The Rage Diaries

What drives me batty about foodie media

So Phil and I were sacked out on the couch the other night, and our TiFaux did deliver unto us the Good Eats episode "Tuna, Surprise." I was pleased, as I currently have twelve 6-oz cans of Starkist in the pantry and am open to finding things to do with them above and beyond the old standard tuna salad.

Sadly, I am still bereft of ideas. The episode focused on Alton advocating that we ditch the humble can for either the pricey tuna-in-a-pouch or the even more pricey tuna-imported-from-Italy. (How pricey, you ask? One four-ounce tin costs $17; I picked up ninety ounces of tuna packed in water -- i.e. fifteen times the quantity -- from Costco for a mere $9.)

This episode stands out as an anomaly, because Good Eats has provided us with many, many great recipes that do not require pricey or hard-to-find ingredients. It has been one of the happy exceptions of foodie media insofar as I am concerned. Our local food section often includes recipes that call for things that can only be mail-ordered, purchased on an installment plan, or procured up in Yreka on the first Sunday of the month between two and four p.m.

Pragmatism is good for the American diet

So a few days ago, I read this post, "Localvores at Walmart?" on WMT's in-house blog, Check Out. The gist of the post is this:

[O]ver the past two years, Walmart’s partnerships with local farmers have grown by 50 percent, and fruits and vegetables grown in any given store’s state now make up over a fifth of what’s available during summer months.  Now, statistics like this are nice, but its particularly cool when you see the results…a few examples:

Until recently, all of the fresh cilantro sold in Walmart stores was sourced from California. Then, Ron’s merchants found a grower named Duda Farms, and soon we started sourcing cilantro from Belle Glade, Florida for distribution in the eastern US.  Introducing Florida-grown cilantro resulted in an estimated savings of 250,000 food miles in a single season.

I liked the post because it was a nice look at how businesses can balances practices that boost their bottom line against practices that are good for the planet.

One year down

On Saturday, June 23, 2007, I finished a cup of coffee around 10 a.m., left Ole's and got into a car accident. It was a heck of a way to say goodbye to caffeine.

 I've gone a year without caffeine -- no pick-me-ups after red-eye flights, no heart-starting beverage first thing in the morning, no cold and fizzy fountain drinks on hot road trips, no after-dinner cappuccinos in the dim and luxurious quiet of a good restaurant. In return: I sleep better, my dentist no longer sighs when she sees me, my heartburn's diminished, I rest reassured that I don't depend on something to feel like I'm working at the top of my faculties.

That's why I quit: I got tired of being the woman with a Diet Coke can permanently welded to her hand. I wanted to see if I had the willpower to walk away from something I had leaned on a little too much; I wanted to see what, if any changes, I'd have to make for the better.

The flip side, of course, is that I really have a hard time when I'm physically bushwhacked. It's like the sleepytime version of Flowers for Algernon: I can feel my problem-solving skills and emotional resilience diminishing with each yawn. This has made me much more sympathetic to toddlers, what with their own need for regular sleep and typical abstention from caffeine. I just wish meltdowns weren't so damned undignified for the over-3 set.

What if I don't want to be what I eat?

I like to read two or more books at a time, and the two I just finished reading  seem weirdly complimentary: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. Once I got past the situational amusement of the book by the non-chef including recipes while the book by the chef most decidedly did not, I realized that the two are united by a common belief that beats beneath each chapter: what we choose to eat, how we choose to prepare it and why we made these choices all reflect who we are.

Animal + vegetable != miracle

My tomatoes are doing beautifully. I have four plants -- two brandywine, one green zebra and one yellow plum -- across two raised beds, and they are now so hearty and vigorous, I've had to stake them to the skeleton of a vandalized "Yes on H" sign someone stuck in our yard.

(Side digression: Alameda's about to vote on Measure H, which would tax homeowners to make up a massive school budget shortfall. People who dig the prop have been putting signs in their yard. However, we can home last Friday and found that someone had stuck a "Yes on H" sign in our yard with a big, black "NO" spray-painted across it. Anyway, I huffily recycled the sign but kept the the metal frame for it. Thank you, vandals, for saving me the cost of a tomato cage.)

Because I had some room left over in the raised beds, I figured I'd do some co-planting. I have some French breakfast radishes coming up in one bed. But alas, in the other ... I have a pile of dirt and a suspicious hollow. There are no green onions coming up, because Zito has apparently been peeing on them. I've scooped out the dirt and have a screen over the bed now to prevent our idiot cat from jumping back in there, but still ... if it's not one thing in the garden, it's another. (At left: the pissy culprit lolls in "his" chair, which is parked in our garage instead of at the dump where it ought to be. He has no reason to look as irritated as he does.)

I can only imagine my headache if I really committed to urban homesteading, like these people:

Fiscal fitness -- the grocery reckoning

This post is a few days late because I normally leave the grocery receipt in the car, and forgot to bring it in until today. But I did promise youall numbers and a look at what we're spending on food and where.

Nogurt

Have you noticed the abundance of yogurt commercials on, say, the DIY Network or Bravo? And how it's always some women yammering on about how they prefer eating a key lime-flavored yogurt to actual, delicious key lime-flavored pie? Then I believe this video will speak to you.

Would you like to know who the yogurt eater in the Schmichaels household is? Hint: it's not the chick.

Open mouth, insert wallet?

Forbes is reporting that those assemble-your-meal places are facing a business crunch, what with the rising costs of basic ingredients and the possibility that many of the chains have grown too quickly without focusing on the fundamentals. ("Taking on Restaurants and Groceries," May 8, 08) It will be interesting to see whether these places can weather any belt-tightening shopping.

Meanwhile, an interesting little nugget in Marketing Daily suggests that high prices may not doom the recently-burgeoning organic market:

[A] study also found that when it came to buying organic--affluence was not a major factor. "People always ask the question of whether organic brands should market to rich consumers because they're more expensive," Welch said. "But our Mindsets are demographically neutral--so Openness 5's aren't just wealthy people. We found that organics is a state of mind, not a state of wallet."

-- "Organic Buyers More Open to New Experiences Than Average," May 9,09

It's an interesting finding in light of reports to the contrary.

I think over the next few months, the real proof will be in monitoring how sales are at places like Hansen's Natural, Kraft (which owns Boca foods and Back to Nature),  General Mills (which owns Cascadian Farm and Muir Glen), Dean Foods (owns Silk soymilk, Horizon, Organic Cow of Vermont and Alta Dena), Kellogg (which owns Morningstar, Kashi and Gardenburger) and Heinz (which owns a lot of organic brands, including: Earth's Best, Celestial Seasonings, Arrowhead Mills and Rice Dream, among others). We'll see whether Whole Foods' sales stay steady. Because, honestly, I think prices are only going to keep rising for organic foods -- in part because the suppliers were already having difficulty meeting demand, even before the worldwide food shortages ("Organic Food Industry in a Supply Crunch," AP, Jan 29, 08).

Fiscal fitness -- a detour through your stomach

I want to call attention to an exchange in the comments related to the "My cashless society" entry. Rebecca wrote:

If I hadn't looked around at what I had, I would have forgotten about the bun and it would have gone stale and then I would have eventually thrown it out. And because it's a small can of milk, I'm using less of it in my coffee (and generally drinking less coffee in order to conserve it).

and Molly replied:

I think too often many people are not aware of the amount of food that gets wasted. I didn't participate in the week without spending because we buy our food daily. While this isn't always a great idea for some, we live in walking distance to the supermarkets. It has greatly reduced the amount of food that we waste, which saves us money in the long run.

I don't know about y'all, but I was raised by two parents who regarded wasting food as a tremendous sin, and the value judgment stuck. It's also bad financial management.

One of the ways we reduce any potential waste is by planning a week's worth of meals at a time and buying our perishables based on that menu. Our menu-planning process is not terribly formal -- it's a discussion we have while walking to the farmer's market -- but it does help us stick to a strict shopping list. Another way we cut down on waste? We are big doggie-bag people at restaurants. Hey, we paid for that food -- we might as well eat it sometime.

How do you handle food waste? Are you a planner? Do you still hear your mom pointing out that starving children in [insert country here] would be grateful for that food?

ETA: Immediately after posting this, I found not one but two articles that talk about the relationship between pocketbook and menu, although not in a wasting-food capacity. Still, read Salon's Apr 18, 08, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Recession" for one writer's retreat into bargain food shopping, then read Slate's Apr 16, 08,  "Why the Food Press Rarely Talks about Dollars and Cents," which dances around the question "Can you eat well on cheap ingredients?"

It's at times like this ...

... I wish we still had a good 13-14 people running for president. Why? Because after reading "Studying the Intersection of Politics and Pantry" (NYT, Apr 16, 08), and its attendant sidebars "You Might Be a Clinton Supporter If ... ," "You Might Be a McCain Supporter If ... ," and "You Might Be an Obama Supporter If ... ," I am totally curious to find out what fills the stomachs of the Romneylans, Kuchinichistas and Edwardsians.

As to how my palate votes? I have one in the Clinton column (I buy butter -- a lot of butter) and four in the Obama column (I shop at a farmer's market, my favorite fast-food place is Panera and my grocery cart includes both olive oil and Kettle chips). However, I have a tortured relationship with two of the items in the McCain camp: the only reason I don't shop at Safeway is because the Schmichaels household has a boycott in place (long story ...) and holy cats, do I love me some Hardee's breakfasts. Damn you, cruel CKE overlords for keeping Hardee's east of Alameda! And you all with your alleged "Frisco" burger too -- can't you see the irony? BRING ME MAH CHICKEN BISCUIT!

Anyway, that's me. Who will your tummy vote for?