Everyday Systems

I got a copy of the Chopsticks Diet at Half Price Books recently. The idea of the Chopsticks Diet is that you make Asian-style food, eat lots of vegetables and fish and less red meat and poultry, and eat everything with chopsticks. The idea is that eating with chopsticks slows you down when you're eating, so you eat less.

I'm not going to make this a full-time diet, but some of the recipes in the book sounded interesting. I might try to add more Asian-style meals to my diet, and eat them with chopsticks. The author talked about how soba noodles are healthy and whole-grain, and had a number of soba noodle recipes. I should eat more soba noodles, because I like them.

If someone did want to eat that way all the time, I could see this diet being easily compatible with No S. I suppose you could even eat with chopsticks on N days and chopsticks or a knife and fork on S days.

Maybe I'd get the hang of it after a while, but I cannot eat with chopsticks. Heaven knows, I've tried and tried and I just can't get it. I'd probably lose a lot of weight! But I'm not trying it. Oh, I see it's Japanese food -- one of my least favorite cuisines. I'm not sure why, but Japanese just doesn't ring my bell.

The Mediterrasian Way is one of the books I take diet inspiration from, although I was eating mostly Mediterranean and Asian food before I was on No S and was still overweight. We eat mostly Mediterranean and Asian style foods. I loooves me some Japanese food.

The idea of eating only one type of cuisine, though, makes me I love Japanese, Chinese, Thai, and Italian food, and the idea of doing without any of them makes me sad. I know there's some research saying you can lose weight by eating from only one cuisine, but that's definitely not the diet for me.

I haven't been able to eat noodles with chopsticks. I'll have to try, but I suspect that will end in my having to do laundry. I'm a messy eater in the best of conditions.

Don't count on chopsticks slowing you down for long. I can shovel it in with them pretty fast! And I learned to use them as an adult.

For that matter, try eating with your non-dominant hand.

I will remain an equal opportunity eater.

Nicest of the Damned wrote:The Mediterrasian Way is one of the books I take diet inspiration from, although I was eating mostly Mediterranean and Asian food before I was on No S and was still overweight. We eat mostly Mediterranean and Asian style foods. I loooves me some Japanese food.

The idea of eating only one type of cuisine, though, makes me I love Japanese, Chinese, Thai, and Italian food, and the idea of doing without any of them makes me sad. I know there's some research saying you can lose weight by eating from only one cuisine, but that's definitely not the diet for me.

I haven't been able to eat noodles with chopsticks. I'll have to try, but I suspect that will end in my having to do laundry. I'm a messy eater in the best of conditions.

I have that book! It's in storage now, but I pretty much ignored the Asian recipes when I had it with me.

I don't eat just one cuisine, but I do limit what I cook at home to just a few. The one thing I've noticed is reading about various traditional cuisines is that most home cooks around the world don't stray from their own cuisine. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to get ingredients for other cuisines even in affluent countries. Many still eat quite locally and seasonally. Plus, food is a lot more expensive in most places than it is here. When the basics are more expensive, you're not going to pay even more for imported ingredients.

Economics plays a large part of it for me. I can't spend what I used to spend. I know I keep not only less variety but just LESS in my pantry, refrigerator and freezer than ever before, yet cook more and better than ever before. There's a fair amount of variety, too.

I'm also a messy eater. I need a bib! I don't intend to be messy, but usually you can look at my clothes and get a clue what I ate at my last meal. It's embarrassing!

wosnes wrote:The one thing I've noticed is reading about various traditional cuisines is that most home cooks around the world don't stray from their own cuisine. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to get ingredients for other cuisines even in affluent countries. Many still eat quite locally and seasonally. Plus, food is a lot more expensive in most places than it is here.

I live in a fairly culturally diverse area, meaning that it's quite easy to get hold of pretty much anything I need for any given recipe because there are established communities of assorted ethnicities within walking distance. All of this is good.

The main problem I find when mixing cuisines at home is the sheer volume of stuff that sits in the cupboard or the fridge. Each style of cooking has its own set of ingredients (yes, there's some crossover and I try to exploit that) and it's practically impossible to use everything up before it goes off unless you're catering for sixty or eating the same thing every day. Dried and/or frozen ingredients help, but it's just not possible (for me) to eat that much food fast enough. What happens, therefore, is that I end up with a stint on each area's food until I get sick of it and move on to something else. Fusion food is the future!

ThomsonsPier wrote: The main problem I find when mixing cuisines at home is the sheer volume of stuff that sits in the cupboard or the fridge. Each style of cooking has its own set of ingredients (yes, there's some crossover and I try to exploit that) and it's practically impossible to use everything up before it goes off unless you're catering for sixty or eating the same thing every day. Dried and/or frozen ingredients help, but it's just not possible (for me) to eat that much food fast enough. What happens, therefore, is that I end up with a stint on each area's food until I get sick of it and move on to something else. Fusion food is the future!

I had much the same problem when cooking from a variety of cuisines.

Sometimes I like fusion food and sometimes it's overkill. Most of the time I think someone was trying too hard to create something "new," or maybe as you suggest, trying to use up ingredients.

This is an example: I was reading a restaurant menu and saw this dish: Italian scallops with jalapeño succotash and red pepper coulis. So here we have Italian scallops (I'm not sure that scallops are common in Italian cuisine, but they are found here in the Northeast) with succotash that originated in New England combined with jalapeños from the Southwest/Mexico and a French sauce. Overkill.

There's something to be said for using what you have on hand in new ways, then there's what the...???. I can see scallops, corn, lima beans, red bell peppers and jalapeños coming together for a tasty dish or meal, but I'm not sure that one is it.

I think I'm fortunate in being so fond of not only Italian food, but also food from the rest of the Mediterranean. Not only are many of the same ingredients used throughout the region, many of the cultures have dishes that are similar (panzanella and fattoush come to mind). If I have what I need to cook an Italian dish, I have most of what I need for Greek or Lebanese and others.

Like you I live in a fairly culturally diverse area. With just a little bit of travel I can visit ethnic stores and get a wide variety of ingredients (except, unfortunately, specialty ingredients from the Mediterranean!). But I've found that usually I'm not craving a variety of dishes from a cuisine, but something in particular. If I can't buy what I need in amounts I can use -- well, there are restaurants.