Hospital Food - Symptom or Cause?

I've spent way more time consorting with our fine, single-payer healthcare system in 2012 than I have in the past few years combined. I'm just back from an overnight stay on the pediatrics ward. All is fine, or so we are assuming until tests come back. In fact, my daughter had such a good time there that she didn't want to leave. And she discovered a new, delicious food - peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

The pediatric toddler menu was very interesting. Breakfast was milk, cornflakes, a slice of wholewheat toast with strawberry jam option, and apple juice (which my daughter insisted on eating with a spoon). Lunch was the aforementioned sandwich, chicken noodle soup, milk, canned peaches, and apple juice. Notice anything missing?

That's right, the fruit-and-vegetable category was entirely filled by fruits. I don't know if the hospital has assumed that children won't eat vegetables, or has discovered from experience that they don't (in which case, do they only not eat vegetables prepared in typical hospital-food fashion, boiled to death?). I admit that I have little experience with children not eating vegetables - whether because of luck, parental modelling of finding delight in vegetables, or perversity, our kids like almost all vegetables, and as they age they discover the odd vegetable they refused has become tasty.

I mostly keep quiet about this, though, because perusing the internets tells me that my children have freakish tastes and I'd better not offer advice or brag about them. It's a very touchy subject, and people tend to assume that opinions are actually judgments on their parenting. Especially since it often takes the form of a struggle: parents puree and disguise vegetables, bargain with their children to get a few tastes past the gag reflex, and sometimes, give up and only serve the vegetables that are tolerated.

I am of the generation that ate what was on their plate Or Else, and I have vivid memories of crying while I choked down purple cabbage with soya sauce and sesame seeds, and bit beets in half to swallow the chunks down with milk. I still don't like beets, although I'll cook them for my husband and son (as of last summer, my daughter didn't like them yet). I have a bit of the Or Else mentality - not enough to cause a major power struggle - but I've rarely felt the need to employ eating rules.

What do you think? If children are presented with a variety of good food, eating is joyful, and coercion is not employed, will they come to eat their vegetables? And can this be done in a hospital?

The Search for Delicious

In Natalie Babbitt's children's story, The Search for Delicious, the prime minister is writing a dictionary. "Affectionate is your dog" and "Bulky is a big bag of boxes" are met with general approval from the court, but when he writes, "Delicious is fried fish", the king objects. Delicious is apples. No, says the queen, it is Christmas pudding. Beer! says the general. Discontent ensues, and soon there are brawls in the street over the definition of delicious.

The prime minister's young son, Gaylen, sets off on horseback to survey the kingdom in hopes that enough people will agree on what is delicious for the prime minister to complete his entry. Just ahead of him, the queen's brother rides out to foment civil war in the kingdom.

I won't spoil the ending, but I will reveal my choice for Delicious:

Ice chips. Delicious is ice chips after several hours of abstinence from food and drink during which the contents of one's guts were exploding from several orifices.

D is also, as it happens, for Dysentery, specifically the food-borne shigella variety. And, because one million children in the world do not have the benefit of intravenous drips as I did, D is for Doctors without Borders, and Donate.

Company's Coming for the Holidays

Do you know Jean Paré?

I feel certain that you do - if not by name, then in your subconscious, the primal palate that has been shaped by your earliest holiday dinner experiences, your first taste of sugar, and the vegetable you had to sit at the table until you finished. Purple cabbage with sesame seeds and soya sauce, in my case.

Jean's recipes have been shaped by generations of prairie cooks, and have in turn influenced another generation through the publication of her "Company's Coming" line of cookbooks. She is one of the main reasons that, in this era of rural population decline, we are still served Those Squares at potlucks, funerals, and weddings:

Yes, those squares. In 1981, Jean published her first cookbook: "150 Delicious Squares". Now, her books have sold in the tens of millions.

One of the appeals of the cookbooks is Jean's principle that recipes should only include ingredients you could easily get at a local supermarket. Unfortunately, I was raised by a hippie mother, so it goes against the grain to keep ingredients like coloured marshmallows and graham cracker crumbs in my pantry. However, they soon will appear. I am going to begin my holiday baking, and it must include squares.

I inherited "150 Delicious Squares" from my husband's great-aunt. Last year, I tried "Flat Truffles". After I'd made them, I realized that the ingredients - icing sugar, cocoa, butter - were the same as those in the recipe for icing on the Roger's sugar bag. Basically, I made a log of icing and rolled it in nuts and sliced it. My husband loved it. I think Jean went a little too far with that one. However, the Lemon Bars and Apricot Chews quickly became a favourite.

This holiday season, stop by my place and I'll feed you up. And remember Jean's homespun wisdom: "The horse is such a respected, noble animal. So if you eat like one, why would you be any different?"

P.S. The squash recipe contest has closed. I am busy testing and will announce the winner soon!

Love apple: the complicated tomato

I don't mean to suggest by my last post that tomatoes are not a vegetable. Although, of course, many will argue that they are a fruit, and some purists even argue there is no such thing as a vegetable, I generally use commonly accepted notions rather than botanical definitions. Whatever the tomato is, it is delicious and nutritious.

Of course, it is not without dangers. Perhaps because of its resemblance to deadly nightshade, colonial Americans thought it was poisonous and used it only as decoration. While that was disproven (for the fruit; all other parts of the plant are toxic), it now turns out that because of their acidity, canned tomatoes are particularly adept at leaching bisphenol-A from the lining of the cans. BPA has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Conventionally grown, they also pose a danger to farmworkers: fields are sprayed with  more than 100 different herbicides and pesticides - and fieldworkers have been found in conditions of slavery in Florida.

If one can navigate these dangerous waters, the tomato is indispensible for certain types of cuisine, e.g. mine - tending towards the one-pot meal where things can be dumped in and simmered or baked. I came across a woman the other day who didn't know what people would use a lot of canned tomatoes for in cooking. She only used them for chili or spaghetti sauce, which they ate maybe once a month.

In addition to chili, here's what I use them for:

• jambalaya
• bruschetta
• lasagna and other pastas
• zucchini parmesan
• lamb and chickpea stew (with or without lamb)
• soup bases - lentil or peanut or hamburger or Manhattan clam chowder
• shirred eggs
• cabbage rolls
•  ...and yes, pizza sauce

 Fresh, could they need any more enticement than the company of fellow vegetables?

Lentils of Superiority

"Why do poor people eat so much junk food? Don't they know it costs more? Why can't they cook and eat nourishing, protein-laden, inexpensive beans and legumes?"

Leaving aside the issue of a potential lack of kitchen appliances, cooking knowledge and skills, implements, access to certain foods, and time, here’s George Orwell’s opinion on why the poor may eat the way they eat, from Wigan Pier:

“When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty.’ There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea ! That is how your mind works…. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don’t nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water.”

 Brown bread-and-dripping, or, lentils of superiority.

Gourmand

In honor of Friday, something apolitical - unless you're a breatharian: Kids take good eating seriously.


Gourmand from Eden Balfour on Vimeo.

Plum-eater's mom in 1977. Good genes.

Salad Days

Why do I have this gorgeous bed of lettuce when I find salads intimidating?

Black seeded Simpson and Matina Sweet

"Oh, just bring a salad." I dread those words. To me, salads mean one of two things. The first is the gourmet salad One tosses together with an airy laugh, with ingredients like "caramelized seckel pear halves stuffed with gorgonzola dolce" - ingredients I have never seen, let alone possess. I am the type of person who occasionally throws caution to the wind and buys something like Italian parsley for a new recipe, then realizes she has no other uses for it, and discovers it weeks later, brown and slimy, in the bottom of her crisper.

The second thing salad means to me is the wodge of green that is slapped on a plate and nudged to the edge by the fleshocentric* main dishes that the salad offers a weak justification for gorging on. In my world, it is typically one of three options:

• The Triumvirate (lettuce, cucumber, wedge of pallid tomato tasting of dirty water)
• The Slaw (cabbage and carrot, creamy dressing)
• The Jello (orange or red with fruit, or occasionally, and hideously, green with slaw)

Ugh.

Usually when I make salad I try to compensate for the lack of taste in a typical Triumvirate and add every vegetable I happen to have. This results in a salad that tastes of nothing in particular and has to be drowned in dressing for flavour. But I do have a gorgeous bed of lettuce. So I decided to try a new approach: use common ingredients, but with a "less is more" philosophy.

This is my lettuce, carrot, sunflower seed salad, with crushed garlic, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar dressing. Fresh and sweet. I look forward to more experimentation!

 *Thanks to Hugh Joseph's presentation on salad at the AFHVS conference for introducing this hilarious term to me.

First Roots of the Season

I planted radishes because they're fast growing and colourful. If I'd known my kids would actually like eating them, I would have planted a lot more!

Easter Egg radishes

Homemade Bread

Boy, was I jealous of the other kids in elementary school. They got bologna sandwiches made with squishy, white Wonderbread, and I got crumbly, dense homemade brown bread sandwiches, usually with lumps of homemade sausage and pickle. I tried to hide them behind my hands as I ate.

And now, I am going to inflict the same indignity upon my children. Because my mom was right, after all.

Ingredients for the sponge

Sponge after rising for an hour

Punch me! Punch me!

Pre-kneading

Mmmmmm.

You kids get off my lawn!

I ate some ice cream tonight and didn't really enjoy it. This isn't because my palate has matured. It's because they just don't make it like they used to.

Growing up, we ate what I later realized, dining at friends', were giant bowls of ice cream. We bought the gallon bucket of Lucerne vanilla and dressed it up with raspberries or granola or apple butter or chokecherry syrup. It was creamy, smooth, and rich.

The Lucerne ice cream I ate tonight was slightly grainy and full of air. Okay, it's a cheap brand. But it's not the cheapest. Should I have to pay $8 a pint to get decent ice cream?

In The End of Food, Paul Roberts describes a visit to Nestle's headquarters, where scientists were experimenting to create ice cream with the perfect "mouthfeel". You know the mouthfeel I mean. That mouthfeel I was missing when I ate ice cream tonight.

Are they keeping all the good ice cream for the Swiss? "Those North Americans and their plebeian tastes. Let them eat junk."