It feels like months since I've posted here, so I'm glad it's only really been a couple of weeks. I've been pretty exhausted on account of starting my new job as a housekeeper! The company I work for is called Exec. They were a big deal in San Francisco and they've just moved to Seattle this month (so if you live in Seattle, please hire us!).
As a result of making regular money now, I've been thinking a lot about food. I have heard people refer to foodie-ism as a kind of oral fixation, and while I guess that's kind of potentially true, there's also a great deal of skill and artistry in cooking. I also appreciate food from a health point of view; things like garlic, ginger root and local honey are actually really good for you (for the immune system, the digestive system, and for pollen allergies and hay fever respectively). Eating well makes me feel well, and that matters to me!
As such, I've been thinking about what kind of food I want to keep in the house. Plenty of meat, for sure - chicken breast, venison and veal are good, as well as beef. I want to start cooking with rabbit and lamb more often, too. I want to get good cheese; we stopped buying Kraft grated parmesan long ago, but even so, we're still only getting soft wedges of parmesan and bags of grated Lucerne cheddar and mozzarella. Good cheese is a wonderful thing, and honestly, I miss getting wet mozzarella, I miss brie, camembert, halloumi, emmenthal, feta. Cheese is so damn good for you. There were years when I was so disordered and mixed up when it came to food that I wouldn't eat cheese. I was scared of the stuff. Shows how warped I was! That's what you get for buying into diet logic. Cheese is high in protein, not to mention calcium and vitamin B (teeth, bones and skin). Delicious!
After meat and cheese, fresh fruit and vegetables - a LOT of them - is my main concern. We've been poor for so long that everyone's immune systems are totally in the shitter. I'm talking grapes, oranges, apples, bananas, strawberries, mangoes, coconuts, pears, peaches - the works. Same for veggies.
As for bread... I'm a fan of bagels but honestly, I have enough quick bread recipes that I don't really feel like we need to load up on carbs. Oatmeal? Yes. I want to get steel-cut oats, which are universally acknowledged to be the best kind.
I'm buying a food processor, and I'd prefer to buy nuts and mason jars and make my own nut butter than I would to buy big jars of Skippy. Up until now we've only ever had a blender, but home made always leaves me feeling better afterwards. I want to buy jam, though, and plenty of good olive oil. And yogurt, plain probiotic Greek yogurt that I can put fruit and honey in.
I don't care about eating 'raw' or 'paleo' or about carbs or whatever the hell else. I don't count calories, I don't eat fat-free or sugar-free or calorie-free (what does that even MEAN? How is it food if it doesn't contain energy?). Fats are necessary for your body and eating sweetness without sugar will fuck with your blood sugar levels. I would rather learn to eat well, to feel good when I put the right things into myself and bad when I put the wrong things, than to cheat my way around it with things that aren't what they appear to be. I definitely don't do diet fads, never ever again.
I just want to eat as fresh as possible. I want to eat exactly what it feels like I'm putting in my mouth, nothing more, nothing less.
Aren't fish, meat and eggs a much better source of protein than cheese, though? There's also the thing of if you fill up on fat you won't have room for food with vitamins etc.
ReplyDelete"eating sweetness without sugar will fuck with your blood sugar levels" -- Would that just have the effect of making you feel a bit crappy, or?
Also omg I didn't know that about garlic and ginger.
fish, meat and eggs are indeed a better source of protein! but that doesn't make cheese bad, and it's also a major component in a lot of recipes (especially italian food) and makes things taste delicious. plus, this is a food area with a lot of tradition and a lot of knowledge and variety. It's one of the few ingredients that has already come from a recipe, so imo it's worth knowing about it and the only way to know about food is to eat it!
Deleteagain, stressing that all the food i buy, i consider an ingredient, not a thing in itself. so any recipe with cheese will also contain vegetables and vitamins and such. note that cheese is a fantastic source of calcium, though! minerals are important too.
makes you feel crappy, and also makes you crave sugar like a beast. your body is expecting sugar, because of the taste, but because it doesn't actually get any, you end up wanting more. this is a major problem with soda - writer husband quit drinking it recently and his previously out-of-control hunger subsided basically as soon as he'd stopped craving the soda. most - although not all - artificially sweetened things use aspartame as a sweetener which will completely destroy your ability to regulate your own appetite. even if you eat enough, you still feel hungry.
yes! garlic is the BEST thing for a cold - i like making toast with mashed roasted garlic when i'm sick, or if it's the season, bruschetta with loads of garlic, tomatoes and bell peppers. and ginger is THE BEST digestive aid! ginger tea (chopped ginger root boiled in water) is the perfect thing for nausea! that's why they sell ginger gum as a motion sickness reliever. peppermint is also really good if you have trapped gas; i keep peppermint tea in the house for this exact reason.
Hmm. I always thought I 'craved' soft drinks to replace sugary things that I would be wanting to eat anyway. Also if I'm hungry and I drink a can of Diet Coke or whatever that seems to kill the hunger for quite a while. And it's not that it kills the hunger momentarily and then I'm ravenous - it actually keeps me going for a while and then at some point the same hunger returns. You don't find that?
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete