On the evils of HFCS

I saw a commercial the other day, produced by a pro-farming lobby firm about high fructose corn syrup.  It features a guy and a girl, on a blanket, in a park, sharing a picnic.  The girl pulls out a Popsicle, and offers the guy a bite.  He declines.  She then offers him two bites, and he responds by saying, "I thought you loved me."  

"I do." she says.  

"Then why are you trying to give me something that is full of high fructose corn syrup?" he asks, all plaintive.  

"What's wrong with corn syrup?" she asks.  

He flounders around for an explanation, and she gives him a rapid fire litany of facts about HFCS, that it has the same number of calories as sugar or honey, it isn't bad for you, everything in moderation, blah blah.

If you hadn't known before that second that the commercial was produced by some corn conglomerate, you did at that point. *eye roll*  But they are kind enough to put the words on the screen at the bottom, at the end of the commercial.  

Sure, HFCS probably does have the same number of calories as honey or sugar.  And if HFCS was the ONLY sweetener in that Popsicle, it wouldn't be as bad.  But the problem is that there is sugar, HFCS, fructose, and sucrose in a whole lot of sweet treats.  You're getting sugar on top of sugar, and would you like more sugar with your sugar?  Plus, HFCS has been refined ad nauseum, and is a pretty far removed thing from the cornfields of Iowa and Oh-hia-ia.  

What is making us fat, America?  Soda, processed sugars, fast food, gargantuan portion sizes.  Guess what is in the average can of soda produced and bottled here in the US?  HFCS.  And sugar.  And at least one or two other sweeteners.  

Guess how I lost a whole lot of that 43 pounds?  I didn't eat anything that had HFCS in it.  I read labels, obsessively.  I put it back on the shelf in the supermarket if HFCS was in it, I asked for ingredient lists at my favorite restaurants, I searched foodie websites to see what has lots of corn syrup.

Granted, I did a whole lot of other things, too.  Worked my tail off (literally!) in the gym.  Controlled my portions.  Removed a lot of the processed, prepackaged stuff from my kitchen and my life.  Focused on fresh veggies and fruits, not fruit juices and canned gunk full of salt.  Avoided fast food as much as possible.  Denied myself desserts and didn't take every. single. opportunity. presented to indulge my sweet tooth.

Is HFCS dangerous?  I dunno.  I do know that as a conscious consumer, I can (and do) choose to not eat it.  But don't tell me that it is as good for you as honey is.  I know better.  You do, too.

Disguises

My M-I-L got me a cookbook for Christmas. My addiction to all literature of baking, cooking, entertaining etc is well-documented on this site. So I was thrilled. When I opened it, and noticed the subtitle (Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food) I raised an eyebrow; she quickly explained that she hadn't realized that it was aimed mostly at kid-friendly recipes.

"That's OK," I replied cheerfully. "Its a cookbook. I'll use it!"

"Told ya so!" DH exclaimed triumphantly from his corner. Apparently, they'd had a "discussion" (read that disagreement) over whether or not she ought take the book back.

I'd seen Jessica Seinfeld's book in bookstores during the holidays, but hadn't leafed through it after noticing that it was aimed at families with young children. Seeing as I don't have any and all.

There's some controversy and she's being sued over the book for supposedly taking the idea from someone else, but *shrug* I just don't really care about the hoopla.

I like the book. There are a few things that I don't like; she's hyper-focused on getting her kids to eat their vegetables, but there isn't much in there about organics or focusing on cutting down carbs, and too many places where she's using ingredients like margarine spreads that I think have no place in any kitchen, too many artificial ingredients. That's really me nit-picking, though...in this age of fast food for dinner all the time, the fact that she and Jerry actually cook a real dinner for their kids is commendable. And note the artificial flavoring (banana candy flavoring) I suggested that you use in my Banana Cake recently...I have all sorts of rationalizations for it (DH likes a stronger banana flavor, I spent a small fortune on the teeny-tiny bottle and might as well use it up, there's no sugar in the stuff...) so I've got no room to throw stones and I'm sure she's got her reasons for icky artificial margarine. No one said I had to use it.

So the premise of the book is this; rather than fight with your super-picky eater kids about "EAT YOUR VEGETABLES, DAMMIT!" hide the veggies in things they like to eat by using pureed veggies in things like spaghetti sauce, chicken nuggets, sloppy joes, mac & cheese, and even burgers. Not a bad idea, really. I kind of had a V-8 moment when I started reading it...why the hell didn't *I* think of that?

Another thing I'm not crazy about is her assumption that she needs to teach you to cook from square 1; it comes off as condescending, in my ever-so-humble. I'm probably a better cook than you are, Miss Hollywood Wife, so let's skip the "what is a steamer" section, mmkay? Not that I'm egotistical about my culinary abilities, not at allllllllllllll. Where'd ya get that idea?

I don't usually cook vegetables; I like a green salad better than cooked broccoli any day, and eating cooked spinach rates right up there with a root canal as far as I'm concerned. Unless we're talking about spinach and artichoke dip, or a spin/artichoke appetizer I make that also has sour cream and creme cheese in it, so not good for you. There are some vegetables that I'd like to prepare (squash, among other things) that DH just turns his nose right up over, and aren't worth my irritation when he won't eat it.

DH will tell you that he's not a picky eater. I disagree. I'm adventurous when it comes to food, I'll try just about anything once. I have firm opinions about what I do and don't like, but something new? Sure, I'll give it a shot. I discovered sushi and curry, both of which I like, by saying, "sure, I'll have a bite of that, what is it?" I have tried reindeer, (didn't agree with my tummy) lutefisk (ugh) and a whole bunch of other oddities. When in Rome and all that. DH, on the other hand, is sort of a meat-and-potatoes kinda guy. Nothing wrong with that. I just like a bit more variety.

I'm giving it a shot; I bought 2 bags of baby spinach, steamed them and pureed them, put them in 1/2 cup portions and tossed them in the freezer just like she suggests. I also steamed a whole head of cauliflower (add that to the list of things I'd rather eat raw) and roasted an entire butternut squash. The head of cauliflower yielded the most, a cup and a half of finished product.

The first thing I sneakily put veggies into was homemade mac & cheese, following MotherMe's recipe. (I did make a few changes; see below.) The book suggests cauliflower OR butternut squash for additions to mac & cheese. I had both purees, but since I was using Colby and cheddar with a hint of Monterey jack, the squash seemed more likely to blend in color-wise.


In the interest of the additional 23 pounds I still need to lose, I cut out the really yummy half & half and used skim instead of whole milk, along with a reduced-fat cheddar, after carefully reading the label to make sure there was nothing icky in it. I also added a whole onion, pureed and quickly browned in a skillet, with 2 cloves of garlic. Then for the protien additions; I added 12 strips of bacon, browned super-crisp and crumbled up, and two diced (pre-cooked) chicken breasts. I didn't need the additional liquid from the half & half, because the puree of squash was pretty liquid-y, and I popped it in the oven only long enough to brown the top.

The result? Good! It was a bit too sweet...I think using a sweet onion probably had a lot to do with that, and next time I'll use a regular old white onion. And the squash is kinda sweet too, so I'll give the cauliflower a shot the next time around. DH didn't love it; but he ate it without too much complaint. I didn't think it was necessary to inform him that there was both onion and butternut squash in his mac & cheese; he blamed the taste being "off" to him on a head cold he's suffering from. We had it again the next day for lunch, and in my ever-so-humble, it was better the next day.

There are a ton of things I can't wait to try in this book. She even manages to squeeze veggies into baked goods...it will be interesting to see how that works out. I could do without the parenting tips on every third page, too, but whatev.

O NO GMO

I was watching a bit of Headline News this morning, and adorable-as-hell Robin Meade did a tease for a story about cloned cattle being one step closer to being on your supermarket shelves.

WTF? No, wait, seriously. What the fuck?

The Washington Post has an old piece slanted in the pro direction; even though they quote a survey that says 63% of respondents were opposed to serving cloned milk and meat at their tables.

Then there's this vid from CNN itself that warns against the possible health risks.

Gentle Goddess, this is horrifying news.

The FDA isn't even going to label things as being cloned; the CNN bit quotes someone from the FDA as saying "Cloned products will be so similar that there will be no need for labels."

How about because you don't want to eat that shit, how's that for a reason? A damn good one, too, if you ask me.

I don't eat red meat; not because I'm vegetarian, but mostly because I really don't like it. A perfectly cooked steak holds absolutely no appeal for me. The reports are talking about cloned cows, and pigs, but not yet chicken. I'm sure that's next on the list.

Fortunately, I do know where to get both chicken and beef from local producers, folks who use organic methods and I can trust. It isn't convenient to buy from either of them, but I'll take the inconvenience over not knowing where the hell the food on my plate comes from.

What is next?

Y'know what...I don't really want an answer to that.


Speaking of being vegetarian, I baked a vegan cake the other day for DH's birthday. My nephew is allergic to eggs, so I'm always looking for recipes for baked goods that don't have eggs. The holiday cookies that I bake with the kids can't have eggs or nuts in them, which makes finding recipes tough. I thought DH's birthday cake would be a good place to experiment, because I had no butter, no eggs, no sour cream and no cream cheese in the house, so a cheesecake was out.

Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

Bouncing Banana Birthday Cake

Makes 1 8x8 square cake. For layers, or bundt cake, double the recipe.

Oven 350

Whisk together in a large bowl
1-1/2 c unbleached flour
1 c turbinado sugar (sold under the brand name Sugar in the Raw)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

In the food processor, combine
2 bananas
1 c water
1/3 c oil (or unsweetened applesauce, or a combination of the two)
1 tsp vinegar
1 tbsp vanilla
1-2 drops banana creme candy flavoring (completely optional)

and blend until smooth. Dump the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients, and mix well. Pour into a greased and floured 8x8 pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 30-35 minutes. Cool on rack in pan 10 minutes and remove from pan. Allow to cool completely before frosting or decorating.


I didn't bother to frost it either time I made it; once, in the square pan just for DH, and the second time in a bundt pan for his family's celebration of his birthday. I used all oil the first time and mostly applesauce the second time. It was definitely more dry the 2nd time around, which just means I've got to tinker with it to find the right mix of oil and applesauce to lower the fat but keep that cake texture. Another change that I made the 2nd time around was to use 1/2 Splenda instead of all turbinado sugar, for my diabetic M-I-L's sake.

I have to say, it turned out far better than I expected. It ages well, too, becoming more moist the 2nd day.

Candy is Dandy, but Liquor is Quicker

I picked up a piece of candy off of a table at an event, those little generic M&M sort of things, chocolate, candy shell, mint flavor. After I popped it in my mouth, I realized that it was sure to be full to bursting of the sorts of things I usually avoid. High fructose corn syrup. Refined sugar. Artificial flavors. Artificial colors.

Really, the sort of thing I don’t eat at all anymore, not the sort of thing that I just avoid.

And it tasted disgusting. Really bad. Either I had forgotten that I don’t like those, or my taste buds readjusted, or something. If I hadn’t been at a work event, I so would have spit it out. I didn’t eat anything else at the rest of the event. I’ve taken to completely ignoring whatever food is served at holiday events that are catered, because it just isn’t worth it to me to eat it.

I had a similar experience with a Milky Way bar, and a 3 Musketeers. (These episodes were all several weeks apart, I haven't been going around noshing on candy.) I used to eat a lot of candy, all the time. Chocolate, mostly, but anything with sugar was OK. I have recently started to realize something; I was seriously addicted.

When I say addicted, I really mean it. I was addicted not only to food but also to sugar. Food used to really be a problem. I can’t eat just one Oreo cookie. I can’t eat just one French fry, or just one potato chip or just one anything, frankly. I hate to compare it to something as serious as alcoholism, but I think that it is a little bit like that. An alcoholic cannot drink just one beer; I can’t eat just one cookie.

For many obese people, food is a comfort. I don’t know if that was the case for me, I’m sure somewhere that figures in, but I really can finally recognize how self destructive, incredibly self destructive, my relationship with food was.

I still like chocolate. But somehow, I don’t enjoy eating it unless it is chocolate that I can actually understand all of the ingredients on the label. A good case in point for that is the fudge that I made with my niece and nephew last weekend. We used Baker’s chocolate, and there are no mystery ingredients in that stuff. I will eat squares of the semi-sweet to satisfy a chocolate craving. The other ingredients in the fudge were vanilla, marshmallow fluff, sugar, and water. OMG, I had to give it away because I couldn’t leave the stuff alone.

Typical, though, that my taste for chocolate has evolved in to stuff that is more expensive. There's a whole 'nother post in that, about how expensive it is to eat healthy food. Move up the scale, to organic, fair trade produced stuff, and it ties back to what I was ranting about recently; the obesity epidemic. Sugar-filled soda and "juice drinks" are cheap. Oh, you want "not-from-concentrate really from apples" apple juice? That'll be $78.34, please. Alright, I'm exaggerating, but you see my point.

Champagne tastes and a beer budget, of course, that's me.

Terribly unfortunately, however, I haven't lost my taste for booze or wine with my changing taste buds.

Cheesecake Poppers

Sonic is a drive-up restaurant that advertises in my cable market. I'm not sure why; there isn't a Sonic within 50 miles of here. Their commercials are memorable, if nothing else. I'd categorize them as annoying, but maybe that's just me.

They've been showing ads for "cheesecake poppers" lately, which if you've escaped this phenomenon, are little bites of cheesecake, covered in a batter and deep-fried. Deep fried! Cheesecake is bad enough for you, but then deep frying it? Wow, holy calories, Batman. Probably just as bad for you as deep-frying Mac & Cheese. Sonic's website does not list the nutritional information for the cheesecake poppers, but I suspect that's because it is a new menu item and they haven't updated their website.

Then I saw a sign for the same thing at an Arby's.

No wonder America is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Deep-fried everything, mega sized meals, sugar bonanza sodas. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. I know that. I'm just astonished all over again at our wacky perception of portion size and what a reasonable daily caloric intake is.

On Tuesday, I was at a meeting held at a restaurant, a local family-owned sort of thing. Many restaurants of that stripe around here are Italian, but this one, I couldn't put a category to. Typical Yankee food, burgers, sandwiches, nutritionally worthless iceberg lettuce salads, a few grilled chicken/grilled fish things. I'd never been to this place before, and I ate prior to the meeting at home, where I can control what I'm getting and I know what is in everything I'm eating. (Control freak? Me?!? Surely, you jest.) I didn't know what I was walking in to there, so rather than take a chance, I just took out a little insurance that my tummy wouldn't be clamoring through the whole thing.

I ordered a cup, a CUP, mind you, of soup, so that I wasn't the only one without food in front of her, and they brought me a bowl that was perhaps six inches across and three inches deep, filled to the brim. If I had to guess, I'd estimate that there were two cups of food inside that bowl. That's their "cup" of soup. It was a vegetarian barley stew sort of thing, and delicious, and it set me to wondering if I could re-create it at home, but I ate perhaps a third of it. I shudder to think what a bowl of soup is to these people.

Being out in the community all day as I am for my new job, the temptations are myriad and near-devastating to my constant refrain of "do you need to eat that?" Fast food abounds, and sit-down restaurants take too long. I've discovered that if I drink coffee, I'm not as hungry and can wait for something to munch on until I get home. Decaf, of course, but I don't think it particularly wise to use that as a long-term plan. I haven't been smart enough yet to remember to put snacks in the car so I'm not ravenous.

I won' fall off the wagon; I'm far too OCD for that. I step on the scale a far more often than is healthy, checking constantly to make sure I haven't gained anything back from the bad eating habits that I have indulged in from time to time over the last month. The eating something crappy is only sporadic, but I worry about it regardless. I've worked too hard and too long to have it completely destroyed by our fast food nation.

The moral of the story? Read the labels, people.

Att banta

When I was learning to speak Swedish, various things confused me as a non-native speaker. It made me appreciate how incredibly difficult learning English must be. I can never remember which is which, but homophones, homographs...you know, words that sound alike but are spelled different, or are spelled the same but pronounced different...how confusing that must be for someone to try to figure out. Then there are words that mean the same or similar things, like red and crimson. I can't remember what those are called. Homonyms, maybe?

One of the things that I love about English is its richness of vocabulary, the fact that there are hundreds upon thousands of words, the many descriptors available for your use, for free!

Yes, I admit it. I'm a grammar geek. I love all this stuff. No apologies for it either.

Swedish has these little quirks too. The words for ugly and drunk are both ful, but I can barely hear the difference between the two. (Context...so important!) In order to avoid having to say ugly, I would use the word horrible, so that I didn't mispronounce it. Again. Then there are the words for ice cream, glass (like in a window) and glasses (for vision correction), which all sound like the English word glass, but they're spelled differently. I think. I can speak it much, much better than I can read and write it.

Words that had similar meanings threw me from time to time as well. To diet in Swedish is att diet; but then there's this other word, banta, that seems to mean the same thing. My host father explained it to me like this; diet was the word you would use for what you were doing when you were trying to lose weight, but to banta was to just hold back. As best I can figure, banta-ing is somewhere in between leaving something on the plate so you don't feel gorged and starving yourself. Kidding!! OK, so not starving yourself, but not eating all that you want to, either.

Recently, I've officially reached a big number in my weight loss quest. 40. I am 40 pounds lighter than I was a year ago at this time. I had been at a plateau with the losing weight since about May or June. It seems after the death of my Auntie H in October that the scale has been showing smaller numbers, finally, and very slowly. We're talking initial changes in ounces. I've finally invested in a decent scale at home instead of relying on the gym's. I have no earthly idea what to attribute this resumption of weight loss to; I haven't changed anything that I've been doing for the last year in the last few weeks. It is a huge relief to see those numbers going down again.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and yes, even atheist-leaning agnostics celebrate Thanksgiving with their families. My Auntie G cooks twice a year; Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is an event not to be missed. Her stuffing? To die for. Better than your granny's or your mother's, I promise. Since I only have the opportunity to eat it twice a year, I tend to overload my plate with it.

Thanksgiving is a carb festival, isn't it? At least, it is for my family. In addition to the stuffing, which is bread-based, there's mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls, corn...all starch-y, not good to overindulge in. Plus this is the Slovak side of the family, so noodles and butter with gravy are also on the table. Like haluski, without the cabbage. Don't ask why we do this, I couldn't explain it to you if my life depended on it. But trust me, it is good. Gooooood!

When people ask me how I've lost the weight, my answer is always the same: "The really, really hard way." Sweating my ass off (quite literally, hahahaha) at the gym, cutting my portion sizes, paying lots more attention to food labels, both for the nutritional value and for the actual ingredients, trying not to eat pre-packaged food, staying away from fried anything. Banta-ing, essentially.

I did not take the opportunity to overindulge yesterday. My attitude about food and relationship with food have changed so much in the past year. It isn't that I no longer derive pleasure from good food, it is that I don't need quite so much of it to be satisfied. One of my cousins, for hours after dinner, moaned about how overstuffed she felt, and I couldn't help but think to myself, "Why the hell did you eat that much, then? No one was forcing you to."

Did I eat the stuffing? You bet. Wouldn't miss it for the world. But there were more carrots from the veggie tray than there was stuffing on my plate. I even ate a little bit of the noodles. I passed on the mashed potatoes. If I eat those these days, it is going to be my own recipe that includes sour cream, cream cheese, garlic, and butter. But was my plate so full yesterday that I had to make a separate trip for a roll? Nope. Didn't eat one of those, either. The fat content and other icky preservatives that are in them aren't worth the taste to me anymore. (They were those rolls that come in the can, that you shape into little quarter-moons.)

Overall, I think my relationship with food and my attitude about it are so much more healthy now than they've ever been. Even when I was a size-0-wearing skinny little bit of a thing. I think about the word banta often. I ask myself all the time; Do you really need that much of that? I turn things over and check out the label, and if it has corn syrup (evil, evil, evil) or tHBQ (dude, two words...PETROLEUM DERIVATIVE!!!) in it, I put it back on the shelf. There's some magic number of fat grams that I won't go over on a single serving of anything. I don't really know exactly what that number is, but impulse buying of a candy bar isn't something that I do much these days. Not worth the calories and fat, and if I'm going to eat chocolate, it is going to be chocolate that has a list of ingredients that I can actually pronounce.

I don't suppose that I can go around answering the question "How'd ya lose the weight?" by saying "I banta-ed," and not just because the Swe-Eng nonsensical word won't make sense to people. I've changed my philosophy, my daily routine, my grocery-shopping habits, my cholesterol levels, my blood sugar, my number of asthma attacks, everything, to get where I am. Much easier to say 'the really, really hard way.' But my favorite upside of it all? Not the fact that I'm stronger and healthier, not the fact that my asthma is under control. Nope. As vain and shallow as it is, my favorite benefit is that in addition to the laundry list I've made of changes, I've changed my dress size, too.

In The Weave

Often, when I am looking at a knitting pattern, because I am geek enough to read knitting patterns, I will build a color chart for the pattern in my mind's eye, trying to see if other colors would work better than the original pattern. Sometimes these experiments have worked; other times, not so much.

I have a multicolored 'novelty' yarn that changes from orange to blue to brown to green, which sounds like it ought to work up in to the most awful melange you could imagine, but it works, even when you're working with more than one skein of it. As you pull the yarn from the center of the skeins, opposing colors seem to fight on the needles for control of the blanket or scarf, but once knitted together, form a more harmonious pattern than I would have ever thought possible.

I think of my writing on this blog in much the same fashion; ideas that seem to have nothing in common, but worked properly and patiently together form a coherent thought. Perhaps I'm fooling myself, and perhaps I write rambling nonsense more often than a cohesive whole. Either way, I enjoy the process.

What I'm thinking about today is dirt, honest to goodness get-into-the-ground dirt, and food production. The genesis of this post was a few completely unconnected things. A friend's blog about her two adorable daughters playing in a sandbox, at a farmer's market that also boasts a playhouse and a lake and ducks to feed. The girls got, gasp, dirty in the sandbox. (I direct you to read the whole post here.) Then a spider spotted inside the grocery store (horrors!) and my thought that we're so far disconnected from where our food is actually produced. Or most of us are, anyway.

I loathe spiders. Loathe them. The story for why is for another time and place, but even the smallest spider has me, unfortunately, reacting 'like a girl'. I often say that I'm not a fan of anything with more legs than me, but spiders in particular...ugh. I think it is something about the way they move that creeps me out.

The spider that I saw in the grocery store was no bigger than a nickel, if I'm going to be honest. I could tell you that it was huuuuuge, but truth is that it wasn't. It was very black, and called attention to itself by being on a white linoleum floor. It had attached a strand of its web to a large cart being pulled by one of the store's employees, a flatbed cart with rails on either end to prevent the boxes of produce that she was carting to the floor from falling off. The spider trailed along at the end of its strand, sometimes being drug by the motion of the cart, other times struggling gamely to clamber back up the line which connected it to the cart.

Another employee stopped the cart puller and called her attention to the spider. I moved in another direction, away from the spider, and did not see them stomp on it, but I heard it. Because goddess forbid that there should be a single insect or any dirt anywhere near the food.

Most of the grocery stores in my area are controlled by a particular chain, and within probably a ten-mile radius of my home are at least five of their enormous brightly lit stores. I worked for them in college, and have no love for the chain, but my choices are fairly limited by the near-monopoly that they have in the area.

Every time I walk inside any of them, I think about Alton Brown and his television show Good Eats. He often shoots short segments of the show inside a grocery store, which he refers to as 'the average American mega-mart.' And mega indeed is appropriate. So much food housed in a single grocery store. So many choices, a bounty of overabundance. No wonder more than half of the country's population is overweight, and our collective consciousness pairs the word obesity with the word epidemic.

But at what point did we learn as a culture that food should come from these gleaming warehouses, not only evidence of bounty but of fantastic waste as well? The gleaming rows of produce without a speck of dirt (heaven forbid) or an imperfection to be seen. How far has that food traveled to get to your mega-mart? When, exactly, did we become so disconnected from the way our food is produced?

I don't use pre-packaged foods, like Rice-a-Roni, or box dinners at all, because they contain too much high fructose corn syrup (otherwise known as HFCS) and everything that I've read the labels on lately also seems to have tHBQ, which is a petroleum derivative ffs, added to it. All of that pre-packaged convenience food only separates us further from the dirt and actual production of food.

"Sure," you say, "but Luce, honey, you're at home full-time these days and can spend as much time in the kitchen as you like to prepare a meal, not to mention time to chase down the ingredients to make such things." And I say to you with my best imitation of a Brooklyn accent, "True dat!"But what is also true is this: we should all be concerned about where our food comes from, and how much or how little connection is has to its beginnings.

I have no neat, elegant solution. No way to fix the problem, tie it up with a pretty bow and present it to you. I solve it for myself by reading labels, buying organic AND perhaps more importantly locally produced stuff when I can, and leave the immense worry of the bigger problem of how much fuel we consume and how much waste we produce getting the gleaming veggies in the grocery store to minds much smarter than mine. Perhaps yours.

Perhaps baking as a form of therapy.

I was channel surfing yesterday and caught a few minutes of "Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee" on Food TV. I wasn't fully focused on the telly, having the laptop in my lap and reading fan's accounts of Jensen's new movie Ten Inch Hero from the Newport Beach Film Festival. Lucky, lucky, lucky fangirls who attended the screening!!!! Part of the cast, including Jensen, was there. So since I was more engrossed in reading about how one fan got to take his picture and hear his voice in person, ('scuse me while I swoon!) I missed exactly how Sandra Lee made the cookies that I thought looked good.

I don't like most of what she does, because I vastly prefer to make my own stuff instead of doctoring box mixes or using some of the other shortcuts that she uses. Yes, she makes homemade cooking more accessible to folks who think the kitchen is a scary place, but for the rest of us who really enjoy the process, the chemistry, the end result, her recipes are usually a "pass". Besides, pre-packaged mixes are always full of the worst things for you, bleached flour, white sugar, tons of salt, high fructose corn syrup, even tBHQ. If you are trying to avoid those things, as I am, you've got to read the label on positively EVERYTHING you pick up in the grocery store, because you never know what you're going to get in that box of Hamburger Helper, or sugar cookie mix.

I've been so weighted down by the depression which I've been trying to work my way through that I haven't made anything from scratch, or created a new recipe, or even fussed much in the kitchen over about the last two months. Y'know things are not good when the food writer isn't working in the kitchen, doesn't want to eat, and can't focus enough to make dinner, right? Something about these macadamia nut cookies made me want to get in there and bake something, though, so today I went rooting through the cupboards and discovered that yes, I did have an unopened container of macadamia nuts. I'll take the spark of inspiration wherever it comes from, I'm not picky.

I next went to my cookbook shelf, which takes up an entire section of my library's built-in bookcases. I was looking for a sugar cookie recipe that didn't require rolling out on the countertop (more mess than I could currently handle having to clean) or chilling in the refrigerator (I want COOKIES and I want them NOW).

Much like collecting shoes is an issue for me, collecting cookbooks is a habit that I can't break. I will actually sit down and READ a cookbook, just like I'll read a novel, learning new techniques or getting an idea for a concoction of my own. I own somewhere around 70 cookbooks, at last count. Go ahead, point at me and say, "Lucy, you're a complete geek." Yes, I know that and am OK with it. I have, at a minimum guess, about 10 cookbooks that are strictly cookies, and several of the old standby all-purpose cookbooks, like the red and white checked gingham covered Better Homes and Gardens, the Joy of Cooking. I couldn't find a recipe that I wanted to use, and even leafing through the huge three-ring binder full of things I've clipped out of magazines, printed from the web and photocopied out of library cookbooks didn't bring any inspiration. Dejected, I put the books all back on the shelf and went to lie down for a bit.

Christ, how ridiculous is it that something like that will put me into a tailspin? The anti-depressant seems to be helping a bit, but not enough, yet, to bring me out of that horrible funk. In my defense, I did only sleep about 3 hours last night, from around 3 am until about 6:30, so perhaps a short nap was just what I needed.

After napping for about a half hour, I thought about the bag of chocolate chips that I'd seen while hunting for macadamia nuts, and I decided that instead of a kind of sugar cookie with macadamia nuts in them, I'd make macadamia nut chocolate chip cookies. There are any number of good chocolate chip cookie recipes out there; I'm fond of the original Tollhouse recipe, with a few small modifications such as using all brown sugar instead of white, and the addition of a little bit of milk, but in about the last two years whenever I've made chocolate chip cookies, I've used Alton Brown's recipe for "The Chewy" which seem to stay soft after baking. I don't like rock-hard chocolate chip cookies. It is very much a personal preference.

A quick second of OT gushing...I heart Alton Brown's show Good Eats. Love how he explains the chemistry of cooking and baking, love his insistence that the only tool in your kitchen that only does one thing should be a fire extinguisher, love how he shows unique ways to accomplish complicated kitchen tasks with things that you already own.

When I'd finished mixing the dough, I looked at the lump of it sitting in the bowl, and was overwhelmed at the idea of scooping out four dozen cookies. (I make them much smaller than Alton recommends.) Just more than I could handle, I guess. So instead I put the whole thing into a round 9-inch cake pan and baked it for 30 minutes, and now cooling on the countertop is what looks like a cookie pizza.

I certainly don't NEED these cookies in the house. One of the problems that I have with food is that I can't eat just one cookie, I want a dozen. I don't want just the recommended serving size of potato chips, I want the whole bag of them. So I don't normally have things like that in my house to avoid temptation. I know this and can plan for it so it doesn't become a problem. When I am testing recipes, or working on a foodie article, I will give whatever it is away after reserving a small portion for myself.

This cookie pizza is cute, though, and I won't cut into it until DH gets home so that he can see what it looks like. And then it will go with me to work tomorrow, so my staff can eat it instead of me. They love it when I'm testing recipes.

Progress, however, in that I was able to get the house cleaned up today, I made something in the kitchen, did some laundry and I'm on the computer looking for story ideas for posts next week. The sun's out, birds are singing, distantly I hear lawnmowers chugging along as people cut the grass for the first time. My house smells like cookies and clean laundry, good, homey things that are sure-fire spirit lifters.


If only baking wonderful things was the answer. Wouldn't it be nice?

tBHQ, gross!

I spent some time last year writing for a website called FitFare, part of the Well Fed Network. I stopped doing it because I just didn't have the time to work for a living, write on the side, keep up with the stuff I need to do at home, and keep in touch with friends and family. I loved the writing, but the deadlines just became too much. Anyway. I still read the site and the other day there was an article about a food additive called tBHQ and I am completely grossed out.

Check out the article on FitFare here, for more background info, but briefly, it is a food additive that manufacturers are using to replace the bad trans fats; but here's the gross....tBHQ is a petroleum derivative. Yuk! Many pre-packaged food items that have the "No Trans-Fat" screaming label have tBHQ in them. I don't use a lot of pre-packaged stuff (Hamburger Helper and the like), but I do admit to liking Zatarain's jambalaya rice as a quick-fix meal from time to time. So after I read the article the other night, I was hungry and I headed to the kitchen to make myself something to eat, and I spotted the box of jambalaya. I started to make it, and then read the label as I was waiting for the water to boil and my jambalaya mix has this petroleum additive in it! Apparently, this stuff is not only legal, but sold as an anti-oxidant and is sometimes not listed on the ingredients list but somewhere else on the label in such a manner that you might not notice, as in "tBHQ added as a preservative" in tiny print. That's how it was on my jambalaya mix, small, at the end of the ingredients list. Icky. So I won't be buying that anymore.