ham and bean soup

Use a good quality, non-glazed, preferably uncured ham for this. I like Beeler's.

All measurements are estimated. Total cook time up to 4 hours. Prep time 30 min. Makes about three quarts, enough to feed a crowd or freeze for later.

You'll notice there is no additional salt in this recipe: the bouillon and the ham are quite salty enough on their own.

2 cups (1 lb) dried pinto beans
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 chopped sweet yellow onion (1 cup)
1 small shallot, minced
2-3 cups diced ham
2-3 tsp chicken bouillon powder (adjust to suit your salt preference)
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp white pepper
2-3 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried tarragon
1 tsp dried thyme
1/4 cup Dijon mustard

To prep the beans, put in a large stock pot with plenty of cool water. Cover and bring to boil. Boil 5 min, then turn off heat, leave covered on the stove 1 hour.

After an hour, drain the beans and rinse in warm water until clear. Add more clean water to more than cover the beans and return to stove on medium heat. Add all other ingredients, cover and simmer for 90 minutes, stirring occasionally. After about 90 minutes you can test the beans for doneness: scoop up a spoonful and blow on them; if their skins split and curl they are done enough to eat.

However, for a nice thick porridge-like soup and tender beans, let simmer another hour. I find 2.5 to 3 hours cook time gives the nicest texture. Stir now and then and add water in increments if necessary.

tilapia and shellfish creole with asparagus, and garlic mashed potatoes

Potatoes

Peel & dice 2-3 medium red skinned spuds. Boil together with 2 cloves peeled garlic until spuds & garlic are soft. Mash lightly and stir in 1/2 stick butter, seasoning salt, California pepper, and a dash of cayenne.

Fish and Seafood Creole sauce

Melt 1/2 stick butter in large skillet. Chop 2 cloves garlic, 1/4 sweet onion, 1/2 red bell pepper, and 1 stalk celery. Add seasoning salt, black pepper, basil, parsley, and 3 dashes cayenne. Sauté until soft, then remove. Do not clean skillet.

Season-salt & cali pepper** 4 tilapia fillets, then dredge in flour. Add 2-3 Tbs olive oil to the skillet with the goodie* and quickly sauté the fish until done through and edges are crispy. Remove to a plate. 

Return the veg-roux mixture to the skillet and throw in a handful each of frozen scallops and frozen cooked cleaned shrimp. Chop a medium tomato and throw in. Take 2 servings of asparagus and cut into bite-sized pieces and add to veg-seafood sauté. Cover and cook over med-low heat until asparagus is done and seafood is thawed/cooked through. 

At the last minute, add a couple pinches of gumbo filé powder, just enough that it thickens slightly.

Plate the fish and potatoes. Serve the chunky veg & seafood sauce alongside.

*"Goodie" is our household word for the cracklin's/roux/drippings or any other flavorful yuck that's left in the pan after you cook something. Used to flavor the next something.

**"Season-salt" is a verb. So is "cali-pepper." California pepper is a mixture from Penzey's that contains, among other things, black pepper and dried bell pepper. Very useful flavor shortcut, especially in Mexican, Italian, or Cajun dishes.

witch's brew

For the last year or so I've been doing some semi-serious research into herbal medicine, mostly to fortify my writing but a little bit out of practical reasons as well.

As I've gotten older I've developed some skin problems. I saw a dermatologist and he went the predictable route: gave me some samples for a VERY expensive topical cream (which made me very dry and uncomfortable) and wanted to put me on a testosterone inhibitor--without checking my hormone levels, and despite the fact that I had none of the other symptoms of high testosterone, just acne. I said no, thank you.

There's an herb called Vitex (chaste tree berry/chaste berry) that reputedly has hormone balancing properties; there have been a few clinical studies to indicate that it can alleviate PMS symptoms. It's also one of the two major ingredients in a commercially available "acne tea" which I have used before, with good results.

Problem is, the tea's expensive, and not available locally. So I could order it in bulk, and have lots of little stupid overpriced tea bags and steel canisters clogging my pantry (and recycling bins) or I could make my own. Luckily I have access to an amazing natural foods store that sells dried herbs in bulk.

The place looks like the aunts' conservatory in Practical Magic. They sell all kinds of stuff that even I, with my casual knowledge of herbal medicine, know to be potentially harmful. They stock at least three abortifacients, ready to scoop into little baggies for $1.49/oz.

I copied down the ingredients from the back of the commercial tea's packaging and went to the store. I started pulling down jars and lining them up in a row, checking them against my list: Vitex, burdock, chamomile, and a handful of florals for flavoring.

"Are you making a spell?" my husband said, in a delighted kind of way.

After a second's thought I said, "Yes, actually."

I will confess something now that will probably have my mother throwing Holy Water at me, if she ever hears of it: I've always wished I was a witch. Not a touchy-feely-new-age-mother-earth-gaia-goddess kind of witch, but somebody with real power, like in the fantasy stories. I have never tried to be one because I don't believe in magic or higher powers that mortals can harness to their benefit. Religious rituals are a waste of time, to my mind. Nevertheless, the last few weeks have been stressful and I've been writing about my characters doing magic, and complaining that it's a pity such powers don't exist, because I could use a bit of influence over the world right now.

But last night I made my tea, with the help of a food processor to chop some of the dried herbs (I tried using my mortar and pestle but those hibiscus flowers are tough, dude). And I was drinking it for breakfast--it had the familiar scent and flavor of the commercial stuff, but stronger--and I thought to myself, This is the kind of knowledge wise women used to have, before the Church decided they were a threat and declared them heretics. By researching and mixing these herbs I have successfully circumvented both the priests of pharmacology and the acolytes of marketing.

So I say what the hell: Blessed be.

Tapas-style meatballs in sherry cream sauce

I've made meatballs before, but this flavor combination was inspired by some I had at Café Sevilla in San Diego. The paprika and the cumin make them seem exotic. 

All measurements are estimated; I tend to make meatballs by the seat of my pants, as it were. Don't omit the shallot in the sauce; it really makes a distinctive difference.

Meatballs:

1 lb ground beef

1 chub of seasoned pork breakfast sausage (I use R.B.Rice Mild or Medium)

1/4 onion, minced

2-4 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup fresh parsley, minced

2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp black pepper

2 pinches cumin

salt or seasoning salt to taste

1 egg

(optional) about 1/2 cup of texturizer; I used cold cooked rice, but rolled oats or bread crumbs may be used instead.

Mush everything together thoroughly in large bowl. Melt a couple tablespoons each of butter & olive oil in a heavy skillet. Drop small meatballs in the hot skillet and cook over medium heat; don’t let them get browned too much before they are cooked through. As the batches of meatballs are cooked, remove them to paper towels to drain.

Sauce:

1 Tbs butter

1 Tbs olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

1 small shallot, minced

optional: 1-2 tsp. beef bullion powder

1/3 c sherry

1/2 c half & half

1 Tbs tomato paste

thickener: 1 Tbs flour, or 2 tsp. cornstarch or arrowroot starch (I use arrowroot lately)

When all the meatballs are cooked, scrape up the browned bits and add the additional fats. Saute the garlic & shallot over med-low heat until well softened. Add the beef bullion power if using (Note: bullion powder can be very salty, and if you’re using cooking sherry, which already has salt, the result can be overpowering). Add the sherry, cream, and tomato paste and cook until bubbling. Dissolve the thickening starch in a bit of cool water and quickly stir into the sauce. As soon as it thickens, reduce heat to low, return meatballs to the pan and cover to simmer for 5 minutes.

These are fantastic with green peas.

rum drinks and snark: a book review

I am not a big drinker. My recent infatuation with gin and tonics is an anomaly. Nevertheless I am interested in cooking, and history, and through one quirk and another I found myself wondering what people--specifically poor people in 1880's New Orleans--would drink to unwind. Rum, I figured. But rum isn't such a popular drink these days, aside from rum-and-cokes, and though I, my husband, and the bartender at Blanc on the Plaza racked our brains, we couldn't think of any commonplace, traditional drinks that featured rum.

(Yes, yes--that's why we have the iPhones and the Internet. Don't jump ahead of me.)

Then I remembered I had acquired a copy of "Steamdrunks: 101 Steampunk Cocktails and Mixed Drinks" a couple of months ago on a whim. And sure enough, when I opened my Kindle I saw there were plenty of historically-accurate and shudder-inducing mixological concoctions featuring rum.

And I should mention, the book itself is a hoot:

"Rum is the saucy drink of choice for your Steampunk sky pirate. Those of you seeking an authentic Victorian flavor need to search the cheapest, bottom rotgut shelves of your local liquor store. The $6 gallon bottle will still be too refined and palatable, so try adding a nice mix of rat droppings, sweat scraped from a homeless man's armpit, and the bitter white citrus interior you've thrown away from all the other recipes in this book. It'll still be too pure for the sake of authenticity, but you'll start to get a feeling for why every rum cocktail of the 19th century was blended with citrus, sugar, and crushing regret."

After reading that, I also understand why not so many rum cocktails have remained popular into the current day.

I recommend this book if you're into booze, or hosting, or history, or any combination thereof.

goat cheese vinaigrette vegetable dip

This is a tangy, savory dip I made up. It's especially suited to raw vegetables.


1/2 brick of cream cheese,
1 small package (3 oz) goat cheese
2 Tbs mayo
juice 1/2 lemon
salt & pepper
1-2 tsps Penzey's French Vinagrette dressing mix*
extra pinch of both rosemary and thyme (optional--I like the piney flavor of the rosemary with the lemon)
dash cayenne

Allow cheeses to reach room temp. Blend together cheeses and mayo. Add salt, pepper and herbs. Add lemon juice and stir well. Keep cool.

*this vinagrette mix includes salt, pepper, sugar, rosemary, thyme, garlic, onion, scallions. Using the real thing fresh would probably be even better!

don't call it luck

I know this is disingenuous, but what is it about people that they can't live and let live? Why does everyone have to tear someone else down to protect their own ego?

There's a lot of noise out there now about discrimination against overweight Americans. Well what about those of us who are actually NORMAL weight? I am rapidly becoming the minority among American women--a slim, athletic female. Does that mean I discriminate against the obese? Hell, no. My best friends in both high school and college were overweight. My ex-husband was obese. So is my sister, who is one of my favorite people in the world. Most of my friends nowadays are far bigger than me. But do I give them a hard time? Do I sabotage their diets, or tell them they need to diet, or give diet books for Christmas gifts? Of course not. That would be fabulously tacky.

So why then, do I find myself increasingly on the defensive against people--casual acquaintances, generally--who seem to feel it's fine to pick on ME for being thin?

"You just have the right genes." "When I was your age I was that skinny, too." "Wait until you have kids." "You must STARVE yourself." "Just wait til you blow out a knee and can't do kung fu anymore."

All of which are jealous, snarky ways of saying, "Just you wait--you'll get yours."

It's rude. It's insecure. And it's fallacious.

The way I look is not an accident. It's also not merely age, or genes, or kung fu--perhaps 5% of each, if I'm being generous. My physique is the result of a planned, deliberate lifestyle I embrace daily because it's a helluva lot easier to maintain than to lose. I want to be able to hike, climb stairs, do a 360-degree jump kick, fit into my clothes, enjoy good sex, stay out of the hospital, and avoid insulin dependence.

I do not starve myself. I do not work out like a demon. I hate working out. I do not weigh portions or count calories.

My age has little to do with it. I'm 37, and I'm leaner now than I was 15 years ago. When I was 23 I was drinking 3-4 Pepsis every day and going out to dinner at Chili's three times a week. One day I hopped on the scale, saw the number 143, and said, "Nope. Not gonna do that."

I did not join a gym. I did not starve myself. I thought about empty calories I was consuming. I cut out soda, and French fries, and I lost eight pounds in two months.

My genes have little to do with it. My sister unfortunately got the bad thyroid from my dad's side, but she is probably correct in suspecting that a couple of years of very poor diet triggered it. The rest of my family is not obese, although they've thickened a lot in the last decade. We were all pretty slim when we were living in the same house, eating food we cooked ourselves every night. It was only after they got married and had kids that my siblings and their spouses started to swell. My parents, too, since they were eating out more.

I'd say 90% of the meals I eat are prepared at home. We eat lunch out on Saturdays, usually, because we're away from home. The people at Blanc Burgers probably think I'm crazy because I take the bun off my Inside-Out burger.

=========

I am a carnivore. I eat meat, eggs, dairy and cheese. I eat plenty of animal fat, butter, and olive oil, which I believe are essential to the health of my body. I eat lots of salads, broccoli, carrots, cabbage, green beans and peas, not to mention onions and root vegetables. I try to have a vegetable with every meal.

I buy these foods as natural/organic/grass fed/local as my budget and resources will allow. I sincerely believe in sustainable farming and the part that animals play in a healthy ecosystem. Sadly, I am not a farmer and my yard is too shaded to allow me to grow produce at this time. However I buy all our meat from local farmers, our beef, chicken and eggs from free-range animals, and I'm constantly looking into new sources for dairy and vegetables.

I don't eat food that comes out of boxes or bags, even if they do say "organic" on the label. There are no crackers, chips, or prepared meals in my pantry or freezer.

The only food I buy in cans are tomatoes, beans, tuna, and salmon. I keep a couple cans of tomato soup on hand in case one of us is too sick or lazy to cook. They usually sit there for months. We don't get sick often.

I eat very little wheat or corn. I'll usually have one or two servings of either during a week--a sandwich or a taco, for instance, when we're out on the weekends. I will sometimes have a piece of sprouted-grain toast for breakfast.

I don't eat vegetable fats, except for olive oil. I won't touch anything that says "hydrogenated" on the label.

I don't drink alcohol, generally. I never drank ANY until I was in my thirties. My parents were strict teetotalers and so I never developed the taste. Occasionally I'll have an aperitif of sweet wine after dinner, or half a margarita if we go out for Mexican.

I don't eat fast food. About once a year I'll get a craving for a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, or some Long John Silvers' batter-dipped fish. Then it takes me another year to forget the unpleasant slickness in my mouth and the uneasiness of my liver and gut while they deal with the starch and soy oil.

I don't drink soda. I haven't had a soda in probably 13 years. I drink water, milk, or green tea. Occasionally a little orange juice, but I prefer it in a smoothie cut with full-fat Greek yogurt, banana, and raw egg.

I eat potatoes maybe once or twice a month. I eat pasta maybe three times a year. I eat rice if my kung fu teacher invites us to dinner.

I eat very little sugar--probably more than the hard-core Paleo people would approve, but far less than the average American. I was totally sugar-free for a couple of years, I did the Splenda thing, and I decided, as little sugar as I ate anyway, I might as well use the real stuff and make it taste good. Laura Ingalls Wilder's family ate homemade pies and cakes and it didn't kill them. So if I want dessert, I have to make it myself--not a tough choice when you consider how I hate the taste of grocery-store baked goods. At our house we go through a pound of evaporated cane sugar every three months or so, depending on whether it's a birthday month and I do any baking for others. Otherwise, I make a home-baked treat--pie, single-layer cake, or a batch of cookies--about once a month. Half the time I end up throwing away the stale leftovers.

Most of my breakfasts are protein and fat, lunches are salads with protein and fat, and dinners are meat and vegetables with a side of fat. Do you see a pattern here? Do you see any of that fat on me? Do you think maybe the whole low-fat concept is a lie?

==========

Don't say I burn it off doing all those martial arts.

I do three kung fu/tai chi classes a week, and only one of them could be considered aerobic. There is no doubt that kung fu/tai chi has made me stronger, lighter on my feet, helped me maintain my flexibility and sculpted my muscles. Kung-fu kicks are especially good for toning a woman's butt and belly.

But I don't believe the kung fu is the sole reason I "stay skinny." There are plenty of fat dojo masters and tai chi masters out there. My sifu, who is a very fit looking 60 (and does all his own cooking), theorizes it's because they don't lift their legs enough or bend at the waist enough. I'm willing to agree that's a part of it. But I really think 75% of one's body shape is determined by what one eats.

Look at any movie or TV series made prior to 1980. Look how slim all those people are--even the ones who are supposed to be "fat." Look at Jackie Gleason in the Honeymooners. He was a well-padded guy but he had none of the sloppy gelatinous look people have today. Look at Mr. Carlson on WKRP in Cincinnati. Thick around the middle, sure, but his arms and legs weren't fat. And the thin people didn't have that bony, strained look that skinny actors have today.

Do you know what happened right around 1980? The FDA and the AMA started telling people to cut out animal fat. And restaurants and food producers started relying on vegetable oils, particularly corn and soy, to replace the animal fats in their products. There are plenty of people out there debating the science and politics behind this switcheroo, so I won't go into it here, but I wholeheartedly believe that those vegetable oils are the cause of American obesity and chronic disease, including cancer. So I avoid them.

==========

In all fairness, there are some other issues that have helped me stay lean.

I have no children. I have never been pregnant. That was by choice. I didn't want the responsibility and I didn't want the effect on my body. I know some people think it's a selfish choice, and I say... darn right. My body. My time. My choice.

I have never taken hormonal birth control. That was a choice, too. Even though I had terrible cramps as a teenager, and trouble with acne (allergy related) in recent years, I feared the impact of artificial hormones on my body. I've had too many women tell me they quit the pill and dropped 20 pounds. The only time I tried BCP's, I took them for 3 weeks and gained eight pounds. My sister had to have her gall bladder removed due to side effects of the Pill. Thank you, no.

I am not into menopause yet. That may very well change the game for me, but I doubt it. There is a lot of new evidence coming out about hormone interplay, how sugar affects insulin and insulin affects sex hormones. I'm keeping a close eye on that stuff.

I still know a few women who are peri- or post-menopausal who managed to avoid extreme weight gain. We'll see where my life is at when that time comes, and what choices I want to make about my body and lifestyle. I don't intend to quit the tai chi, so I don't expect a lot of drastic obstacles.

For the last ten years I've hovered between 125 and 128. When I start creeping up toward 130, I cut back on sugar and eat more vegetables.

I'm not obsessive about my weight. I'm obsessive about my health--mental and physical. So I have brownies when I really feel like baking them. I enjoy the baking process and the eating--preferably when shared with friends. Then the other 29 days of the month I eat meat and vegetables and do my kung fu.

There is nothing--NOTHING--"lucky" about it.

wheat vs. rice

An ongoing question I have had about low-carb diets is why the traditional-eating Chinese don't seem to get fat off rice.

Whole Health Source has a post from a year ago that points to a study I hadn't heard about, and he draws some fascinating conclusions from it.

It's one of these epidemiological studies where they try to divide subjects into different categories of eating patterns and see how health problems associate with each one. They identified four patterns: the 'macho' diet high in meat and alcohol; the 'traditional' diet high in rice and vegetables; the 'sweet tooth' pattern high in cake, dairy and various drinks; and the 'vegetable rich' diet high in wheat, vegetables, fruit and tofu. The only pattern that associated with obesity was the vegetable-rich diet. The 25% of people eating closest to the vegetable-rich pattern were more than twice as likely to be obese as the 25% adhering the least.

[...]In other words, wheat flour had replaced rice as their single largest source of calories.

[...]Wheat seems to destroy the metabolism of cultures wherever it goes. [...] Only in a culture transitioning to a more Western diet can you find a robust association like this.

Go there for more details.

*Sigh.* There's no getting around it. I'm gonna have to start baking my own bread. I don't know what the hell I'm going to bread my fried chicken with, though.

donut-cake

I've had this long-running mission to recreate a flavor from my childhood: the "buttermilk crullers" Dad used to bring home from the grocery store on Sundays. I don't know who made them; some local bakery now defunct. But they were tender and sugary-moist, dripping with crusty syrup and tangy with buttermilk. Krispy Kreme's cake donutholes are similar, but at the same time nothing like--there's too much artificial stuff in the Krispy Kremes, and they don't have the sour note. Also there was an elusive perfume in the buttermilk cruellers--some subtle spice that I couldn't identify.

This week, I got close.

It was kind of an accident. Couple years ago, I was messing around with a Madeleines recipe that was too dry for my taste. In my kitchen, everything baked can be improved with a dollop of sour cream (except pie crust--don't go there). Sadly, when you add sour cream to Madeleines they are no longer Madeleines--they don't get that nice crumbly edge, or the spongy quality.

What I ended up with was something more interesting. And Saturday night I was jonesing for something sweet, so I pulled out this recipe and decided to try it again. I wanted something that could be baked in little cakes, you see--because frying is a nuisance, and because individual cakes can be wrapped up and frozen and I needn't eat them all at once, or let them go stale and wasted.

Here's the recipe. The batter itself is rich, rather than sweet. You could probably reduce the amount of sugar further, to 1-1/4 or 1-1/3, without damage. The glaze will add sweet as needed.

• 1 cup (1/2 lb) butter (I used salted; if you use unsalted you will need to add a pinch of salt to the dry ingredients)
  
• 1-1/2 cup sugar
  
• 2 large eggs
  
• 1-1/2 to 2 tsp vanilla extract (preferably the kind made with bourbon)
  
• 2-1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  
• 1-1/2 tsp baking powder
  
• 1/2 cup full-fat sour cream
  
• 1/2 cup whole milk yogurt, plain
  
• about 1 tsp ground spices (read on)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
   
   
2. Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla.
   
   
3. In a measuring cup, combine yogurt and sour cream.
   
   
4. In another bowl, combine the dry ingredients, including your desired spices. This time, I started with a combination of Penzey's Cake Spice, which is nice, but not quite what I wanted. I think the winning combination here is a touch of cinnamon, nutmeg or mace, and cardamom. I used about 1 to 1-1/2 teaspoons total ground spices. This gave the cake a perfumy quality without tasting "spicy." Use a mild cinnamon like Vietnamese.
   
   
5. Alternate adding the dry stuff and the sour cream to the batter in 2-3 stages, blending well after each addition. This batter is fairly thick and fluffy, especially after the baking powder and acids in the dairy go to work on either other.
   
   
6. Let it sit for a couple of minutes, while you generously butter and flour your pans. I have a pan with six mini-bundt wells, which left a bit of batter left over that I put in a mini-springform pan. I'm sure you could also bake this in a loaf or full-sized bundt, but it would take forever.
   
   
7. Spoon batter into prepared pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes (mini pans) or 45-60 minutes (full sized pans) or until a knife comes out clean. They will be pale on top, but the cake should be slightly brown at the edges and pulling away from the pan.
   
   
8. Turn off oven, crack door, and let sit inside for another 5 minutes.
   
   
9. Remove from oven, let sit in pans for 5-10 minutes while you mix up a glaze from 1 cup powdered sugar, a dash vanilla, and enough milk (2-4 Tbs) to make it pourable.
   
   
10. Turn out cakes onto cooling rack with foil or parchment underneath. Set Cakes right-side-up and pour glaze lavishly over them. (If you want them super-sugary, you can set them in a jelly-roll pan, pour the glaze over, and let them soak up the excess. This is the way the buttermilk cruellers were glazed, but I am no longer ten and I don't need all that sweet.)

These are good warm, but I think they are best the day after. Wrap them up tightly after they are cool. They should freeze well.

pizza.... mmmm, pizza

I am done buying carryout pizza.

Done.

Hear me?

Not because of a bad experience, but because, as with so many other things, I can do a better job, and cheaper.

Last night I used the Perfect Pizza Dough recipe from Culinate. This is the third or fourth time I've made it, and it is extremely satisfactory, although I usually add a bit more salt and sugar than is called for. It's not the ingredients that make the difference, really, it's the method: the long cold rising in the fridge, and the preheating of the pizza stone. My oven will heat to 550 degrees, so that is the temperature I use. It yields a terrific, tasty, crunchy crust that will support a surprising overload of toppings.

While the dough was rising, I went out to my garden, plucked a handful of basil and oregano leaves off my plants, brought them in and mashed them up with some farmer's market garlic, olive oil, sea salt and a few raw cashews. The resulting pesto-ish pulp I mixed with half a can of Muir Glen diced tomatoes, half a can of tomato paste, and a generous dash of black pepper and red pepper flakes.

After the crust was pre-baked, I smeared it with the doctored tomato sauce, then topped with Italian sausage, chopped mushrooms, red and yellow bell peppers, sliced olives, and plenty of fresh-grated mozzerella and romano cheese.

My husband said, "You could make a lot of money selling this stuff."

Only I couldn't, because I'd eat all the profits.

Such wealth is not good for the waistline.

But I am never buying a carryout pizza again. We've even got some pretty decent shops here in town, but they can't touch the flavor you get when all the ingredients are fresh and high-level to begin with. What's great is, I can mix up the dough before leaving for work in the morning, and it's ready to use when I get home. High level, indeed.

what our ancestors ate

I found a remarkable website called BeyondVeg.com, which is absolutely chock-full of information about nutrition, mostly from a human-history standpoint. The author is a former vegetarian and raw-food enthusiast who found his health deteriorating after many years of eshewing animal products. He's very frank about his change of paradigm, and refreshingly free of finger-pointing.

There are pages and pages and pages of discussion here, far too much for me to read--much less (ahem) digest--at a sitting, but I'm deeply intrigued by "Setting the scientific record straight on humanity's evolutionary prehistoric diet and ape diets" and even more so by the updates to that essay. Some samples:

• "...recent findings pointing to a correlation between increasing levels of animal flesh in the diet over the eons at the same time the human brain was in the process of near-tripling in size..."



• "Lack of sufficient intake of long-chain fatty acids in the diet would be a limiting factor on brain growth, and these are much richer in animal foods than plant. (Relative brain size development in herbivorous mammals was apparently limited by the amount of these fatty acids in plant food that was available to them.) Given the foods available in humanity's habitat during evolution, the necessary level of long-chain fatty acids to support the increasing size of the human brain would therefore presumably only have been available through increased intake of flesh."



• "human cranial capacity has decreased by 11% in the last 35,000 years, the bulk of it (8%) in the last 10,000. ...this correlates well with decreasing amounts of animal food in the human diet during this timeframe.(...[also] correlates with the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago.)"



• "the brain (20-25% of the human metabolic budget) and the intestinal system are both so metabolically energy-expensive that in mammals generally (and this holds particularly in primates), an increase in the size of one comes at the expense of the size of the other in order not to exceed the organism's limited "energy budget" that is dictated by its basal metabolic rate. The suggestion here is not that the shrinkage in gut size caused the increase in brain size, but rather that it was a necessary accompaniment. In other words, gut size is a constraining factor on potential brain size, and vice versa."

All of this is fascinating to me--it addresses some questions I had, in a non-hysterical and well-researched voice that is informative and easy to read. Even better, he talks about the spread of agriculture and cooking worldwide, and discusses the correlation between genetic origins--what part of the world your ancestors came from--and ability to thrive on certain foods, particularly milk and grains.

"Another interesting example of the spread of genetic adaptations since the Neolithic has been two specific genes whose prevalence has been found to correlate with the amount of time populations in different geographical regions have been eating the grain-based high-carbohydrate diets common since the transition from hunting and gathering to Neolithic agriculture began 10,000 years ago. (These two genes are the gene for angiotensin-converting enzyme--or ACE--and the one for apolipoprotein B, which, if the proper forms are not present, may increase one's chances of getting cardiovascular disease.)[123]

In the Middle East and Europe, rates of these two genes are highest in populations (such as Greece, Italy, and France) closer to the Middle Eastern "fertile crescent" where agriculture in this part of the globe started, and lowest in areas furthest away, where the migrations of early Neolithic farmers with their grain-based diets took longest to reach (i.e., Northern Ireland, Scotland, Finland, Siberia). Closely correlating with both the occurrence of these genes and the historical rate of grain consumption are corresponding rates of deaths due to coronary heart disease. Those in Mediterranean countries who have been eating high-carbohydrate grain-based diets the longest (for example since approximately 6,000 B.C. in France and Italy) have the lowest rates of heart disease, while those in areas where dietary changes due to agriculture were last to take hold, such as Finland (perhaps only since 2,000 B.C.), have the highest rates of death due to heart attack. Statistics on breast cancer rates in Europe also are higher for countries who have been practicing agriculture the least amount of time"

I'd never seen this correllation spelled out so simply. I'd suspected it, myself, when someone asked me why the Chinese ate so much rice but didn't get fat*; the only thing I could suggest was that the Asian genetic pool had adapted to heavy rice consumption. Nobody was willing to buy that, though, since we've all been conditioned to think that evolutionary changes take millions of years to enact.

Well, maybe on the bone-structure level. But how can a paleontologist know what the gut flora of Australopithecus looked like? And how many generations of bacteria can live and grow and die in the span of one human's gut's life?

"The difference in time since the advent of Neolithic agriculture between countries with the highest and lowest incidences of these two genes is something on the order of 3,000-5,000 years,[126] showing again that genetic changes due to cultural selection pressures for diet can force more rapid changes than might occur otherwise.

[however]"...Nobody yet ... really knows whether the observed genetic changes relating to the spread of milk-drinking and grain-consumption are enough to confer a reasonable level of adaptation to these foods among populations who have the genetic changes, and the picture seems mixed."

Nevertheless, it's a fascinating concept, and those of you who are interested in this kind of thing will probably enjoy further reading.

*By the way, it's not entirely true that the Chinese don't get fat. The women tend to get quite plump when they move to America, and there's a famous kung fu fighter who was very slim and trim until he went to work for the Emperor and had access to the banquet table--he died a young man, and very obese.

sweet & sour tart

I never tried rhubarb til last night. It looked pretty icky, but when I read descriptions of rhubarb tarts and pies they described the flavor as "tart" or "sour," and as some of you know I adore sour flavors--lemon and pickles and the like.

So I picked up some rhubarb at the local mercantile, threw in some of my mother's freezer blackberries, and came up with this.

Trim rhubarb stalks (I used two large ones) and cut into pieces about 1/2 inch. Put in saucepan with about 1/4 cup butter and 1/3 to 1/2 cup brown sugar, dash of vanilla and dash of cinnamon. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until rhubarb starts to get pulpy.

Meanwhile, make a small amount of pastry from about 3/4 cup flour, 2 Tbs of butter, 2 Tbs of full-fat sour cream, a sprinkle of sugar and dash of salt. When fat is incorporated, add more flour if necessary so it is stiff and not too greasy. Divide into two balls and press into the bottoms of two small tart pans or 16-ounce ramekins.

When rhubarb is softened, turn off heat and throw in a handful of blackberries (if frozen) to thaw. You should have about 2 cups fruit and syrup.

Heat oven to 375°F.

In another bowl, combine 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup flour, about 1-1/2 Tbs butter. Combine with fingers or fork until sandy. Stir in 1/3 cup of slivered almonds, chopped fine.

Ladle fruit mixture into prepared ramekins and divide syrup between them. Sprinkle almond-crumb mixture over the tops. Bake for about 25 minutes or until tops are crusty and browned.

I think this would be really good with vanilla yogurt. My husband ate his for breakfast today.

like mixing concrete in your large intestine

Remember when I was saying that eating a lot of fiber didn't sound like a good idea?

Now I find this doctor with a book out that says pretty much the same thing, only in more detail.

The Fiber-related Malnutrition page on his website says it all, as far as I'm concerned: "If fiber blocks water and fats from absorbing, then it blocks all nutrients dissolved in water and fats too!"

So there. Eat more fat!

On a side note, it's amazing how many people misunderstand the principles of the Atkins diet and feel no compunctions about deriding it. Please read the damn book, people. Read it or keep your mouth shut.

percentage according to whom?

Okay, following up on the percentage of fat question.

I was reading "Spontaneous Healing" by Andrew Weil a couple weeks ago. The SP had acquired a copy of it from somewhere and, well, I've always been a little suspicious of Weil because he seemed so mainstream crunchy. Too slick, too well-marketed. But I'm a lot more crunchy myself these days, and I thought I'd see what he had to say.

For the most part I think his advice is sound. But I was startled when I was reading his chapters on diet and he recommended no more than 30% of calories from fat. That actually sounded high to me--I figured a low-fat diet such as Weil advocated would be more like 15 or 20% fat calories.

And then I realized, with all the reading I've done about diet and low-fat/low-carb, I didn't have any hard numbers in my head. Atkins' book isn't real precise about numbers; in fact a selling point of his diet is that you didn't have to count, except for the magical 20-grams-a-day during induction, and then figuring out your carb threshold later. (Mine's around 65. Below that and I start dropping.)

So, I went researching. Turns out that the 30% of fat calories is the American Dietary Association's recommendation, which is based on the AMA and the America Heart Association's assumption that fat and cholesterol in the diet cause heart disease. Which is, as I and others have mentioned, a pretty shaky assumption.

Here are some quotes and reference links. Most of the articles I found were written in the mid-nineties. The science and diet climate has changed somewhat since then.

The New York Times:
"In 1990, a recommended low-fat diet for adults should be no more than 30% fat calories."

The San Diego Earth Times:
"In the average American diet, 34.3 percent of the calories came from total fat and 15 percent from saturated fat."

The Weston A. Price Foundation:
"By analyzing menus from turn-of-the-century cookbooks, we can estimate that the fat content of the diets at that time was about 35-40 percent of energy as fat."

"...the American Dietetic Association (ADA) recommends that "diets should provide moderate amounts of energy from fat (20 percent to 25 percent of energy)" and noted that the more restrictive level of 15 percent offered no advantage. However, since typical diets have been found to be closer to 35 percent of energy as fat, even their recommendation of 20-25 percent represents a lowfat approach."

Chiroweb:
"The USDA food consumption survey revealed the percent of fat in American's diet continues to go down: 33% in 1994, 34% in 1990, and 40% in the 1970s."

The American Academy of Family Physicians (detailed report on clinical studies):
"Under current recommended guidelines set by the National Academies of Sciences, Americans are advised to take in 45 percent to 65 percent of calories from carbohydrates, 20 percent to 35 percent from fat, and 10 percent to 35 percent from protein."

So, here are the answers to the questions I asked you:

The average American diet in the mid-nineties appears to have consisted of approximately 33% fat calories.

The Powers That Be recommend consuming no more than 30% of your calories from fat, although more and more often nutrition gurus are making the distinction between poly/mono and saturates and unsaturates. I think these distinctions are just the gurus scrabbling to take back the lines in the sand which they drew before the latest data was in.

An Atkins-type low-carb diet, at its most extreme, may consist of up to 60% of calories from fat. At this point, however, you'd be consuming at most 1200 calories a day, because you'd be living off your body's fat reserves.

As for how what percentage of calories "should" be coming from fat? I say go back to the 40% that was common in cookbooks in the early part of the 20th century. But they have to be the natural fats that people were eating back then--butter, olive oil, lard and schmaltz (chicken fat).

Bottom line is, your body needs a certain amount of dietary fat, not only to run smoothly but also to process certain vitamins. I think if you're not eating enough good-quality fat, your body thinks it is being malnourished, possibly because it can't make good use of the nutrients that are coming in (and probably because the cheap starches that we eat instead of those good fats are not, in fact, very nutritious). So we feel hungrier--but it's not hunger per se, it's malnourishment. So we eat more cheap starchy crap, because it's low in fat and supposedly harmless. And we get fat.

That's what I think, anyway.

nutrition poll

I've got some questions for y'all. Without doing any research--I don't want someone else's opinion, I want your best guess--fill in the blanks below. Answer each question in order--don't go back and revise your previous answers when you see the next question.



1. In a healthy diet, what percentage of daily calories should come from fat?














2. In a low-fat diet, what percentage of calories should come from fat?













3. In a low-carb diet, what percentage of calories would come from fat?














4. In the average American diet, what percentage of total calories do you suppose come from fat?



I'll tell you why in a day or two.

industrial toxins, hormones, and food

I followed a link on Culinate (sidebar) to this article about a theory that environmental toxins contribute to obesity.

It's an interesting theory, and one that I wouldn't summarily dismiss. I don't think it's news to anyone that synthetic chemicals can act on the body like hormones, and having read Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories, I know that researchers are increasingly curious about how hormones regulate metabolism and body size. Knowing that, it's not a leap for me to suppose that environmental chemicals are interfering with our bodies' ability to use the nutrients we injest, which would fool our brains and endocrine systems into thinking we need to eat more.

At any rate, I think we could all do with less plastic in our lives. I've gotten pretty good about taking my cloth shopping bags to the store with me. I'd still like to replace most of our plastic storage wear--use glass for the refrigerator and tin or stainless for lunchboxes. That's a work in progress. In many ways I'm glad we live in an older house, one built out of brick, wood and mortar, instead of plastic composite. Is it healthier? I don't know. But these things have been around a long time and I trust them to be chemically inert, more or less.

I haven't posted in a long time, I know. I've been gardening, and sewing. I got another costume order, which is half made, and I've been selling about a pattern a week since March.

I took most of that money and bought plants. I think I mentioned I have a three-year plan for the yard. Next year that will probably include some raised beds for more produce, but for now I'm trying my hand and my patience with herbs, tomatoes, and peppers.

The herbs are basil, sage, marjoram, oregano, chives, thyme, parsley, and patchouli. The patchouli is the only one that lives inside; it's a handsome little shrub and smells fresh. I made my first batch of chimchurri sauce on Wednesday and it was very nice; it'll be even better when I get some cilantro. I don't know why I forgot the cilantro. I love the stuff, and it always gets wasted when I buy it in bundles.

I planted two pepper plants, one sweet and one hot. They went into five-gallon buckets and so far have been spending their nights inside. They've doubled in size.

The tomatoes were very small and tender when I brought them home. I bought two slicing varieties and two romas. Eventually they are going into 20-gallon tubs in the back yard, but right now they are on my kitchen window ledge. Three of them are doing fine, but one of the little romas has aphids and is kind of sickly. I washed it in soapy water and it's still struggling along, so we'll see.

This week I went all domestic and brought home a fern, a hosta, and some strange purple thing that's supposed to get five feet tall and have pink spiky flowers. They all went into the shady front bed. I don't know what got into me. My parents agree that they never thought I'd be the kid to get bit by the gardening bug, but sometimes we take strange paths to get to our destination. If I feel the need to garden because it's environmentally sound, and because I want to grow my own food, well, I guess that's as good a reason as any.

living color

Much has been written about the effects of color on the perception of flavor. Much more has been written on the superiority of pastured meat versus feedlot meat. I'm going to say a bit about both, now.

Couple weeks ago we had a gift card to the organic grocery store in our town. We buy our produce and dairy there regularly, but not usually the meat because it's awfully expensive. A pastured chicken--which is to say, one that grew up scratching in the grass and eating bugs and seeds--costs two to three times as much as one that spent its life crammed a cage in a barn with its beak cut off, choking down a slurry made of soybeans and its own kin. I try to buy minimally processed chickens, so mine aren't shot full of saline and "flavor-enhancing solution," but they still grew up on a vegetarian diet, which is not what chickens are meant to eat. Their meat is acceptable but certainly not premium.

Since I had the gift card, I could afford to splurge. I bought a locally-reared fryer. It was cleaned and prepped just like any bird you'd buy in a chain store. In fact it was cleaner than many; there were no bits of kidneys clinging to its ribs, there were no stubs of feathers in the creases. I thought at first it hadn't been properly drained, because it seemed to be very red.

As I cut it up, however, I saw this was not the case. It was very well drained; there was a little bit of congealed blood in the veins under the wings, but that's common and easily washed away. The meat just had a lot of color. The flesh was pink to salmon-toned at the joints; the fat was butter-yellow. There was a blue and brown undertone to the bone like I'd never seen before. There was rather a lot of fat, too, especially under the wishbone--so much so that I cut part of it off. It tends to not fry cleanly and can get soggy.

I remember now, being a kid and cutting that fat off the underside of the wishbone, because the wishbone was always my piece and I didn't like that chewy lump of fat under there. I haven't had to do that in years; most commercial chickens just don't have that much fat anymore. They've been bred to be lean with a lot of breast tissue.

This bird was well-proportioned, with well-developed thighs, and very moist. We didn't bite into it and say to each other, "Oh my God, this is the best chicken I've ever had!" but it was very very good, and I suspect that if I fried a supermarket chicken tomorrow, we'd be disappointed. It was certainly the best chicken I've had in years.

Fifteen bucks is a lot to pay for a single bird, when you compare the seven or eight dollars I usually pay for a Smart Chicken. But fifteen bucks is not bad at all for a bird that feeds me and the SP for at least two meals apiece. And when you throw in the flavor and the knowing that the bird probably doesn't have salmonella or pesticides in its system, I'd pay fifteen dollars for another one. I know that puts me in a priviledged position, that I can do that, but what better do I have to spend it on? Besides, if the demand gets great enough, perhaps the price will drop. It's worth it to me for two meals a week.

insulin, aging, frying and baking

There is an excellent article over at DiabetesHealth.com titled, Insulin, Leptin, Diabetes, and Aging: Not So Strange Bedfellows. It squares up with some things I already knew, and it expands on some things I was curious about.

One sad thing, though, is the precise reason why fried chicken is something you shouldn't eat every day:

In a process called glycation, glucose reacts with protein, resulting in sticky, sugar-damaged proteins called advanced glycated end products (AGEs). When protein is damaged, it cannot function properly or communicate properly with other cells. AGEs also promote inflammation and free radical oxidation throughout the body. AGEs cause skin to wrinkle, and wrinkling and damage to the lining of arteries contributes to plaque and heart attacks. It can promote the formation of cataracts, macular degeneration, and eventual blindness.

The glycation process has also been linked to the destruction of protein and nerve cells that can lead to Alzheimer's disease, memory loss and various neuropathies. Heating of starches (especially frying them, like french fries and chips) can produce a type of glycated protein called acrilamides, which are potent carcinogens.

See? I told you it was the breading, not the oil. Granted, the author says heating starches "can" cause this reaction, but not under what circumstances, i.e. how high a temperature. Oh well. I put out a fryer to thaw this morning, and I'm going to enjoy it.

On an amusing side note, my sister and I finally convinced my mother to switch from Parkay to butter, partly as a result of a little health scare my Dad had in December. He's fine, but I took the opportunity to brow-beat her about all the Crisco and margarine they eat. Finally, at Christmas, my sister added her "yucks!" to the makeup of margarine and Mom caved. Yesterday on the phone, she was asking me how I stored my butter, how fast it would go rancid at room temperature, and so on.

"I tried making a batch of oatmeal cookies with butter," she told me in a hushed voice, as if she were doing something subversive (which in a way, she was; I feel that way myself sometimes).

"Oh? How'd that work out?" I said casually, because I already knew the answer.

"Y'know, I just wasn't really happy with my baking this year," she said. Mom is the champion baker of the family. Her dinner and cinnamon rolls are legend, and I have to admit I prefer her pie crust to mine but I still think I can beat it. "Nothing was really bad, it just wasn't up to my standards."

"You said something about texture," I remembered.

"Right! They were... not as light. Kind of doughy. So I looked at the back of the Parkay box and saw that it was made with soybean oil. I could've sworn it used to be corn oil."

"Yes, that's what I remember, too."

"But these oatmeal cookies turned out really good. They got browner on the tops and they had a nice crispy rim around the bottoms that your dad really liked, but they were still moist on the inside."

"You don't say."

"Of course that was your great-grandma Rella's recipe, so it was originally intended to be made with butter."

"That's true."

"And you know that she used to make all her pie crusts with lard." Sigh. "I guess I'll have to try that next."

She's half-kidding. She's following the same path of logic I went down a few years ago. Even those of us who pride ourselves on being open-minded and open-eyed and logical fall into traps of convenience and the so-called "common knowledge" of our age. I could make a point about how everybody living in single-family homes, isolated from the wisdom and method of our grandparents, is having an effect, but I think it's more sinister than that. My grandparents are the worst of the processed-food consumptors. They eat Lite this and Diet that, and probably haven't seen a non-trans-fat in ten years. Meanwhile my grandmother is having all these nerve problems and chronic back pain. I really want to get some butter and olive oil into the woman, but that's a battle I don't expect to win. Unfortunately she's always been a little too eager to believe what authority figures tell her--authority being doctors and the talking heads on TV.

But, I've about got my mom swung around. Now if I can just get her to use olive oil to fry instead of Crisco. I know she knows I'm doing it; I've mentioned it several times, but she claims Dad likes the taste of Crisco. I'd bet a hundred bucks that if he quit eating it his heartburn would go away.

about eating fresh and local

There is a really excellent post over at Culinate that gives an overview of the health and environment issues inherent in big farming and industrial non-food products.

Here's a real eye-opener:

Did you know that many of today’s crops are genetically engineered with a “suicide gene,” a gene that won’t let the crop reproduce? Did you know that, for many food plants like wheat and tomatoes and apples, only 20 percent of the known varieties remain in existence? One in five? Did you know that your average carrot has one-third of the nutritional content as did a carrot in the 1930s? Did you know that crab is sent from the West Coast to China to be removed from its shells, and then back again to our supermarkets? Did you know that industrial farms are systematically stripping the topsoil from our arable land until nothing at all can grow? Did you know that most of America’s bees are sent to California every spring to pollinate the almond crop, that the resulting bitter honey is thrown away, that the bees eat high-fructose corn syrup and many of them just die from the stress?

I had heard rumors about much of that, but didn't know all the specifics. I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this is what happens when both parents work outside of the home, and commute such great distances to spend a day in busiwork that makes nothing, accomplishes nothing, teaches nothing. I was thinking on my way into work today, that obesity is brought on by eating starchy foods with no real nutritional value. Gary Taubes' sources implicate insulin as the primary trigger, but there is still a gap in our knowledge as to what causes insulin resistance, and the breakdown of the body's ability to use its fat stores. I wonder if the answer is simple lack of nutrients? For instance, many vitamins are fat soluable. If we don't eat enough digestible (read: natural, as in partly-saturated) fats to process the necessary vitamins, perhaps the lack of fats actually prevents the body from utilizing its own fat stores? That's a nice homeopathic concept for you.

If you go read the post, check out the comments, as well. The discussion after the post is even better. I'm especially keen on the bit about allergies. I've suspected for several years that my body does not like corn products, but I love Mexican food, and last night I caved and we ordered a Special Dinner from El Mezcal. It tasted great, and I ate relatively little, but this morning my face is inflamed and my guts feel full of concrete. I made myself some nice pastured scrambled eggs for breakfast.

an important bulletin about fried chicken

I started frying chicken again after I went to live with the SP. We both like it a lot, it's virtually impossible to buy anywhere (other than a fast-food grease pit), and I finally have had the leisure to experiment and get it the way I wanted it. I think I've got it mastered now. (Recipe is here--you know you want it.)

This led to the SP taking leftovers to lunch, which led to his co-worker asking for the recipe, which led to many discussions among the menfolk about diet and what is supposedly good for you, with the SP passing along all my reading about fats and oils and proteins and tofu and processed crap.

I may have started a little mini-cult. Heh Heh. (Seriously. The Recipe is here. Go try it.)

But he asked me a question I couldn't answer this morning, having to do with olive oil. See, I've heard for years that you couldn't use olive oil for frying, because of olive oil's supposedly low smoke point, but over the past year I'd been using more and more olive oil in my frying mixture, and now I am using it exclusively, and I have not had a single problem with it smoking or overheating at 375°.

So I went looking for an answer to this olive oil problem. And it seems--as I suspected--the idea that olive oil can't be used for cooking is so much propaganda. I shouldn't be at all surprised if it originated with the Crisco manufacturers, back in the 1920's.

From the Olive Oil source:

If you go to the internet or the market to look for smoke points you will see something interesting. Every oil claims to have the highest smoke point. One website for macadamia nut oil puts their oil at the top of the list with a smoke point of 410 degrees F. On their chart, olive oil comes in at a measly 190 degrees F. This is below the temperature of a hot cup of tea!

The Olive Oil Source claims that extra virgin olive oil smokes from 400 to 365 degrees F, according to it's free fatty acid content. But the macadamia nut folk say that olive oil smokes at the temperature of hot water out of the tap; 190 degrees. When I suggested to the macadamia people that it seemed unlikely that olive oil smokes at a temperature lower than boiling water and that maybe they were confusing centigrade with Fahrenheit they insisted they were right.

So who do you trust for the real smoke point? Here is what some research yielded:

The International Olive Oil Council: 410˚
Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils: 420˚

Or why not get some olive oil off the shelf and heat it up in a saucepan with a frying thermometer? This is properly done in a lab with special lighting which shows the first hint of smoke. My stovetop experiment yielded 350 degrees for a jug of discount store oil which had been sitting open in the garage for a few years and 380 for a premium fresh extra virgin oil. Olive oil is fine for frying.

And if that's too random for you, here's the skinny from Food Network:

The filtration process for this light-style oil also gives it a higher smoke point than regular olive oil. Light olive oils can therefore be used for high-heat frying, whereas regular olive oil is better suited for low- to medium-heat cooking, as well as for many uncooked foods such as salad dressings and marinades. The International Olive Oil Institute recommends using pure olive oil for frying, since the flavor of extra virgin olive oil tends to break down at frying temperatures, making the added expense a waste.

I like the olive oil. Since I'm using the Pomace, or third-press, oil, it's relatively inexpensive, it has little or no taste of its own (at least compared to canola or peanut oil) and it doesn't give me heartburn or bowel discomfort the way Crisco does.

Of course you can use whatever oil you like. I just enjoy bursting other people's absurd balloons. Now go forth and fry!