Two faced meal.

As I was sitting in my house recovering today, I had the occasion to look around my kitchen and recognize the odd mix that is my diet. 

I am really into food politics. I watch the movies about GMO foods (from both sides). My kindle books right now are a biography of Cod, a book on the philosophy of food and a book on the history of food. I can quote obesity statistics for most of the country, I know what the calorie counts are of everything I eat, and yet, my diet is just weird.  And my weird diet has made me really become aware of the benefits of locally produced organic food.

 Almost all of the vegetables in my house are organic, from the  local CSA(the fruits and vegetables themselves come from the entire west coast, but are 100% organic.) They are a bit bruised when they get to my house, but they taste absolutely succulent.  The apples are flavorful, the oranges are juicy and not sour or bitter and the strawberry was simply perfection.  When I make my boiled greens for the week, I can actually taste the difference between the chard and the collard and the kale even after I have boiled them in wine or chicken stock. 

The non-organic veggies in my house are the opposite. They are canned and frozen and flavorless. I have corn on my counter that looks brownish yellow and is packed in some sort of watery product. The fruit cocktail cups for my young son's lunch cannot possibly contain fruit. The little squares of juice infused squishy things taste okay, but nothing like a real pear or a real apple. 

Then, in a fit of convenience, I decided to buy a set of packaged and over-processed food like-main dishes to have around the house. They are convenient, and confession, they don't taste awesome. My cupboards are filled with different mass produced preservatives mixed with different varieties of corn and soy products. The nutrition labels give the deceptive picture that what I am eating is low-calorie and is fortified with all of the vitamins an adult woman could need.  And, because of my food politics reading of late, all I can think of when I eat my box of stuff that is meant to approximate an entree is that I know where this thing comes from and it ain't a fishing boat in Alaska or an organic farm upstate.  

And for me, I realized that the main issue is that I don't really know how to cook so I get scared and either go out to eat or eat food-like substances. I can make chili (but all of the ingredients mostly come from cans), I can make quiche (but I use a trans-fatty pie crust from Marie Callendar's).  

So, protect your children (I will probably accidentally leave the oven on),  and get ready for emergency phone calls and texts regarding my inability to figure out how to clean up the flour I spilled on the floor and the weird smell emanating from the sushi rolls.

I am officially, in a month, when all of the processed crud has finally departed my kitchen, am going to become a person who eats only food. :) 

How to make a Diet Poke

One of my friends at work once used the following analogy to describe diet soda:

    Diet soda is to real food as the shadows on the wall of the cave are to reality.

If you didn't understand the reference, you need only get two things from it: 1) my addiction to diet soda is so bad that it somehow justifies references to ancient greek philosophers and 2) diet soda cannot be compared in any way, shape or form to real food. If you know the reference, and you think I am badly misusing and misquoting Plato, go drink some hemlock and shut up.

Anyway, back to diet soda. I know it is bad for me, I read an article last week that correlated excess consumption of diet soda to strokes. Aparently, people who drink diet drinks are actually fatter than those who drink regular sodas. I get that, I tend to make up the excess calories I save with my diet coke many times over. And most importantly reading the can is like going to a chemistry class:

Carbonated Water,
Caramel Color, (So, how does one grow caramel color, is there a plant?)
Aspartame,  (Anything we lovingly call FAKE SUGAR has to be bad)
Phosphoric Acid, (I think this is the ingredient that makes diet soda eat away the enamel in your teeth. MMM)
 Potassium Benzoate (to protect taste),
Natural Flavors, (I bet they use a different meaning of natural than the rest of us)
Citric Acid,  (This must be like vitamin C, right?)
Caffeine    (I have nothing bad to say about caffeine, I live in Seattle, it is heretical to hate caffeine in Seattle)

But like a girl who always goes after the bad boys, I keep going back to my diet soda. Eventually they will  ban it in the work place as a health hazard, those of us who drink the mess of chemicals will have to put on our coats and take coke breaks outside (and NOT that kind of coke break). There will be law suits, and I will sue the fake sugar companies for causing me to lose my teeth and gain weight. But until then, I will continue to enjoy my low-calorie beverage of choice.

And this is where I really annoy the mainstay providers of diet cola drinks. I do not like either of their products. The one that starts with a C is too carbonated and too harsh for my discerning fake sugar taste buds. The one that ends in Epsi is very smooth, but is too smooth. It is like the skeezy guy at a bar with one too many lines.

 So, I do the unthinkable: I mix them together in a drink I like to call Diet Poke (yes, that is what she said). It provides me an even larger dose of diet goodness and combines the very worst of both beverages into a wonderful bubbly mess that I consume every day at around two.  I have gotten to the point that I am unable to drink either major soda brand without a dose of the other brand.

Occassionally I will have a Diet Cherry Poke or a Lime Poke to mix things up a bit. I vary which brand I get the flavor from.  When I was a kid, we made these types of creations at the soda fountain and our parents shrieked in horror. But try it, I am sure you will enjoy the taste and health benefits as much as me. ;)

Current List of AWESOME food policy books I am reading...reviews to follow

1) Safe food: The Politics of Food Safety by Marion Nestle - It is disturbing enough that it is almost a diet book. Best line so far, "Irradiated poop is still poop"

2) The End of Overeating by David Kessler - Once again disturbing, but because of its descriptions of how the food industry entices us to eat fatty, salty, sugary food, you will gain 10 pounds while reading

this book.

3) The World is Fat by Barry Popkin - obesity rates in America have gone from 8% to almost 30% in the last 30 years, this book will apparently tell me why. I vote for poverty and high food prices(but I am a liberal, so of course that is what I believe).

4) Food and Philosophy - Haven't gotten into it, we shall see if it is as bad as the other "Philosophy and __________" books

5) The Way we Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason - Peter Singer does not eat meat and is a utilitarian (In short: the greatest good for the greatest number), I eat meat and am not a utilitarian, but he writes interesting books.