garden for the first time in my entire life.

I don't have any pictures of my garden yet, so here's a picture of Sol Harvest Farm, where Ric gave me my plants. It's so pretty!

But I'm totally terrified.

You've got to understand this about me: I have a baffingly black thumb. No, you know what? Black doesn't even begin to describe it; it's as though somebody lit my thumb on fire, left the charred remains and then asked me to garden with it.

Once in my apartment back in New York, in a fit of productivity, I asked my friend Monica to give me a few of her plants to liven up my cramped living space. Monica, a permaculture expert, had so many plants in her in apartment, it was practically a greenhouse. "Be careful what you give me, though," I warned her. "I'm REALLY bad with plants."

"Don't worry!" she said, "I'm giving you my hardiest plants - trust me, they're impossible to kill."

Oh yes. I killed them all.

And if you want to get totally technical, I actually just finished planting a garden for the second time in my life - the first being a week and a half ago, when I somehow managed to kill it all in less than a fortnight.

I have no idea what I did. Did I give them too much water? Too little? Too much direct sunlight or too much shade? Did I transplant them too soon or too late? So I'm massively frustrated, and terrified I'm going to kill my second try in even less time. But, as my dad said, "Well, you can either try again or give up."

So, when Farmer Ric asked me on Monday, after spending the afternoon helping him weed at Sol Harvest, if I wanted a few of his extra plants, I said, "Hell yeah!" Though I did make him promise not to be offended if and when I accidentally kill his nice gifts. (He promised.)

I put the plants in the ground almost immediately, and I've stopped worrying about overwatering (it is the desert after all), and they seem to be doing okay so far. I even bought a soil test to discover my soil is too alkaline ("That's only all the soil in New Mexico," Ric scoffed) and I'm saving my eggshells to grind up in the soil to balance the pH levels. But mostly praying I somehow manage to get it right.

Just cross your fingers that in a month or two you'll be seeing photos of fat, luscious tomatoes and squash and not the withered little stalks of good intentions.

Leave Something for the Gods

54. ...Eat less
55. Stop eating before you’re full.
77. Leave something on your plate.

So, after all that good talk in the last post about accepting what you have and not assuming it's your right to consume whatever you want whenever you want, what did I do last night? I went home after work and thought, Ugh. It's my night off, and I want a nice meal. I really don't want any of those meals I cooked last weekend and put in the freezer. I just don't. I almost ordered a pizza. Don't worry, I didn't. I found some lasagna from the weekend in the fridge, poured m'self some wine (Rule 52) and made a night out of it.

And THEN I made a coffee-cup microwave cake for dessert (yeah, you read that right) because I was in a decadent mood. A decadent, petulant mood. I WANTED what I WANTED and I didn't want to think about the rules. And (surprise) realized too late that I broke a few.

I licked my plate clean, including the garlic bread I decided to make even though it wasn't remotely necessary. And despite the fact the recipe CLEARLY said the cake could easily feed 2-4, I went right ahead and ate it all. And then sat on the couch and thought, I'm really full. Wait... oops.

And truth be told, this wasn't an isolated event. Of all the rules in the book, these are probably the hardest for me. I've been known on several occasions to indulge delightedly in something I'm certain is rules-violation-free, only to realize that I may have over-indulged, and, oops, broken a rule.

I have an impossibly hard time with the concept of leaving something on my plate. I can't leave a bite behind. I just can't do it.

Come ON. How do you just throw that out???

Full confession (except it's not really a confession, because everyone who's seen me eat must know it): I'm that person who, even when everything in front of her has been consumed, scrapes her finger across edges and into eeeeevery tiny corner to get to the last crumbs. I inevitably want at least three more bites than I have left on my plate; it takes an incredible amount of restraint not to go back for seconds. It's just an affront not even to be able to eat my own full portion. And for what? To just throw out perfectly good food?

And yet, this is perhaps precisely why I should pay attention to this rule. Despite how wasteful and ungrateful it feels to toss the last bite, Pollan argues that our plate-licking mentality actually fosters an attitude of unbridled gluttony.

I've told myself that I don't really need leave something on my plate. It's a symbolic gesture anyway; the important thing is that I am mindful of how much I eat, and that I eat it slowly and consciously. I tell myself that it's enough not to eat everything on my plate just because it's there - to be okay with leaving something if I find I'm not hungry anymore. But maybe it's time to rethink that rational because, if my recent cake incident is any indicator, I'm not doing such a great job with the whole mindful eating thing. And if reserving that last bite really is a symbolic gesture, it's clearly a powerful one, judging by my reticence to part with it.

I don't really know what the answer is here - I think I'm just working some things out on paper. As convincing as the argument to leave something on you plate is, the fact stands that 9 times out of 10 when I get to that bite, I'm still hungry and it feels so wrong to throw out food when you're hungry.

On the other hand, I have to ask myself: why do I seem to have such a hard time eating slowly and carefully? I've told myself a million times, Leigh I say to myself, you would have such an easier time managing your weight if you just ate more carefully. Watch your portion size. Think about what you're eating. Eat slowly. Why is it that I'm willing swear off doughnuts forever in the name of health, but I refuse to take make the effort to see what would happen if I just ate the doughnut, but did so with deliberateness and thought? Why is that so hard? Shouldn't it be the easier of the two options? And if it is so hard, shouldn't I do anything in my power to break myself of that attitude?

I don't know. I really don't know. Am I just stubbornly digging my heels or do I have a valid complaint?

Who Is My Server?

28. Eat your colors.
34. Eat wild foods when you can.
66. Don't be a short-order cook.

Right, so, you know, I think I've done more than give Pollan's Food Rules the ol' college try; I've done everything in my power to follow each and every one in the full spirit in which they were intended. But there are a few rules where I am forced to draw the line. I don't want to - I just can't help it. It isn't going to happen.

Take Rule 34: eat wild foods when you can. Yeah. I live in New Mexico, arid land rich in squat cacti and dust. What am I gonna do? Hunt for jackrabbits and forage for tumbleweeds? We have an abundance of local food, if you take the time to find it, but all of it comes from a long and practiced agricultural tradition. To say, eat wild foods "when you can" is essentially to say eat wild foods never.

I can't really imagine foraging for truffles here.

The same goes for eating a variety of colors (Rule 28). Sure, that's doable - as long as those colors come in my weekly box from the local CSA. I know that my harvest box is the closest I'm going to get to all local, seasonal produce, and I know it's more than enough to last me the week. So I make a point not to shop elsewhere unless I run out. Which means that if I get a colorful box, hurrah! And if not? Well, too bad. I just can't have it all.

Which is where Rule 66 comes in because that's what that rule - don't be a short-order cook - is really all about: not having it all. When Pollan talks about not being a short-order cook, I assumed that this rule was geared toward parents. "When kids learn to think of the dinner table as a restaurant," Pollan says, "they’ll eat the way most people do in restaurants: too much." Not having kids, I thought this rule didn't really apply to me; I thought I would pretty much end up ignoring this one.

But what I didn't realize is how much I act like Pollan's "short order cook" for myself. I'm so used to the idea that I can make myself whatever I want, whenever I want - and why not? (I used to think.) I buy the groceries, I'm the only one I'm cooking for... why wouldn't I fix exactly what I want.

But take my limitations when it comes from eating from the wild and eating a variety of colors. Those are specific limitations bound to time and place. And when you take the time and effort to really consume what the ground under your own feet is yielding at that place and time, you find that those kinds limitations proliferate your plate. You realize how strange and wonderous it is that we can step into a magic, flourescently-lit room and purchase any food we wish and buy anything we can imagine at any time, when that structure is so contrary to the way Mother Nature originally laid it out.

And I'll be the first to admit, I'm far from enlightened here. It's hard. It's really hard to tell yourself, "No, you can't have a mango on your cereal. Mangoes grow in a tropical climate, and you're in the middle of the desert in the middle of winter," when all your life you've been told that if you want a mango on your cereal, just go get one. But I'm starting to see that I can want strawberries for breakfast and have to have grapefruit because that's all that came in my harvest box was grapefruit and I don't even really like grapefruit... and it's not the end of the world. I'm beginning to accept that if it's Thursday, and I don't want lentils and chard for lunch, but that's all I had time to cook this weekend so I HAVE to have lentils and chard... I won't die.

Grapefruit with honey... mmmm, not so bad...

Pollan encourages eating "what we're served, rather than what we might order or crave," When you're the one who serves yourself, recongizing that difference is tricky - but it's there. The more we understand that the abundance of choice the supermarket offers is hardly the only way to eat and certainly not our God-given right, the more spiritual, healthy, and mindful eaters we become. And, in turn, the more spiritual, healthy mindful consumers we become - better stewards of the world and ourselves. And that, to me, is what it's all about.

Magic Spinach Water

29. Drink the spinach water.

This was a new and illuminating rule for me. Apparently, the water in which you cook your vegetables retains much of the nutrients of the vegetables themselves. I had no idea. So Pollan suggests saving it and adding it to future dishes - boom, instant nutrient boost.

To be perfectly honest, I haven't been great at following this rule. I once saved the water in which I had steamed some broccoli... and then promptly let it sit in the refrigerator for several weeks. And that's about as proactive as I've gotten on this rule.

In my defense, I very rarely steam vegetables. I'm really much more of a grill/sautee kind of a gal. But that's no excuse; I can and should do better. A part of it is I wouldn't know what to do with my "spinach water" even if I had some. Pollan says it can be added to "sauces and soups," but as far as I'm concerned, that's way too vague to be helpful. So I'm giving a little love to this rule and trying to pay attention to ways I can "save the spinach water."

For starters, it occured to me that I could have thrown a little veggie water into the dish I made for lunches this week. Too late, of course - maybe next time. And in the meantime, I'm going to share the recipe anyway, because it was a)delicious, b) easy and c) healthy.

I took a picture of my own lentils, but it didn't turn out great. Green collard greens + green lentils + grey smoked turkey = not super photogenic (but still delicious). But it looks and tastes kind of like this. Mmmmm. Image courtesy of The Wednesday Chef, who, by the way, recommends using bacon rather than turkey and adding onions and balsamic vinegar. Which would probably also be good.

COLLARD GREENS WITH SMOKED TURKEY AND LENTILS
Ingredients
•3-5 cups of collard greens, stemmed and cut into strips

**note: I ran out of collard greens halfway through and switched to chard, which tasted just as good.**

•1 cup green lentils
•1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
•1 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste (read: a crapload)

Instructions
•Combine ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil.
•Reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for 30 minutes.

And that's it! So easy. So good. And it would be equally easy to replace a little of that water with leftover vegetable water instead.

And while I'm thinking about it, here's a few other ways I can think of to add veggie-water to my cooking:

• Homemade dips, like ranch, or spinach and artichoke - then when you dip carrots or celery in it, you get DOUBLE the veggie magic.


• Salad dressings. What if you threw a little bit of veggie-water into a homemade vinaigrette?


• Rice, quinoa and other grains - just throw it back in the water. That would work, wouldn't it? It would get absorbed back into the grain. And, I'll bet, would kick the flavor way up too.

So that's a start. And if anyone can think of other ways to get creative with the spinach water, I'm all ears.

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!