I just got back from a few days in Florida; a little golf, a lot of family, a little sun, and all was right with the world. Except for two of the most hideously nauseating flights I’ve ever been on, and the (almost) equally horrible discovery that there is no bar in Terminal D at the Atlanta Airport. Or at least not one that was willing to serve alcohol on a Sunday morning before noon. I love Georgia. (Who drinks before noon you ask? You’ve never seen me after I’ve gotten off a bad flight.)
On the way down to the Sunshine State, we had a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina, and stopped in to an airport chain restaurant called, I believe, Taqueria, and were astonished at the quality: my other half, who is fanatical about tamales, proclaimed her lunch very, very good. My tacos were, surprisingly, excellent. None of the hard shell-filled-with-ground-God-knows-who covered in bland salsa. Just very, very tasty, and very, very reasonable. On the way back to Connecticut, stuck in Terminal D, Atlanta’s own version of Dante’s 7th circle of hell, I was faced with a choice: Cinnabon, Burger King, or a lovely $13 sandwich-and-water combo from a Wolfgang Puck Express kiosk. Not happy. Not happy. Not happy, I said, murmuring the mid-turbulence mantra I always repeat as I’m digging my nails into my partner’s arm at 32,000 feet.
Anyway, I started thinking about the issue of cheap food versus good food and why they always seem so mutually exclusive; the lines at Cinnabon and Burger King were long and their patrons rather sizable, and there was no one but me and the cashier at Puck’s place, where I bought a turkey remoulade sandwich, a bottle of water, and a snack pack of raw carrots and snap peas for a completely ridiculous $15 and change. Of course, the turkey sandwich was a big, ‘ol nutritional thumbs down—an overfed, drooling Newfy in Whippet’s clothing, if you will. I didn’t keep the sticker, but let’s just say that the sandwich was essentially packed with the same number of fat calories and sodium as the Whopper that BK was offering down the corridor.
It just looked nicer.
I’ve been ruminating over this a lot lately; the fact that you can buy cheap food –and a lot of it–at restaurant chains and supermarkets nationwide ought to make Poor Man’s Feast happy, especially in this economy. But alas, it doesn’t. I want very much to support my local farmers; I want to eat a lot more vegetables, preferably organic; the meat I buy I would like to come from grass fed cows. You know the drill: no antibiotics, no hormones, meets its maker in a “humane” fashion, or at least not one involving a prod or a forklift. Nevertheless, on those Sunday afternoon food shopping trips, I always seem to be suckered in to buying a mass-propagated pork butt for a few bucks, or a gigantic London Broil on sale for $3.99. Who knows what I’m eating, and who cares: it’s cheap, and that’s good. Right? Not so much.
This is something I’m particularly cranky about, and it seems that the culinary king of crank, Mark Bittman, is cranky about it too. Matter of fact, his new book, Food Matters, is very, very cranky–even by Bittman standards, and that’s saying something. In a nutshell: the environment is going to hell, feedlots and mass-produced meat are to blame, the economy is in the flusher, cheap food is getting worse and worse, and we’re all getting a lot fatter and sicker. What to do? Eat far more grains (which are inexpensive), far more vegetables (serving sizes should be smaller than what you’re used to), and cut way way back on the meat.
Ironically, Mark’s New York Times Minimalist column has of late been filled with recipes that included things like fried chicken, buckwheat noodles drenched in butter, ducketta….stuff that’s delicious, bad for you and often expensive. (Go find a Murray’s chicken for less than $10 or duck breasts for less than $15 a pair.) While reading Food Matters, I kept envisioning Mark grumbling under his breath about having to wax rhapsodic about fried chicken when his own breakfasts and lunches were grain-packed visions of wholesome goodness. So, understanding the mechanics of publishing contracts, I patiently waited and waited. And today, I was finally rewarded.
In today’s New York Times, Bittman finally makes the big leap over the pond to furtively introduce his readers to the idea of eating savory, grain-filled dishes for breakfast. Of course, to ease the slide into the subject, he includes half a pound of sausage in one of the dishes (I’m all for it, as a sausage fan). I wonder whether he’ll eventually mirror his actual way of eating, as covered in Food Matters: vegan until 6 pm, whereupon he lets loose like the wild, ferocious omnivore he is.
The thing about grains is that they’re cheap; they’re filling; you can sweeten them, or not; you can bake with them; you can push meat dishes much further with them (check out Bittman’s Food Matters riff on meatballs and loaves filled with grains–a distinctly Middle Eastern way of preparing them); you can stuff vegetables with them; you can cook and then freeze them; you can toss them with pasta and beans; you can combine them with other grains; and you can eat them whenever. Not to put too fine a point on it, the earth will thank you, as will your heart, your colon, and your wallet. Not necessarily in that order.
Last night, feeling ever virtuous and a little thin in the accounts, I cooked up a batch of red (unhulled) quinoa that I’d bought in Vermont (where else?) a few months ago–$6 for 2 pounds. Bittman called for cooking 2 cups in water, so I did. The yield: approximately 6 cups. I froze one packed cup, and tossed the balance with chopped scallions, a bit of ginger, a dried hot Thai bird’s-eye chile, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and some cubed tofu (see virtuous, above), which we’ll have for lunch over the next few days. Next time, I’ll add some chopped shrimp that I have in the freezer, or maybe an egg or two.
Doing the math:
Four meals from 2 cups of quinoa. Very, very cheap.
If only I could sneak it into the airport.
