Catch up

Hmm...can't remember the last thing I cooked that felt worthy of being blogged about. But, for all that, I do cook in some form or another, every day. Obviously that involves dinner, but my lunches are often more fun. I love lunch dearly - I think it's the meal I look forward to most every day in fact! When I'm working (ha!) from home, I tend to treat myself, making something rather delish and putting a bit of effort into it. Well, either that or I lie prone on the sofa shovelling corn chips from a bag into my mouth until my tongue feels raw from the excess salt. That happens quite a bit too, truth be told. So, anyhoo, I've added a new wee feature - my daily lunching efforts are now on a panel down the right-hand side. I feel keeping up with this is a more realistic goal than blogging about major kitchen triumphs every day (because that would require such bold victories as much as anything, and really, I'm seldom bold), and maybe having to confess my eating habits will make me stop with the corn chip diet. Probably not though...

I'm reading a couple of really interesting books at the moment (I'm actually reading 4 interesting books at the moment, but only 2 pertain to food stuffs. One of the others is a historical fiction tome, and the other is the Feminine Mystique. That does sort of deal with cooking in the sense of a housewife having dinner on the table for her husband the second he walks in the door, but that's not really a favourable discussion of such concepts! Great book, but unrelated to the focus of this blog...). So, the two food related books I'm currently reading are Julia Child's My Life in France (the other half of the Julie/Julia tale) and Food Matters by Mark Bittman (food columnist for the New York Times).

The Julia Child book is lovely - so evocative of 1940s/50s Paris (well, it evokes an all-too-clearly imagined Paris of that era. Having never been to Paris either in this century or the last, I couldn't actually say if my vision is accurate or not). I've come to realise I can't read this book in bed at night though, because the descriptions of Parisian dining and Julia's cooking efforts are much too delicious-sounding and I end up having to do a late-night raid on the fridge in desperation. In London I share an office with an American woman who actually met Julia once - it's quite a sweet story. She was at college and attending an event in commemoration of women getting the vote, and there were some speakers organised. She came in late to one of these events and sat in the back, and shortly after she arrived, a very tall older woman came and sat next to her. Apparently the woman kept leaning over and making comments about the speaker's speech in my friend's ear all the way through, and she was getting rather annoyed. She was on the verge of telling the older woman to be quiet when the event ended and the woman up and left. My friend had no idea that the noisy whisperer was Julia Child herself until a colleague told her! Having seen Julie/Julia, read both books and watched Julia's videos online, I can all-too-clearly imagine her making opinionated remarks all the way through someone else's speech! Wonder what she would have said if my friend had shhhed her!

The other book, as I said, is Mark Bittman's Food Matters. I've only just started it, but it's already making an impact. It's not necessarily well-written, but interesting nonetheless (the style is a bit repetitive and disjointed - I think Michael Pollan has a much nicer writing style, but this book has an important message irrespective of writing standards!). It is a call for Americans (particularly Americans, although I think the same call could apply to anyone living in a 'western' country) to change their eating habits. Eat less meat and better meat. Eat whole grains and more fruit/vege. Stop eating products with vast quantities of high-fructose corn syrup in them. By doing all of this, Bittman argues, you will (inadvertently) lose weight and become healthier, but more importantly for him, you will make a very real difference to climate change. Evidently livestock production contributes more to greenhouse gas emissions every year than global transportation does - accounting for 1/5 of total emissions!! That's a hell-of-a carbon footprint! In fairness, the vast majority of livestock production in America is in the form of disgusting factory farming with practices that make me nauseated to think about, and this is not standard practice in other countries. But, Bittman makes the point that meat consumption patterns globally (in developed AND developing countries) are on a very clear upward trajectory and the only way to fill that increasing demand, is to continue factory farming. I personally find that idea abhorrent, as does the author, so he's calling for people to change their eating habits. Most people eat too much meat anyway and some of his stats regarding that are pretty startling. So, I've bought his book (which includes a bunch of recipes) and we plan to make a more concerted effort to eat more 'greenly'. I do think that we aren't that bad anyway - I don't waste meat and tend to make a little go a long way. We often have meat-free meals, and I tend to be VBD...vegetarian before dinner. Not always, but generally. I had a period of about 5 years when I didn't eat any red meat (typical teenage stuff, you know), and as a result I discovered that I actually really like vegetarian food. Quite often when we are at restaurants, I order the vege dish. But, teenage hiatus aside, I do like meat. Like Bittman though, I think you can eat meat in a respectful way and that has a positive impact for not just our figures and our budgets, but the globe too! Hell, back in the ol' days, farmer's families would have a roast on Sunday and then make the leftovers last through till the next Sunday, probably resorting to fish on a Friday and meat-free food on the Saturday. Meat was scarce and expensive so you valued it. Now we squander meat and it's killing both us and the planet.

Ok, now I've wandered off into a diatribe, and I didn't mean to. I just rant so easily about this stuff! Must stop such impassioned ranting! Anyway, I just wanted to recommend both books and share them with others!

Happy reading and eating!