The milk shake is just a milk shake

By Greg Turner | Published: January 21, 2011

A photo of three milkshakes from the Steak n Shake menu

I work pretty close to a Steak ‘n Shake. I also think their shakes are delicious. Sometimes on slow afternoons, I’ll go buy one and drink (eat?) it.  Submitted without further ado, a recent exchange with a friend of mine via IM*:

Me: I think I’m going to get a milkshake
Him: Steak n Shake?
Me: Yeah
Him: Oooh, you gonna go for the super caramel-bomb side-by-side turtle chocolate explosion shake?
Me: No, probably just a vanilla shake.
Him: C’mon, man, if you’re going to indulge like that, you gotta go all out.
Me: It’s not an indulgence, it’s just a milkshake
Him: I hate you.

The more people I speak with, the more I understand I am in the minority when it comes to this kind of thinking. And more and more I wonder why. Why do we view the things we’re “not supposed to have” as indulgences? Why do we deny ourselves so long that when we finally give in to temptation, we completely bust the bank?

If you make a choice about healthy eating, it should not mean you take on some kind of monastic path of self-denial. Far from it. I think you just need to be a little more mindful about the choices you make. Having a milkshake? Why go for the large? Why go for the small? Ask if they have a kids’ size. Also, why go for the most extreme, highly engineered concoction they offer? You think you have a film crew and something to prove? If you want some chocolate, order a chocolate. If I want my vanilla, I’ll get my vanilla.

The other thing I might advise is that you allocate milkshake time. I’m totally serious about this, though it might sound like a quip on a Dove Promise wrapper: when you’re drinking a milkshake, drink the milkshake. Don’t rush back to the office and feel like you have to suck the damn thing down before you get off the elevator. It’ll make you sick and leave you feeling unsatisfied.

Savor it. Be aware that you’re drinking a milkshake. Rather than beating yourself up over it, embrace it. This is my moment. This is my milkshake. Consider each sip. Again, this sounds like some kind of feel-good bullshit designed for a 40ish woman newly divorced and considering a third cat, but it’s also rooted in some serious science: eating more slowly leaves a person feeling more sated. It allows his body to keep pace with his mouth. It enables you to be conscious of your behavior.

Awareness is key. If you’re aware of your milkshake today, you’re less likely to have one by accident tomorrow. And becoming more aware of your food and eating will make you less likely to reach for that fifth handful of M&M’s. Moving the dish from desk will help that, too. But then, you already knew that.

*I don’t save transcripts of my IM conversations because I’m not desperate or creepy or stalkery. Consider this paraphrased.

Posted in Diet, Essay, Health | Leave a comment

A new sojourn

By Greg Turner | Published: January 18, 2011

“When we no longer have good cooking in the world, we will have no literature, nor high and sharp intelligence, nor friendly gatherings, nor social harmony.” – Marie-Antoine Caréme, Chef (1784 – 1833)1

I started this blog just over two years ago with no idea what I was doing or where it would go. For a while there, I think I had a pretty good run, but something always smacked of charlatanism. After all, there isn’t much I can claim: I’m not a chef, I have never worked in a kitchen, and I’m not a person who keeps a liquid nitrogen canister underneath the sink. I don’t come from a family with a rich food tradition, food fads don’t really interest me, and I like to get most of my dinners done in an hour (Sundays being a noted exception).

Still, I’ve been a pretty serious home cook for a few years now, and more than ever I believe cooking is one of the most important things we can do for another. Cooking makes us better stewards of the planet, and it provides a relatively easy means for good health. Plus, it puts you in control. If you have to ask some jackass behind a counter to make your food every meal, you can’t really be your own person. Somewhere along the way, though, I kind of lost my curiosity.

Why switch gears?

I have to admit I’ve been coasting a long time. I have a pretty sizable menu of go-to dishes I can pull together with some variation with little problem. But it strikes me that I’ve become one of those people who falls back on the same recipes over and over. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that. I just want that to be a choice, and not something I’m forced to do. And I’m hoping that by forcing myself back outside my comfort zone, I can re-ignite my curiosity. I’m also hoping, truly, that I can help people live healthier, saner lives. Really.

Let me depart here and tell a little story: Last January (2010) I weighed myself on the scale at the local grocery store. I weighed in at 198, which isn’t bad for a dude who’s 6’2”, but it wasn’t what I wanted. My pants were tight, my face was kind of puffy, and I realized that I’d allowed myself to put on a lot of weight without being conscious of it. I chose to begin eating more plants and less animal fat, and I shed about twenty pounds over the next six months. I’ve been able to keep the weight off, and I feel great. Bonus: I don’t have to go to the gym, count calories, or read food labels. What made it so easy for me? Yeah, I was fairly lucky when they doled out metabolism genes, but I’m incredibly lazy and completely lack discipline when it comes to anything that isn’t fun. But I did know how to cook, and that made taking control of my food choices incredibly easy for me.

What’s in it for you? (how about what isn’t?)

Can I claim learning to cook could make you a better person? You better believe it. Can I claim it’ll let you live a healthier, happier life? Sure thing. Are those claims founded in scientific experimentation and analysis? No way. Not mine, anyway, but more and more studies show unrefined, natural foods are a key to good health. So you’ll get that.

What you won’t get is a bunch of crap dogma decrying your love of bacon (though I think it’s jumped the shark), extolling the virtues of flax seed or millet, or the need to source your own ground beef from some yurt in outer Mongolia. I just don’t have time for stuff like that, and neither do you. I’m also not big on keeping track of the latest kitchen gadgets, and you won’t find six easy, simple, fast and fun (!) ways to jazz up chicken on a Wednesday. Someone else is doing those things way better than I ever could.

So what are we going to do?

First, we’re going to talk about salt. Just salt because yeah, it is that important. Then we’ll talk about finding the right hardware without spending a terrific amount of money, and we’ll talk about how food works. Sure, there will be recipes, but I hope to go beyond that and talk more about ingredients and how they fit together. Then, when you find yourself with half a roasted chicken and whole hungry family and nothing but a pie plate and your spice cabinet, you’ll be able to make a meal all by your lonesome and feed a table-full of smiling faces.

And if you don’t think that’s a great feeling? I don’t know. You might be dead inside.

from The Flavor Bible

Posted in Essay | Leave a comment

When we get our eggs from a single basket

By Greg Turner | Published: August 26, 2010

Eggs
“Eggs” by Zyada

The question is whether that consolidation is really a risk factor for salmonella. And you’ll find people on both sides of that who will argue the case that either having it be at large places where you can actually do really good biocontrol is more safe, you have people who would argue that having many small farms is more safe. I don’t think we know the answer to that yet.
-Elizabeth Weise, USA Today, in an interview with NPR’s Newshour

Um. No.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the 1,300 reported cases of salmonella poisoning traced back to two Iowa farms. Perhaps some eggs in your refrigerator are some of the over 550 million eggs recalled over the last month. Perhaps you or someone you know has gotten sick from salmonella poisoning. Or perhaps you buy your eggs from a guy down the street.

When people like Elizabeth Weise claim the jury is still out over which is safer, giant factory farms or locally sourced goods, they miss two major points: reach and market enforcement.

First, let’s consider the reach. Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms are two massive, factory laying environments producing well over a billion eggs every year. That’s billion. The local farmer down at the farmer’s market has 100 dozen eggs (and that’s being generous) every Wednesday, for a grand total of 62,400 eggs per year. His customer count is also in the dozens, give or take, with maybe some local restaurants buying up some additional eggs. He doesn’t make his living from eggs alone, but they’re a good subsidy for the hot months when it’s hard to grow vegetables around here (or the cold months up where you live).

He can’t poison 1,300 people, even if he smeared his eggs in cow shit and dunked them in cyanide. He gets 100–200 people, tops, and news of it spreads pretty fast. Whether or not one method is safer–and I’ll wager here that for the small farmer the health of each chicken is pretty important, as opposed to some giant warehouse where chickens are kept in small laying cages, mostly in the dark, and owned by some small group of executives thousands of miles away. So whether or not one method is safer seems immaterial in the face of such numbers.

Ms. Weise’s comment also doesn’t account for enforcement. It’s no secret that government regulation has been neutered over the past eighty years, with huge cuts in funding and new laws removing more powers in the 1980′s and the 2000′s. It makes it harder and harder for government to protect its citizens when things go awry at giant factory farms. But a small market corrects itself pretty quickly. The local farmer simply can’t afford to poison his customers. If he does, chances are he won’t make it back to sell on a Wednesday, and the customers he has will find a new egg source at the market.

Think of it this way: let’s say you find the eggs in your fridge are part of the recall. You get rid of them, then decide to get a different brand. How do you know the new brand isn’t from the same farm? Industrial farms often produce eggs for a number of different brands. At last check, 36 brands are listed as possibly tainted and slated for recall. The guy at the market sells his own eggs, maybe some eggs from his neighbor, and that’s it. You can be pretty selective and be an informed consumer when you’re dealing with one or two people. People who you could go visit if they pissed you off enough.

I’m not about to say one method has been empirically shown to be safer than another, and I don’t disparage Ms. Weise’s comments on that front.  However, when we’re talking about one of the things we need to live, we should probably take a look at it in a more nuanced manner.

Posted in Essay, News | Leave a comment

Black Bean Tacos

By Greg Turner | Published: May 26, 2010

Black Bean Tacos

I love transferrable skills. It’s one of the reasons I do my best to talk about understanding food rather than memorizing recipes. If you understand food, then you can take an idea and move it across an entire spectrum of entrees. Like, for example, the idea of including onion in a recipe without really including onion, an idea I got from this Salt & Fat post on Tomato-butter sauce and transferred to black bean tacos.

The onion-in method

The results? Stellar, and without any onion bits to dissuade a finicky 13 year old (or any texture eater) from gobbling up dinner.

(And before you suggest just leaving out the onions, it’s probably best you move along. You can’t have black beans without red onions. It’s just not done.)

Black Bean Tacos
(feeds 3 with plenty of leftovers)

Ingredients:

  • 28 oz cooked black beans
  • 8 oz water
  • 1/2 large red onion
  • At least 9 corn tortillas
  • 16 oz uncooked long-grain rice
  • 4 oz shredded Monterey jack cheese
  • 12 oz cup shredded cheddar cheese
    • Note: you can alter the ratio of cheddar to jack cheeses depending on how sharp or mild you want your cheese sauce. You just want to have 16 oz. of cheese, total
  • 1 cup (8 oz) half-n-half
  • olive oil (about a tablespoon)
  • a couple big cloves of garlic
  • kosher salt
  • black pepper
  • ground cumin
  • hot sauce (optional)
  • cayenne (optional)
  • lime juice (optional)

Supplies:

  • Large skillet
  • Small sauce pan
  • Large pot with a tight-fitting lid

Begin by making the rice. Boil three cups of water in the large pot, add your rice, stir about a minute, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Set a kitchen timer for 20 minutes.

Put a splash of olive oil in your skillet and set it on the stove over medium-high heat. While it heats, cut your onion half in half. Set the pieces in the skillet ring-side-down so they begin to caramelize and release their flavor into the oil. While they’re cooking, go ahead and mince the garlic. After the onions have cooked about two minutes, add the minced garlic and give it a stir for about 15 seconds, then add your beans and about half a cup of water (4 oz). The water will help the beans heat evenly, prevent them from burning, distribute all your flavors, and provide a nice sauce once you’re done. Let them heat through for a couple minutes, then reduce the heat to simmer. Stir in a generous pinch of salt, a couple grinds of pepper, and a generous sprinkle of cumin. Give the mix a taste. If it doesn’t taste enough like food from your favorite Mexican restaurant, sprinkle in a little more cumin. At this point you could also add some cayenne pepper for heat and a splash of lime juice to bring a little brightness to the mix.

Note: as you finish out the remaining ingredients, keep tasting your beans. If too much of the water simmers out, the flavors will become too concentrated and the beans will get dry. If you need to, feel free to add an extra splash or two of water. Also, feel free to doctor the ingredients as you go. Don’t be afraid to play!

When there’s about a minute left on the timer, heat your tortillas (I use the microwave) and store them in a clean tea towel (paper towels will do just fine). Then set the remaining sauce pot on the stove over medium heat and add your half-n-half.

When the timer beeps, pull the rice off the burner, give it a stir, put the lid back on and set the rice aside. Begin sloooooowly adding the cheese to the half-n-half, a big pinch at a time, and give one or two stirs with each addition. After you’ve added all the cheese, stir slowly and smoothly until it’s blended to a sauce.

To serve, spoon rice and beans into a tortilla, set it on a plate and smother with cheese sauce. Bask in your family’s loving gaze and applause.

Posted in black beans, cheddar cheese, Ingredient, mince, olive oil, onion, saute, simmer | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Making Time to Cook

By Greg Turner | Published: April 29, 2010

I believe cooking is important. It enables us to eat healthier foods, and makes us more mindful of our place in the world. I honestly believe that cooking and eating together with family and friends grounds us and makes us happier.

I hear many people say they don’t have time to cook. I hear Michael Ruhlman say,  ”bullshit” in response. And I have to agree. However, it would seem some people don’t.

This morning @Tanukipdx posted a lengthy (for twitter) screed about Ruhlman’s comment. In part:

Someone wants to say they are too uneducated/lazy/drug addled/asshurt or artistic to work they get sympathy. Someone is too self-indulgent/lazy/progressive/drug-addled/ or artistic to deal with society’s norms, laws and mores they get sympathy. But a working person struggling to balance the needs of their life who says they can’t find time to cook homemade meals? Ridicule them! Sir, you have grown too fucking self-satisfied and smug to be believed.
-from a post at TwitLonger

A couple things to note, given a cursory glance at the screed-author’s twitter stream: one, the stream appears to be the official Twitter account of a Portland Restaurant. Two, the author seems to relish a little confrontation.

My immediate question: who better to benefit from people feeling they’re too busy to cook than a restaurant?

That being said, I believe people use “too busy to cook” as an excuse. And in that way, it is bullshit. I’m amazed at what people find time to do. They go out to eat, they go to the gym, they spend hours in front of the television on a Sunday afternoon. They tend fake crops on Facebook. Maybe, rather than say they’re too busy, they should fess up and say they don’t enjoy cooking. Or that they don’t know how. Because to say you don’t have time is ridiculous.

Take me, for example. Cooking is important, as I’ve said, and so I make time for it. In addition to working full time as a Web developer for one of the Southeast’s premier health care systems, in addition to being an adjunct instructor at the community college. In addition to spending time with my family and finding time to write a novel (now in revisions), I still, somehow, inexplicably, find time to plan a menu every weekend. My wife and I find time to shop for groceries, depending on who is busier. I find time to make an awesome Sunday dinner for all of us, and I find time to create delicious, easy meals every other day of the week–breakfast and lunch for me, dinner for all of us. I don’t exercise as much as I should, certainly. And yes, some evenings I just can’t bring myself to go into the kitchen. Those nights we figure out something else. The thing is, I never say I’m too busy to work out. I just haven’t made time for it in my schedule. There are other things, like cooking and novel revisions, that are more important to me. That’s where I think Ruhlman’s “bullshit” comment comes in. If someone says he’s too busy to cook, he’s lying. He’s not too busy; other things are just more important.

Last night I got home from work and began cooking up a big pot of lentils. Not the fanciest of dinners, but delicious and wholesome. As they simmered, I changed out of my work clothes, and spent some time on the kitchen floor “cooking” with my eighteen-month-old son. I made sauteeing noises while he stirred a small potato and a splash of water in a small skillet. When the lentils were done, I served some plain for my daughter, then added kale for my wife and me. We all ate together at the dining room table, then went to the back yard to enjoy the cool spring evening. We ate ice cream, and it was awesome. And that’s why I’m never too busy to cook.

Posted in Essay, Memoir | 4 Comments

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