{"id":207,"date":"2009-03-25T19:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-25T19:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2009\/03\/25\/207\/"},"modified":"2014-09-06T15:16:56","modified_gmt":"2014-09-06T20:16:56","slug":"207","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=207","title":{"rendered":"My Food Credo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like most people, I like to eat; I enjoy the act of consuming tasty, well-prepared food.  But I also know that too many kinds of tasty food have bad side-effects, e.g. obesity from too much fat and sugar, high blood pressure from too much salt, and possibly cancer from certain preservatives and by-products (e.g. the stuff in bacon, maybe even the crust on bread!).  And I also know that what I eat has a bigger effect on the planet and on humankind at large.  As such, I choose not to eat meat, and to minimize the amount of animal products that go down my throat (admittedly, I&#8217;m not a perfect vegan yet).    Furthermore, I&#8217;m convinced that what I eat has an effect on my psyche; I&#8217;d get pretty depressed after a while trying to survive on microwaved burritos and non-stop Micky D&#8217;s (although I know people who do survive on that diet &#8212; in fact, too many people).<\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;m a bit of a &#8220;foodie&#8221;, a vegetarian foodie.  I put a lot of time into cooking and baking, I constantly try to improve my recipies, I own about 7 or 8 different cookbooks, and I&#8217;m on the lookout at the supermarkets for interesting new ingredients that might fit with my food philosophy. (Unfortunately, most of the new things I see at those supermarkets are highly-processed &#8220;food-like&#8221; items, exactly what I don&#8217;t want to eat).  I&#8217;m kind-of a &#8220;slow food&#8221; guy, although I&#8217;m also trying to keep it simple.  I don&#8217;t do complex, elaborate dishes; I don&#8217;t go bonkers to get the freshest, most exclusive items from specialty stores; and I don&#8217;t limit myself to organic fruits and veggies (too expensive!).   I mainly use ingredients available at the local supermarket (although I do order some things now and then from bulkfoods.com, and I stop in at the local Whole Foods every month or so).<\/p>\n<p>My meals are fairly simple; no fancy salads or appetizers, just a plate full of carbs, proteins and veggie fiber, followed up by a small dessert (maybe some cookies or a cupcake that I made &#8211; from scratch &#8211; during my weekend cooking sessions).  With perhaps a glass of wine or ale (or porter or stout), but sometimes just a glass of seltzer with lemon.  I concoct my main dishes on weekends, so that a weeknight consists of cooking some rice or pasta and heating up some veggie side-dishes along with the &#8220;main event&#8221; (usually a soup, a bean dish, or a pasta sauce). And then sitting down to enjoy the results.<\/p>\n<p>Notice that I cook a lot, and thus use a lot of heat.  Yea, admittedly I&#8217;m not a raw-foods person.  I come from a Polish ethnic family and even though what I eat is very different from what they ate (lots of starch and meat fat and nothing green or yellow), I still tend to favor hot, cooked meals.  As such, my carbon footprint is larger than for those good, progressive folk who get by on nuts, salads and raw brocolli.  But there&#8217;s something very familiar and comforting about having a steamy plate full of calories under my chin, come dinner time &#8212; even in July!  With me, the old tradition lives on (even though the spices and basic ingredients are all different).<\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s on the menu?  Here&#8217;s a list of my main dishes at present.  I go back and forth between these items, making enough for 8 or 10 meals and then moving on to another item to sustain me for a few weeks.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial;font-size:100%;\">&#8211; Black beans \/ rice or cornbread, with broccoli and yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Black bean soup w bread, yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Veg chili, red beans and lentils, with broccoli and yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Green split pea soup (no ham) with bread, broccoli and yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Lentil \/ tomato soup w bread, yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Beans baked in molasses and onions w whole grain raisin bread, yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Lentil \/ barley \/ mushroom soup w baked potato, broccoli and squash or yam<br \/>&#8211; Black eyed peas \/ rice or cornbread w yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; White bean \/ kale \/ tomato soup w bread, yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; White bean \/ broccoli soup w red vinegar, bread, yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Pinto bean stew w wheat noodles or baked potato, broccoli and yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Lentil \/ carrot \/ ginger soup w bread, yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Baked lentil loaf w sauteed mushrooms, baked potatos, yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Ratatouille (zucchini, eggplant, tofu, bread crumbs) w rice, yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Curried eggplant with peas, rice, yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Noodle casserole w tomato, green pepper, onion and tofu, with yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Stir fry (broccoli, red cabbage, red pepper, onions, tempah, garlic) w rice (sweet or short brown)<br \/>&#8211; Whole wheat pasta, orzo or aroboli rice w lentil\/onion sauce, sauteed split mushrooms, steamed broccoli<br \/>&#8211; Garlic\/chick pea\/red lentil\/cracked wheat soup, with yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Falafel with tahini sauce, bread, brocolli, yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Red Beans, hot peppers, cumin w\/ rice, salsa, yam or yellow squash<br \/>&#8211; Pasta with kale\/red cabbage\/garlic, sauteed zucchini and portabello mushroom<br \/>&#8211; Pasta sauces:  Tomato; Lentil\/onion with basil pesto; Green pepper and onion w red vinegar<\/span><\/p>\n<p>FINAL POINT: Most foodies love farmers markets.  Up to now I haven&#8217;t given those markets much attention, as they are usually provisional affairs open at a odd times in odd places without good parking.  But this past weekend I discovered a more institutional farmer&#8217;s market &#8212; some snobby foodies might not even consider it a farmer&#8217;s market.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patersonfarmersmarket.com\/index.php\" target=\"blank\">It&#8217;s in South Paterson<\/a>, NJ, about 5 miles from my house, and  I came across it by accident on a photo expedition.  It impressed me by its size and scope (it&#8217;s not a handful of tables in a town square, but a series of warehouse buildings along a two block stretch where food merchants set up bins on the sidewalk and along the curb).  So I got out and walked around, and was quickly astounded by the low prices and high quality of the stuff for sale on those bins.  I picked up some apples and tomatos and strawberries at half to 3\/4 of the supermarket price.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the sellers aren&#8217;t farmers but food wholesalers, although supposedly some farmers set up tables and sell direct during the summer months.  So maybe the apples came from Chile and the strawberries from Mexico and the tomatos from Florida or such.  This market is not necessarily local, but neither am I. In fact, it&#8217;s patronized largely by the local Arab and Hispanic neighborhoods. It&#8217;s what &#8220;one-worldism&#8221; is truly about, once you get past the elitist idealism of the Barack Obama \/ PBS crowd (to which most &#8220;foodies&#8221; subscribe). It&#8217;s gritty and industrial; it&#8217;s not organic and there aren&#8217;t any Starbucks nearby (in fact, there are classic old diners to either side of it!).   Here&#8217;s a pic. My kind of place &#8212; I&#8217;m definitely going back!<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jimgworld.com\/beta\/railwayave2.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like most people, I like to eat; I enjoy the act of consuming tasty, well-prepared food. But I also know that too many kinds of tasty food have bad side-effects, e.g. obesity from too much fat and sugar, high blood pressure from too much salt, and possibly cancer from certain preservatives and by-products (e.g. the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4567,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions\/4567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}