America doesn’t want to eat its vegetables
Lady Bird Johnson was out to beautify America by planting flowers. Nancy Reagan wanted us to Just Say No to drugs. And Michelle Obama would like Americans to eat more healthfully and nutritiously, and to include more fresh vegetables in their diet.
A laudable goal, no doubt. But a long-elusive one, as the above cartoon, from the New Yorker during the 20s, shows.
Now, I happen to love vegetables. I eat quite a few every day, and my favorite cuisine—Middle Eastern—features them in many delicious guises. I’ve even written a tribute to some unaccountably neglected ones.
But then, I’m a little weird, and atypical in that respect. Most people just aren’t all that interested:
This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a comprehensive nationwide behavioral study of fruit and vegetable consumption. Only 26 percent of the nation’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day, it concluded. (And no, that does not include French fries.)
These results fell far short of health objectives set by the federal government a decade ago. The amount of vegetables Americans eat is less than half of what public health officials had hoped. Worse, it has barely budged since 2000.
“It is disappointing,” said Dr. Jennifer Foltz, a pediatrician who helped compile the report. She, like other public health officials dedicated to improving the American diet, concedes that perhaps simply telling people to eat more vegetables isn’t working.
Many people have bad associations with vegetables, especially the canned or overcooked army-green variety. And fresh vegetables are extraordinarily expensive.
As the articles says, Doritos are a lot simpler. And anyway, some people would say they contain a sort-of veggie—or is it a grain?—corn.
If people won’t listen to reason and they won’t listen to pleading, what will they listen to? If this NYC proposal to fine added salt in restaurants is any indication, the nanny state may decide some day to encourage us to eat vegetables by taxing or fining “junk” foods such as Doritos that crowd them out of the diet.
The NY Times article isn’t saying exactly how this might be done. But this quote indicates that something like the anti-salt initiative would not be outside the realm of possibility:
But clear guidance probably isn’t enough. Health officials now concede that convincing a nation that shuns vegetables means making vegetables more affordable and more available.
“We have to make the healthy choice the easy choice,” Dr. Foltz said. And the choices need to become ingrained.
As Nurse Nancy Pelosi said the other day, the projected savings that will finance HCR are expected to come from preventive care and the health benefits it will supposedly create. Since preventive care rests to no small extent on lifestyle changes, and since it’s clear that the “guidance” of education “is not enough,” this could pave the way for other measures. Wonder what they will be?
If a “nudge” doesn’t work, then a “shove” will be necessary. Followed by a “good swift kick” and a “gun to the head”.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
When I was a kid, cooked vegetables were common and salads less frequent. We might have buttered carrots or cauliflower or green beans as a normal part of every meal. Then the nutritionists started telling us that cooking destroyed vitamins and that a plate of lettuce with a bit of out-of-season tomato and lots of bottled dressing was better. Of course kids ate this junk with less enthusiasm than we did our ripe tomatoes in summer. I think the nutritionists and food faddists made mothers feel guilty about serving the vegetable dishes their moms cooked. And your poor old parsnips went the way of the dodo bird.
If they can’t make veges cheaper, they can easily make everything else too expensive, much like the intentionally planned effects of “cap and trade; too, the more power transferred to the “central planners” the emptier (of meat and junk foods) we can expect the store shelves, quite common in state managed economies… Later on, perhaps we can expect “agricultural reeducation camps”, the Democrats were the pioneers of the only entities of that “generic” sort under Roosevelt (D), and before him Woodrow Wilson (D). The Dems have a way of rationalizing just about anything when they’re protecting us, especially from ourselves…
Theres something else going on in the psyche of these liberals besides the peasants well being. Just maybe they push their control freak attitude to try and mask how useless they actually are to society.
Looking at Michelle Obama and I get the impression she needs to eat more vegetables and exercise a lot more.
Hey, when did potatoes fall off the vegetable truck? Heck, these days even the oil is made from vegetables. And here is the odd part, many, many vegetables, raw and cooked, are better with added salt. So cutting back on the salt, will disincentivize eating vegetables.
You know why people don’t eat vegetables these days? The liberals banned spanking your kids. I eat vegetables today but in my younger years I ate them under threat of the hickory. Also, I learned that warm cooked spinach was better than cold cooked spinach and sitting at the table until I ate them wasn’t all that much fun. Now, such actions by parents gets them investigated by the “meant it for the best crowd.”
So now instead of the hickory we’ll be eating under the butt of a gun.
I happen to like vegetables, too, but I live in a family that doesn’t like them as much as I do. I’ve learned that one way to get people who don’t like vegetables to eat them is to roast them. For example: chunks of cauliflower, onion, just enough olive oil to toss it in, salt, pepper, roasted hot until tender and just starting to brown — mmmm. Or asparagus, done the same way. Or pretty much any vegetable with some density to it — all will rapidly disappear with no need for know-it-all directives from the Food Police.
If they make other forms of meat too expensive, I guess I’ll just have to follow my “humanitarian” impulses….. Long Pig Luau, baby. 😎
1.
With due respect to rickl, when a politician, bureaucrat, “activist”, or other parasite says “we need to”, they are using “we” in a manner tantamount to lying.
(Of course not every politician, bureaucrat, and activist is a parasite, but the generalization becomes better & better as government continues to grow.)
2. Civil servant Dr. Foltz has forgotten (if she ever knew) whom she works for. Her type should be fired from government.
3. I haven’t read much about Michelle O since her junket to Spain. Is the reference to her vegetable garden the beginning of a rehabilitation project? (Fwiw, the vegetable garden made a positive first impression on me.)
4. I recently opened a can of water chestnuts that have been lying around my place forever, and I’m with Neo–as long as they are whole (not sliced).
The phrasing of “times a day” made me curious about their data– if you asked me how many times a day I eat veggies, I’d probably say one or two times a day.
If you asked how many servings I had a day, and mentioned a serving is half a cup, it would be more like three to five. (I put frozen veggies into almost everything I cook.) {slightly simplifying– magically, a whole apple is one serving, but if you cut it into slices, a half-cup is; leafy greens are one cup a serving.)
Found the press release: and looked at the source data and hey, it turns out that while it wasn’t as bad as “how many times a day do you eat veggies,” it wasn’t much better.
Golly, it’s almost like they don’t want to solve the problem and lose their jobs!
gs: ah, but have you ever had a fresh water chestnut? That’s the type I wrote about, and they are ambrosial. No real resemblance to the canned variety.
One thing that’s struck me as strange over the past two years or so is how many cat foods and treats are now advertised as beneficial because they contain veggies. Cats are obligate carnivores (meaning that they must have a certain amount of meat in their diet)– and even the Vegetarian Society of the UK (George Bernard Shaw was a member, for what that’s worth) has had to warn the vegan crowd not to feed cats a strict vegetarian diet. I now wonder whether advertising pet foods with added vegetables is subliminal re-education of the humans.
FWIW, I like vegetables, eat them regularly, always have– but I do resent a steady diet of statist propaganda.
Most people eat vegetables. This load of crap was dreamed up to show yet another example of inequality caused by culture get attributed to oppresive capitalist practices.
My standard answer to food nazi:
chocolate is made of cocoa beans which grow on trees which means they are vegetable/fruit kind.
So, I am on mostly vegetarian (*mumbles*: chocolate) ration!
Couple of book recommendations for you. In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. The first is one of the most reasonable discussions on eating in America that I know of and is very readable. Validated all of my unspoken concerns, but is not dogmatic at all.
Count me in as a major critic of all things Michael Pollan. I think that he is actually quite dogmatic, and he is not without his own agenda. For the love of Pete, please no one else get hooked on that guy.
For example, IIRC he freaks out about the existence of yogurt in a tube (brand name Gogurt). To which my reaction is, so freaking what? Is yogurt in a plastic 4-pak somehow “better”? What if yogurt was always from a tube, would we think yogurt in a cup was weird?
My example that I have used before on Pollanites is as follows. Compare “whole, organic” food to fresh cold spring water. The spring water is great, and if you have a source of it available to you for cheap, so much the better. However, it is not commercializable. It can’t be widely distributed without processing, which is supposedly evil (another disagreement). It is not possible for everyone to have the highest quality food all the time. Same with water, most of us have chlorinated water flavored with plumbing. And there is nothing wrong with that. It is superior to no water. And it is the best technology currently available.
So beware the school of Pollan, he makes a lot of erroneous conclusions.
All vegetables need is salt, pepper, lots of butter, and the occasional gob of sour cream. Yum. But I expect the food experts really want us to nibble on raw carrots and celery sticks.
Fresh grown cherry tomatoes are great, imo. I dont particularly like the big tomatoes- just the cherry tomatoes.
here is how to get people to eat more fruit and vegetables, not by laws and regulations:
http://www.starkbros.com/
neo-neocon Says: gs: ah, but have you ever had a fresh water chestnut? That’s the type I wrote about, and they are ambrosial. I haven’t, and will keep the tip in mind. Thanks.
But I dropped by to record an afterthought about the egregious Dr. Foltz.
I am rarely troubled and I often approve when the government uses my tax dollars to assess how effectively products work. I almost always get exercised when, if the public disregards such information, the government decrees that “we” have to do something: “something” consisting of laws, regulations, fees, fines, penalties…and more jobs, bigger salaries, and larger empires for politicians, bureaucrats, “activists”, lawyers, lobbyists and hacks.
I love most veggies, whether in salads, soups, or roasted with a little olive oil. Yum. But nature made humans omnivores for a reason, and a healthy diet can also consist of reasonable quantities of grilled steak, hot dogs, ham & Swiss on rye sandwiches, cold boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce, and Thanksgiving turkey, to mention just a few of my many favorites (yes, I like food). As with most things, moderation is the key. And I’m not interested in paying for yet another government program that tries to get me to eat in any particular fashion. Nutrition is still an imperfect science, and what’s accepted wisdom today might be significantly altered with new discoveries a few years down the road.
It’s simple, really. Just tax meat to the point where only the rich can afford it.
Chronically malnourished peasants are too weak and listless to start revolutions. Win-win.
Campbell’s Condensed Soup is the problem. Just add water to a can of condensed soup? Why not just add water to fresh vegetables and make a pot of soup?
I only slightly kid. The real problem is the lack of Home Ec, or anything like it today. Too many think cooking is difficult and not worth the time or effort. Our taste buds have been ruined by ‘ding’ food (the microwave announcement that your ‘food’ is ready). I’ve started making my own stocks (they freeze well). I really like my carrots/potatoes/cauliflower/peas with a beef stock/homemade curry flavoring.
Also, a lot of people have no idea of the concept ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ when it comes to cooking. Cooking two pounds/bags of dried beans takes as much time as cooking a half a bag and, again, they freeze well.
I thank my lucky stars each and every day that my Mom not only allowed me in the kitchen, but encouraged me as well. I started with scut work, cleaning dishes, utensils, cutting boards and the like, and moved on to prepping veggies like chopping onions or peeling garlic or other useful work in the kitchen. Eventually, I worked up to preparing complete meals, giving my Mom a well-deserved break. Being a Boy Scout didn’t hurt my kitchen experience, either. My Scoutmaster (may he rest with the Righteous) used to joke that when my troop went camping, he knew he could go to any patrol for instant coffee, but he always came to my patrol for food. My patrol (The Road Runner Patrol, with a homemade patch and flag) went far beyond hot dogs on a stick and stuck over a fire. Biscuits cooked in a reflector oven served with sausage gravy, spaghetti and meatballs, beans, chili mac ‘n cheese, all kinds of food cooked over fire slowly, all day, like the ‘old days’. When we sat down to chow down, we chowed down. I still like cooking my ‘chow down’ food.
One other thought: For graduation from high school AND college, one should be required to cook a meal (along with balance a checkbook, but I digress). How many people know how to chop an onion, a seemingly simple task I’ve seen mangled too many times? If one can’t follow a recipe, then one is functionally illiterate and should not receive a diploma.
My Mom used to take me to the meat section and tell me we need X meat, and to pick one. I would go through the packages and pick one, then she would ask me why I picked that one, and I had to explain my decision. It wasn’t made into an onerous test, with scathing criticism, but a true learning experience that I’ve carried with me to this day (look at the marbling on this cut, see how much less fat there is and how it’s better distributed throughout the cut?). When all kids know is their food coming in a package, then that will be all they know later in life as well. I have an elderly neighbor who uses that rice in a boil bag. I told her rice is easy, 2:1 water to rice, and cook for 20 or so minutes, almost as long as the boil in bags take (plus you can flavor your rice with whatever you want: Jasmine tea bags, ginger chunks, lemon halves, etc). And she’s a cook when it comes to other things. So learning the ‘how-to’ of kitchen prep and seasoning is key to getting a whole new generation eating healthier. But if music can’t make the cut in today’s cash-strapped schools, I know ovens and the like won’t make it either. Beside, such items are inherently dangerous and could cause someone to be burned and sue. Getting burned/cut in the kitchen is part of the charm as well as a ‘don’t do that stupidity again’ learning experience. We want a safe learning environment in our schools, when cooking itself is full of sharp pointy objects, heavy pans/skillets that when dropped will crush one’s foot or has hot elements that will burn if one is not careful.
But I still blame Campbell’s Condensed Soup.
Fresh vegetables are expensive only because it is hard to keep them fresh for long, and after cooking they loose most of their taste and health value. But actually there is a proven way to keep them fresh: gamma-ray irradiation. It is very cheap, safe and efficient and can cut prices to 1/10 of the present level for industrial produced green vegetables. Alas, general public tend to panic every time when radiation is involved: even the term “radioactive” meas in English something abhorent. It would be hard to overcame this irrational prejustice, radiophobia, and it is a major hurdle to technical progress in many fields.
RickZ,
My mom was a lot like yours. Some of my best hours were spent peeling potatoes next to her.
BTW, she did a mean spinach. Fry a few bacon strips, add some cider vinegar and sugar, then cook the spinach in that. Do not overcook.
expat,
I learned quite early in life that hanging around the kitchen with all the good female cooks in my family was where the action was, as well as the food. I’ve always liked food. (I’m probably the best male creative cook in the family, not just a recipe cook, though there’s nothing wrong with that.)
I still retain fond memories of being in the kitchen with my favorite aunt at Thanksgiving and making homemade ham salad (with one of those cast iron meat grinders that attached to the side of a tabletop). She’d pick through a batch of ham, removing what fat/gristle she could find, then me doing the same after her. Meticulous would be a good description of us removing that fat/gristle. Others would call it anal rententive or a waste of time, but then they never ate good homemade ham salad, only the crappy, fatty, gristley stuff.
Expensive? Not in Texas. We can buy a trimmed head of broccoli for 88 cents. Cauliflower for $1.50. I could go on. I do not find vegetables expensive at all. We eat lots of them regularly–all fresh and cooked just enough to be easily chewable.
…with one of those cast iron meat grinders that attached to the side of a tabletop…
My mother had one of those, with which she made the filling for homemade kielbasa (we’re of Polish descent). Better than anything you could get at the supermarket, and just as good as what the Polish butcher carried.
Sorry, RickZ, I can’t chop an onion. But that’s because I don’t like onions (one of the few veggies I don’t eat, when I have a choice), so I don’t cook with them. But I’m competent in the kitchen otherwise, although not especially creative. As a lifelong bachelor, my only choices have been to eat out all the time, and accept the inevitable impacts to my wallet and waistline, or learn to cook. Not wanting to end up broke and fat, I learned to cook.
RickZ -you are so right about the kitchen as the place where the action is. Or was – probably not in the typical modern American family (there are many variables, of course).
At least that’s how it used to be in my grandma’s kitchen, not modern and not American -and we, too, had a cast-iron grinder…in fact, one was among her presents to mefor my wedding.
She was the Matriarch – and she loved to feed us all, her three adult children with children of their own.
*waltj: mmm. Home-made kielbasa…and bigos…
No, I don’t think the problem is vegetables being too expensive. Rather, it’s as RickZ said earlier: Nobody learns to cook anymore. People won’t buy a bag of potatoes, but they will buy a bag of potato chips, which pound for pound are much more expensive.
My mom, bless her, wasn’t much of a cook. She did make decent chicken with a cornflake crust, but vegetables tended to be boiled and flavorless. She didn’t seem to understand spices at all. That was probably the norm in 1960s America. I never developed any interest in cooking at a young age. (In her defense, though, she did do enough cooking to keep us all alive. Which is the point, after all.)
For most of my adult life I’ve lived on fast food and TV dinners. I’m slightly overweight but by no means obese. That probably has more to do with beer than anything else. Luckily I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, so I don’t gorge myself on cookies or candy.
A few months ago I decided to get serious about learning to cook. That desire was actually sparked when I bought a supply of storable food which included several large plastic buckets of whole wheat. I also bought a hand-cranked grain mill. When the SHTF, I’ll have the capability to make my own bread. I still haven’t actually tried doing that yet, but it’s on my agenda. Still, I figured that I’ll have to learn how to do it before it gets to the point where I’ll need to do it.
Anyway, I bought a cookbook and have been trying out various recipes. I’m happy to report that my freezer, which was once filled with TV dinners, is now full of leftovers in Rubbermaid containers, which can be reheated in the microwave. (As RickZ said, it takes exactly the same amount of time and effort to make four servings as it does to make one.) I have some baked chicken with pineapple sauce, beef stew, and two kinds of rice pilaf. Last night’s dinner was meatloaf, green beans simmered in chicken stock with shallot, and some leftover rice pilaf.
While there are gazillions of cookbooks on the market, the one I ended up buying was The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Apparently it’s based on a PBS TV show which I’ve never seen. I like it because it seems to be geared towards beginners, but is not condescending or “dumbed down”. It discusses kitchen equipment and basic ingredients to keep on hand. Some of the recipes are pretty complicated, but it also explains the basics like baked potatoes and hard-boiled eggs. It assumes no prior knowledge, which is exactly what I needed. (My first attempt at a baked potato resulted in a tough, inedible crust, but subsequent tries have been 100% successful.) And it comes in a ring binder, so I can take out the page with the recipe I’m making instead of trying to keep the whole book propped open in the kitchen.
*rickl,
I am sure she can do it herself if she happens to stop by on this thread, but if she didn’t I am happy to point out in her direction: look up the Cooking Noob series on Labrat’s blog Atomic Nerds. Not just hilarious but seriously educating, and from the analytical position you will appreciate, I think (somebody in the comments to one of her earlier posts in the series said there is a niche for Cooking For Engineers that might make one crafty chef-entrepreneur rich beyond belief…)
So, you are assured the SwillHTF, and rather soon? You speak as if you know for sure…
If you want some tips on
-kitchen organization
-meals planning
-groceries purchase planning, etc
I’ll be happy to help; have been cooking since 12 yo and for over…well, many decades and many people, shall we say.
rickl,
You might want to browse Epicurious sometime. They have recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appetite going back years. If you search for an ingedient (sweet potatoes, eg), you’ll get all sorts of recipes that you can play around with. You have to ignore a bit of food snobbery, but it’s worth it for the range.
Cooking is a great relaxer. I love to get all the ingredients and just line them up. Today it’s cabbage soup with chicken. I like the look of the red onion, green cabbage, orange carrots, the cans of chicken broth, the knife on the cutting board. I love institutional cooking as well: all the stainless steel and the large ovens and sinks and stirring bowls.
Forward to Thanksgiving: my favorite holiday.
Several people on this thread said the vegetables are not expensive at all, and gave examples of $.90/lb broccoli, etc.
The problem is not that one single vegetable might be expensive or not, it’s that for tasty well-rounded meal you need several.
Since meat and carbs give feeling of satiation (is that a word? I meant fullness of stomach after consuming controlled portion) sooner and for smaller portion of product than vegetables do, you need more of them for a meal.
For instance, you can buy 3 lbs of beef and it will be enough for 4 dinners for a family of two – you could prepare it 4 different ways, but all additional ingredients you need are spices and a couple of onions. At the same time you need:
-various lettuces, peppers, tomatoes, onions, carrots for salad
-potatoes, or corn, or yams, or cabbages, or squashes for side dish
– fruit and berries for your morning and lunch fruit salad, as add-on for yogurt or desert after dinner.
So when you start counting pounds, those $.90/lb broccoli that yields one side dish per 2 lb-purchase (and everyone knows how bag of spinach shrinks after boiling…), the staff has a tendency to bill up.
And I am not yet talking seasonal, farmer’s market varieties, heirloom tomatoes or exotic starfruit and raspberries in December…
Curtis, “cans of chicken broth”?
*rolls-eye*
My Babbie would kill’ya.
What’s wrong with making chicken stock from scratch? Super-easy, it practically makes itself!
Yes to the homemade stock, but I have a big bag of skinned and boned chicken thighs. Plus, I have to find a way to cook large and not throw so much away. Being a bachelor and all. That’s my fault.
rickl:
Americas Test Kitchen on PBS is fabulous. My SO and I both love to cook, but he is the science geek half of the relationship, and the one that watches all of the cooking shows. He’s a tough audience so if he likes a show (like ATK), you know its got good enough info to please a science geek. In addition to that show, DO watch Alton Brown and “Good Eats” – Alton always includes the science behind what you are doing.
Curtis, I am a very economic cook, very rarely throw anything away – I even use milk that went sour overnight for pancakes (much better, btw, than separately bought buttermilk)
Next time buy your chicken thighs a la naturelle – with bones in them. Not only it is cheaper, you’ll have bones for delicious soup. Better yet, but whole chicken. I typically have 6 dishes out of a roaster-size chicken plus bones, carcass and neck for chicken stock; the only thing thrown away is the skin, and not the whole skin, either.
Look up lessons (in book or video format) by my favorite chef Jacque Papin – he shows how to cut chicken in the most economic, quick and purposeful way…he probably gets 10 dishes out of chicken, I can only aspire to his heights.
Heh. Thanks for the good links – you can never have too many good bookmarks!
My best “trick” is chicken breasts – whether you want them to put into a gravy for dinner, or on a salad, or for chicken salad…whatever… Bring water (enough to cover the breasts) to a boil, add the chicken, bring back to a boil, cover and turn off the heat. Let it stand covered (did I mention that??) for 20 minutes (more is ok, less is not). Whether bone in or boneless, the chicken will be cooked all the way through, and won’t be dry. (I use a 4 quart pan for 2 bone-in or 3 boneless breasts. For more, you’d need a pan with a much wider diameter. The chicken should only be one layer deep) Then…you can take the “chicken juice” and boil it till it’s about half the volume it was, and you have the stock for soup. Add a few fresh or left over veggies, a bit of left over cooked rice and soup’s on. If you bought skin on and with bone in, add the bones to the broth when it’s cooking down, and take the skin, slice it into _really really_ thin slices (like a quarter inch or less wide) and put it into a small fry pan at very low heat (low enough to walk away and leave it safely). When it’s crispy, take the bits out, drain on a paper towel, sprinkle with a little salt and enjoy the crunchies. Pour off the fat into a jar in the frig for use in frying onions or making gravy. (With shallots and fresh mushrooms….yum!) Most of the flavor is in the fat.
Appears it is time, again, for one of my pet rants, on preventive care. The dreckstreamers and the healthcare reformers want us to believe it will save untold millions and billions. But that is not true, never was and never will be true. Prevention requires detection (at a cost), followed by intervention (at a cost). Detection of asymptomatic conditions, like essential hypertension or hyperlipidemia, does indeed extend lives with intervention. At a cost.
As others above have noted, pigging out on veggies comes at a cost. Don’t even think of getting me started on the “organic” issue, which is an enormous ripoff.
Preventive care can never be free, and will always have a cost. Living a longer life isn’t a free or cost-saving endeavor! Duh.
Oh, I forgot to say that Sergey is absolutely right about irradiation of food. This is a technology that has been proven since the 1950s. It doesn’t make the food radioactive; rather it kills the bacteria and pathogens that makes food spoil. I’ve read that irradiated milk will stay fresh for a month or more. It is almost criminal that it is not in widespread use. It would be a massive improvement in human nutrition and would help prevent famines and starvation, since it would dramatically cut down on the amount of food lost to spoilage.
If my wife finds a chapter of Pressure Cookers Anonymous, she’s sure to have me at the next meeting. I have cut down to five, one somewhat hor de combat, but using the ones that work, I can cook a lot of long-day-stirring things in an hour or so, and as for stock, I don’t like to fill up the fridge with it, so, after I cook a roast, I can the dripping, with the tallow skimmed off, and when they have chicken thighs on special, I buy five or ten pounds, cook the Hell out of them, dip out the skin and bones and can the stock. I also make different kinds of canned chicken soup, and keep a few jars in the car in cold season, so, if someone has a cold, or someone is not at church because of a cold, I send a couple of pints home with the healthy member of the family.
I also make cassoulet and carne guisada in quart jars that people have fought over the last serving, and beans can be cooked in the jars, as well, so as not to take up freezer space. Yes, I know that the freezer is more efficient when it is full, but I’d rather fill it with meat on special, to be cooked when I can, and put the cooked stuff on the shelf in jars.
My mother did not let us in the kitchen much. There was something mystical, I now understand, about her relationship with food, and we were not included. I learned to cook in the hard years, because it was so much cheaper than eating fast- or convenience food. I always brought the kids into the kitchen, whether they wanted to be there or not, to teach them the how, and the why, as well, the joy of the kitchen, the cooking as an extension of the pleasure of eating, sort of nutritional foreplay.
I will say the one thing that is expensive, or rather the many things, and that is setting up one’s pantry staples for the first time. To be a decent cook you need decent and varied staples, and that can be quite a hit to one’s pocketbook. Just in bottled staples alone I have the Mustards, Brown and Sweet-Hot, along with Mayo and Ketchup. Then there are the Sauces: Tabasco, Sriracha, Worchestershire and White Worchestershire, plus a couple of Soys, Dark Mushroom, Tamari and Low Sodium (to be ethnically diverse). And of course, the Vinegars, White, Apple Cider, Rice Wine, Red Wine and Balsamic. Not to mention the Oils, Extra Virgin Olive and her plain jane cousin Regular, along with Mr. Peanut. Then there are the specialty cooking sauces, in my case stir-frys. There’s Hoi-sin, Oyster, Black Bean, Teriyaki and Fish Sauces, along with the Garlic-Chili Paste, plus some plum preserves (for that special Plum Sauce moment). For the Greek stuff, there’s Tahini. That right there, off the top of my head, is a boatload of cash. Even the upkeep is not cheap. But one must want to eat good home-cooked food that tastes anywhere near authentic to want to go through all the ‘stocking staples’ gyrations, and I haven’t even mentioned dried spices and herbs at all. So there is a cost to cooking, it’s just not all coming from the fresh ingredients.
Oh, and I forgot dear sweet Honey. Sorry, Honey.
I don’t think more government intervention is required to improve things. Just a redirection of current subdidies away from corn and towards other more healthful vegetables. As it stands the government is subsidizing coca cola and french fry consumption, which is a crazy state of affairs.
Simon W:
Dream on! Corn subsidies today are part of the general subsidization of ethanol production as a mandated gasoline “extender”. You are buying that ethanol with every fuel stop. Ethanol is more expensive per gallon to produce than grubby ol’ gasoline, with less energy per gallon than gas. But it is an icon in the renewable energy temple, and farmers in the corn belt have become extremely prosperous these last few years as a result. I met a farm equipment dealer from ND 4 yrs ago whose business was thriving like never before because of corn—>fuel.
Ag. subsidies in the USA have nothing to do with people’s nutrition.
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There might be something to this now, but it certainly is not the reason the corn subsidies were originally brought in. And as I haven’t seen the price of a bottle of coke shooting up over the last few years, I think your assertion that subsidies have nothing to do with nutrition is a stretch.
I do find this move towards ethanol very troubling though. As it burns in the same dirty way gas does, it is a pretty dumb alternative to gas.
>>when they have chicken thighs on special, I buy five or ten pounds, cook the Hell out of them, dip out the skin and bones and can the stock.>>
I used to do this with backs and wings. Have you noticed the price of _wings_ lately?? how could you _not_! I know the buffalo wings have become popular, but you have to pay as much or more for wings as you do for bone-in, skin-on breast! boneless/skinless is more, of course, but for crying out loud…there’s nothing _on_ those wings but skin and bones!
RickZ: I made my own plum preserves today – the “italian plum” season finally started!
Simon:
just do a little homework on US Ag. subsidies.
It may interest you to learn, for example, that the support price for sugar has been (I’ve not recently checked) twice the international price for sugar. The support price is the USDA’s subsidy, the setting of a price bottom: so domestic prices do not fall below that, or the taxpayer bridges the gap.
The Ag. support business may go back to FDR, but I don’t know that for a fact. Been around a long time, though, for most industrial Ag. products (wheat, corn, soybeans, sugar cane, etc.).
Now, tell me how this advances people’s nutrition.
Well, first off, they need to STOP saying “vegetables” and START saying “Green, Leafy Vegetables”, since that’s apparently what they are referring to.
These morons appear to be the same class of imbecile who refer to Orientals as “Asians” — can’t quite grasp that there’s a wide variety of [Asians] vegetables (particularly the [non-Oriental] potato) which aren’t actually in the class they are intending to refer to.
Second off:
Only 26 percent of the nation’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day,
???? WTF ????
Unless you have more than three meals a day (unlikely… and probably means more calories than you ought to be taking in, which is ALSO a favorite peev of the modern Health Nazi), exactly, WHAT “GLV” is anyone supposed to eat at BREAKFAST?
“Mom, please, can I have some more of the spinach waffles?”
“Dad, would you like some more shredded broccoli on your Wheaties?”
“Son, what do you want this morning, the parsnip Pop Tart, or the brussell sprout doughnut?
Q.E.D. — this call is in and of itself — for GLVs at all THREE daily meals — asininely lame.
P.S.:
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
No, it means EXACTLY what they think it means. They just are kind of fuzzy on all the side stuff that comes with it.
I do enjoy vegetables, I just do not have the patience to shop for them, then prep them, then maybe prep them again, then cook them (along with meat), and then wash the extra pans and plating involved. Meat is so easy. I do eat grains and legumes aplenty, but those are easy. Cooking is not the problem, flavor is sort of not the problem, it is prep and as you indicated, price of the vegetables. It would not be so bad if they stayed fresh for longer than seeming days, or if you could cook them and store them as with grains and having them retain flavor. Until they fix that or I find a wife who likes to do that, they are off my buffet tray.
As for the government, if I have to, I will simply put them on ignore and do some right proper civil disobedience. If they come one step closer beyond that, I think the government ‘food police’ will be needing replacements. Since I doubt that I am alone in this, well… Then again, look at it this way, I would be helping alleviate the public sector pension problem one ex-employee at a time.
By the way, I do not eat junk food. My idea of junk food is multi-grain bread, toasted with butter. On the good side, I controlled heretofore uncontrollable diabetes without meds. Meds didn’t work, cutting sugar didn’t work, insulin didn’t work, changing my diet just a bit did. Meat, beans, potatoes, grains, milk, and… stray bad kitties. Well, maybe not kitties but don’t tell my kitty, she has been being quite nice since I told her that. :p
Tatyana: Ahh, you know:-). Of course, the kielbasa often ended up in the bigos. Along with other types of pork and beef. Add a nice side of pierogi with plenty of sour cream, and wash it down with a piwo or two, a perfect fall or winter dinner.
I adore most vegetables, prefer them over fruit any day. But vegetables require more prep time and with all the working mothers ,they don’t have the time to deal with them. Therefore, kids grow up without exposure to tastily prepared veggies. Most canned and frozen veggies just aren’t that good. (Though, I do love frozen artichoke hearts, so much easier than dealing with a whole artichoke!)
On the list of neglected veggies, my favorite is kale. I eat it 5 or 6 times a week. Lightly steamed or boiled, (let it keep its color), with cider vinegar to flavor, yum!
I also love beets and turnips.
But parsnips, that is the only vegetable I can think of I won’t eat. That sweet flavor that you rave about, is too reminiscent of root beer, which I also abhor.
I spent last week bottling homemade ketchup from garden fresh tomatoes. It is highly superior to “bought” ketchup. My kids love it . Nothing is better as a topping for meatloaf!
*waltj:
but of course I do.
Years ago I even won a home-cooking “Braise’ contest with my bigos…
Pirogi with bigos, together, is a bit too heavy – well, it’s suited for Carpatian winters (or North Dacota…) rather than NY.
mmmm… Meat
http://www.faqs.org/photo-dict/photofiles/list/408/777meat.jpg
Pirogi with bigos, together, is a bit too heavy – well, it’s suited for Carpatian winters (or North Dacota…)
Well, I grew up in Michigan, which has winters similar to those of North Dakota. And “light” was not a word that was used around my mother’s kitchen unless she wanted to “light” the stove. Pierogi, galobki, and bigos–two out of three together were common around our house, particularly when the weather turned foul. And yes, it was heavy fare, but soooo good.
Thanks, and for anyone that is having trouble chopping onions without the tears, here’s an incredibly easy tip – put them in the fridge for a few hours, then chop them straight away after taking them out! No more tears! I found some more onion soup recipes here if anyone wants to try some more variations.