Omnivore Atlanta

Playing ketchup

By Russ Marshalek

I first discovered ketchup as a weight-loss tool when I was in my early teens. My Marietta trailer-park youth contributed to some serious adolescent obesity in terms of me shopping the husky section of Wal-Mart for cheap jeans (which my family called “dungarees”). Around the age of thirteen, three major turning points happened in my life. First, I got really, really physically ill, as a result of weighing somewhere close to a billion pounds. Second, I became a vegetarian as a direct result of said illness. Third, I realized that (and this only applies to then, not now) I really, really hated most vegetarian options available to me.

Growing up on fast food, my new-found attempts at healthier eating and vegetarianism found me alienated from my family in regards to food. It was possibly a cool, crisp autumn day, or maybe a stinking hot mid-summer afternoon, or all/none of the above, when I was standing in line at a Wendy’s with my folks and suddenly realized that a plain baked potato, with no butter or sour cream, would, in fact, be the healthiest option on the menu.

Upon ordering and digging into the foil-wrapped bundle steaming with the blandness of a tennis ball covered in a sneaker, I realized that baked potato ordered from a fast-food establishment and eaten entirely plain was way better in theory than in actuality. I frantically scoured the restaurant for something, anything, to make the potato better: salt? My minimal knowledge of health and food was enough to know that “salt=bad”. Pepper? My limited taste palette had yet to experiment with it. Ditto with mustard (thank god — a plain baked potato covered in yellow fast-food mustard? Ugh). Ketchup? Ketchup … my still-acclimating-to-healthy-eating-choices brain raced: Ketchup works on French fries. French fries are potatoes+death. Remove death and you still have potatoes. Ketchup!

And thus, it began. (more…)

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Zen cooking

By Julia Stedman

I turned to my husband and said “if Mama asks me to cook supper, will you give me five dollars?” He gave me a very knowing half smile. Surely to God, with an hour left on our four hour drive and the sun setting, I was in the clear. Not so. Fifteen minutes later mama called asking us to retrieve my sociopathically late sister and bring her to join the rest of the family, their families, and a dozen or so out-of-towners all there to celebrate my sister’s wedding. That’s fine Mama, we’re happy to pick her up. Then it came, in a voice that chirped like a song bird – “oh, and when you get here can you cook the etouffe? I’ve already peeled the shrimp for you.” I held the phone towards my husband and asked her to repeat the question, feigning cosmic cellular interference. He gave me another knowing half smile. Of course Mama, I’m happy to help.

While my mother is a perfectly respectable Cajun cook, I tend to be on the more adventurous side. So when some twenty years ago I announced my newfound avoidance of meat, I was pretty much left to my own devices if actually wanted to eat when I visited. Accommodating my constraints was not considered considerable.

We arrived to a chaotic household, and an even more chaotic kitchen. There were two aunts, one uncle, and at least one sister-in-law buzzing about with all the grace one expects from bumblebees. I went into “sarge” mode, which didn’t quite have the effect I was hoping for – looks like I’m dealing with a bevy of conscientious objectors. (more…)

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I’ve never much liked farm-raised tilapia. I remember going to a food conference years ago and hearing someone extol the fish’s long “shelf life,” “mild” (read “boring”) taste and suitability for just about any cooking method. Think tofu with fins.

Well, now it turns out that farm-raised tilapia may be bad for you, according to a study reviewed in Science Daily:

Farm-raised tilapia, one of the most highly consumed fish in America, has very low levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids and, perhaps worse, very high levels of omega-6 fatty acids, according to new research from Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

The researchers say the combination could be a potentially dangerous food source for some patients with heart disease, arthritis, asthma and other allergic and auto-immune diseases that are particularly vulnerable to an “exaggerated inflammatory response.” Inflammation is known to cause damage to blood vessels, the heart, lung and joint tissues, skin, and the digestive tract.

Find the whole story here.

(Image from TMW.)

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Here’s yesterday’s lunch — bean sprouts wrapped in tofu skin from the Green Sprout. I’ve written about this dish before and it looks much better not compressed into a take-out container.

Why am I eating this? Wayne and I decided to experiment with not eating meat for a week. Part of the experiment is to keep within our normal dining zones in Grant Park, Midtown and Little Five Points. It’s been a roller-coaster ride, to say the least.

Monday night, I stopped at Whole Foods and bought extra-firm tofu, which I sauteed and combined with kim chi, an over-priced mild version I also found at the grocery. I also added some “succotash” to the dish. It was surprisingly good.

It’s been mainly downhill ever since. I love the Standard, but the “vegetable burger” I ate there was one of the most unpleasant things I’ve tasted in months. It was dry, sandwiched in a dry bun and had the usual harsh seasoning that typifies so much vegetarian cuisine.

I couldn’t eat but a few bites of the thing. I was so embarrassed to eat so little of it that I hid the leftovers under my napkin.

We also hit Ali Baba’s in Little Five Points. They had no air conditioning and it was suffocatingly hot on their patio, too. So we took home wraps made with falafel and various vegetable salads. They were decent, but left me hungry.

I’ve mainly been eating some cheese and roasted vegetables for lunch.

I’ve been struck by a couple of things in this experiment, which has included visits to a few other restaurants:

It’s not that easy to find decent vegetarian cooking in the average meat-serving restaurant. Unless I drive to Decatur or Buford Highway for Indian food or go to Dynamic Dish on Edgewood Ave., I’m stuck with the average restaurant’s vegetarian offerings, which are usually dull afterthoughts, over-seasoned with boredom.

I don’t feel the least bit healthy eating this way, even allowing myself eggs and cheese. Maybe that changes with time. What is clear is that to eat well — by which I refer to taste and health — you have to do a lot of planning.

Also, the experiment is teaching me that I need to be a lot more conscious in my usual eating.

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Last week I extended an invitation to readers to contribute to Omnivore with stories of food and life. I’ve had quite a response already, and today I’m happy to present our first guest blogger, Lauren Leschper. Lauren writes about how for her, baking is way cheaper than therapy. Enjoy, and if you’re interested in blogging for Omnivore, send me your ideas at besha.rodell@creativeloafing.com.

Cheaper (and tastier) than a psychiatrist

By Lauren Leschper

Everyone deals with stress in a slightly different way. Some people eat, some exercise, and some do nothing at all. Me? I bake.

I don’t know why, but at least since I’ve been in college, the best way for me to calm down and de-stress is to make a cake, pie, whatever. I have little desire to eat the resulting dessert, however. I always manage to cover myself in homemade icing when I make cupcakes, so by the time I finish I have usually eaten my fill of sweets for a while.

Which is the interesting fact about baking, for me at least – making lots of cupcakes actually keeps me from eating many desserts on a daily basis. Luckily (for them or me?) my boyfriend and his four roommates are more than happy to scarf down whatever treat I’ve decided to make. Otherwise, my roommates would certainly throw me out for keeping them from fitting into their formal dresses.

Brownie and muffin mixes were basically the extent of my mom’s baking when I was growing up, other than the blackberry pies she would make for special occasions. My family was never a “dessert” family. Yet somehow I discovered the absolute magic of from-scratch baked goods. In my experience, there are few things as sure to brighten someone’s day as a homemade cupcake. Knowing this fact helps make the preparation and effort worthwhile for me, but there’s more to it than that. The combination of art and science, creativity and precision, is the paradox and essence of baking. I think that inherent contradiction is what gives baking its therapeutic qualities for me. I have to concentrate and devote my full attention to what I’m doing. Depending on the recipe, sometimes the smallest mistake could lead to disaster. I don’t have time to think about my midterm, or my fight with my boyfriend, or anything else that might be weighing on my mind.

Plus, I get to eat some yummy frosting. Calories from icing licked off your fingers don’t count, right?

(Photo from Wikimedia commons)

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Once upon a time, there was a Chinese restaurant on Buford Highway where your meal was concocted sort of pharmaceutically. (It was located in the shopping center that contains Phuket.)

The owner-chef was a doctor who came to your table, read your pulse and then composed your meal on the basis of his findings. I’m not sure how he found the state of my health, but the remedy was always really, really bland.

But that was consistent with the advice of a Tibetan doctor who traveled with the Dalai Lama. I had an appointment with him years ago. The examination included a pulse reading and a look at my urine, which I’d been told to bring in a bottle. The doctor, after correctly diagnosing a muscle problem I’d never had before, held the bottle up to the light, swooshed it around and said: “You eat too much spicy food and you think too much. You must stop thinking for five minutes every hour.” Good advice for a dining critic and perpetual student, I guess.

In the 15 or so years since then, we’ve come increasingly to view food in a medicinal way. Yesterday, The New York Times featured a post in its “Well” blog entitled “The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating.” Topping the list composed by author Johnny Bowden is a food I actually eat quite often, beets, although I was surprised to see that I should be eating them raw. The best treatment of beets I’ve regularly encountered is at David Sweeney’s Dynamic Dish.

Another (stinky) surprise, popular in trailer parks throughout the South, is this dish, which I’ve heard called “Redneck Sushi” before (especially when served on Saltines):

Sardines: Dr. Bowden calls them “health food in a can.’’ They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins.
How to eat: Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread.

Check out the entire list here. There’s a spirited discussion in the comments section following the post.

(Graphic from mattbites.com. Check out his recipes.)

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When I was little, my mother used to make the same birthday cake for everyone in the family. It was a chocolate fudge cake with pink peppermint buttercream icing. Usually, she would use the brownie recipe from the Joy of Cooking, and make two nine-inch rounds of solid brownie, with the cotton-candy colored stuff in between the layers and stickily slathering the top. I still remember the birthday I had when she picked delicate tiny violets and crystallized them in sugar to top my cake. I think I was 9.

In the following years, our family grew; my brother and I were joined by two younger sisters, and my mother’s cake-making time became less leisurely. My sisters grew up with the same cake but not always with such a time consuming procedure, and the nostalgic birthday cake of their youth involves cake made from a box. But still, chocolate with pink mint icing.

It’s been a long time since any of us had one of those cakes. My youngest sister recently turned 18, and my middle sister, Grace, turned 22 this month.

Grace is in college out of state, but she has lived with me since she was 17, and comes home to my house during the summers. For years I’ve been planning to make her one of those nostalgic pink mint and chocolate birthday cakes, and this year, with three of her friends visiting for her birthday, I decided it was time. I was also making a labor intensive risotto for dinner, so I opted for the cake in a box option. That’s what she grew up with anyway. (more…)

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