One word of caution, this blog deals with issues affecting people in middle age, which is why I am devoting some time to health and nutrition. I don’t have growing children so I won’t ever post frugal ways to feed a family of four.  Trent Hamm of the Simple Dollar, does that much better than I ever could.

Last week I wrote the vegetarian dilemma defining what I believe the dilemma is: that vegetarian cooking so often lacks flavor and texture that it often leaves you wanting a slab of meat just to feel satisfied.

I excitedly tried a new recipe, spiced potatoes with lentils and barley.  On the nutrition scale it scores big time.  On the flavor scale, the recipe sucked big time.  I am still eating it, because while my palate is quite unhappy, my colon is.  I keep thinking about all that wonderful nutrition with each spoonful of that crunchy-yet-flavorless slop that I consume.

What went wrong?

The dish is boiled. So some whole potatoes are pan fried in olive oil and coated with prefab cajun seasoning.  (Paul Prudhomme has a great recipe for home made cajun spices that actually involves using fresh herbs. His recipe for cajun spices can be made in advance and stored in an airtight container.)  The potatoes are then boiled along with the peas, barley and parsley the recipe calls for in a stock pot filled with vegetable broth.  The recommended lentils are canned and lemon juice is added to the broth.  The liquid is allowed to evaporate and the barley, lentils, peas and potatoes are tossed together along with lemon zest to create a brown white mixture that is not even remotely interesting to look at, much less eat.

What would I do differently, for I will try again?  Toss the recipe…it truly sucks and start over.  Start over with red potatoes rather than the new potatoes the recipe calls for.  Boil until fork tender, then toss with olive oil and K-Pauls’ homemade cajun seasoning and roast them until golden.

Next, boil the lentils, peas and barley in chicken stock rather than vegetable stock, drain.  Then toss in fresh parsley, lemon juice, the potatoes, garlic, and a roasted pepper.  Add the potatoes and salt and pepper to taste.  The prep time will be twice as long as the original recipe, but the flavor should be quite good.

I have used a recipe from the NYTimes a wheat berry in tomato sauce for topping vegetables.  The Times recipe uses this sauce with Asparagus but the sauce can be used with roasted butter nut or acorn squash.  It is quite good.  The recipe calls for coriander which makes the aroma just as pleasing as the taste.

From the Moosewood Restaurant is the farm-fresh meals deck.  This is a card deck with well-seasoned recipes.  Including a roasted squash, beans, corn, sage and red onion concoction that is quite good.

Why am I spending so much time on this topic?  We are becoming a nation of heavy people.  Travel internationally and you’ll see that we are truly becoming the heaviest people on the planet.  We love our protein and all of the animal fat that goes with it, but red meat isn’t the only source of protein.  If we don’t learn to get more of our proteins from whole grains and less from animal fats, especially red meat, there won’t be a health care system in the world or a dollar amount big enough to provide for the health needs of our citizens.

Please comment

I am a bit late writing this post because, well, because I was watching Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance video on youtube. I didn’t even know what a Lady Gaga was until Glee.  I have discovered I am a Gleek.  See, I was in chorus in school when I was a kid and I loved it.  I loved the holiday shows and the competition.  We even won regionals.  But no cool costumes….uh-uh.  I guess back then Elton John was today’s Lady Gaga.  At any rate, wrapped up in my youthful reverie I got to working on this post late.

When I was in medical school I had a friend, Abigail, she showed me the city of New York, on foot.  Said it was the only way to see the city and I think Abs was right. We’d walk from the West Village to 92nd street.  I did that trek probably twice a month and traversing the city east to west was no big deal.  Abs and I went on a great many errands together in support of her vegetarianism.  We went someplace on the West side to get Miso, for its B12; we were always going somewhere to get something.  I ate raw broccoli for the first time at a Farmer’s Market that Abs took me to and thought it was awesome, but of course I then had to get a slab of cheese to eat it with.  My favorite sandwich in school was a rye, raw broccoli and swiss sandwich.  Pretty good eats when you are a student on a budget.  Abs was thin and healthy looking and I was chubbing up by the day despite all the walking, because I also had a weakness for the abundant New York city food carts.  So becoming a vegetarian would have appealed to me except that it seemed so hard.

The summer before I got to medical school I landed a teaching position at a summer school.  The school cafeteria leaned toward vegetarian cooking.  I ate walnut burgers, tabbouleh, salads, fresh fruits and vegetables, seafood, chicken, some lean meat and, I a have to admit, an occasional kielbasa.  I decided I could be a vegetarian if I could just get someone to cook for me, because otherwise vegetarian cuisine seemed to consist mainly of tofu and the green salad.  My experience with Abs, as wonderful and educational as it was for me did nothing to change my mind.

Concerned that the Southern diet might be putting Black folks in the ground early, the National Institutes of Health got together with several Black chefs in the early 1990s and reworked some favorite Southern recipes. My mother sent me a copy of the resultant cook book.  The recipes were horrible.  No, red pepper is not an adequate substitute for ham hocks in greens!  These folks reworked favorite recipes and made them unpalatable.  I still have the cookbook as a reminder that some things are best left alone.  I just assumed I would be an inveterate meat eater stopping at every street cart I could find.

In 2003 I went to Gobo in New York.  OMG! outstanding vegetarian cooking prepared by kids!  I decided that enjoying vegetarian cooking was as much about texture as flavor.  Some of the food was so well textured that I thought I was eating meat.  Alas, Gobo doesn’t publish a cook book so I was left to enjoy a one-time eating experience thinking that I would never be able to incorporate more vegetarian dishes that I enjoy into my life.  Then a friend of mine, Artemis, had a business conference in her home in 2006.  Artemis is a former Body for Life Grand Champion and she had a friend cater the conference.  Her friend provided salads with barley, potatoes, beans, nuts, wheat berries, quinoa, apples, pears.  There was meat for those who felt they had to have it,  but those vegetarian dishes contained such nutrition, texture and flavor that I felt I wasn’t missing anything by passing up a serving of meat.

That’s the vegetarian dilemma, that good vegetarian cooking is so inaccessible that much of what passes for vegetarian cuisine leaves a person feeling that they are missing something and just have to add a juicy slab of meat to get a complete meal.

While we were in Peru, I learned about quinoa, nature’s complete protein, the food of the Incas.  Quinoa contains all 8 essential amino acids, calcium, Iron, vitamins B and E.  Quinoa can be substituted for rice and easily incorporated into a daily cooking regimen.  When I got home from Artemis’ I resolved to do better and found the whole grains council website.  This is a great educational website and contains easy-to-duplicate, delicious recipes that can be incorporated in to everyday eating.

Today I visited the Huffington Post.  I don’t know why.  During the last presidential election, I lived on that site practically visiting it several times a day.  I haven’t been on the site in months, but decided to go today.  There, on the front page, was “Meatless Monday & the Protein Principle”. As you might guess the article talked about the amounts of protein we consume.  Nearly twice the amount that we need daily to keep us alive.  Most of that protein is consumed as animal protein with all of the attendant fat that goes with it.  The great thing is that the article came with quick, easy and tasty-appearing recipes.  I am going to try the spiced potatoes with lentils and barley recipe in the article this weekend and report back to you.

Have you gotten stuck on the Vegetarian Dilemma?

What are you doing to increase the percentage of lean foods in your diet?

Please comment.

It is my anniversary this weekend. Planning a weekend getaway. I wanted to have something decent for us to drive so I took my car into the shop to be detailed. Years of transporting dogs and the car is only fit for transporting me, but I wouldn’t have a friend or anyone with an allergy near the car.

I looked at my work schedule, seemed today ought to be the day to take my car in and I am way behind in my blog posts. I don’t have to be at the hospital today so I decided to wake up, walk my dogs, fix breakfast, load up my lap top, god I cannot wait for the iPad, take in the pile of clothes to GoodWill that I have been putting off taking in and head to the detailer. I told the owner of the shop that I was going to walk to a local coffee shop and work there while they worked on my car. He asked me if I was sure and I said yes. He thought it odd that I was willing to walk. Heck, I needed to walk, I haven’t been to the gym in a few days. Also I spend very little time in the town I have called home for the last 15 years. I go to work, come home, go to work, come home, take call, go in come home. All of that is punctuated with the occasional need to go grocery shopping and buy gas. When I am off, I get away to another town, to another state. Walking through town, I get to check out the stucco jobs on the buildings I pass. Which jobs look good, which jobs look bad. I hope that people have left signs on their work so I know whom to call. Before I have gone half a mile, the first person pulls over and asks me if I need a ride…I am walking after all. I politely decline and tell her no, that I want to walk. She drives off. A gentleman pulls over and asks me where I am headed. I’m almost there is my reply. About 20 feet ahead of him another car has pulled over, passenger side window down, waiting for me to pass, he (or she I didn’t even look) pulls off when I don’t stop. I take these attempts to offer me assistance for what they are, acts of kindness in a town where the auto repair shops out number the number of churches. People are always walking, usually when their transportation has failed them. That someone, laden with bags, might choose to walk stands out as odd. I had to reflect, though, during the remainder of my walk. That we have become a nation of heavy people, addicted to our cars where walking is simply odd. Unless of course you live in a retirement community, were people can often be seen walking, but why do we have to be retired before we walk? We have become a nation of non-movers, non-walkers, non-shakers. Over the last decade or so, I’ve watched my patients grow steadily heavier and our rate of diabetes, cancer and heart disease shoot through the roof. The few times I have been out of the country, I can always tell I am back home, not by pictures of our flag or the President hanging on the wall, but by the weight of the people in the port of entry. Now I am not naive enough to believe we can walk our way to fitness without changing what or how we eat, but it is a start. It takes no money, just a comfortable pair of shoes and a willingness to do it. Now I plan to sit in a coffee shop for the rest of the afternoon sipping coffee and eating lunch until the shop calls me to tell me my car is ready, then I’ll pack up my bags and head back using my own two feet to take me. I’ll probably be offered a ride or two and I’ll politely decline. I will have spent a day IN my home town without the pressure to leave, spending money here in our local economy. And I will have also done something for free to make myself incrementally healthier.