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Keeping track of the freezer.

Mark picked up our half-hog order from the farm yesterday and stowed it in the basement freezer.  I went down there this morning for a pork steak from the fridge and, as long as I was there, I unpacked all the individually wrapped cuts and counted them,  then restocked them in some semblance of order.

Right now I know everything that's in there, but come March or April I'll be digging through the bottom of the chest freezer, wondering, "Have I already used all the ham hocks?"  I've tried, other times, making a list of the cuts that are in there, posting it on the wall, and crossing them off as each is removed.  It never seems to work for very long.  Mostly, I think, because I generally don't carry a pencil downstairs with me when I go to the pantry (and don't tell me to tie one to the wall, I promise you the kids will find a way to run off with it).

So I had an idea today.  This would work for all you people who have a giant freezer or pantry full of stuff they need to keep track of, whether it's cuts of meat, once-a-month-cooking casseroles, or homemade preserves.

Here's my list on the wall above the freezer:

But I don't need to bring a pen down to cross stuff off, because I took a cue from the flyers on the coffee-shop bulletin board I was looking at yesterday:

See -- now all I have to do when I get a cut of pork out of the freezer is tear off one of the corresponding strips.  What's left on the list is what's left in the freezer.

Tonight we had one of the pork steaks, thinly sliced, over a spinach salad with white beans and red onions, tossed in a dijon-cider dressing.  Homemade wheat rolls on the side.  Two kids opted for PB&J, so one pound of meat easily fed the whole family.  I have decided it's a good idea to let them choose a meatless protein alternative -- as long as it isn't too complicated -- whenever they want.

Low-carb, low-impact.

Mark sent me a .pdf of a very interesting paper the other day:  "Nitrogen and Food Production:  Proteins for Human Diets," V. Smil,  Ambio vol 31 no 2, March 2002. It got me thinking about lower-carb living and sustainability.  

One way to think about farming:  "[A]griculture's principal objective is the production of digestible [nitrogen]."  Nitrogen is a proxy for protein, and its availability in the soil limits how much protein can be produced from the land.  That's why the advent of ammonia fertilizer led to such an explosion in land productivity.  But nitrogen fertilizers have environmental costs, and so we want to use them efficiently. 

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Back when I was trying to live low-carb, Atkins-style, one of the things that troubled me about it was that it seemed so... gratuitously meaty.    The Atkins folks are now recommending "at least 4 to 6 ounces of protein foods per meal," "8 ounces... if you're a tall guy," but five or six years ago I had gotten the distinct impression that you were supposed to eat "as much as you want" of bacon and beef and the like.  

Basically, the impression was:  Replace your bread, rice, and pasta with meat, eggs, and cheese.  Right?   And of course, even now, six ounces of protein-based foods per meal is more than a pound a day.   You've got to eat something, right?  And you don't want to be hungry?  And carbs are out?  So high-protein must be in.

But of course this is far more protein than individuals need.  Protein can't be stored,* so eating extra is wasted.   It's greedy, too, on a societal and environmental level; Americans overeat it, and pour nitrogen fertilizers into the soil in order to overproduce it, while in other parts of the world demand outstrips supply.

So why is the Atkins recommendation so high?  I think it's because the Atkins diet sells itself with that "you can eat as much as you want" theory.  The extra meat will fill your plate and your stomach, be satisfying to chew, and taste good; it is made of "normal" stuff that you're used to eating; and if the research on insulin resistance is to be believed, it won't contribute to your fatness.  You can, indeed, lose weight while eating lots of Atkins hamburger salads.

But it's still wasteful, if you're eating more protein than your body needs.  And the more people in affluent nations who try to fix their fatness by following Atkins-style high-meat low-carb, the more overall global demand for meat rises -- and for already-overnourished nations like us, that's shameful.

* * *

This is one reason why, even if we concede that high-refined-carb diets cause obesity and low-carb diets can cure it, we still have a gluttony problem.  A pound and a half of meat every day is a ridiculous amount of meat to eat, even for a "tall guy."  

Let's concede that a small number of obese, insulin-resistant people will not respond to a diet unless it contains virtually no carbohydrates at all.  These few folks will need a diet that's almost all protein and fat, of necessity based mostly on animal products.  They want to eat reasonably-sized meals with enough calories in them that they don't suffer terribly.  Okay, let those few people subsist on mostly meat, and more meat than their protein requirements call for.   Chalk it up as an expensive medical treatment.  But it's terribly wasteful to start there as a first resort for weight loss, or worse, for a lifelong way of eating.

* * *

Here are some things to keep in mind when designing a lower-carb, but more-sustainable way of eating.

1.  Too much protein and too little fat is an important cause of the famous constellation of side effects that accompany "Atkins-style" low-carb eating.

From Gary Taubes, Why We Get Fat, pg 214-216:

This shift [from running on carbohydrates to running on fat] can come with side effects.  These can include weakness, fatigue, nausea, dehydration, diarrhea, constipation, [postural hypotension], and the exacerbation of pre-existing gout.  ... This reaction is why some who try carbohydrate restriction give it up quickly. 

...The reason for the side effects now appears to be clear, and physicians who prescribe carbohydrate restriction say they can be treated and prevented.  These symptoms have nothing to do with the high fat content of the diet.  Rather, they appear to be a consequence of either eating too much protein and too little fat, of attempting strenuous exercise without taking the time to adapt to the diet, or... a web of compensatory responses [from the beneficial drop in insulin levels] that can lead to water retention and what are called electrolyte imbalances.

So too much protein is one cause of the unpleasant side effects.  Eat more fat and less protein -- which means you can eat less animal product and more vegetable oils like coconut, avocado, olive -- and the lower-carb adventure might feel a whole lot better.  (Meanwhile, make sure you get enough salt and don't overdo the exercise).

 2.  Don't overestimate your daily protein requirements.  Three grams for every ten pounds of body weight is slightly more than you probably need -- a number I get from using the recommendation of (0.6 g protein)/(kg body weight)*.  Another way to think about it is one gram per ten pounds of body weight at each of your three meals.  

I weigh 113, so it's doubtful I really  need more than 34 grams of protein per day.  Let's be generous and call it 36:  12 grams of protein at each of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  So at each meal I can get enough protein from:

• 2 eggs; or
• 0ne-third of a small (5 oz) can of tuna; or
• one smallish chicken thigh; or 
• less than 3 ounces of not-particularly-lean ground beef; or
• almost two ounces of cheddar cheese; or
• a cup and a half of whole milk or yogurt.

Now, if I got most of my protein from plant sources like beans and grains, I might need to eat more, because the body uses the protein in these less efficiently.  And mind you, I don't weigh very much.  If you weigh 250 pounds, you might need twice what I need.  Oh, and growing children and pregnant women will need more than this.  So will someone who does a lot of heavy lifting.  But the point is, if low-carb living means you're going to eat globally-scarce animal protein at most meals, you don't have to consume more than your "fair" share (unless it turns out you have a medical need for it).

3.  Fill the rest of the plate with nutritious vegetables.  Flavor them with enough butter, sauce, oil, or cream to give you plenty of energy.    If you want a low-carb, moderate-protein diet, logically you must eat a good deal of fat.  There is nothing wrong with this.   And the thing that will give it to you, along with a nice lengthy eating experience and a sensation of fullness, is the dressed vegetable side dish.  Eat your veggies, and eat them with plenty of tasty, tasty fat -- not an excess, but enough to give you your daily calories.  This fat need not come from animal products.  The bulk of your calories can thereby come from veggies.

Atkins-style low-carb set an initial upper limit on even salad vegetables, which naturally means the dieters felt they had to eat more meat just to fill up their plates.  Some people might need such drastic limits, but I'm betting that most people will do fine eating as much broccoli, okra, cabbage, spinach, collards, cucumbers, cauliflower, asparagus, and the like as they want.   Might as well give it a try.  

4.  Don't waste so damn much food, especially protein.    Here is a sad statistic:  Somewhere between 25 and 55 percent of the food available to people living in North America, Oceania and Europe is simply wasted.*  Thirty-six hundred calories* are available to every American every day; that doesn't count exports.  We eat too much to begin with, and what we don't eat we waste.  

• A lot of these calories are wasted by retail sellers, who have to throw out expired meat and the like.  
• A huge amount is wasted by the restaurant industry; I don't know this, but I suspect that the fancier they are (i.e. the more operating expense they can pass on to the clientele), the more wasteful.  
• But we also waste a lot of food at the household level, by buying too much and cooking too much in the first place, by over-trimming, and generally by being too picky.   

 I've made this point before:  The first place you can reduce your carbon footprint is by wasting less so you can buy less.   What's more, unlike many other ways to go green, you'll actually spend less money (and maybe even time) on the effort.  (A somewhat frightening implication here is that every time we eat in a nice restaurant, we necessarily contribute to the problem.   Don't really want to go there....)

5.  Choose animal products that make efficient use of protein.  One way to compare protein sources is by feed protein to food protein conversion efficiency.    We could get protein by eating cereals and legumes; or we could feed some of the cereals and legumes to animals, and then eat the animals.  How much of the protein in those cereals and legumes can you get back?  We can accept a less-than-100-percent conversion because animal proteins are more bioavailable to us, and also because they come with valuable fats, nutrients, and iron (not to mention that most of us like to eat animals).  But how good can it get?

According to Smil, the best you can do is dairy products, which give you back 40 percent of the nitrogen (a proxy for protein) you fed to your cow.  Aquacultured fish are next, tied with eggs at 30 percent efficiency.  Eating chickens gives you back about 25 percent of what you "spent" in feed protein.  Pork:  only 13 percent.  And when you get to beef cattle, it's pretty abysmal:  five percent.

It does depend quite a bit on how your beef is raised:

Beef production is inherently the least efficient way of supplying dietary protein through animal feeding. ... This inefficiency is irrelevant in broader [nitrogen] terms as long as the animals are totally grass-fed, or raised primarily on crop and food processing residues (ranging from straw to bran, and from oilseed cakes to grapefruit rinds) that are indigestible or unpalatable by nonruminant species. Such cattle feeding calls for no, or minimal—because some pastures are fertilized—additional inputs of fertilizer-[nitrogen]. Any society that would put a premium on reducing [nitrogen] losses in agroecosystems would thus produce only those 2 kinds of beef. In contrast, beef production has the greatest impact on overall [nitrogen] use when the animals are fed only concentrates, now typically mixtures of cereal grains (mostly corn) and soybeans.

Switching from conventionally raised beef to grass-fed beef is expensive, and not even practically possible depending on the grocery options where you live.    But switching some of your conventional pork and beef consumption even to ordinary eggs and dairy is a cheap change, available to anyone anywhere, that can halve your meal's nitrogen footprint while still providing you high-quality protein, enough to support even a quite low-carb diet.

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*Asterisked information comes from the Smil paper.

Why Why We Get Fat isn't really a comprehensive diet book: a review, part two.

(Part one of my review of Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It by Gary Taubes is here)

This is what I want out of my culinary lifestyle: 

Above all other concerns, it has to keep me physically healthy, so I can feel good, stay active, get my stuff done, and maintain my weight.  This is the natural purpose of food, so I have no problem putting it above every other desire in importance.   But as long as I can get this, I have other desires:

• I want to enjoy a variety of tasty, real, unprocessed food.
• I don't want to feel dependent on eating large quantities of food; I want to eat lightly.
• I would like to have at least a little bit of foods that make me happy even if they are biochemically not so good for me.
• I don't want my family to consume a whole lot of meat.
• I want to be a gracious dinner guest, accepting some (if not all) of what's offered me.  I don't want to require special treatment.
• I'd like to save money and preparation time.
• I want to be able to eat a meal in any restaurant whatsoever without resenting the choices.
• I want to obsess less about my diet.

These are not universal values.  Some of you might pipe up:  "Well, I'd like to grow as much of my own food as I can."  Or:  "I don't want to eat any meat at all."  Or:   "You'd like to save money in an abstract sense, but me, I have a food ceiling of $80/week."  Or:  "I love to try new restaurants and want to do it as often as possible."  Or:  "I have to have chocolate every day." 

If you peruse the list of culinary desires, including the first one, you should notice one thing:  I cannot satisfy all of them.   The more I emphasize one desire, the more I must compromise with another.  For example, the more I diversify the foods I eat, the more money I probably spend.  The less processed food I buy, the more time I spend preparing food.  The more-freely I eat in restaurants and the more I accept what the hostess offers me, the less control I have over things like sustainability and healthfulness.

 Another thing you should notice is that some of these desires require effort.  It feels good to eat food, and eating lightly requires that I stop before I might like to.  It's easy to plan dinner around plenty of meat, and so using less requires me to work harder.   It feels good to eat a large piece of cake; it's harder to stop after just a small one. 

So my desire of staying physically healthy, even though it has primacy, has to be satisfied in context.   I must also strike a balance among a number of other values in tension with each other and sometimes even in tension with the primary goal.   And I must do it in an environment where there are many temptations to act contrary to my desires.

A really comprehensive diet book can't tell you what your own values are, of course, but it will promote some of the author's values and show you the tensions that exist between those and other values you might have.  A really comprehensive diet book will devote some attention to strategies for balancing contrary desires, i.e., for living your life within the constraints of the eating plan:  a chapter of suggested restaurant orders,  advice on living with diet-sabotaging relatives, a section of recipes.   A really comprehensive diet book will also suggest strategies that keep the dieter motivated in the face of temptation, or ways to remove temptations from the environment. 

Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It devotes little, if any, attention to context.  This means it is not a comprehensive diet book.    But what it does provide is a crucial piece of information:  a detailed description of an evidence-based weight-loss menu, one that has the best-demonstrated track record of really helping people lose body fat in controlled clinical settings.

This information is undeniably useful.   It is also real-life-context-free.  Except for a couple of implications and hints strewn throughout the book, Taubes declines to provide any suggestions about how to integrate this information into your life.  Clearly, he does not think it is his job. 

 And I agree; it is not.  Taubes is a science journalist.  He is not a diet guru.  He is not a cognitive-behavioral therapist.  He is not a chef.  And more importantly, he is not you.   His job, it seems, is to tell you what the evidence demonstrates.  Your job is to figure out how you can incorporate it into your life and your own set of values.

+ + +

So what does the evidence demonstrate?  Remember the quote from the last post:

The one thing we absolutely have to do if we want to get leaner--if we want to get fat out of our fat tissue and burn it--is to lower our insulin levels and to secrete less insulin to begin with.

According to Taubes, evidence suggests that the only way to do this is to reduce the consumption of -- you've heard this before -- breads, cereal grains, white root vegetables, "foods containing much sugar" including a few fruits, and sweets.   This leaves quite a bit left that can be eaten freely and still promote weight loss in most people:  animal flesh, green vegetables, eggs, cheese, and many other fruits.   (A rephrasing of a set of successful clinical recommendations quoted on pages 155-156).

A key, oft-repeated point is that among obese individuals, sensitivity to the restricted foods varies a great deal. 

The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be... [T]here's no one-size-fits-all prescription for the quantity of carbohydrates we can eat and still lose fat or remain lean.  For some, staying lean or getting back to being lean might be a matter of merely avoiding sugars and eating the other carbohydrates in the diet, even the fattening ones, in moderation:  pasta dinners once a week, say, instead of every other day.  For others, moderation in carbohydrate consumption might not be sufficient, and far stricter adherence is necessary.  And for some, weight will be lost only on a diet of virtually zero carbohydrates, and even this may not be sufficient to eliminate all our accumulated fat, or even most of it.

Whichever group you fall into, though, if you're not actively losing fat and want to be leaner still, the only viable option... is to eat still fewer carbohydrates, identify and avoid other foods that might stimulate significant insulin secretion..., and have more patience....The more obese the patients, and the longer they had been obese, the more likely they were to remain obese [over the duration of the studies]....

What we don't know is whether these individuals could have succeeded had they further restricted carbohydratees, or had they simply had more patience, and maybe both.

So some people take a long time to begin losing weight even on a drastically low-carb diet, but others succeed immediately with even a little bit of carb restriction. 

This explains why some dieters, including me, lose weight on diets that aren't intentionally "low-carb."  Taubes insists that whatever they set out to change, be it reduced fat or reduced calories  or more exercise, their success is caused by an incidental reduction of carbs or of refined carbs.  If you eat less butter, maybe you don't want quite as much bread.  If you cut calories across the  board, well, some of that was by cutting carbohydrates.  If you took up exercising and lost weight that way, Taubes is betting you also aren't drinking as much beer and soda as you used to.    

Successful diets aren't low-carb, but they are all (Taubes says) fewer-carb-grams-than-before, or at least better-quality-carb-than-before.

That's the information in the book.  The evidence marshalled in the book is compelling.  Now you have to ask yourself:  How can I fit these recommendations into my life? 

Undoubtedly you'll want to know:  What kind of success can I expect if I only "sort-of" follow the recommendations, because of balancing them with other things I wish to get out of my way of eating?  And Taubes doesn't tell you the answer to that either.  You will just have to try it and see.

+ + +

All this being said, Taubes does point out that there is some variety in the application of the diets.  Taubes organizes the successful clinical diets into three different approaches:

(1)   "To establish an ideal amount of carbohydrates that you can and perhaps should eat -- say, ... three hundred calories' worth...  This is intended to minimize any potential side effects.... also assumes that it's easier to eat some fattening carbohydrates than to eliminate them entirely."  The example diet is one that allows "small amounts of sugar and an occasional dessert, some crumbs for breaded food, a little lactose (in milk), and small quantities of carbohydrate in vegetables and fruit." 

 (Note that you can still eat quite a lot of vegetables while receiving from them only "small quantities" of carbohydrate.  Many of the diets do not restrict green vegetables much except as a last resort for extremely sensitive individuals.) 

(2) "[A]im for minimal carbohydrates from the outset" and get used to the side effects. 

Here Taubes is talking about the physiological side effects of carbohydrate withdrawal -- but I would add that such an approach also has whole-life side effects as you transition to a meat-based lifeform.  Your experience as a restaurantgoer, dinner guest, and cook will be irrevocably changed, and you're going to have to deal with this.

(3) The Atkins compromise:  begin by drastically reducing carbohydrate to near-nothing (including limiting green vegetables), and then when weight loss is established, gradually add carbohydrates back in until the individual daily limit is discovered.

There are advantages and disadvantages to all these approaches.

A couple of other possible approaches are implied by Taubes' evidence, but he does not include them in this list because they are not represented among the clinical diets he has surveyed. 

(4) The low- or no-meat approach.  I was really hoping that Taubes would address the sustainability issue, but (other than a brief comment that it is more sustainable to eat fat with your protein)  it seems he has no evidence for a low- or no-meat diet that will reliably cure obesity.  Still, he has something to say about what a vegan or vegetarian (and by extension, a flexitarian like myself) can do:

[I]f you eat mostly plants... you're getting the bulk of your calories from carbohydrates, by definition.  This doesn't mean that you can't become lean or remain lean by giving up sugars, flour, and starchy vegetables, and living exclusively on leafy green vegetables, whole grains, and pulses (beans).  But it is unlikely to work for many of us... If you try to eat fewer carbohydrates by eating smaller portions, you'll be hungry, with all the problems that entails.

So if you're a vegan or a vegetarian you can still benefit from an understanding... You can always improve the quality of the carbohydrates you eat, even if you don't reduce the total quantity.  This change alone will assuredly improve your health, even if it's not sufficient to make you lean.

So you could classify the low- or no-meat approach as "worth trying, probably won't hurt, and might even help."

(5) The cut-the-worst-offenders-first approach.  This is not, I repeat, represented among the clinical studies that Taubes references.  However, what he writes implies that it might be a viable option.  "Clearly, as [Michael] Pollan points out, humans can adapt to a wide range of non-Western diets, from those exclusively animal-based to those mostly, if not exclusively, vegetarian.... [W]hat is it that distinguishes Western diets...?"  Japanese and sub-continent Indian populations remained healthy on diets that were rich in legumes and rice before they started adopting the Western diet, after all. 

 This, plus Taubes' evidence that some people lose weight with only moderate carbohydrate restriction, suggests to me that one way to cut carbs is to begin by eliminating the worst offenders, and if that isn't sufficient to induce weight loss after a while, or if a plateau is reached, to cut back some more.    First to go might be soda and sweets, then processed food with sugar, then white flour or polished grains.  Later the portions of even the whole grains might shrink, and those be served less often.  Eventually the obese person might find it necessary to cut categories of food entirely out of his diet; but by systematic and slow improvement and experimentation, perhaps the dieter can acquire good habits along the way to a sustainable lifestyle that also promotes better blood chemistry and eventually fat loss.

+ + +

I will continue this book review in a third part, where I want to address why, unlike Taubes, I conclude that--even if fatness isn't caused by gluttony--gluttony still isn't off the hook.

Pork braised in milk with parsnips, white beans, and sage.

Here's a keeper that I sort of invented this evening.  I say "sort of" because I derived it from a classic Italian combination I have made a few times, pork braised in milk with sage and potatoes.  (Here, I Googled it for you).

I didn't have a dinner plan and I didn't have any potatoes, but I managed to turn up two pork chops in the freezer, and the pantry yielded part of a bag of wild rice, and there were parsnips in the fridge along with some limp-looking carrots and celery.  Also I found some bacon.  So this is what I did:

- Chopped up an onion, a carrot, and some celery, and smashed a couple of cloves of garlic with the side of my knife.

- Peeled and thinly sliced four parsnips.

- Minced up a couple of slices of bacon and browned them in some olive oil in a skillet.  I lifted the crispy bits out with a slotted spoon and left the grease in the pan.

- Added the two pork chops and browned them well on both sides.  Salt and pepper of course.  And removed them to a plate.

- Poured off all but about 2 Tbsp of the fat, and then added the onion/carrot/celery/garlic.  I stirred that around, scraping up the browned bits from the pork, until it was nice and soft.  Then I added the sliced parsnips and tossed them till they were coated.

- Nestled the pork chops in amongst the vegetables.

- Poured milk into the pan until it came about halfway up the side of the inch-thick chops.  I brought it to a boil, added a bit more salt and pepper, turned it down and let it simmer until the chops were done and the parsnips quite soft.  I turned the chops halfway through, by the way.

- Removed the chops to a fresh cutting board and chopped up the meat.  Here is where I would have returned the meat to the pan, except that I am feeding children who accept unmixed food a bit better.  So I kept the pork out and passed it separately.

- Mixed in 1 can white beans (drained).  Turned up the heat and let the mixture bubble a bit to reduce and thicken.  

- Transferred to serving bowl and sprinkled with reserved bacon bits.

I served this with wild rice, plain brussels sprouts, and my mother-in-law's home-canned pears.  It was really good -- I might never use potatoes again, the parsnips were so sweet.  There were lovely little flecks of orange color from the carrots.  It was a very autumn-like dinner, even though we had it in January.

And it's yet another entry in the list of "ways to stretch a little bit of meat."  We didn't even eat all of the pork.

Obesity in a land of starvation.

Had a busy weekend and not much time this morning, but here's a quick link:  People losing weight for charity.

Annie Retter was so shaken by the hunger she witnessed on a recent trip to Africa that she slashed her food budget -- and consumption -- to send her savings there. Her sister [Linda Clute] did the same.

Each has dropped more than 60 pounds thanks to the "Africa diet" they started in March. They now send $400 to $500 a month to a children's meal program in Namibia....

Retter has traveled to Namibia every year for the past four years to support the project and/or do research. But this year's visit with her sister really broke her heart. Sitting at the kitchen table at her sister's house last week, she opened a photo album showing children lining up in front of a corrugated tin shack offering free meals.

Both Retter and Clute weighed more than 200 pounds at the time....

The article also describes some "lose a pound, donate a pound" type programs.  

Of course, food shelf donations are good, so don't take this as advice not to try such a thing.  I have to say I'm a little skeptical about the weight loss effectiveness of programs where you link how much you donate to how much weight you lose.  I think you might be setting yourself up for nothing more than a higher-stakes guilt cycle, and one where (if you happen to reach your goal weight) the motivation disappears right when you need it most.  (Though maybe you could vow to donate 40 lbs of food every year that you keep off your 40 lbs.)

But linking food donations (and an awareness of the plight of truly hungry and malnourished people worldwide) to your daily behavior -- as the sisters in the above quote do -- now that seems like it could be motivating, effective, and the trigger for a lifetime of healthy eating and community activism.  Eating very simply and sparingly as an act of solidarity, and/or donating the cost of the excess food you're not eating anymore (or even donating that volume of food directly to a food pantry)?  Well, there's an ongoing motivation.   

A lot of what turned things around for me was sheer revulsion at my own behavior.  Mine was not triggered by any specific experience, but it's easy to imagine that revulsion and embarrassment being triggered by being a (relative) glutton in a land of starvation.  Perhaps we should all imagine ourselves there, once in a while.  

Pounds of vegetables, because you asked.

I have my receipt in front of me, and I can report that I bought about 37 pounds of fresh produce today at the store.  Plus three pounds of frozen vegetables, a can of pineapple tidbits, and a can of basil-garlic tomato paste.

I just picked up my quarter-beef, which will last me a while, so it's not too surprising that the only meat I bought was in a package of hot dogs and four cans of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee (don't look at me like that, we start school next week and I need lunch to be reeeeeeeealllly easy).  The other processed foods I bought were Cheerios (baby now on solids -- must have Cheerios), hot dog buns (natch), and some frozen cheese pizzas and frozen french fries (see above re: lunch).  Then there was some milk, eggs, cheese, and yogurt, peanut butter, coffee, and baking powder.  That's it.  Total bill $122.66, enhanced a bit because I bought a few organic items.

But understand that I have a nice big pantry that we stocked up with canned-good and dry-good staples some weeks ago.  I never buy things like dish powder or toiletries at the grocery store, either.

"One raw, one plain, one fancy."

From a comment I made on an earlier post. 

It's a rule of thumb I use when putting together meals -- for getting three vegetable side dishes on the table with a minimum of fuss.

I don't always have three vegetable (or fruit) side dishes on the table, especially if my main dishes have plenty of veg in them, but it is nice to shoot for.

"Raw" includes most salads, fresh cut fruit, and also simple things like a bowl of baby carrots.

"Plain" is anything steamed, boiled, or roasted, either truly plain or maybe with a little butter or oil.  Roast sweet potatoes, plain microwave-steamed fresh vegetables, or cooked frozen vegetables.  Also something like applesauce would count here.  The essence of "plain," though, for the purpose I mean (not doing too much work at dinner time) is "simply prepared."  I didn't have to stir it or cut it up much or measure anything.

"Fancy" would be anything cooked any other way, or anything that required a recipe.  Sauteed broccoli with olive oil and lemon; cream of tomato soup; stuffed squash; marinara sauce.  That kind of thing.

"One raw, one plain, one fancy" puts a variety of textures (and usually colors) on the table without my overdoing it in the last minutes before supper.

Announcing a new category: "Lower on the food chain."

I hear that some readers are interested in my family's ongoing project to eat "lower on the food chain," consuming fewer meat meals and less meat overall.  I have written a number of posts about this topic, and I think it would be good to gather them together in this new category.

Most people know how to make a meat meal and how to make a meatless meal, but a very-low-meat meal -- the "meat as a flavoring agent" meal -- often seems trickier to put together.  I want to blog some more about those recipes, but even more, about the whole menu -- because it's really the menu, the way a small amount of meat can fit into a whole meal, that is the tricky part.

Last night's dinner was an excellent example of a summer low-meat meal.  I split one twelve-ounce steak among five people (our genders and ages are, by the way, M-37, F-35, M-10, M-6, F-4).  The baby is only just beginning solids so he doesn't count.

Here was the dinner menu:

Marinated White Bean Salad

Roast Sweet Potatoes

Sauteed Broccoli with Lemon and Garlic

Skewers of Bell Peppers, Red Onions and Sirloin Steak

Fresh Peaches

One thing you have to get over, if you're going to eat low-meat meals, is the idea that it's not worth firing up the grill to cook one steak.  

Skewers help.  Midday, I partially thawed the 0.75-lb steak and cut it into about twelve one-inch cubes -- so I guess each cube was about an ounce -- which I threaded onto two skewers and then salted.  I placed the skewers over a plate so the beef could drip if necessary, covered it up so I wouldn't contaminate anything, and left it in the fridge until about an hour before grilling.

Three bell peppers and part of a red onion, I cut up and put on different skewers.  I find it's better to skewer veggies separately from meat, because they may cook for different times.

Roast sweet potatoes are pretty easy, of course, you just pierce them and put them in a parchment-lined roasting pan in the oven for a couple of hours.   Or, if you forget until the last minute, you can always microwave them, or peel them, cut them up, and boil them for ten minutes.

The marinated white bean salad I made the day before.  This is one of those recipes that doesn't need a recipe.  Cut into small dice:  some celery, some carrots, some red onion.  Mince a couple of cloves of garlic.  Toss in a bowl with olive oil, red wine vinegar, basil, and dill.  Stir in a couple of cans of well drained white beans.  Refrigerate at least a few hours, overnight is even better.

The broccoli was cooked briefly in boiling water ahead of time, and then as soon as the other stuff went on the grill, I finished it by sauteeing in olive oil with minced garlic and lemon zest, the juice of the lemon being added at the end.

Mark and I each got three cubes of meat, and the three eating kids each got two cubes of meat, plus as much of the veggies as we wanted.  I put my steak on top of the white bean salad, but everybody else dredged theirs in ketchup or barbecue sauce.

A weekend camping menu.

Planning for the summer's camping trips and other outings has begun.  I'm expecting to go tent-camping with our friends' families at least once or twice this summer, and the other day I called Hannah up to confirm our standard camping menu plan.

One summer the three families managed to go camping five times, and that was the summer that we streamlined the weekend camping menu to perfection (at least for our families).

Here are some things to consider when you set up a multi-family campout meal plan.

(1) Go allergen-free.   If anyone in your camping party has a food allergy or intolerance, don't bring that stuff along if you can help it.  It's not too bad if the allergic person is an adult or a very watchful older child, and if the allergen is confined to a single easy-to-isolate item; but in general, camp food gets strewn all over the place, and it's very hard to keep things separate.  In our case, one of our adult friends has celiac sprue and must avoid wheat; so all our cooked meals and snacks are gluten-free.  (We have made an exception for graham crackers for s'mores, which we think we can control pretty well.)

(2) No fruit with sticky remains.  Apple cores attract bees and black flies, which are no fun.  If you pack any fresh fruit, stick with things like grapes or maybe clementines, which leave inoffensive, dry little peels.   

(3)  Consider a cooler-free, and therefore a fresh-meat-free, trip.  I know, I know, half the fun of cooking out is hot dogs roasted on a stick over the campfire, bacon in the morning, and maybe steaks or burgers.  But hear me out.  The cooler and ice necessary to keep all this stuff from poisoning you is HEAVY.  And it's remarkably hard to practice food safety rules when there's only one food prep surface, a wood picnic table, and all your water  bottles are clustered together on it.    This doesn't mean you have to go meatless (although that can work really well).  Shelf-stable meat products work fine:  aseptically packaged, dehydrated, smoked, or canned meats do fine.  Uncracked eggs are okay overnight if you're going to cook them through.    Depending on how they are packaged, hard cheeses will be fine all weekend.  And many fresh vegetables will get no worse than a little wilty.

(4) Don't rely on a cooking fire the first evening.  You have enough to do -- fight Friday rush hour traffic, put up the tents, set boundaries for the children -- before you even get the fire started.  Don't keep your kids hungry while you do all this.  Pack a picnic basket.   Use the cooking fire to make snacks later on.

(4 and a half).  Bring charcoal.  Wood is nice, but finicky.  If it turns out you don't need it, just take the charcoal back home.

(5) Simplify when dividing up "what to bring."  You can settle up any disparities in cost later.  It's so much easier to remember "My family is in charge of breakfast" than "My family is in charge of the green peppers for Saturday morning breakfast, the canned broth for dinner, and the raisins for the trail mix."

(6) Consider cooking two meals, not three, on your full day in the woods.  You're all going to be nibbling trail mix and jerky anyway.  Why not just call it lunch?  It'll give you more time for hiking and fishing and stuff.

(7) For multifamily trips, try "stone soup" to minimize planning.  Have each family bring an assortment of odds and ends to make part of a stew -- a few vegetables, potatoes, bits of smoked or dehydrated meats, dried beans or grains, some spices or herbs, canned broth, etc.  (Don't overdo it!  One cup of solids per person is more than enough).  Then put it together and see what you get.   For three families, we always make two different pots of stew:  one on the bland and simple side, and one on the spicy and interesting side.  Part of the fun is deciding which ingredients go into which pot.  (We have been known to throw the leftover beef jerky into the soup.)  We put them into two dutch ovens right after breakfast and let them cook on the coals all day while we hike.  Have some packaged bread or tortillas or chips on the side, and you've got a satisfying and very trouble-free meal.

(8)  Simplify with "brunch porridge" on the morning before you leave.  Mix it all up and set it to cook on the coals while you squeeze in one last morning hike, then come back and eat it up before taking down your camp.  (We have been known to throw the leftover trail mix -- M&Ms and all -- into the oatmeal.)  Aseptically packaged or canned milk is nice to have for this purpose, but powdered milk will do if you want to save weight.  

(9) If you camp a lot with the same people, have a "standing menu."  It's a plan.  You can change it if you want to do something different, but you can also get going much more quickly and spontaneously if you've got a standing default plan.

Here is this summer's standing weekend non-backpacking camping menu for three families:  six adults and eleven children.  

Friday Dinner:  Each family brings their own "brown-bag" dinner that requires no cooking.

Friday Campfire Snack:  S'mores.

Saturday Breakfast:  Scrambled eggs with sauteed peppers and onions, salsa, and corn tortillas.

Saturday on the Trail:  Trail mix and jerky.

Saturday Dinner:  Stone soup.

Saturday Campfire Snack:  Popcorn.

Sunday Brunch:  Oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, and dried fruit, made with canned evaporated milk.

Beverages:  Tang, tea, coffee, powdered hot apple cider.

Each family is responsible for bringing these things:

• Their own brown-bag dinner for Friday
• Enough eggs to feed their family for one breakfast
• 4-6 cups worth of solid ingredients for stone soup
• Cooking oil, salt, and dish soap

Plus:

• Family #1 brings trail mix/trail snacks for everyone, plus herbal tea
• Family #2 brings campfire snacks for everyone, plus black tea and powdered cider
• Family #3 brings breakfast tortillas/veg and oatmeal/mix-ins, plus coffee and Tang

Grab it and go.

An unexpected side effect of not being a glutton anymore is that it is easier to
eat simply and appropriately for special circumstances.

Let me give you an example.  Our family went on a day hike yesterday at Afton State Park.  We planned to eat lunch on the trail.

Once upon a time, such a day would have been all about the picnic lunch.  I would have planned it on my grocery list several days earlier.  I would have made fancy sandwiches -- pressed Italian hoagies; or brie and ham on baguette; or roast beef, red pepper, and smokey cheddar on onion kaiser rolls.  I would have brought baby carrots and celery.  Fresh fruit, possibly cherries or strawberries.  Maybe pasta salad.  A cooler would probably be involved.  Fresh-squeezed lemonade.

And of course, since we have to keep our strength up, there would be trail mix and jerky and granola bars.

You should have seen what I brought for a weekend camping. 

Nowadays my thought process is a little different.  Rather than the hike being an excuse for a fantastic picnic lunch, the hike is... the point.  And instead of "Ooh goody, a picnic!  What kind of fun picnic food do I want to eat?"  I am thinking, "What's convenient to carry in a pack on a hot day, won't spoil, provides enough calories for the hike, and can be eaten with minimal fuss and not much to pack out, so we can get back to hiking?"

Obviously it has to appeal to the kids, but other than that, those are the main requirements.

So what is hiking food now?

• Little red-waxed cheese wheels.
• Triscuits.
• Possibly apples.  (If there's room.)
• Water.

All you need is a knife.

Instead of trail mix, we now pack peanut M&Ms.  (No more eating the chocolate and leaving the nuts!)

If we want to give the kids another choice besides cheese and crackers, we might make a few peanut butter sandwiches.  Unlike the fancy sandwiches I used to make, there's no concern about them going bad in the heat.  And I don't know about you, but a PB&J (or PB&H) that's slightly squashed at the bottom of a pack tastes pretty good when you've been hiking all morning. 

This isn't to disparage the families who came to the park ready to have a traditional Memorial Day barbecue.  On our way out we passed a man and a woman each gripping one handle of a heavy picnic cooler.  A man with a bulging paper grocery bag in one hand and a big sack of charcoal briquets up on his shoulder.  A woman carrying the baby while her older teens pushed a stroller laden with food and soda and lawn chairs.  True, an appetizing aroma of cooking meat drifted through the park.  Condensation formed on cans of ice-cold soda as they were pulled out of coolers and passed around.  Even the bags of baby carrots and cauliflower chunks looked pretty good after a day of hiking (the tubs of stagnant ranch dressing, not so much). 

The picnics I used to make were, objectively speaking, "healthier" than the trail food I pack now.  They were balanced.  They contained fresh fruit and vegetables.  Usually it was all homemade, with few processed-food items.

They were also enormous, a lot more trouble, and the biggest problem?  They were the center of my attention.

Sometimes, an objectively "less healthy" food experience is mentally healthier.  For all the tsk-tsking about our grab-it-and-go culture, occasionally grabbing and going makes a lot of sense.  There's more time to sit down and enjoy the simple food we've brought, out under the sky, if we spend less time fussing about it back in the kitchen.