Chester is a good friend of mine. He’s lived in South Boston for all of his 84 years. He is a WWII veteran. He enjoys bacon and eggs, a good Western movie, baseball, listening to the radio, and talking about how expensive everything is. He dislikes modern music, doctors, throwing things away, and how expensive everything is. He has diabetes and is legally blind. I’ve visited him often for about three years, sometimes to help out around the house, but mostly just to chat.
I met Chester through a great organization called FriendshipWorks, a Boston-based nonprofit that matches volunteers with elders and adults with disabilities. On the surface, Chester and I don’t seem to have a lot in common. But get us talking and the conversation usually turns to food.
Tonight I brought Chester dinner. He’ll eat pretty much anything, although he tends to favor pastries, candy, white bread, processed foods, and red meat. As you might imagine, none of these pair well with diabetes, so I jump at the chance to make and share a healthy meal with him. Tonight’s dinner was brought to us by the brilliant mind of Angela Liddon over at Oh She Glows. It was her Naughty and Nice Enchilada Casserole, baby, and man was it good.
This is a bad photo of a good casserole.
Click the links above to check out Angela’s site and get the full recipe. Some slight alterations: I used store-bought taco seasoning mix and enchilada sauce. THE SHAME. For the pasta, I used Eden Organic Flax Rice Spirals. I topped the casserole with crushed tortilla chips (Laurel Hill Multigrain) and fresh avocado.
For what it’s worth, this recipe has received the coveted Chester Seal of Approval. He didn’t even notice there was no meat in it.
On Monday, February 13th, McDonald’s and The Humane Society of the United States released a joint statement regarding gestation crates used to confine pregnant sows (female pigs). By May 2012, all of McDonald’s pork suppliers must provide the company with plans to phase out the crates. After assessing these plans, McDonald’s says that it will share the results and outline next steps.
A gestation crate, also known as a sow stall, is a 7 ft by 2 ft metal enclosure used in intensive pig farming, in which a female breeding pig (sow) may be confined during pregnancy, and in effect for most of her adult life.
Thanks Wikipedia! Basically, gestation crates are cramped, cruel little spaces that 500-lb pregnant pigs are forced to hang out in for most of their short, miserable lives. They can’t even turn around. If you’re curious what they look like, here is a photo. I mean, I freak out when I’m sandwiched between two people on the subway. But unfortunately gestation crates are the industry standard and the vast majority of all pregnant sows live in them.
Advocates of the crates will tell you that they’re used to prevent fighting among the pigs, which is true enough. What these advocates often won’t tell you is that there are many other ways to prevent fighting, but those ways require understanding the animal’s basic natural behaviors and instincts and putting that knowledge to use. Perish the thought! Also, the crates cause a whole slew of other health issues for the pigs, which leads to sick pigs, which leads to us eating sick pigs.
So, let’s look at this McDonald’s effort. A lot of people have written about it – you can read what Mark Bittman and NPR have to say. I agree that this is a good thing. Where McDonald’s goes, the industry follows. If the company makes good on this effort, it’s likely that gestation crates will be a thing of the past in ten years. And that’s great! That is of course assuming McDonald’s makes good on this effort. Nowhere in their statement is there a guarantee (as Gawker so eloquently points out) and there is so much more work to do. Like, a lot more. We can embrace this as progress, but we can not ignore the impact McDonald’s has on minimum wage and general employee welfare (it’s one of the largest employers in the country), animal welfare (it’s the largest buyer of industrially-raised beef in the country), and the global health dialogue (it’s the world’s largest fast food restaurant).
As Spider-Man’s wise Uncle Ben once said, with great power comes great responsibility. We can applaud this effort, but we can also hold our nation’s biggest companies to higher standards. It is not unreasonable to do so. Yes, improving our food system takes time, thought, money and energy. It takes a desire to be better and to be different. It takes a cultural shift and a change in consumer values and a government whose food policies align with its nutrition talk. It takes a lot! There are obstacles. But if we can’t be bothered to work on overcoming these obstacles, then I don’t have a lot of faith in us and in our incredible capacity for innovation and creativity.
All of this brings me to Chipotle, a company which until 2006 was a subsidiary of McDonald’s. They ran an ad during the Grammys called “Back to the Start.” It’s a beautifully done ad with a simple message as I see it – basic humanity over industry. It highlights the challenges of being a participant in a broken system and it offers hope that we can reach a place where our values align with our business and where sustainability rules.
I didn’t write this to stop you from eating meat or to stop you from going to McDonald’s. I just think that we need to cultivate a heightened awareness of how we eat and why. I don’t mean to oversimplify an incredibly complex issue, but quite frankly I’m sick of focusing more on the obstacles than on the solutions. Kudos to McDonald’s for a step in the right direction, but let’s not forget about all the other steps that need to be taken.
Talk to me – what do think of all this? Are you impressed with McDonald’s effort? What more could be done? How much did you love that Chipotle ad? Willie Nelson has such great delivery.
I originally titled this post “The Bay Leaf Incident of 2012,” but “Easy Lentil Tomato Soup” seemed a little more blog-friendly and less ominous. I shall begin with a photo:
Despite the Bay Leaf Incident of 2012, I did not die upon consuming this soup.
Looks harmless enough, right? WRONG. Lurking within that blurry bowl of Lentil-Tomato Soup is something that until this weekend I assumed would cause immediate death – blended bay leaf. That’s right. I slaved over a hot stove creating a lovely soup, only to forget the crucial step of removing the whole bay leaves before using my immersion blender. I was certain I would kill myself and my unassuming dinner partner, who had placed blind faith in my ability to make a non-lethal soup.
After much hand-wringing and brow-furrowing, I did what any functional adult would do: I texted my mother.
“Am I going to kill us both if I serve soup in which I accidentally blended a bay leaf?’
Mom responded with the sanity that I was lacking.
“Not unless either of you are allergic to bay leaves.”
Oh. Thanks Mom.
So long story short, I learned a valuable lesson. Accidentally blending bay leaves into your soup, while not recommended, will not lead to paralysis, stroke, nerve damage, or sudden death. Mostly it will just result in a strong bay flavor and tiny floating pieces of leaf in your soup. If you’ve learned nothing else from this blog, please retain that.
I still want to share the recipe with you all, as it was actually quite tasty. I was inspired by an Alton Brown recipe I came across awhile ago. By the way, leave it to Alton Brown to publish a recipe calling for “Grains of Paradise.” I’m almost certain that is not a spice at all, but the title of an obscure John Steinbeck novel.
Easy Lentil Tomato Soup
Serves 2-3 people
2 tbsp olive oil
2-3 minced garlic cloves
1 small-medium sweet onion, chopped
1/2 cup chopped carrot
1/2 cup chopped celery
A few pinches of salt
1 can cooked lentils, drained
1 cup peeled, ground tomatoes (canned)
1 32-oz box vegetable stock
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
2 whole bay leaves … do not blend
Directions
Heat up the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large pot. Add the onions, carrots, celery, and salt and saute for about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for another 2-3 minutes. The onions should be soft and starting to brown.
Add everything else and stir it up.
Up the heat until the soup starts to boil. Then reduce to a simmer and let it do its thing for 10 minutes.
Remove from heat. REMOVE BAY LEAVES. Blend using an immersion blender, regular blender, whatever.
Beyond the Kale 