The Omnivore's Dilemma!

if you haven't read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, read it! this book has changed my life...i think. (if you know me just a little, you know i go a *leettle* over the deep end with whatever my latest hobby is; a few months later, i become unobsessed (read: completely disinterested), unfortunately, a great many $s and storage-space lighter.)

anyhow, i thought it would keep a little journal, documenting my hopefully permanent change in thought regarding food.

so, what did my first steps involve? well, if you had spent any time with us this weekend, you would have witnessed the following:

on friday night, lots of processed/canned/otherwise conventionally-produced foods culled from my kitchen and waiting in a few garbage bags ready for kevin to throw away. i grappled with this a little [the food, not the fact that i expected my husband to do the heavy lifting]...do i donate it? in the end, i ended up just throwing it out. mostly b/c i realized a lot of the stuff was just really OLD (sometimes, embarassingly so...like "best by" dates going back to 2004. yikes!), but i still felt super guilty about the waste.

this, er, cleansing (you should have seen how empty the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator/freezer were) was followed with a trip the next day to the san francisco ferry building farmer's market (meat, pastured eggs, and produce), Macy's (All-Clad slow cooker; very important if i'm going to start cooking with grass-fed meat), and then rainbow grocery (produce, dairy, bulk foods).

[while at the farmer's market, i bought a stewing chicken from marin sun farms: they sell them with their heads and feet still attached. kevin looked like he was going to throw up, and told me flatly to not expect him to go anywhere near it. i definitely felt, well, fobby asian, as we walked back to the car with me holding this chicken. several people in their cars stared as i walked across the street. funny how in the farmer's market nobody looked twice, and if they did, it was to point it out to the people they were with and say: "oh look, she has a fresh chicken! should we get one also?" it's amazing what context does to bystander commentary. i'm pretty sure the car people said something like, "oh look, she's from chinatown!"]

after we got back from our shopping around 3 pm, i started my marathon cooking for the weekend. i slow-cooked the stewing chicken (after removing the kevin-offending feet and head...he demanded to know what i did with them so he could avoid them like the plague.), marinated the beef short ribs (for sunday-night dinner), made beef stock and the first of two batches of chicken stock (used the back and wings of the stewing chicken), brined the other (pre-headless and feetless) chicken (for sandwiches during the week), and made goat-cheese gnocchi and a spicy tomato sauce (for dinner that night). TIRING!

on sunday, i started the short ribs around noon in the slow cooker, baked chocolate chip cookies (this one is a great recipe if you like soft, chewy cookies (which i do!). recipe is below), and roasted the brined chicken. (i used the carcass of this second chicken to make the 2nd batch of stock) i was again pretty tired. if it's like this every weekend, i don't have a shot in hell of keeping the new lifestyle up. i proudly pointed out to kevin that i cooked a lot this weekend, to which he deadpanned, "yeah, i *know*. i CLEANED a lot this weekend." (our deal is that whoever cooks, the other cleans.)

and yes, i definitely went to Amazon to buy a few new cookbooks that promise to make cooking either simple, fast, or fast and simple. (hopefully "tasty" figures in there somewhere.)

tonight, when i got home from work, i made rainbow-chard and brown rice (something i just made up, and pretty tasty, too. recipe below). i'll be eating some of it for lunch tomorrow.


Swiss Chard & Rice
This is a surprisingly hearty meal. If you want to make it vegetarian/vegan-friendly, substitute vegetable stock for the chicken stock.

1 bunch of chard, stems cut into bite-sized pieces, leaves coarsely chopped
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup brown rice
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup water
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a large saute pan. Saute garlic and onions until onions are translucent. Add chard, cook until wilted. Add rice and saute until rice is well coated with pan juices. Add stock and water, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil; reduce to simmer, cover and cook for about an hour. (Or after the rice is well coated, transfer to a rice cooker, add the stock, water, salt, pepper, and cook.) Makes 4 servings.

Caroline's Chewy Chocolate-Chip Cookies
I prefer milk chocolate, but you can use semi-sweet or dark if you like those better (why, i don't understand :)

2 cups flour
1 cup oats
1 1/2 tsps baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 medium eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups milk chocolate chips

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 375°F. Line cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. Beat together butter and sugars with an electric mixer at high speed until fluffy, ~3 minutes. Add eggs to butter mixture, beating until creamy, about 1 minute. Beat in vanilla. Turn off mixer, add flour and then beat on low until just nearly blended. Stir in chips.

Scoop large, heaping tablespoons of batter about 2 inches apart on cookie sheet (12 per cookie sheet). Bake, 1 sheet at a time, until golden, 10 minutes. Transfer cookies to a rack to cool and continue making cookies using cooled baking sheets. Makes 4 dozen cookies (unless you like cookie dough...then it yields considerably less than 4 dozen cookies :)