Always a timely topic (unfortunately): the Journal of Lutheran Ethics has a review symposium of Gary Simpson’s War, Peace & God: Rethinking the Just War Tradition.
Month: January 2009
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Cooking with ATR
Jennifer’s post here makes me think that this sort of thing might actually be interesting or useful to some folks. One of the most common questions I get as a vegetarian is “What do you eat?” I chalk this up to a couple of things. One is that, for many people, the standard American meal, which I like to define as meat+potato+some sorry looking looking veggies, is…well, the standard most people use for what a proper meal should be. So, when they imagine a vegetarian meal, they imagine the standard meal, but without the meat. And, understandably, a plate of mashed potatoes and overcooked carrots doesn’t sound all that appealing. Either that, or they think vegetarians just eat salad all the time. (I’ve been to more than one restaurant or function where a salad was the sole “vegetarian option.”) Another popular misconception is that eating vegetarian essentially means eating the standard American diet but replacing all the meats with meat substitutes (veggie burgers, soy bacon, veggie dogs, etc.). And I imagine these are common reasons why people either don’t try vegetarian eating or don’t stick with it.
Consequently, I think successful long-term vegetarian eating requires a kind of paradigm shift in the way you think about meals. As long as you have the standard American meal as your template, vegetarian food is going to have a hard time measuring up. It’s going to be a stumbling block in exploring the different kinds of vegetarian cuisine and discovering the ones you really like, which are usually (though not always) not going to be imitations of meat-based dishes. Which is why, if you do decide to go veggie, or just decide to cut back on meat, getting some good vegetarian cook books is an important first step. Good cook books will introduce you to meal possibilities that go way beyond replacing your hamburger with a tofu burger (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). And they’ll help you discover the possiblities of ingredients that form the basis of a lot of vegetarian dishes and can help you maintain good nutrition (hello, lentils!).
So, as a public service to my dear readers, I thought I’d suggest some vegetarian cook books that get a lot of use around our place:
Donna Klein, The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen
This is one of my favorites and ideal for people new to vegetarian eating. Don’t let the “vegan” label put you off; the beauty of this book is that it’s fool of delicious traditional recipes for foods that will be familiar to most people without using any soy-based meat or dairy substitutes. Great stuff.
The Moosewood Collective, Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home
This one focuses on quick, easy-to-prepare meals. Mostly vegan, but also has a section on fish.
Mollie Katzen, The Moosewood Cookbook
A classic. Mollie Katzen is credited with bringing heatlthy vegetarian cooking into the mainstream.
Catherine Hackett, Meatless Main Dishes
This is a slim volume, but has great single-skillet dishes. Some of our favorite soups and stews come out of here.
Robin Robertson, Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes
As the title indicates, this book is full of hearty, stick-to-your-ribs food. Who says vegetarian eating has to be about tofu and bean sprouts?
Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, Veganomicon
I just got this over Christmas and we haven’t had a chance to use it much, but it got good reviews. It’s billed as the ultimate vegan cook book. I did make a chili verde recipe that used tomatillos and Granny Smith apples which was tasty, if a bit labor-intensive.
What most of these books have in common is that the recipes are relatively easy, they contain interesting dishes that go beyond imitating meat-based foods, and they don’t rely on a lot of processed ingredients or soy-based meat and dairy substitutes. And learning the basics by using these recipes will eventually help you improvise with your own creations. And I haven’t even touched on the many ethnic cuisines (Indian, Thai, etc.) that offer bountiful and delicious veggie options.
Also, anyone who decides to go veggie, or change their diet in a significant way, ought to consult a trustworthy source on nutrition. Vesanto Melina and Brenda Davis’s Becoming Vegetarian is a handy and comprehensive reference. (They also have a companion volume, Becoming Vegan.) It’s actually pretty easy to eat a balanced, nutritious diet as a lacto-ovo vegetarian (trust me, getting enough protein is not really a problem for most Americans); vegans have a few more specific dietary holes they need to fill, but I’m not the guy to ask about that.
Finally, here’s a good piece from the Audubon Society magazine making a passionate case for reducing our meat consumption.
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Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, RIP
The co-founder and longtime editor of First Things, and noted conservative polemicist, has passed away at age seventy-two.
I’ve drifted away from reading FT over the last few years, partly because it seems to me to have embraced a more down-the-line conservative ideology than before (whether that says more about them or me is debatable). But I had been a pretty regular reader since the late 90s and was introduced in its pages to a lot of ideas, debates, and thinkers that shaped my understanding of Christian faith and life. So I have Fr. Neuhaus in part to thank for that.
Other blogger reflections here, here, and here.
RIP.
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Intolerable
I was doing some online research on website development for a project I’m working on and came across this statement:
It’s an established fact that Internet users today are increasingly impatient and intolerable.
Indeed!
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The anti-foodies’ foodie
Salon has an informative review of Mark Bittman’s new manifesto/cook book Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating. Bittman is the author of several cookbooks and writes for the NYT, including the “Minimalist” column about cooking. The reviewer, Laura Miller, calls Bittman the “anti-foodies’ foodie” and describes his book as an application of Michael Pollan’s principles aimed at making us healthier, saving money, and benefitting the environment:
The formula is very simple (Bittman is the Minimalist, after all): “Eat less of certain foods, specifically animal products, refined carbs, and junk food; and more of others, specifically plants, in close to their natural state.” It is a recommendation that owes much (as Bittman repeatedly acknowledges) to the work of Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food”; the spirit of Pollan presides over this book like the Virgin Mary over a Catholic Church. In fact, you could describe “Food Matters” as “applied Pollan,” because Pollan, for all his endlessly inventive, inquisitive and adventurous writings on American eating and food production, lacks Bittman’s pragmatic touch.
Miller raises two points worth thinking about. First is that what will sound like common sense to some will seem radical and totally impractical to others:
It can be easy for someone like me to forget that many people would see Bittman’s plan as untenable, since the kinds of foods he recommends aren’t sold in affordable chain or fast-food restaurants or available prepared or frozen in every suburban supermarket. Some of his advice — carry nuts and fruit around with you for snacks, so you can avoid vending machines — may be tenable for them, but some of the rest will seem even less practical than the Atkins Diet.
This is related to Miller’s second point, that “Americans simply don’t know how to cook”:
Real home cooking means having a good repertoire of reliable, quick, uncomplicated recipes and understanding enough of the underlying principles to improvise when needed. It means knowing how to stock a pantry and plan your menus so that you shop for groceries only once a week. It’s a set of skills manifested as an attitude, something you can acquire only through regular practice, and it’s the one thing that can make a person truly at ease in a kitchen.
[…]
Like writing, driving, touch typing and balancing a checkbook, basic cooking is a life skill (not an art or hobby) that everybody needs, and it ought to be taught in public schools as a matter of course. The fact that cooking can also be a craft, featuring a certain amount of self-expression, or that contemporary star chefs have been exalted to a degree far exceeding their actual cultural worth, shouldn’t be allowed to obscure that humbler truth.
And of course, though Miller doesn’t mention it explicitly, many people don’t cook because they don’t have time to: they’re working long hours, maybe at more than one job. Preaching at people to cook won’t change the way many of their lives are structured by the demands of work and other obligations.
Miller is optimistic, though, that just about anybody can learn to incorporate uncomplicated recipes of the sort Bittman favors here and in his cookbooks, even if much of what he proposes will seem radical to some people. Recipes like those offered in the magazine Everyday Food, “familiar American fare yet free of processed and fake foods,” should be feasible for most of us, she says, and can help us save some dough to boot.
I want a both/and approach here: I do think there are ways of changing our diets to be healthier and more eco-friendly that are within the reach of nearly everyone. And it’s important to point out that this doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing affair; every little step helps. If there’s one thing that probably discourages people from radically chanigng their diet for whatever reason, it’s probably that it seems like such a daunting task.
But let’s also not forget that forces beyond our immediate control influence the way we eat. For instance, our existing farm policy, as amply documented by Pollan and others, makes a lot of bad foods artificially cheap (e.g. virtually anything with high fructose corn syrup in it), so it’s no wonder that overworked, cash-strapped people hit the frozen food section or reach for a bag of snack chips instead of whipping up an all-natural meal of whole grains and leafy greens. Reducing everything to a matter of individual choice ignores the way market forces and food policy structure the choices available to us. A more sensible policy would make it easier to choose foods that are healthier, more humane, and better for the environment (which, needless to say, wouldn’t eliminate the need for individual choice).
A Thinking Reed 