Adventures in Hooterville

I've been a bit preoccupied by food and where it comes from since I turned 13 and decided I was going to vote with my diet. As the story goes, I read an article in one of my teeny-bopper magazines about vegetarianism and the myriad of reasons people choose to eat that way, and declared that I, too, would be a vegetarian. What made such an impression on me, besides the sheer number of valid reasons to eat vegetables, was that vegetarianism is one way to protest the cruel and unhealthy conditions in factory farms. (MRSA, anyone? Shudder...)

Because of my choice of a (mostly) vegetarian lifestyle and my tendency toward excessive research, I've read a lot about food. I've seen my share of propaganda on both sides of the argument. Last year, I read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and I was impressed. Strangely, he was using a lot of vegetarian-propaganda stand-bys (in my case, preaching to the choir) but for an entirely different purpose: he's not a vegetarian. He is just a dude who thinks the American food culture is broken.

In addition to being a regular "Joe Omnivore", he's logical, reasonable and a terrific writer. The combination of these attributes make him someone that people will actually listen to, which gives me all sorts of butterflies in my stomach. A figurehead for reform in American agriculture? Hot damn, I've been waiting for this guy to show up for awhile now*.

So I recently read his second book, In Defense of Food, and I liked it. He trash-talks scientists in the first part of the book, and that is a little weird because he uses a fair amount of science to back up his arguments in subsequent chapters. Besides that minor offense, he makes some good points. Let me sum it up thusly:

Book #1: By following 4 meals from the soil to the table, demonstrate that the American agricultural system is... not ideal.

Book #2: By examining the American eater, compared to eaters of traditional cultures (primarily Europeans - French, Italian, etc), demonstrate that the American food culture is unhealthy. Then give some recommendations on how to fix it.

and then there is "Book" #3, which I stumbled upon a couple days ago. It's his most recent article in the New York Times, where he's a contributing writer. Believe it or not this entire rambling love-fest was intended to properly introduce this article... ha... Anyway, this article describes another part of the American food culture that seems to be broken: cooking. Americans don't cook the way other cultures do. We reheat, we take-out, we snack-pack and (maybe) assemble. Read the article! It's interesting! I won't be able to do it justice.

So, in an effort to get off the couch and into the kitchen, and to open a dialogue about how to cook food (versus how to order food... read the article!), this is what I cooked tonight:

2 Tbs olive oil

1 onion

1 apple

1 bunch kale

1 Tbs curry powder (give or take)

a small amount of water

salt, to taste

Chunk onion and apples, 1-inch pieces work well but don't worry about uniformity. Wash and strip kale greens from tough stems.

Saute onions in oil in a large skillet, until they look delicious. Add apples and curry powder and saute for another minute. Add kale greens and a bit of water for steaming. Stir briefly, and cover. Cook for 3 or 4 minutes (I'm guessing here) stirring once or twice. It's done when the greens are tender.

Yum :)

That's chipotle baked tofu in the background, if you're wondering. Tonight was the first time I had tried this tofu recipe and the chipotle marinade, big surprise, totally overwhelmed the curry. But, that's okay, the sweetness of the apples/onions came through and that was a good contrast for both types of spice.

* To be fair, the meat-eating Eric Schlosser wrote Fast Food Nation in 2000-ish, and I was (and am) a big fan. But for some reason I can never get my omnivore friends to read this book. It might have something to do with the Sinclair-esque detail with which he describes industrial agriculture...