Eating Transparently

For seven days, I have committed to chronicling all of my meals here. This is Day One.

I knew I was going to embarass myself with this little project. Matter of fact, I can't believe I got myself into this in the first place. I eat a shocking amount of food. And I realize, now that I'm looking at the absurdly long list of things I ate yesterday, I eat all day long.

It's a long list, folks. And yet I inexplicably lost a pound yesterday.

I'm sorry.

BREAKFAST:

- 2 cups Cafe Choco Andes coffee (organic, fair trade, locally-roasted coffee purchased at the farmer's market) with organic vanilla soymilk. I would have had more, but I'm still nursing a baby.

- big bowl of Heritage organic whole grain flake cereal with organic unsweetened soymilk

MORNING SNACK:

- 2 figs (picked from the organic tree in my yard)

LUNCH:

- big bowl of leftover Italian vegetable soup from Saturday's dinner (made with organic zucchini and leeks purchased at the farmer's market, organic broth, and dried organic oregano from my mother's garden)

AFTERNOON SNACK:

- small plate of fettucine with fresh pesto (the pesto was made with organic basil from my mother's garden and organic olive oil; the fettucine was the delicious organic whole-wheat Bionature brand that I highly recommend)

LATE AFTERNOON ADDICTION:

- homemade cappucino made with Cafe Choco Andes coffee and organic vanilla soymilk (if you're addicted to Starbucks and haven't bought yourself a Krups, please let me give you a little push in that direction)

DINNER: this entire meal went over very well with the family and the current crop of houseguests, most of whom are carnivorous

- Spicy corn on the cob (recipe below; made with organic butter and organic corn purchased at the farmer's market)

- Squash ribbons (made with organic squash and onions purchased at the farmer's market)

- Orzo with tuna and garbanzos (recipe below; made with organic whole-wheat orzo, organic canned garbanzos, organic lemons grown 3000 miles away, organic olive oil, and organic parsley from the farmer's market)

EVENING SNACK:

- Stove popped popcorn (cooked in organic olive oil)

LATE EVENING ADDICTION:

- Three Edy's strawberry popsicles (I am so ashamed)

SIDE ORDER OF NEUROSES:

- In the Italian vegetable soup, I used some white bowtie pasta. White noodles stress me out, but I really wanted to use bowtie in this dish, and I couldn't find whole-wheat bowties. I should have made my own from scratch. Please hold while I flog myself...

- The canned tuna in the orzo is a guilty pleasure. I need to find a source that is more sustainable than what I picked up at the supermarket, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I feel bad about this.

- The popcorn was not organic this time because Walmart doesn't carry it and that happens to be the store I was in when we had run out of our organic brand. Conventionally-grown corn is a bit of a nightmare though and should be avoided.

- Some people don't like to run out of crack. I feel much the same way about those Edy's popsicles. I'll give them up when you pry them out of my cold, dead fingers.

*****

SPICY CORN ON THE COB (adapted from Cooking Light, serves 6)

• 6 ears corn
• 5 Tbs butter
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1/2 tsp coarse salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp finely ground black pepper
• 1/8 tsp ground cayenne red pepper

1. Melt the butter and combine with the herbs & spices.
2. Shuck the corn, and brush the herbed butter onto the corn.
3. Wrap corn in aluminum foil.
4. Bake at 450 degrees for 25 minutes.

*****

ORZO WITH TUNA, GARBANZOS AND HERBS (adapted from Bon Appetit, serves 4)

• 9 oz uncooked whole wheat orzo (this can be tough to find - I found it at my health food store; substitute regular white orzo if necessary)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3 Tbs fresh lemon juice
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 15 oz can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained (conversely, you could use dried beans if you plan ahead, which I didn't in this case)
• 2 Tbs chopped fresh herbs (I like to use basil and parsley)
• 2 1/2 oz crumbled feta cheese
• 1 can tuna in olive oil, drained
• Salt & pepper to taste

1. Cook orzo in large pan of boiling salted water until al dente. Drain.
2. Whisk olive oil, lemon juice and minced garlic in large serving bowl.
3. To the bowl, add cooked orzo, drained beans, chopped herbs, feta and tuna. Toss well.
4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
5. Serve warm or at room temperature. Note: leftovers make a delicious lunch for the next day.

How The Other Half Lives

Lest anyone wonder, I’m fully aware of how annoying I can be. I, with all my rules by which to eat, and my inability to hold my tongue even in polite company, can grate on the last nerve of one who would like to be left alone with their soda pop and bag of chips. And see, if you only have to deal with my sermons here, in this quiet forum where you can leave with a single click, you may find me tolerable.

But you would be wrong.

The Carnivore tunes me out (he’s had years of practice), and Big Mama shares most of my dietary concerns, but as for everyone else, well, I just can’t help myself. I have strong opinions on sodas, imported produce, meat, conventional dairy products, high-fructose corn syrup, boxed mixes of any kind (including, but not limited to, cakes, brownies, pastas, pancakes, and biscuits), mass-market coffee, fast food chains, seafood of unknown provenance, juice drinks, cornbread with sugar, and processed food in general. And that is nowhere near a comprehensive list.

Look, we’re all a little neurotic about something, right? For me, it’s food. Clearly.

At my house, I serve an almost entirely vegetarian menu (the occasional exceptions are seafood maybe once a month, and the ham that I put into The Carnivore’s lunch bagels, at his request). Everything is made from scratch, except pie crusts (which scare me), some of our bread, all of our pasta (until I break down and buy a pasta machine), cheese & yogurt, and Edy’s strawberry popsicles (a non-negotiable food item). The vast majority of our produce, at least from May through October, comes from our CSA, the farmer’s market, or my mother’s garden. And the only groceries that come from out of the country are coffee (though I buy an organic, fair trade, locally-roasted blend), olive oil, balsamic vinegar, some cheeses, and a rare lime or banana. I think popcorn should be popped in a pan on top of the stove, and would rather eat a raw potato than bake it in a microwave.

Some rules are occasionally broken, at which time I flog myself with a limp (yet organic and whole wheat, to be sure) noodle and then strive to be a better consumer. Again.

I know what you’re thinking. “So what DO you eat, little miss smarty-pants?”

Well, I’m glad you asked. Actually, I get asked this question a lot. Through some genetic quirk, I am slim even though all I talk about is food. And then, since everyone knows I’m a vegetarian and very few people seem to understand how I get by in life that way, I field questions about obtaining adequate protein and iron. I usually give vague answers to this query, mostly because vague answers are my forte no matter the topic, but I’ve decided to lay it all out on the table now.

For the next week, I’m going to chronicle all my meals here. So far today, I have dutifully written down each and every snack, meal, and fig, and tomorrow I will post that ridiculous list here. I will admit it if I break down and go to Dairy Queen, and I won’t sugarcoat things if I eat virtuously for every single meal. I’m nothing if not brutally honest, and I have no qualms about making myself look bad (I do it all the time). I will not, though, under any circumstances, get into serving sizes or calorie counts. That takes all the fun out of eating. And if it isn’t any fun, well, what’s the point?

I hope I don’t regret this…

Ribbons and Bows

Our summer CSA subscription from Full Moon Farms ended two weeks ago, so I’ve gotten back to picking and choosing our menus based on what is available at the Saturday Athens Farmer’s Market. Well, I suppose ‘picking and choosing’ isn’t an entirely accurate representation since, of course, I am limited by what’s in season at the moment. But, considering the wanton recklessness of basing a menu on the vast array of produce at the supermarket, nearly all of which is grown on far-flung continents and is mostly season-less, and comparing that to the limitations imposed upon meal choices when our produce comes solely out of a box provided to us by the CSA, I guess we’re somewhere closer to the middle of the continuum right now.

Or maybe I’m just thinking too much about the whole thing.

I’m always a little relieved the first week after the CSA season ends. I finally get the crisper drawers completely cleaned out, and I’m no longer feeling any stress about making sure nothing goes bad before we get around to eating it (and I feel nearly giddy that I no longer have to find creative ways to use kale). But truly, that relief only lasts for a week. Then I start to miss that giant box of veggies, the weekly drive out to the farm, and the anticipation of finding out what surprises were in the box each time. Plus, when it comes to cost-effectiveness, joining a CSA works out to a better deal than does the farmer’s market. Granted, there are drawbacks to the CSA since you never know what you will be getting, and some summers have better harvests than others, but that’s all part of the point anyway. Subscribing to a co-op means you share in both the bounty and the losses that come from farming.

Which means I ate squash every week, if not every single stinking doggone day, for the last month or so of the CSA season. There was a point, during that last week, when the sight of squash made me break out in hives. I mean, sure, I love the stuff. And there will be a point in January when I’ll start freaking out because I miss it so much, but, you know, by early August I’m over it. Completely, utterly, and fully over it.

Anyhow, all that aside, here I find myself, already missing the CSA. I still go to the farmer’s market early every Saturday morning (within 5 minutes of the opening as a matter of fact), so I actually have more choices available to me since there are at least a dozen farmers there any given week, but unbelievably, this morning I checked my list on the way out the door, and found that I’d written both zucchini and yellow squash into the menu for the next week. One week without squash, and already I’m jonesing.

The thing is though, it was only two weeks ago that I was desperate for new squash recipes. It reached a point where grilled or sautéed squash slices were out of the question. And I just couldn’t bear the thought of one more meal of tucking the squash into vegetable soup, or veggie quesadillas, or marinara sauce, or anything else for that matter. Because while it may seem at times that there is an abundance of ways to use squash in the kitchen, the truth is, there isn’t. Not without resorting to odd, overly hippie, vegetarian recipes that will turn off the carnivores in the family, at least. And I must admit, we do enjoy variety. If I had my way, we would go at least a month without repeating a single recipe (except for those addictive crispy potatoes, of course).

One of the last “new” squash recipes that I lucked into was actually an old one that I had tried once, a few years back, and then completely forgotten about. It had come from a 2005 issue of Cooking Light and had, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, seemed a little too wasteful to be put into regular rotation. But, oh, it was light and delicious and had an unexpected texture that really appealed to me. See, in this recipe, you use a vegetable peeler to shave the squash into ribbons (hence the cool texture), but the seedy core is discarded and therein lie the rub for me. Normally I use the whole squash, so tossing out any portion of it seemed to be sacrilege. Until, that is, I reached the part of the summer where I was sick to death of squash (or so I thought). Then, well, using the whole squash just wasn’t at the top of my priorities any longer.

This makes an excellent side dish. It’s very simple and only takes a few minutes to prepare and cook, yet the flavor is full and most interesting. The only drawback, and it can be a big one to get past, is that the dish looks a bit unappealing. If you’re willing to spend an inordinate amount of time, you can peel the ribbons into perfect little pieces and then arrange them artfully on the plate until it looks quite pretty, but frankly, I have neither the time nor the patience for that kind of nonsense, especially since I tend to serve this with at least two or three additional dishes. Thus, when I plate this, it looks a little like, um, compost. And, since I am planning to serve this dish to my houseguests later this week, I do hope they come to the table with an open mind. If not, well, there’ll be more for me.

*****

YELLOW SQUASH RIBBONS WITH RED ONION AND PARMESAN (adapted from Cooking Light, serves 4 as a side dish)

• 2 pounds yellow squash
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 large red onion, thinly vertically sliced
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 tsp coarse kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
• 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 oz shaved Parmaiganno-Regianno cheese (or Pecorino Romano)

1. Using a vegetable peeler, shave squash into ribbons, discarding seedy core.
2. Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat.
3. Add squash, garlic and onion to skillet; sauteeing for 3 to 5 minutes, or until onion is just tender.
4. Remove from heat, and add salt, red pepper and black pepper, tossing gently to combine.
5. Sprinkle with shaved cheese.

Note: the squash, onion and garlic can all be found fresh at the farmer's market at the same time.

Love and Special Sauce

During the summer, with such an abundance of fresh produce, I rarely plan meals in advance. Instead, I’ll generally wait until the last minute and then survey my options before pulling together a simple dinner of whatever I have on hand. Between our CSA subscription, my Saturday morning trips to the farmer’s market, and accepting overstock from my mother’s and grandmother's gardens, my kitchen is always brimming with an eclectic array of vegetables that take center stage on our dinner plates. Truly, it is wondrous.

I still go to the grocery store for dairy products, pasta and rice, dried beans and soymilk, but for the most part, I let the local harvest dictate our menus. Summertime is perfect that way. It’s too hot to eat anyway, and, well, let’s admit it, this just isn’t the right time for heavy casseroles or long, laborious recipes. Besides, with so many vegetables right at their peak for flavor and texture, a light hand is generally all that is needed.

My favorite dinners right now are vegetable plates. I might make a frittata or a quiche with a few different veggies, or I’ll roast, grill and sauté to my heart's content until I have three or four side dishes and decide we don't even need a separate entree. Like I said, it is wondrous. And this goes on for months, until I suddenly pull back and realize that all this variety has, without warning, become dull. Generally it is late August before this happens, and quite honestly, it could just be that the heat has roasted my brain by that time (or the fact that we never want to see another squash again), but when it happens, IT HAPPENS, you know? Everything comes to a screeching halt and we just can’t bear it any longer.

Just once, someone will plead, just for one night, let’s have something else. No more vegetable plates, no more light and healthy meals. Bring on the cream sauce. Pile on the decadence. Do some carb-loading. See how the other half lives.

Oh, don’t worry. This won’t last. And it isn’t as if I’ve completely cracked and decided to start serving processed foods or any other such nonsense. Matter of fact, at this morning’s farmer’s market, I picked up some parsley, leeks, blue potatoes, squash, and okra (along with some locally roasted coffee beans that I am very excited about).

Last night was not a time for vegetable plates though. I wanted to inject some variety back into our lives, something unexpected and fun. The Big Boy had, out of nowhere, been asking for pancakes anyway so I took my cue from him and decided we would have an upside down day. Breakfast for dinner. But with a twist, of course.

Pancakes from a mix don’t appeal to me for obvious reasons, and The Carnivore isn’t a big fan of whole wheat pancakes, so I was most intrigued when I came across a recipe for ricotta pancakes in a recent issue of Bon Appetit magazine. And, oh my stars, the brown sugar-cherry sauce sounded perfectly delightful as well, especially if I were to substitute fresh, local blueberries since I can’t find a source for fresh cherries within 3,000 miles here.

We’re in love, this recipe and I. The ricotta and the egg whites play off each other in a strangely dichotomous way, with a simultaneous richness and lightness that make the pancakes melt in your mouth. It’s love, I tell you. A crispy exterior, a fluffy yet substantial interior, topped with a fruity, barely-sweetened sauce is the stuff of dreams. Well, my dreams at least. I don't know what everyone else dreams about...

I served the pancakes with those Creamy, Dreamy Cheddar Grits that I crave so often, and it made for a dinner that made everyone happy, adults, houseguests, and kids alike. And since there was a considerable amount of sauce left over, I think I might just have to throw together a poundcake today to sop it up with.

But then we shall repent and go back to eating squash for at least two meals a day. Amen.

*****

RICOTTA PANCAKES WITH BLUEBERRY SAUCE (adapted from Bon Appetit, makes 12-16 pancakes, enough to serve about 4 people)

• 1/2 cup water, divided
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1 Tbs unsalted butter
• 2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)
• 2 Tbs packed brown sugar
• 1 Tbs fresh lemon juice
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 Tbs sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 1/3 cups whole-milk ricotta cheese
• 4 large egg yolks (save 3 of the whites)
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 3 large egg whites (saved from above)
• Vegetable oil or cooking spray for the griddle

For the sauce (oh, the glorious sauce):

1. Whisk 1/4 cup water and the cornstarch in a small bowl and set aside.
2. Melt butter in a medium cast-iron or other nonstick skillet over medium heat.
3. To the pan, add blueberries, the remaining 1/4 cup water, and brown sugar. Stir until sugar dissolves.
4. Increase the heat just a little, to about medium-high, and add cornstarch mixture.
5. Stir until mixture boils and thickens slightly, about one minute.
6. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice. Set aside.

For the pancakes (ah, but I do love these pancakes):

1. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
2. Using an electric mixer, beat the ricotta cheese and egg yolks at medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 1 minute.
3. Reduce mixer speed to low, and add half of the flour mixture, beating just until blended.
4. With the mixer still on low, add half of the milk, followed by the remaining flour mixture, scraping down sides of bowl.
5. Add the remaining milk and beat only until combined.
6. Using the mixer again, but with a clean bowl and beater, beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. This will take one or two minutes, so that the peaks will stand up when the mixer is turned off and the beater is lifted. When you have a peak, you're good. Better to err on the side of not stiff enough than to have it end up dry.
7. Fold 1/4 of the whites into the ricotta mixture, and then fold in the rest of the whites, 1/4 at a time. Don't overstir or all that wonderful air will be beaten out of the mixture.
8. Heat griddle or large nonstick skillet over medium heat.
9. Brush griddle with oil (or spray with cooking spray) and drop batter by 1/4 cupfuls onto griddle.
10. Cook pancakes until bubbles form on top, and bottoms are golden (two to three minutes). Flip and cook for another minute or two until the other side is golden as well.
11. Keep pancakes warm in a 200 degree oven until all are cooked.
12. Serve with warm or room-temperature blueberry sauce.

You Are What You Eat

Oh, it was one of those weeks. Things started off so swimmingly last Monday, with me knocking out most of my weekly errands there at the onset, and getting through most of the paperwork that I had designated as imperative. Then, on Tuesday, as the kids and I were driving back from the farm with our weekly CSA box of produce just brimming with basil and parsley, Swiss chard, tomatoes, potatoes, squash and zucchini, eggplant, cucumbers, onions and garlic, The Auto From The Inner Circle of Hell overheated. Not just a little, mind you. The kind of overheating that involves turning on the heat full blast so as to bleed the heat out of the engine, in no less than 90 degree weather. And even then, the needle went into the red and so I searched for a safe place to pull off the road with my precious cargo of children and produce. Before I could make up my mind about what to do (and one of the options included moving back to town where a car would be a less necessary part of our existence), there was a loud explosion and fluid sprayed out from under the hood. It was turning into one of those days.

I pulled over in front of an assisted living facility, calmly climbed out of The Auto From The Inner Circle of Hell and furiously dialed The Carnivore on my cell phone. When there was no answer, and Little Miss Piggy started to cry (no doubt from the heat) and The Big Boy started to fuss (because he wanted me to “take the car to the hospital”), I lost my cool. All of it. Every last shred. I jumped up and down in fury and kicked a tire, and then I called my mommy.

My chagrin was palpable when I saw all the retirees sitting in rocking chairs on the porch of the facility, quietly watching me pitch a big fit.

In the days that have followed, as The Auto From The Inner Circle of Hell sits in front of my house, in the same spot the tow truck deposited it, with its unrepentant hood up and its bumper splayed out upon the ground beside it, I have done little more than fume. It was paid for, you see, and I do not relish the thought of getting a new vehicle even though it is painfully that this might be my only option.

I wanted to spend my week playing around with all the beautiful vegetables from the farm, trying some new recipes and putting up sauces for the winter, but everything has been overshadowed by the glowering hunk of metal taking up space in my yard. When I should have been finding new uses for squash, I was running amortization schedules in my head to see how much I was willing to spend on a new(er), less offensive automobile. And when I would have rather been turning those beautiful onions into sinful fried rings of glory, I was comparing the gas mileage and cargo space of different vehicles.

We did eat, of course, but there were no spectacular new recipes last week. I sautéed slices of squash with garlic and onions, and I made more of those crazy-addictive crispy flattened potatoes, and I froze some more batches of pesto to get us through the long, hard (4 ½ weeks) of winter we will have to endure in a few months, but I have no breakthroughs in cooking to share.

This is such a lonely feeling. I love to share recipes, and yet here I am, and I have nothing. Nothing but a broken down, fully useless Auto From The Inner Circle of Hell to grumble about.

I reached a new low on Friday when I realized I had no transportation with which to get to the Saturday morning farmer’s market. I flopped on my mother’s sofa in abject misery (after she came to pick me up, of course) and contemplated borrowing my grandmother’s car. The market would cheer me up, for sure, especially since I knew there was going to be live music (something I have heard far too little of since becoming a family woman), and I was feeling most desperate for more potatoes – because one can never have enough of those Crispy Flattened Potatoes.

My mother raised no dummy though (in my case, at least) and when I saw an opportunity for redemption, I jumped up and wrapped myself around it. Mom was trying to coerce my visiting uncle into joining her and Grandma at yard sales on Saturday morning, and Uncle Jim (God bless him AND the horse he rode in on) made entertaining little scoffing noises at Mom before saying, “I’d rather go to the farmer’s market with Sarah.”

Yes, yes, yes. THAT is how one erases a perfectly annoying week.

My Uncle Jim is only about 13 years older than I am, and I have always adored him. I knew he would be, without a shadow of a doubt, the ideal farmer’s market date. He’s hip, he knows food, he already understands why I’m so infatuated with the farmer’s market, he’s well-versed in what goes on politically, and he’s a lot of fun. He has always been fun. Mom and I shared a house with him in New Orleans for a few months when I was a wee thing, and there were always delightful impromptu visits when he would pass through Georgia in the years before and since. Even more than usual, I was excited in my anticipation of our trip to the market.

Truly, I look forward to the market every week now. We have had other incarnations of farmer’s markets in Athens over the years, but this spring a very well-planned and eclectic market came together at Bishop Park and was an instant success. There are maybe 10 or 12 stands of organic produce, a truck with eggs (that always seem to – grrrr – sell out within 5 minutes) and grass-fed meat, a couple of tables piled with fresh breads and other baked goods, Free Trade coffee that is locally roasted, and some crafts as well. It is beautiful and friendly and not the least bit elitest. You don’t have to be a card-carrying hippie, you don’t need to be able to converse on the merits of The Farm Bill, and you aren’t required to sign a statement that you will never eat anything grown out of state. The farmers at the stands are more than willing to answer questions about their goods, and you’d be hard-pressed to not find smiling people on every side. It would pain me greatly to think that anyone isn’t shopping there because they are intimidated by it in any way.

Everything is grown (or raised, in the case of the meat and eggs) organically and sustainably, within 100 miles of Athens, and there is even a table with information about PLACE, an organization that works to promote the idea of eating locally. The variety of produce is just lovely to behold, which, of course, is the best draw of all.

Uncle Jim, Little Miss Piggy and I arrived at the market only a minute or two past 8:00 this past Saturday morning, and my dour mood improved considerably before we even had his car parked. The weather was pleasant, the music was a great addition to the ambience, and Jim happily ambled off, scoring some blueberry juice and some hand-made soaps. There were people milling around everywhere, tote bags bulging with their purchases, and, even though the egg people were, of course, already out of eggs again, I gleefully filled my bags with potatoes, green beans, a gloriously fragrant cantaloupe, yellow onions, and two bags of dried tomatoes. The dried tomatoes were a particularly pleasing find, since I usually buy mine in jars from the supermarket, and I can’t wait to cook with these. I was also thrilled to the top to come across some fingerling potatoes. I have been trying to find some in the stores for a couple of years, and always came up empty before now.

For so long, one of the loudest arguments against local, organic food was the exclusionary high prices, but with the inflation at the supermarket checkout, I’m finding the costs of my summer CSA subscription, along with my weekly farmer’s market purchases, to be only slightly more than what I had formerly paid in the stores. Naturally it is all a matter of priorities, and since I’m vegetarian, well, it isn’t a big leap for me to buy my groceries locally and to be willing to spend a little more on them.

It can be daunting, I know, to go from buying processed food at the supermarket to joining a CSA or getting up at the crack of dawn (on a Saturday, no less) to get to the farmer’s market before everything is gone. The thing is though, it isn’t necessary to change one’s whole life in one fell swoop. If anything, that would be a recipe for disaster. But you have to start somewhere, and the benefits of eating locally and seasonally are too many to name. The flavor is the biggest and most obvious difference, but there is also a lot to be said for keeping your money in the local economy, for supporting small local farmers, for really knowing where and from whom your food truly comes from.

Start small, if it seems easier: go to the farmer’s market even just once a month, or make a pact to only buy produce at the supermarket that is grown in this country (hey – it uses less energy than transporting veggies from Chile), visit a pick-your-own-berry farm, read that Barbara Kingsolver book that brought local eating to mainstream America. Just do something. Food should be a source of joy, eating should be a thoughtful experience. It just makes sense that dinner should come from somewhere other than a box or a can.

After all, you are what you eat.

Southern Summer Delicacy

Green tomatoes are one of those fleeting joys, one of the last of the seasonal items that you must learn to grab while you can, unlike the artificially year-round availability we have grown accustomed to with so many other fruits and vegetables. I can find a tasteless, perfectly round, evenly colored red tomato in the supermarket any old time. Green tomatoes, on the other hand, are available around these parts only to those who grow their own tomatoes, or who belong to a CSA or shop at the farmer’s market (though I came up empty-handed when I tried to obtain more of them at this morning's market).

Don‘t get me wrong. This isn’t a complaint letter. I like having something to look forward to. Green tomatoes are really nothing more than plain old-fashioned unripe tomatoes - perfect for those of us who get wildly impatient waiting for produce to ripen. If left to their own devices, they’ll turn red and get softer, but frankly, I like them just the way they are. Firm, almost to the point of crispness inside, with very little in the way of seeds and gel, and a tart flavor akin to wild apples, they have rightfully earned their place in Southern cuisine. But you already knew that, right? Everyone has read Fried Green Tomatoes, or seen the movie, or (come on) at least heard of them, though from what I understand, entirely too many people have never had the pleasure of enjoying this unexpectedly addictive dish.

Truth be told, I’ve only had them twice, and I'm firmly ensconced in the Deep South here. When The Carnivore and I were dating, he showed up after work one afternoon with a bag of vegetables from the garden of a mutual acquaintance of ours. When he reached into the bag though, and pulled out a succession of green tomatoes, I winced and reached for the Chinese take-out menu hanging on my fridge. “I’ll fry them,” he said. “I don’t know about all that,” I replied warily, wrinkling my nose up at both the thought of the tomatoes themselves and fried food in general. An hour or so later, of course, I was munching happily and wiping my greasy fingers on my jeans.

Last summer, when I discovered a couple green tomatoes in our weekly box from the farm, I excitedly lined them up like little toy soldiers on the kitchen counter, vowing to learn how to fry them. Two days later, when I finally had the time, I saw that an evil ripening ghost had snuck in and turned my green tomatoes red. So I made a batch of salsa with them instead and consoled myself with Mexican food for dinner.

And then a whole ‘nother year passed. See, green tomatoes are like that. Out of sight, out of mind, or some such cliche. Since I don’t pass them at the grocery store every week, I just don’t think about them, and then lo and behold, poof, suddenly there they were again. I was crouching in the big walk-in cooler at the farm, transferring my box of goodies to some bags when I came across something like eight or nine big, fat, firm-as-could-be green tomatoes. The Big Boy eyed them a little suspiciously at first, but caught on in a hurry when I told him I was going to fry them up into tomato chips. It’s all in the way you talk to a kid…

I mentioned my plan to my adventurous sister who had never had the pleasure of fried green tomatoes and she cheerfully invited herself to dinner as well. She and I both dug around for the right recipe, and I finally settled on one that I had clipped from the July 1997 issue of Fine Cooking. I can only assume that my mother must have found me some old issues at a yard sale, and that I hadn’t been holding on to this recipe clipping for eleven years, but honestly, there’s just no telling.

Now that I think about it though, I wasn’t even involved with The Carnivore yet in July of 1997, and I certainly wasn't reading cooking magazines in my spare time back then. I did run into him at a party Aviso played at in Normaltown late one night during the summer of 1997, and we did start dating a few months later…

Anyhow, that being neither here nor there – the recipe was so simple as to be nearly comical, and called for ingredients I already had on hand (unlike many of the ones which required buttermilk). I called The Carnivore to see if he had any tips for me: “salt the p-turkey out of the breading,” is, I believe, an exact quote, and then I commenced to frying.

Frankly, the biggest lesson I walked away with is that it takes more patience than I have to wait until the heat has dissipated before popping the fried slices of heaven into my mouth. I’m telling you, these things are flat-out addictive and since the ideal way to eat them seems to be standing by the stove and snacking as they come out of the skillet, the chef gets the biggest share (and ends up with a burnt tongue, or so I've heard).

I served them for dinner that night alongside a frittata made with leeks, kale and garlic from the farm, and a potato salad supplied by my brother-in-law who, for some reason, did not accompany my sister to dinner, though that was just as well, I suppose, because there were only two slices of tomato left over.

As Jamie Oliver said about something completely unrelated to tomatoes, “This is not Michelin star food. This is proper food. This is dinner.”

*****

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES (serves four as a side dish, adapted from Fine Cooking)

• 4 green tomatoes (about 1/2 pound each) sliced 1/2 inch thick
• 4 tsp kosher salt, divided, plus a little more for sprinkling
• 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper, divided
• 1 cup stone-ground cornmeal
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 2/3 or so cup of olive oil, divided

1. Season the sliced tomatoes generously with 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper.
2. Combine the cornmeal, flour, and remaining 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper in a small bowl.
3. In a large cast-iron skillet, pour about 1/3 cup of olive oil, so that the oil is about 1/4-inch deep or so in the pan. Heat over medium heat.
4. Dredge the tomato slices in the cornmeal mixture immediately before putting them in the pan (don't do this too far ahead or everything gets soggy), and yes, there is no need for an egg mixture - the cornmeal/flour mix clings wonderfully to the slightly moist tomatoes on its own.
5. Carefully (to avoid getting splashed with hot oil) place a few tomato slices in the pan, leaving plenty of room between them, and cook in batches, until well-browned on the bottom (2 to 3 minutes). Flip the slices over and cook the other side.
6. Drain finished slices on paper towels, and add more oil to the pan as needed.
7. Serve immediately, sprinkled with extra salt.

The Problem of the Bitter Berry

I am a recent convert to the cooking with fruit concept. For the longest time, I thought people to be quite batty when they would take perfectly good fresh-picked berries and run off to bake a pie. Honestly, it seemed quite wasteful. If I wander around picking blueberries, even if I come home with three bucketfuls, I will sit and eat them out of hand until I get sick. And sick I have gotten. Same goes for blackberries, which grow all over our property and which can stain one’s clothing beyond repair (as I’ve found when Little Miss Piggy stuffs them into her mouth with her less-than-coordinated fingers).

There are just very few pleasures in life that can compare to the flavor and texture of sun-warmed berries bursting in your mouth. And it is such a short-lived season that you don’t even have time to get sick of them before, poof, they’re gone.

Now don’t get me wrong. I plan to have too many berries someday. We have five blueberry bushes planted now, and I intend to add to our little orchard. If things go well, we shall be so inundated with berries that we’ll be able to freeze some for use in smoothies when the dark and dreary days of January arrive. But we are years away from that goal, and my little four-year-old gardener son can easily eat his weight in blueberries, so sharing is a bit of a problem.

I understand the appeal of fruit-based desserts, really I do. Cobblers and pies have their place in life, and it would be a rare day indeed for me to pass up one of these delicacies at a true Southern meat-and-three restaurant where the cobblers tend to be made with old family recipes. Hot, gooey fruit, covered with a crisp topping and then drowned in cold vanilla ice cream? Please. Pretty please.

But, see, given a choice of fresh-picked berries and a dessert baked from the same, I would choose the unadorned fruits every time. Maybe you’ve never tried produce that was picked moments ago. Those refrigerated fruits in the grocery store, picked days (or weeks) ago clear across the country (or the world) aren’t what I’m referring to. Those are not fresh. And they usually don’t even taste like real fruit. Peaches that taste like dry cotton, humongous strawberries with firm white insides, mealy blueberries, well, those just don’t count.

A week or so ago, I was flipping through my grandmother’s current issue of Southern Living when I ran across a very simple recipe for blackberry cobbler. After some histrionics on my part about nobody loving me when I could find neither pen nor paper, my usually oppositional little sister came through for me and I scribbled down the recipe and stuffed it into the nether regions of my giant bag.

The recipe seemed so ideal: local, seasonal fruit; idiot-proof baking instructions, a short list of ingredients. But I just couldn’t quite see past the stumbling block of having to waste perfectly good berries in a dish that would mask their true flavor. Then, last Saturday, The Carnivore and The Big Boy went traipsing through the woods and down the driveway and returned with a handful of the smallest, the tartest, most pathetic-looking blackberries I’ve ever seen. Apparently, two years of drought have taken their toll. I tried to keep my game face on, but the berries were bad. There was no sweet flavor, there was no juice dripping down my chin, there was no burst of plump skin. There was only tart, only bitter.

I have this one recalcitrant eyebrow that goes up when I'm mulling over an idea. It is an involuntary tic that I have very little control over and which has driven a few of my friends mad, and it shot up quickly over the problem of the bitter berries. “Can you go back and find four cups of these for me please?” I asked The Carnivore, trying vainly to hold the eyebrow down with my index finger. Without a single complaint, off they went, The Carnivore and The Big Boy, back to the thorns and the brambles, eager to help in the hopes that they would be rewarded with dessert.

I wasn’t sure it would even work, but it just seemed so logical. It makes sense to me that it was exactly for this problem that cobblers were invented in the first place. After all, what can you do with the most inedible berry harvest but add sugar to it and wrestle it into submission? Regardless, we were inundated with these miserable excuses for fruit and I couldn’t stand for them to go to waste. And that recipe was just lolling about in my bag…

But work, it did. The sugar tamed the tartness of the berries and created this perfect synergy of flavor. A little sweet, a little tart, with a crisp crust and just enough juice to muddle the color of the Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream that I topped it with. I loved it. The Carnivore loved it. The Big Boy wanted to swim in it. If I get my way, they’ll pick another four cups this weekend. And the one after that.

*****

BLACKBERRY COBBLER (from Southern Living, serves 6)

• 4 cups blackberries
• 1 Tbs lemon juice
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 6 Tbs melted butter

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Place blackberries in lightly greased 8-inch square baking pan.
3. Sprinkle berries with lemon juice.
4. In a medium bowl, stir together the egg, sugar and flour until mixture resembles coarse meal.
5. Sprinkle flour mixture over fruit.
6. Drizzle melted butter over the flour topping.
7. Bake for about 35 minutes, until topping is crisp and lightly browned.
8. Serve hot.

Know Cukes

I have a love-hate relationship with cucumbers. There is no real drama behind the story; its actually very simple. In June, I love cucumbers. By the end of July, I am much less fond of them. Or, put another way, I love the first 149, but I feel considerable angst about the 763 that follow.Cucumbers are just one of those things for me, for our whole family actually. They are beautiful and refreshing and deliciously delicately-flavored when they’re crisp, cold, and of a normal size. It never seems to be long though before I find myself with a pile that are going soft in the peel, have grown to annoying proportions, and are more seedy than I would like.

I try not to hold it against them. After all, most things grow old after a while, especially vegetables that just won’t quit. Everyone in the South gets grumpy about yellow squash by the end of the growing season, you know, and most of us have no trouble admitting that there are only so many ways to enjoy a zucchini. Tomatoes are never a problem, and I’ve never heard a complaint about too many blueberries or too many strawberries. Remember last year when the entire peach and blueberry crops in Georgia got killed by the Easter freeze? While we never run out of ways to celebrate a fruit, we can feel a bit differently about some of the vegetables.

But, really, what can you do with a cucumber? Well, let’s count: you can make pickles (yum), you can slice them and put them in a bowl of vinegar in the fridge (one of my favorite summertime treats), you can eat them out of hand, you can put slices in a sandwich, and you can chop them and throw them in a salad. That’s it. Oh, sure, you’ll find cookbooks that claim you can sauté them, but that’s just whacked. I know. I’ve tried. And I don’t really want to talk about it.

Whacked, I tell you.

I suppose this is where I should admit that I don’t know how to make pickles. I know it can’t be all that hard, but I just, oh, I don’t know, get BORED before I finish reading instructions on pickling and I just move on. There are some things a girl feels like doing, and there are some things that just feel like a colossal waste of time when I have so LITTLE time to start with. Maybe when the kids are older…

In the early years of our marriage, when we still lived in town in that cute little pink rental house that didn’t have air conditioning, we were cucumber fools. The Carnivore made sure we never ran low, and would always have a giant casserole dish in the fridge filled with slices of red onion and cucumbers swimming in vinegar and cracked black pepper. During those steamy months when we would open the freezer door just to stick our heads in so we could stop sweating for a brief moment, we lived on those cucumber slices. They were bracingly cold and acidic, the ideal refreshment to sate our short-lived hunger (who can eat when it’s that hot?) and to make our lips pucker.

But then, you know, we grew up. We moved out to the country, restored an old house and added central air conditioning. Three separate units to be exact, with programmable thermostats and crazy energy-efficient systems that mean we can keep this entire house cool without batting an eye at the electric bill. Granted, The Carnivore owns a heating and air business, but still…

The thing is though, we have since tried filling our refrigerator with those lovely vinegar cucumbers, but, well, it just wasn’t the same. Maybe it’s because we aren't hot and sweaty anymore, or maybe our palates have, dare I say it, become more mature, but we just weren’t interested in them anymore. I was a little disheartened. It was a little like giving up yet another part of our youth. No longer did we sit on the front porch in the evenings, talking with neighbors as they walked by. No more did we lay around languidly on sweltering Saturday afternoons, talking and laughing and drinking iced coffee because it was too doggone hot to enjoy it any other way. Gone were the days of living on vinegar-soaked cucumbers for dinner followed by frozen fruit cocktail for dessert.

Woe.

Needless to say, I guess, when I picked up the third or fourth box from our CSA this summer, I was more than a little chagrined to see the first cucumbers show up. Even though I knew I had actually been craving some cukes, I was already feeling a bit negative about the whole thing because I was wary of getting to that point when I would shudder to find them in the bottom of the box. I did what I always did with the first one though: I cut it in half right down the long side, dribbled it with coarse salt and balsamic vinegar and ate it out of hand, fighting The Big Boy for the last bite, but I chomped away a little half-heartedly and then I tucked the rest of them in the crisper and moved on to the beets (something I will never tire of).

But then I pulled out my binder of recipes that I had clipped in anticipation of the new CSA season. All year long, when I came across recipes that seemed to be intriguing uses for eggplant or squash or any of the other summer veggies, I put them in this binder, knowing full well that as the glow of June waned, I would be desperate for new ways to cook kale or turnips or eggplants or any of the other stumpers that the farm would throw my way.

It was one of those fabulously serendipitous moments as I opened the binder to find a teeny-tiny little piece of paper, no more than one column-inch in length and in a pale, hard-to-read font, for an Asian twist on the good, old-fashioned Southern marinated cucumber. This one called for rice vinegar and sesame oil and crushed red pepper. The idea was the same, but the flavors would clearly be vastly different.

Having nothing to lose, I gave it a shot. All the ingredients were ones I keep on hand anyway, and goodness knows I wouldn’t be lacking for cucumbers through the summer so even if worse came to worst, I could toss the whole thing into the compost heap without shedding more than a tear or two.

Ah, but there was not only no ‘worse,’ there was no ‘worst’ either. We all loved the results, even Little Miss Piggy, who likes to suck out the vinegar and the seeds and then throw the sliced cucumber carcasses under the kitchen table where they end up sticking to our poor little dog.

These flavors are unexpected in marinated cucumbers, but not so unusual that they qualify as a kitchen experiment, and all the blessed qualities of the traditional recipe remain the same, namely the crisp texture and the refreshing acidity. The scant bit of oil balances the vinegar though, and adds a nutty tone that I love.

NOTE: there is a little bit of sugar in this, mom, so you will need to bear with me – remember that there is sugar in bread-and-butter pickles as well, and keep an open mind.

*****

MARINATED CUCUMBERS (from Cooking Light)

• 2 cups sliced cucumbers (as thinly or thickly as you like)
• 3 Tbs rice vinegar
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl with a tight-fitting lid. Cover and refrigerate for at least two hours.
2. Shake bowl to redistribute marinade before serving (or before reaching into the fridge to grab a slice or two for a quick snack).

Ode to a Potato

It is a relatively rare occurrence for me (lo, the entire family) to get so excited about a new recipe that I end up making the same dish multiple times in one week. I mean, sure, there has been the occasional dessert recipe that has knocked our socks off and been cooked back-to-back, but that hardly counts.

I try a lot of new recipes, and we have long since grown accustomed to the nightly meal evaluation in which we pick apart what we’ve eaten and decide whether or not to add a new dish to our repertoire. So of course there are evenings around the dinner table when we all smack our lips with delight and declare a meal delicious and lick our plates clean, but these times are tempered by the other suppers that make us shrug with boredom. Even with the recipes that we fall madly in love with, the most those winners can hope for is that I will cook them again in a few weeks or so. With so many new recipes waiting in a stack on my menu desk, and with a binder bulging with tried-and-true recipes, and two bookcases groaning under the weight of too many cookbooks, we can go weeks without duplicating a recipe.

Of course, it is summer now, and the vast majority of our produce comes from the CSA we subscribe to (supplemented by my mother's and grandmother’s gardens), so the ingredients I’m cooking with are fairly constant. Like the summer squash, obviously, and kale for the fifth time in as many weeks, just to name a few of the standards. Needless to say, I have scoured my cooking resources for variations on these themes.

Oh, but then there is the magical potato. As much as I love a good beet, and as excited as I get to eat just-picked fruits, very few things can make my heart flutter like a potato. Good old boring potatoes. You know you feel the same way. Even if you’re the type to shun a real potato, I bet you can eat a French fry or a potato chip with the best of them, right?

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I too love those bastions of ill-health. While I’d rather starve than eat a typical convenience store potato chip, I’ll knock you (and your mother) over to get to a bag of Mrs. Vickie's. And then there’s the French fry. I do love a good French fry. I have a recipe that we use fairly regularly for baked fries, but if I’m totally honest with myself, I have to admit that nothing compares to a deep-fried French fry. There is just no way around it. Baked is to adequate as deep-fried is to delicious.

Normally I’m not one to deny myself a guilty pleasure. I might not tell anyone about it – that is why they call it ‘guilty,’ after all – but if a girl needs a French fry, a girl needs a French fry, right? The problem is that I made a fatal mistake in my reading recently, and I read Fast Food Nation nearly back-to-back with Don't Eat This Book. I haven’t been able to bring myself to eat a fast food fry since.

But enough of the moralistic stuff. It is the potato itself that is my object of affection, and I’ll take a potato any which way. I like them baked, I like them roasted, I like them grilled. I will eat them on a train. I will eat them in the rain. I love potatoes. Yukon golds are beautiful and baby reds are sublime. In a pinch though, I wouldn’t even dream of turning my nose up at a good, old-fashioned Idaho clunker.

A while back, I ran across an intriguing recipe in Fine Cooking for Crispy Potatoes. They sounded scrumptious, and I cut the recipe out and then promptly lost it in the towering stack on the menu desk in my kitchen. I would run it across it sporadically, but frankly, the recipe looked a little fussy, and I rarely feel like knocking myself out on a side dish. Time constraints, teething babies, hungry husbands, houseguests and preschoolers – well, the list of reasons to not bother was endless. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that recipe.

Then, a few weeks back, Pioneer Woman, in one of her hilarious and highly-entertaining step-by-step photo recipes, made a version of the Crispy Potato that she called Crash Hot Potatoes. And she made it look easy. My interest was more than a little piqued. So I rummaged and made a big mess and pushed a lot of paper around and finally got my hands on that Fine Cooking recipe again. The recipes were strikingly similar, except that Pioneer Woman didn’t bother with the fussy steps that had been repelling me. So I did what I often do: I took the two recipes to the counter next to my stove and I just decided to go for it.

Oh. My. Stars. I am SO glad I went for it. I must warn you that this recipe is highly addictive. I made it two nights in a row. And then I made it again. And again. I think we’ve had these four or five times in the past two weeks now. We all love them, even the vegetable-averse houseguest. See, the potatoes are boiled until tender, and then you lay them out on a baking sheet and flatten them. Then, and this is my favorite part, you smother them in olive oil and salt. What could be wrong with that, right? Then, oh maybe THIS is favorite part, you put them in a hot oven until they – dig THIS – get brown and crispy on the outside.

They’re really as easy as can be. Total time is about an hour and a quarter, and that alone can be daunting, but truly, the hands-on part is only about 10 minutes. My-oh-my, they are worth the wait of the cooking time. The end result is somewhat of a cross between a potato chip and a French fry. Honest.

I think I might have to make them again tonight. Just thinking about these babies is making my heart go all pitter-patter.

*****

CRISPY FLATTENED POTATOES (adapted from Fine Cooking and Pioneer Woman, serves 4 as a side dish)

• 1 1/2 lb small red potatoes, golf-ball sized or smaller work best
• Kosher salt
• Olive oil
• Black pepper
• Italian seasoning dried herb blend (McCormick's makes one that I like that has thyme and rosemary in it)

1. Put the potatoes in a large pot, and add water until water rises at least an inch above the potatoes. Add 2 tsp kosher salt to the water, and bring water to a boil. Boil the potatoes for about 30 minutes, or until fork tender.
2. Drain the potatoes.
3. Grease a large, rimmed baking sheet with a good amount of olive oil. There should be enough so that the oil sloshes just a wee bit when the pan is tilted.
4. Put the potatoes on the baking sheet, a few inches apart.
5. With a potato masher, press down on each potato individually to flatten. You don't want pancakes here, you just want a messy, smashed-up-looking potato. The skin will break and be the best part of the potato, so try not to lose any of it in the tines of the masher. Perfection is not the goal.
6. Drizzle a fair amount of olive oil over each potato. Then, to make sure every glorious inch is covered, use a pastry brush to further oil up the tops of those taters. As a general rule, I use about 1 tsp of oil for each potato (more if the potatoes are larger).
7. Sprinkle salt over each potato (be very generous with the salt - this is not the time to be shy). I use a pinch per potato.
8. Depending on your taste, sprinkle just a little finely ground black pepper, and Italian seasoning (or whatever dried herb you prefer) on top of each potato.
9. Roast the potatoes in a convection oven at 400 degrees (or a regular oven at 450 degrees) for about 30 minutes, until brown and crispy on top. Convection ovens will yield crispier results.

Seafood Angst

I’m feeling no small amount of seafood angst. And what’s up with that anyway? Food is one of my greatest hobbies, and yet it is causing me anxiety again. I’ve learned to simmer down a little bit about food politics, at least where my grocery shopping is concerned. The Farm Bill and its ramifications still push my buttons, and I try to make the best decisions I can, within my geographic and financial limitations, but I no longer flog myself if I break down and buy a banana. This is progress.

But like I said, I’m stressed out about seafood. To be fair, this is a subject that has pained me for years. Seafood is the only ‘meat’ I eat, and I’ve often wondered if I shouldn’t just give it up and go full vegetarian. After all, there have been countless times in my life when I’ve gone months at a time without a bite of fish – for no other reason than I hadn’t craved any. But then I would go to the beach on a vacation and I would eat my weight in shellfish within the first 24 hours. Hey, you try and sit on the balcony of an oceanfront restaurant without ordering the lobster bisque, alright?

It isn’t just the personal decision regarding how far to take my vegetarianism anymore though. I mean, have you read a newspaper lately? Between sustainability issues, the problem of mercury (especially since I have been either pregnant, trying to get pregnant or breastfeeding for the past five years), distrust over Chinese food safety, and the nutritional questions regarding farmed vs. wild, well, I’m so stressed out that I get paralyzed at the fish counter.

Frankly, this is a difficult time to be a food lover. I read everything I can get my hands on about seafood issues, but truly there are so many different concerns to address, I find myself overwhelmed. And so I stand there with my mouth slightly agape, trying to ignore The Big Boy while he counts the lobsters in the tank, and pretending like I don’t see Little Miss Piggy rubbing Cheerios slobber into her hair. I discount the tilapia because it comes from Chile and that causes too much dissonance with my attempts to reduce my food mileage, and I look away from the salmon since its farmed and thus has a compromised texture and nutritional benefit. The tuna steaks are tempting, but didn’t I read something about the sustainability problem? Or was that an article on grouper?

So I close my eyes and rub my temples because I’ve given myself a headache again, and I tell The Big Boy to say goodbye to the lobsters while I try to spit-shine Little Miss Piggy’s head and push the cart to the dairy case where I will almost certainly suffer a breakdown over which organic milk comes from a company owned by Monsanto. But that is an entirely different problem.

I was born 50 years too late. Might it not have been easier Back in The Day? Back when everyone grew their own veggies and was fully accustomed to having access to only the fruits that would grow in their backyard; before eggs came from caged chickens that were fed antibiotics as a matter of course; when a fish dinner resulted from nothing less than a couple of family members with fishing poles?

There are ways to navigate this seafood terrain, of course. I’m dying to read Fish Forever, as is The Carnivore, who actually spent his late teen years on commercial fishing vessels in The Gulf and The Atlantic and whose father is a crabber to this day. Gourmet magazine recently published a Guide to Buying Sustainable Seafood, which meets my angst head-on and gives me some guidelines by which I can hopefully avoid a prescription for Xanax, and there is also a pocket guide put out by the Environmental Defense Fund that I have finally printed out and put into my giant purse-diaper bag-briefcase.

You wanna know the real rub though? I not only don’t like being told what to do, but I feel like a sheep when I blindly follow a list of rules compiled by a political lobby.

Here I am again, closing my eyes and rubbing my temples because I’ve given myself another headache. Ignorance truly would be bliss. Then I could just waste some good old-fashioned natural resources and drive to the nearest food court and order a BK Big Fish without a care in the world beyond which flavor of “milkshake” I should wash it down with.

To make matters worse, I went into full revolt earlier this week and stood at the fish counter with a recipe in hand that called for halibut or red snapper. I had never cooked with either of these fish and the dish itself sounded truly intriguing. I had a warm potato salad with beer and mustard vinaigrette planned for a side dish and, dadgumit, I was really craving fish. I knew Pacific halibut had been deemed acceptable by the fish police, but I was clueless about snapper and I had forgotten to do any research before we left the house that morning to run errands. As it happened, my grocery store was out of halibut and so I pinched my nose and bought the snapper in full ignorance. And then I went to the farm to pick up my weekly CSA box.

I later found out that red snapper is on the “worst choices” list. More dissonance. There’s just nothing quite like eating produce that is locally-grown and purchased directly from a farmer, while on the other side of my plate there squats a fillet of environmental disaster.

Maybe I should try yoga AND Xanax.

Though the snapper was clearly not the best whitefish I could have selected for this particular recipe, the dish turned out delightfully. I love firm fish to begin with, and since spicy food tickles our fancy, we fell in love with the results. It couldn’t be easier really, you rub some dry spices on the fillets, bake them for a short time, and then top the cooked fish with a chipotle-butter mixture. And of course you can vary the amount of chipotle depending upon your own threshold for food that makes your nose burn. Just be sure to use Pacific halibut rather than red snapper. Your conscience will thank you.

*****


SPICED HALIBUT WITH CHIPOTLE BUTTER (2 servings, adapted from Cooking Light)

• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/8 tsp finely ground black pepper
• 2 (6-oz) halibut fillets
• 1 Tbs melted butter
• 1 or 2 canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, minced (these have quite a kick, so err on the cautious side if you're a wuss)

1. Educate yourself about fish.
2. Combine cumin, paprika, salt and pepper in a small bowl.
3. Rub spice mixture into the fillets.
4. Transfer the fillets to a baking sheet coated with cooking spray.
5. Bake fish at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, until fish flakes easily when prodded with a fork.
6. In a small bowl, stir together the butter and the chiles.
7. Brush the chipotle butter mixture onto the cooked fillets and serve immediately.