Literatarianism

As I mentioned, Geoff Nicholson's essay about books he's read with descriptions of disgusting meals sent me into a reverie about foods I've read about that left me salivating -- not in books that were otherwise about food necessarily (that's too easy) but in which the world created by the author is so richly imagined that you're given smells, tastes, even textures that draw you in, so deep.

The first book (or rather, series) that came to mind was Harry Potter, so remarkable because so much of the food, drink, and sweets are completely imaginary, and yet J.K. Rowling leaves you craving a warm, comforting mug of butterbeer or the adventure in every box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans (includes spinach, liverwurst, and ear wax, but also sweet flavors like "a nice toffee"). Let me say, this is moreover a feat because the "real" food mentioned in the books is of the heavy, bland, British variety, like Yorkshire pudding, steak and kidney pie, and treacle tart (except when the Beauxbatons students are in town, and the house elves make bouillabaisse and blancmange appear). And yet somehow cauldron cakes washed down with pumpkin juice sounds enticing; I would even sample gillywater or take a gulp of Ogden's Old Firewhisky. I'd probably skip Hagrid's cooking, though -- rock cakes don't tempt me.

The sweets! What variety: Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, chocolate frogs, pumpkin pasties, the aforementioned cakes and jelly beans, Licorice Wands, Pepper Imps, Sugar Quills, tooth flossing string mints, Fizzing Whizbees, peppermint toads, fudge flies, Acid Pops...

Finally, I love that so much of the food served at Hogwarts is made with the vegetables from the patches near the greenhouses and that Hagrid raises chickens. A school after Alice Waters' heart!

From my childhood (much of which was spent reading, and the rest of which was spent eating and cooking, I think), Anne of Green Gables's terrible mistakes in the kitchen got across how painfully eager she was to belong and shed her status as an uncivilized, not-to-be-trusted orphan. Two incidents stand out.

Anne accidentally gets her bosom friend Diana drunk by serving her currant wine, thinking it's raspberry cordial, at a time when there is a growing prohibition movement and Diana's mom Mrs. Barry anyway doesn't trust Anne. The understanding Marilla isn't too hard on Anne, and says, "I should think Mrs. Barry would better punish Diana for being so greedy as to drink three glassfuls of anything!"

Anne also lets a mouse get into the pudding sauce because she gets carried away imagining she's a nun ("of course") and forgets to cover it. "I'm a Protestant, but I imagined I was a Catholic taking the veil to bury a broken heart in cloistered seclusion, and I forgot all about covering the pudding sauce. I thought of it next morning and ran to the pantry. Diana, fancy if you can my extreme horror at finding a mouse drowned in that pudding sauce!" (Anne does, of course, voice the thought that drowning in pudding sauce is relatively a rather nice way for a mouse to die.)

Literatarian feasting is aplenty in Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik. Aside from all the mouth-watering, perfect food Gopnik and his family enjoy during their five years of cafe life in Paris, there is an adorable scene in which, just before returning to their home town of New York, their son has an interview with a New York kindergarten and, when asked what his favorite breakfast is, he answers (suitably for a child who has spent his first five years of life in Paris), "Croissant et confiture."

Growing up vegetarian, I could not help but being equally fascinated and repulsed while reading The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. Maxine's Chinese mother cooks 'coons, hawks, skunks, city pigeons, wild ducks, wild geese, black-skinned bantams, "turtles that crawled about the pantry floor and escaped under refrigerator and stove" and "catfish that swam in the bathtub." And she allows absolutely no waste, so use is also made of the strange innards of all of these unlikely creatures.

If you love this sort of thing, just read the chapter "The Literary Glutton" in Anne Fadiman's adorable book of essays about loving reading, Ex Libris. She writes, "In Anna Karenina, all the essential differences between Oblonsky and Levin are laid out in the Moscow restaurant scene during which the former orders three dozen oysters, vegetable soup, turbot with thick sauce, capon with tarragon, and fruit macedoine, while the latter longs for cabbage soup and porridge." Nothing more need be said, and we understand the Oblonskys and Levins of the world.

Juicing

My father-in-law is interested in taking up juicing for health, so I did some Internet research for him on the best juicer to buy if you're going to be juicing a lot of vegetables in addition to fruits, including leafy greens and wheatgrass, and if you want your juice to be of the highest nutritional quality. (Caveat: I myself have not test driven the juicers, but rather combed through juice lifestyle-oriented sites that compared a number of different kinds of juicers alongside one another and included dozens of reviews of each, and also compared models within a single brand.)

Based on my research, I recommended that he buy either the Omega Model 8006 Juicer / Nutrition Center (the latest Omega model) or the Omega Model 8003 Single-Gear Juicer.

Omega makes single gear (masticating) juicers that literally chew fruit and vegetable fibers and break up the plant cells, resulting in more fiber, enzymes, vitamins and trace minerals. Masticating juicers are more efficient than the cheaper centrifugal juicers because they extract more juice (so, the pulp comes out drier). Masticating juicers can juice virtually any fruit and vegetable, and single gear juicers can juice leaves and grasses, like wheatgrass, spinach, lettuce, parsley, and other leafy greens and herbs. Masticating juicers also operate at slower speeds (RPMs), resulting in less foam, heat, and noise, 

which means the juice comes out with its enzymes not degraded by heat and not as oxidated, so you can keep it in the fridge for 1-3 days. In addition to extracting juices, these juicers can also make purees, patés, sauces, nut butters, frozen yogurt, and fruit sorbets. Some also come with attachments for making pasta.

Their disadvantages compared with centrifugal juices are that they are slower to use because they have smaller feeding chambers, slower feeding times, and take slightly longer to clean, but these are small inconveniences if your goal is drinking very high-nutrient juice.

Juicing is not a substitute for eating fruits and vegetables; when you juice, you don't get the benefit of helpful fiber. But juicing helps you to access the beneficial vitamins, enzymes, and antioxidant phytochemicals that are stored in fruits and vegetables and can neutralize carcinogenic free radicals and protect our cells' DNA from breakdown. Fiber is not broken down well by the body, so when you eat whole fruits and vegetables, the body expels the fiber along with much of the goodness fruits and vegetables contain. Juicing at home is also a lot more potent than buying bottled juice, because processing, bottling, and time break down the helpful nutrients. When you juice at home, you consume the juice right away or within a day or two, so you get the most nutrients.

Juicing sites recommend that you wash your fruits and vegetables thoroughly before juicing to remove any pesticides, to try and buy organic produce for juicing if possible, which is free from pesticides, herbicides, etc., and to shop at local produce markets where the produce will be fresher than if it has been shipped halfway around the world. In-season produce is also at its pick in terms of nutrition. Pick the fruits and vegetables with the deepest colors and strongest fragrances. The sites also recommend that you peel citrus fruits and leave in the white pith, as it contains high levels of vitamin C and bioflavinoids. Some fruits with a low water content are not as suitable for juicing and are better being broken down in a blender and then combined with the juice output of the juicer, like bananas and avocadoes.

One tip I loved: leave your juicer set up on your kitchen countertop to remind you to juice.

I also loved the recipes with healthy fats mixed into juices for a creamier treat, like olive oil; soaked cashews or almonds; pumpkin, sunflower, or flax seeds; seed oils like flaxseed oil; or vegetables like avocadoes. The oils help the body take in fat soluble vitamins that fruit and vegetable juices contain.

Also recommended was adding a tablespoon or two of soaked raisins, soaked dates, or chopped figs for sweetness.

A lot of people juice one vegetable or fruit at a time (for instance, carrot juice, apple juice, or tomato juice), but it's much more fun to make interesting juice blends, such as these ideas:

Pear-fennel-watercress

Apple-strawberry

Apple-carrot-celery-parsley

Carrot-fennel-celery-apple

Carrot-apple

Apple-beet-ginger

Lemon-melon ("melonade")

Tomato-apple-garlic-parsley

Red bell pepper and lemon

Spinach-mango

Basil-parsley-soaked pine nuts-garlic-olive oil (presto, it's pesto juice!)

Pumpkin with soaked cashews, nutmeg, and soaked dates (which I think will taste like pumpkin pie)

Green mango and pineapple with chaat masala

Apple-raspberry-brewed black tea

Mint-lime-cucumber

Apple and red grapes with some soaked peanuts (which I think will taste like PB&J)

Add-ons like ginger for zing, red chillies or hot sauce for heat, cinnamon, vanilla, rose water, tamarind, coffee, tea, saffron and many other kinds of flavorings would be fun to experiment with.

Another good point made on the juicing sites is that you will have dry pulp left over after juicing. Instead of throwing it away, you can add the left over pulp to foods (like baked goods) to increase your dietary fiber intake. If you don't have time to make dishes with the pulp on the day of juicing then you can simply put the pulp in a bag and freeze it until you are ready to use it. While the nutrients in freshly made juice break down quickly due to oxidation of enzymes, the benefits you get from fiber do not decline if it's stored frozen. You can also use the left over pulp and peelings for garden compost, or for artistic uses like to make your own paper. Certain types of pulp can be used to feed the birds in your garden.

Wheatgrass is a big reason that many people get into juicing, because it must be juiced: wheatgrass is non-digestible due to its high levels of cellulose, but juicing it makes the nutrients that wheatgrass contains available. One ounce of wheatgrass juice is said to contain the same amount of nutrients as 2.5 lbs of green vegetables. It is grown from the red wheatberry, a special strain that contains high concentrations of chlorophyll, amino acids, enzymes, minerals and vitamins. You can grow your own wheatgrass indoors from a starter kit, which can be more economical than buying it, on a windowsill that receives sunlight daily. It should be cut when it reaches around 7-8".

I also sent my father-in-law a list of potent "superfood" fruits and vegetables (in rainbow order – think of this as a checklist, and try to get the whole rainbow in each week):

- PURPLE: grapes, prunes, plums, cherries, cranberries, raisins, blueberries, peppers, açai, pomegranate, dragonfruit, purple bell peppers, purple carrots

- RED: tomatoes, pink grapefruit, watermelon, apples, beets, strawberries, red bell peppers, red cabbage, chard, currants, damson plums

- ORANGE: pumpkin, carrot, squash, yam, mango, apricot, cantaloupe, orange bell peppers, passionfruit, mangosteen

- ORANGE-YELLOW: oranges, tangerines, grapefruit, peaches, lemons, limes, papaya, pineapple, nectarines, goji berries, golden beets

- YELLOW-GREEN: peas, beans, spinach, green bell peppers, collards, cucumber, mustard greens, kiwi, avocadoes, bananas

- GREEN: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, bok choy, broccoli sprouts, wheatgrass, karela, other sprouts

- WHITE-GREEN: garlic, onions, celery, leeks, scallions, shallots, ginger, asparagus, pears, artichokes, endives, mushrooms, chives

- SEA VEGETABLES: spirulina, kelp, seaweeds

More about juicing and Omega juicers:

Harvest Essentials

Cool Tools

Epinions on the Omega 8006

Is the Novel You're Reading Making You Hungry? Just Pick a Different Book

I have been chortling through Geoff Nicholson's essay, "Go Ahead. Spoil My Appetite," in the New York Times, and I just had to share the best tidbits from it. It's all about how he prefers novels in which the descriptions of what the characters are eating are either nonexistent or disgusting, so that he doesn't have to sit there feeling ravenous and food-envious "while sitting alone on the couch sustained only by instant coffee."

He prefers to read about characters suffering because of what they're eating:

"In 'Gravity’s Rainbow,' ... Tyrone Slothrop samples various hideous English candies, flavored with the likes of quinine, pepsin, eucalyptus, tapioca, until, choking, he’s offered a Meggezone, 'the least believable of English coughdrops.' This is a real product, a nasty little black lozenge, still available, and if my childhood memory is reliable, Pynchon’s description of its effects — 'Polar bears seek toenail-holds up the freezing frosty-grape alveolar clusters in his lungs' — gets it about right."

"'Moby-Dick' ... struck me as a vast smorgasbord ... of bad eating: the Try Pots Inn, where even the milk tastes of fish; the grim formal meals aboard the Pequod; and the notorious scene of Stubb’s Supper, in which the second mate gets a craving for whale steak and sends a crew member to slice some flesh off a poor dead beast attached to the side of the ship.... As Stubb eats he hears sharks in the water far below tearing apart the rest of the whale carcass."

And finally:

"'Naked Lunch' contains my favorite description of disgusting food. Burroughs writes: 'In Egypt is a worm gets into your kidneys and grows to an enormous size. Ultimately the kidney is just a thin shell around the worm. Intrepid gourmets esteem the flesh of The Worm above all other delicacies. It is said to be unspeakably toothsome.' This is surely Burroughs’s own hallucinatory invention, but I’d still like the recipe."

Next up: some of my favorite good reads for good eats : )

Recipe: Moqueca de Peixe (Bahia Seafood Stew)

Moqueca de Peixe (Bahia Seafood Stew) for 6

• juice of 1 lime
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 pound white fish fillet(s), cut into strips or chunks
• 1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 chopped red onion
• 1 chopped green bell pepper
• 1 chopped red bell pepper
• 1 bunch chopped green onions
• 5 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 large chopped tomatoes
• 1/2 cup minced fresh cilantro
• 2 (8-oz.) bottles clam juice
• 1 (14 1/2-oz.) can low sodium broth
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1/2 teaspoon ground red chilli pepper

Combine lime, salt and pepper, garlic, fish and shrimp in a large bowl; toss or turn to coat. Marinate in refrigerator 30 minutes.

Heat oil in a large Dutch oven or stock pot over medium heat. Add onion, bell peppers, green onions, garlic, and bay leaf; cook 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Increase heat to medium-high; add tomato, and cook 2 minutes.

Add half the cilantro, clam juice, and broth. Bring to boil; reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Remove bay leaf.

Blend vegetable-and-stock mixture until smooth (I used a hand blender, but you could also transfer the mixture, 1/3 of it at a time, to a blender for pureeing). Add coconut milk and red chilli pepper to pureed vegetable mixture. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; cook 3 minutes.

Add fish-and-shrimp mixture; cook 3 minutes or until seafood is cooked. Sprinkle with the remaining cilantro.

We had this over brown rice, but it could also be served simply as a stew.