Pollan Cooks

[wosnes]

Mark Bittman recently wrote an article about Michael Pollan's new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (released today).

Also, an interview with Michael Pollan (it's long, but good).

[Amy3010]

Thanks for sharing this! I agree with the premise of his new book - that we need to be cooking our own food. I really enjoy reading both Bittman and Pollan - they are two of the most reasonable voices on food around, in my opinion.

I also like where he says if you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you're not really hungry.

[oolala53]

Bernard Jensen used to say to wait until you had the keenest desire for the plainest food before you ate. He also said to chew your juice and drink your food, meaning to chew solid food until it is completely liquid (you get all the flavor, too) and swish juice around in your mouth to start the digestive process.

[leafy_greens]

I also like where he says if you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you're not really hungry.

I always have thought this too! Previously, in my bag of grazing snacks at the end of the day, the apple would make it home while the chocolate would be eaten...

[wosnes]

Bittman also has a book on cooking (not a cookbook): Cooking Solves Everything. It's available on Kindle, but not in print.

Cooking is like exercise or spending time in nature or good conversation: The more you do it, the more you like it, the better you get at it, and the more you recognize that its rewards are far greater than its efforts and that even its efforts are rewards. When you become even marginally good at cooking, you begin to enjoy the process. Even the shopping. Even, sometimes, the cleanup.

To learn to cook you must make cooking a priority. (Not the priority. A priority.) I'm convinced that not much more has to happen. Once you learn to cook, it takes care of itself, because there is, forgive me, joy in cooking. Almost everyone I know who know how to cook cooks. Almost no one who learns how to cook stops doing it...

...Cooking is a tangible activity that anyone can do, on almost any given day. It is something people can control; it doesn't require the kind of miracles that it will take to end animal confinement or omnipresent sugar in kids' foods.

Few promises fulfill their expectations more elegantly: Spend time in the kitchen and you're rewarded with something to eat. It's that simple. The food might not be splendid (though the odds are wildly in your favor that it will be delicious), but it's rarely inedible...Unlike with other activities, the value of the results often exceeds the effort exerted. So if viewed purely from a return-on-investment perspective, cooking is a worthwhile endeavor.

At first, everyone was in the kitchen. Then women were alone in the kitchen. Now almost no one is in the kitchen.

We need to get everyone back there.

The main points:
Cooking puts you in control.

Cooks eat healthier food than non-cooks.

Food tastes better when you cook it yourself.

Cooking creates demand for real food.

Cooking is a political statement.

Cooking ensures food security.

Cooking improves the economy.

Cooking is easier on the environment than not cooking.

Cooking supports a more sustainable system of agriculture.

Cooking fosters a healthier society.

I don't dislike cooking, but I don't love it either. I don't cook for relaxation or because I enjoy it, neither do I dread going into the kitchen to cook. I cook because I like to eat and I like good food. It's a means to an end for me. A very tasty end.

[leafy_greens]

Thanks! Good find. I hate cooking myself, but the alternative of a frozen pizza becomes less appealing the longer I'm on No S.

[maryashley]

Anyone have a simple cookbook they are particularly fond of? We enjoy cooking, but it tends to be a rotation of hearty things we love. Plus a lot of soups. Hehe.

[wosnes]

Anyone have a simple cookbook they are particularly fond of? We enjoy cooking, but it tends to be a rotation of hearty things we love. Plus a lot of soups. Hehe.

My kids are grown and gone, but I stumbled across The Mom 100 Cookbook last year and I've enjoyed it. She also has a blog. Some of the recipes from the cookbook are there, but there are plenty of others. It will give you an idea of what her recipes are like.

One that was just released this week but looks good is The Fresh 20 Cookbook. It gives you menu plans for 4 weeks worth of meals for each season and uses fresh, in season food: no processed foods, no preservatives, nothing frozen. For each week there is a menu, grocery list and recipes. If a recipe calls for salsa, you'll be making it and it will only take a few minutes. If an expensive ingredient is called for, there's a less expensive option included. There's also a subscription service and you can get a sample menu: http://www.thefresh20.com/

I subscribed to The Fresh 20 a couple of weeks ago. I intended to wait for the book, but decided I needed help before the book was published. I know how to cook; I know to use fresh, whole ingredients; I know how to menu plan. But I was spending far too much on food, especially considering that I'm a single and on a rather limited budget. I've been very happy with the menus. Even the things I'm not crazy about have been good. If there is something I really don't like (it hasn't happened yet), I've got enough of a backlog of recipes of my own to make a substitution and not have to add many, if any, items to the grocery list. I haven't calculated whether or not it's saving me money, but I know I'm in the grocery far less often.

There has been an unexpected benefit to this. I never thought that any of this caused me stress. But suddenly there's less stress associated with cooking and eating. I'm not exactly sure why I feel less stressed, but I'm not going to complain about it either!

EDIT: The Fresh 20 menus are based on 20 pantry staples and 20 fresh items from the grocery for 5 meals weekly. They're designed to feed 4 adults or 2 adults and 2 kids with leftovers. I've been cutting the recipes down to serve 1, but sometime soon they will offer recipes designed to serve 1. There are classic, vegetarian/vegan, and gluten-free menus from her online service. The book, however, concentrates on the classic menus with instructions for how to change some of the menus/recipes to vegetarian/vegan or gluten-free.

Most of the pantry items are things you probably have in your pantry already. Herbes de Provence are on the pantry list. What she likes about Herbes de Provence, the floral flavor, is exactly what I dislike about it. So I substitute thyme, which is one of the ingredients. She also calls for cayenne and it doesn't agree with me in a number of ways. I'll decide what to substitute on a recipe by recipe basis.

[clarinetgal]

That Fresh 20 sounds great! I stink at menu planning, so I will certainly look into this.

[leafy_greens]

That Fresh 20 sounds great! I stink at menu planning, so I will certainly look into this.

I'm a member of their website and it's good stuff! The ingredients list has the average price for each product next to it, so you shouldn't be spending more than $50-60 a week. Also, look for groupons.

[tobiasmom]

I was going to recommend the Fresh 20 cookbook. Just got it yesterday, and it's gorgeous!!! Fresh 20 has really lowered my grocery bill and cut down on waste drastically. Of course you do have to actually cook the stuff

[wosnes]

I think Melissa Lanz has taken the notion that cooking from scratch with fresh, seasonal, whole foods is too expensive and time consuming (especially for busy families) and blown it right out of the water. I haven't been doing the prep work and still get dinner on the table in a very timely manner. As I said above, I haven't calculated the costs yet, but I know I'm in the grocery less than ever.

[maryashley]

One that was just released this week but looks good is The Fresh 20 Cookbook.

Sweet! I just signed up for three months.. and then promptly remembered that we are going into summer camp mode and I don't cook for myself between May and August. Whoops. But will try to utilize over the next couple of weeks at least!

What a great suggestion.

[leafy_greens]

You can save the pdf's and use them later. Sometimes I don't make every week's recipe plan, but I have a stockpile on my computer to use later.

[Thalia]

Mark Bittman's cookbooks are great for giving you easy, no-fuss recipes that you can customize for your own tastes. I have The Food Matters Cookbook, his fish book (OUTSTANDING!), and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian -- they're all good, although the vegetarian book is the weakest of the three IMO.

[leafy_greens]

Mark Bittman's cookbooks are great for giving you easy, no-fuss recipes that you can customize for your own tastes. I have The Food Matters Cookbook, his fish book (OUTSTANDING!), and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian -- they're all good, although the vegetarian book is the weakest of the three IMO.

Why is it weak? I'm a vegetarian so this one is the one I would buy.

[Thalia]

I have just found that a lot of the recipes are kind of "meh." I've made some good things out of it, but also had some blah results, and it has more recipes that don't appeal to me than either of the others.

I like Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison much better. It has some more challenging recipes than the Bittman, but also some that are easy and GREAT -- like the white-bean salad with green olives, which is amazing.

[wosnes]

Mark Bittman's cookbooks are great for giving you easy, no-fuss recipes that you can customize for your own tastes. I have The Food Matters Cookbook, his fish book (OUTSTANDING!), and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian -- they're all good, although the vegetarian book is the weakest of the three IMO.

Why is it weak? I'm a vegetarian so this one is the one I would buy.

I agree about Bittman's vegetarian cookbook. At the time I bought it I was eating more vegetarian than not and very little appealed to me. I do like How To Cook Everything -- the original yellow one. Both How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything - the Revised 10th Anniversary edition have quite a few vegetarian recipes throughout. I think the Food Matters Cookbook does, too. I expect that his new book, VB6, will have some.

leafy_greens, take a look at it some time when you're in a bookstore. By the way, a vegetarian cookbook I like very much is Martha Rose Shulman's Mediterranean Harvest. One reviewer at Amazon said she used chicken broth in a recipe, but the only thing I could find was a mention that chicken broth is usually used in risotto. There are a number of mentions of meat, but in the context of how something is traditionally served.

[leafy_greens]

I really enjoy a cookbook I found in the discount area of B&N that is all vegetarian slow cooker recipes.

[finallyfull]

@Leafy Greens -- The longer I'm on No S, the more I notice what you said about not wanting frozen pizza or other things like that. I think having three spotlighted meals a day makes me value them much more, and over time, this is only growing. I want each meal to be delicious and good for me. When I graze all day nothing I eat "counts" because I always have the idea (or illusion) that I will eat more delicious or more healthful meals later. Now the idea of "later" is kind of put to the test.

I don't think it's a coincidence that I'm paying more attention to books like Pollan's latest, and other nutritional info, now that I have my No S habit down. Food is both more and less important at the same time.

[wosnes]

I really dislike cookbooks that aim to pass on the American ideal of healthy eating. For me, that's usually concentrating on whole grains and eliminating refined grains -- especially in traditional recipes from other countries.

Another of my pet peeves is the Americanization of traditional recipes: hummus is an example. "Hummus" means chickpea. So, while you can have a black or white (or whatever) bean dip or spread, you can't have black or white bean "hummus." And certainly not beet hummus.

[leafy_greens]

@Leafy Greens -- The longer I'm on No S, the more I notice what you said about not wanting frozen pizza or other things like that. I think having three spotlighted meals a day makes me value them much more, and over time, this is only growing. I want each meal to be delicious and good for me. When I graze all day nothing I eat "counts" because I always have the idea (or illusion) that I will eat more delicious or more healthful meals later. Now the idea of "later" is kind of put to the test.

Yes, I still eat frozen pizzas in a real pinch, but they just don't do it for me. Feels like I'm eating air. Not fulfilling.

[Happy Cooker]

Michael Pollan recommended An Everlasting Meal, by Tamar Adler, and so I bought it. She has wonderful and practical advice for getting meals together quickly. The piece I've been using most is to prep and cook vegetables when you get home from food shopping. Roast vegetables, steam/boil greens, wash and dry herbs, then store them all separately in the fridge. Meals come together very quickly with most of the prep done ahead of time. You can also chop onion and freeze it.

Adler has worked in lots of restaurants, and I think her approach draws on that experience. Her prose is mostly enjoyable, sometimes a little too precious, but I still consult the book for things I missed the first read-through. It's out in a cheaper paperback edition now.