Breathe. Air pulls essential flavors up into the nose, engaging other parts of the mind with the food. When you take a bite, chew a bit and take a slow breath through your nose. You’ll start to register so many different tastes.WHAT WILL YOU DO?
Develop a basic reckoning of food choices
Commit to slowing down
Prepare meals designed to help you put that commitment into practice
WHAT WILL YOU DISCOVER?
The failures of most diets
How much you have been telling yourself no
The value of slower sorts of food
We’re surrounded by low-fat crackers, no-fat yogurt, low-carb ketchup, no-carb mayo, deli subs under however-many calories, fast-food healthy choices. Supermarkets and restaurants are minefields of health claims.
Taken together, these products and their claims have made us a nation of dieters. We’re all on the lookout for some sort of a fix, assessing what we eat on at least one sliding scale: fats, carbs, sugars, antioxidants, fiber, omega-3s—you name it.
Which means we don’t always make great choices. Take, for example, the Miso-Glazed Salmon at one prominent chain restaurant. The cheery menu describes this entrée as fresh salmon marinated in miso and baked—served with a delicious miso sauce, snow peas, and white rice.
Seems like a good choice, right? Except the single serving arrives as a whopping hunk of salmon, slathered in wasabi butter. It tops out at 1,673 calories with 39 grams of saturated fat.
I’ve ordered it. Hell, I’ve finished it. Frankly, it was delicious. Or at least the first few bites were. After that, I really don’t know. The sheer quantity overwhelmed me as I inhaled the soft, sweet bits. And not only it. Before it appeared, I’d already split the chicken quesadillas with Bruce for an appetizer. And since I thought I’d been good ordering chicken (not bacon) and salmon (not something fried), I gave in to half a piece of Dulce de Leche Caramel Cheesecake. (Yes, I actually took the other half home.)
The best-laid plans… In that one meal, I took in 3,446 calories (running up near two days’ worth on the USDA scheme) and 80 grams of saturated fat (running up near four days’ worth).
I suspect I’m not alone. Most of us go to restaurants and search for so-called light entrées because we’re supposed to, or our friends will think better of us if we do, or we’re afraid of anything else on the menu. But even seemingly small portions hide big problems. We might choose the tomato basil soup as light luncheon fare. Too bad a single bowl at one popular chain has almost 1,100 calories, about half the USDA’s recommended daily intake for an adult.
Or so hollered one recent advertising campaign for a series of frozen dinners, ready in minutes from the oven or the microwave. The hulking tally for one of these meals—Roasted Carved Turkey (which sounds sort of healthy) with over 1½ pounds of food (which sounds sort of overwhelming)—crests 1,450 calories with 5,410 mg of sodium (more than twice of the USDA’s recommended consumption per day) and 26 grams of saturated fat.1
Gargantuan portions in a snap: that’s what we’re eating.2 While we’re all dieting in some way, we’re also being sold the bill of goods that we can (and should) eat more and more and more. More crackers per serving. More cereal per serving. More food at all times.
In fact, nothing has befuddled Bruce and me like the question of huge portion sizes in restaurants and the economics of it. We can’t figure out a business plan in which the point is to offer us more and more for less and less money. Is it just to get us in the door? The portions get larger; the cost goes down. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t they be trying to charge us more for less, like the airlines? We’ll leave it to the economists to debate, but we both feel there’s a whiff of desperation about the whole thing, a rabid attempt to get us in the door this quarter, no matter what it ultimately means to the business bottom line two years down the road.
Anyway, just look at the change in U.S. consumption per person over a thirty-year span:
CONSUMPTION OF |
PERCENT CHANGE BETWEEN 1970 AND 2003 |
fats and oils |
+63% |
grains |
+43% |
vegetables |
+24% |
sugars and sweeteners |
+19% |
dairy products |
+5% |
calories daily3 |
+23% |
One reason for these dramatic increases is that we have to eat more or else the agriculture industry might collapse.4 More and more production means it’s all got to go somewhere. Based on today’s methods, one acre of U.S. soil can produce 42,000 pounds of strawberries a year. Who wants shortcake?
So there’s the marketing strategy: convince us to eat a lot, sell most of it under some sort of vague health claim, and then tell us to eat even more.
No wonder we all diet. We’re eating way too much. We can feel it in our bodies; we can see it in our clothes. So when someone comes along with a plan and says to us, “Hey, you should cut down,” we agree. And we should. Except what most of the diet gurus are proposing isn’t a matter of cutting down. It’s just a matter of depriving ourselves—and plays into the dilemmas already rattling around in our heads.
Cut down the carbs. Cut out the sugar. Cut out the fat. These are some of the answers.
Listen, if we cut out one type of food, no matter what it is, we’ll temporarily lose weight. Period.5
Mind you, it’s not a bad thing to cut way back on sugar for a week, or avoid fatty salad dressings for a while, or dump the after-work cocktail to save a few calories. But following close on the heels of these good intentions comes the first lie that deprivation diets tell: the food we’ve temporarily cut out must be evil. It’s not how we eat but what we eat.
While driving to a local orchard to pick cherries the other day, Bruce and I happened to catch a prominent, national radio show. The guest was talking about favorite summer foods. Of course, since taste is connected to memory, the call-ins were mostly about favorite childhood summer foods. One woman innocently said she never has a summer gathering without making her mom’s favorite tuna-macaroni salad.
To which the show’s guest responded in utter horror: “Evil, evil carbs.”
Millions of Italians must be wrong, but the woman was undaunted. “Can I use whole wheat pasta?”
He audibly shuddered. “It’ll taste awful.”
“Well,” she said resignedly, “you can get used to anything.”
Yes, that’s what we want: food we have to get used to.
Now watch this next move. You toss out the offending stuff—the carbs, the fat, the sugars, you name it—and then deprivation diets convince you to compensate with tons of grapefruits (the seventies fad). Or watermelon (the eighties fad). Or blueberries (the nineties fad). Or whole grains (the millennial fad). Or omega-3s (the right-now fad). Or whatever the next it food will be.
Or much worse: cut out the offending stuff and then replace it with a fake version of itself. Drop the sugars and replace them with artificial sweeteners—some natural, some fully manufactured, some in a no-man’s-land in-between.
Or drop the fat and replace it with a chemically modified starch, a long-chain emulsifier, or one of those engineered fats whose only benefit is a bad case of the runs later in the day.
Any deprivation diet will work for a while. Of course. Cut out something that’s a normal part of your food choices and you will lose weight. But that’s not a long-term solution. And it’s certainly not a real food solution.
Just because something worked for a while doesn’t mean it will work forever. Witness the Electoral College.
In truth, we’re not losing weight despite the plethora of diet sodas and candies. We’re not thinner with fat-free everything on our plates. We’re not healthier because a million diet gurus are hawking their plans on a million street corners.
Maybe that’s why there’s been a rather stinky desperation in the new diet schemes popping up on the market lately. They don’t cut out one thing; they cut out practically everything.
Thus, the popularity of the new purge diets. One recently popular version was based on some mythology about thin French women. It had us sipping nothing but leek broth for the first weekend… then touted its claims to correctness with the inevitable See, we lost weight.6 Of course we lost weight! Quaffing tepid leek water, who wouldn’t lose weight? Besides, maybe certain Parisian women are thin, but most suffer from the same eating and weight problems the rest of us do.7
Why would anyone buy into a system based on so many lies? Especially when.…
Deprivation is not a motivator. It’s a blocking mechanism. And once we remove the block, the pent-up desire goes nuts. Or worse yet, quiets to depression.
Who’s going to keep drinking leek water? Or not eating chocolate? Or only eating chicken breasts and a plain baked potato? Or cutting out real sweeteners for the fake stuff? Or cutting out this and that all to take some ridiculous supplement? How can anyone stand it?
We can’t. Except that failure is then laid at our feet. If we were to outline almost every diet, they would go like this:
1. mandate a dramatic cutback (carbs, fat, you name it),
2. which works temporarily,
3. which proves the diet is trustworthy,
4. except it fails,
5. so we blame ourselves.
Look at that outline. There’s a basic pronoun shift: it to we. We’ve bought into a bind where if it doesn’t work, we’re at fault.
But a deprivation diet can’t work. We run on pleasure, especially when it comes to taste.8 We are complex beings, made of the dust of this earth and all that grows in it, beings whose innards reward us with endorphins that add up to ooo, ah, and yes.9
And if our goal is to lose weight, we need to stop boiling dinner in a bag, or going on a fat-flush purge, or doing any of the other unspeakable things all those diets require. Instead, we must get back to a place where food is pleasure—even in a world that has so much of it.
Let’s be clear: Bruce and I are not talking about triple-dipper ice cream sundaes and cheeseburgers. Rather, we’re talking about that simple peach—and what it brings to the dishes prepared with it. We’re talking about the delight of food that retains its natural goodness, nutrients, and taste. We’re talking about real food, not fussed up or contrived, but straightforward and pleasurable.
Dreydl knows it. He’s our collie—and a handful: willful and addicted to chasing chipmunks into the woods. Since we live in a place where we routinely can’t get out of the garage because a 500-pound bear is napping on the driveway, it’s not the best strategy to have him running like a maniac through the underbrush. So we enrolled him in an obedience class.
Our first night there, we had to sign a contract that said we would never scold our dog, never hit him, never react in anger. Um, okay. Had they met Dreydl?
The only things we were allowed? Praise and food.
We’ll let you guess which one worked better.
Actually, it all worked beautifully at first. Within a week, he was more than happy to stay close because he’d learned that there was a boxed dog biscuit in it for him.
Then he quit. He was back to the underbrush on a daily basis.
We asked the trainer what was up.
“The food,” she said, a no-nonsense fortysomething. “Would you eat that biscuit?”
Us? Established food writers?
She sensed our hesitation. “So up the stakes,” she said with a harrumph.
We did. We fried up some chicken livers, cut them into tiny pieces, and put those in a baggie.
Dreydl passed two levels of obedience, the star of his class.
That dog knew the right answer: the food has to be deeply satisfying for it to register as its own reward. That processed dog biscuit wasn’t worth the effort. You want me to do what for what?
Think about the sheer amount of food available in the world. There are convenience stores, vending machines, restaurants, and grocery stores. Even gas stations sell food. After all, there are tons and tons of strawberries that have to be eaten every day! We can’t turn around before we find more to eat.
Bruce and I did a quick count the other day. Driving twenty-nine miles down some rural New England roads to our bank in West Hartford, Connecticut, we passed 122 food-selling establishments, from restaurants to grocery stores.
It’s not surprising we’re all on some sort of deprivation diet. We go about telling ourselves no most of the time.
Sometimes consciously, sure. In New York City a few months ago and on our way for Thai food, we watched a young woman in a business suit falter in front of a lovely bakery, one we’ve visited several times. She did no more than hesitate, a catch in her stride, as she glimpsed the cupcakes—then she instantly struck back into high gear. Lo and behold, she turned in ahead of us at the very Thai restaurant where we were going! She had told herself no because lunch was only minutes away. And reasonably so.
But more often, we tell ourselves no unconsciously. Food is survival. If we don’t eat, we die. So we’re wired to be on the lookout for it, scanning the world for opportunities—even when we’re not hungry. Over the years, we’ve been conditioned to know where food is: that restaurant, that grocery store, that food court at the mall. Put simply, these are constant opportunities for what used to be sheer survival.
Let’s say we’ve just had lunch at a restaurant at the mall: a tuna sandwich and a green salad, for example. We walk out to do some more shopping and pass the food court or one of those little cookie stands. We’re not hungry; so deep inside, we tell ourselves no.
And we should. We’re not hungry, despite having seen and registered a food source. Animals do this all the time. We’ve watched our bear picking at the wild berry brambles in the woods beside our house. He goes through a bush or two, eats a mighty lot, and then moves on. He passes other canes loaded with berries, but he doesn’t stop to eat more.
However, here’s one real difference between us and our bear: I can tell you with utter certainty he will not pass 122 berry brambles in the next two hours. Our wonderful world of overwhelming food abundance has led us to the strange moment when we’re having to practice restraint all day every day over and over again, consciously or subconsciously. We’re always telling ourselves no.
So our land of abundance actually feels like deprivation. And it’s a recipe for disaster. We’re an oppositional people. Tell us no, and we may never stop. Once we hear don’t, the pleasure of the table is instantly replaced by a set of rules (or prohibitions). Life then morphs into a particularly silly version of obey or rebel. We need only think of those no-carb/all-protein fads of the nineties to watch how the faulty logic plays out. As carbs were demonized, we got off them—only to get back on them with shocking abandon.10
Watch people at a buffet—a church supper, a family reunion, a community event, a cookout on a cruise. They dive for the food as if they haven’t eaten in days—and won’t have any obvious opportunities in the future. Sometimes all that no just gives way, especially in social settings where eating is celebrated. Sometimes, after telling ourselves no long enough, we want a license to say yes.
It’s high time we removed the games around food and revamped our choices to enjoy every bite—partly so we can indeed turn away from gargantuan proportions without feeling deprived.
To do all that, we’re going to celebrate abundance. Not by eating everything and anything we can. Not by heading for the cookie cart right after lunch. But by making sure that what we eat is real food, glorious and full of genuine flavors. And by finding a meal tomorrow and the next day and the next that fits the same bill.
This is the path to our culinary salvation.
We can’t run away from pleasure. Real satisfaction comes from enjoying the world’s bounty in reasonable portions. So settle in for a couple of these meals. Taste for complex flavors, celebrate how they connect to memory, find them with all your senses, and chew beyond the first bite.
Your brain is so quick that you have to figure out ways to relish every bite. Like these:
Breathe. Air pulls essential flavors up into the nose, engaging other parts of the mind with the food. When you take a bite, chew a bit and take a slow breath through your nose. You’ll start to register so many different tastes.
Occasionally, push some of the partially chewed food onto the roof of your mouth just behind your front teeth. You’ll be pushing it closer to your nose, so you’ll experience more complex flavors.
Have something to drink. It will increase the complexity of the flavors dramatically. And the liquid will help get those flavors onto your tongue and up in your nose.
This is one of our favorite lunches—we’ve even carried it with us for a quick meal on the road. Search out a crusty, chunky, whole-grain bread to give you the most chew and taste with every bite. Add some roasted or steamed broccoli, carrots, or cauliflower on the side and you’ve got dinner!
1. Position a rack about 5 inches below the broiler and preheat it. Set the bread on a baking sheet and place the tray on the oven rack so that the toast slices are right under the heating element. Toast the bread on both sides until lightly browned and crunchy.
2. Spread each slice of bread with ½ teaspoon mustard. Top each with the pear slices.
3. Mix the two cheeses in a small bowl, then sprinkle 2 tablespoons over each piece of bread and pear.
4. Place the tray back on the oven rack as before and broil until the cheese melts, turns a little brown, and gets bubbly, about 4 minutes. Transfer the sandwiches to a wire rack and cool a few minutes before eating.
Note: No kitchen should be without a proper scale, sold at most cookware stores and online outlets. Its purpose is not to weigh portion sizes. Rather, it’s so we can complete a recipe successfully. For example, cheese is always given by weight: 1½ ounces. More, and the dish will turn greasy; less, it may be dry.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
(CAN BE HALVED FOR TWOSOMES)
Here’s a make-ahead goodie full of flavor without any fake-outs. For dinner, line a plate with lettuce leaves and spoon the salad on top. Make sure you have a piece of a crunchy baguette on the side.
1. Prepare the grill for high-heat cooking or heat a grill pan over medium-high heat. Smear about 1 teaspoon oil over the tuna steak and set on the grill grate directly over the heat or on the grill pan. Continue cooking, turning once, until an instant-read meat thermometer inserted into the center of the tuna registers 140°F, about 6 minutes, maybe 8 (see Note). Transfer to a cutting board and slice into small cubes. Cool for 5 minutes.
2. Place these cubes in a bowl and stir in everything else, including the remaining oil. Serve at once—or cover and refrigerate for lunch the next day.
Note: No kitchen should also be without an instant-read meat thermometer. The only way to tell if a fish steak or any cut of beef, pork, veal, chicken, or turkey is done is to take its internal temperature. The thermometer will give you a reading in seconds, without its having to be left inside the oven. Gently press the probe into the thickest part of the cut and wait a few seconds for the temperature to register. Always wash an instant-read thermometer before a subsequent use.
MAKES 2 SERVINGS
(CAN BE DOUBLED OR TRIPLED)
This easy supper will help you realize that fresh flavors don’t need a lot of adulteration. Buy the best black olives you can find, preferably the small ones from Nyons or other varietals from Provence.
1. Place a chicken breast between two large sheets of plastic wrap on your work surface, then use the bottom of a heavy saucepan (or the flat side of a meat mallet if you have one) to pound the breast to about ¼ inch thick. Or save yourself the trouble and ask your supermarket’s butcher to pound the breasts until they’re ¼ inch thick.
2. Mix the flour, salt, and pepper together on a large dinner plate.
3. Unless you have a gigantic skillet that can accommodate all the pounded breasts at once, melt ½ tablespoon butter with 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
4. Dredge two breasts in the flour mixture, coating both sides. Knock off any excess flour. Slip them into the skillet and cook until lightly browned and cooked through (you can slice one open to make sure it’s white inside), about 4 minutes, turning once. Transfer the breasts to a serving platter or individual plates.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 without cleaning the skillet until all the chicken is cooked.
6. Stir the olives and lemon zest into the skillet; cook for about 20 seconds.
7. Pour in the wine, vermouth, or broth, as well as the lemon juice. Raise the heat to high, and bring the mixture to a full, bubbling simmer, scraping the bottom of the skillet occasionally to get any flavorful brown bits up and into the sauce. Cook for about 1 minute, or until slightly reduced. Pour this wet sauce over the breasts.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
(CAN EASILY BE HALVED FOR TWOSOMES)
Once, as Bruce and I were jogging through Dulles Airport, trying to make a connection home, he wanted to grab a coffee, a little caffeine to keep him awake. He walked up to a small kiosk and asked for a medium cup.
“Don’t you want something to eat?” the chipper woman asked.
“No, thanks. Tired. Just coffee.”
“The sandwiches are fresh,” she said, doing her best.
He hesitated.
“I just unpacked them.”
Fresh? They’re not fresh. They haven’t been fresh in days. They arrived at the airport on a truck from a processing plant out beyond the exurbs, already sealed in cellophane, stamped with an expiration date, and stacked in cardboard boxes—which got checked in at the airport’s central food facility, made it onto trolleys, maybe sat around for a bit, finally got taken to this woman’s kiosk, and dumped behind her chair until she was ready to slice open the case and put them out.
Fresh. Not I made them. Or I saw them being made. Or even I know where they were made. Fresh, as in I just unpacked the box.
That counts as a sales pitch.
Even as fresh became freshly unpacked, the national sport of home kitchen renovations has spawned TV shows, magazines, websites, and an industry of remodeling specialists. What’s more, many of us have tricked out our appliances: stainless-steel this, copper that. All of which is sort of odd considering how little anyone cooks at home anymore. Watch this:
Around 1934, we devoted almost two and a half hours a day to cooking at home.
By the fifties, when modern appliances had taken root, we were down to one hour a day.
By the midnineties, with the advent of a battalion of frozen meals, we’d shaved it to fifteen minutes.
And today? In 2010, it’s projected that the average American will spend eight minutes a day preparing food at home—not per meal, but for all three, snacks included.11
To accomplish the Herculean task of cooking our food in eight minutes, we’ve turned to a lot of processed or packaged foods. Only 58 percent of our meals use at least one raw ingredient.12 Milk on cereal counts. Which means that 42 percent of foods cooked at home did not include even one raw ingredient.
We’ve also turned to a lot of heat-it-up, frozen foods: over $32 billion worth in 2010.13
But in all actuality, the growth of frozen foods pales in comparison to the growth of prepared and processed foods. Industry statistics are guarded secrets, but we do know that the U.S. imported (not counting what we made ourselves) over $31 billion worth in 2007 while the global market has crested $1.3 trillion.14
Walk into any supermarket and look at the growth areas: breads and pastries, deli cases, take-home dinners, and rotisserie chickens. Remember that idea that you should shop the supermarket’s perimeter to find the freshest, minimally processed, or least packaged stuff? Now you’ll mostly find ready-to-go fare in boxes or on warming trays.
So we’ve revamped our kitchens, bought better cookware, and gotten buried alive in a blizzard of cookbooks and food shows; but we mostly buy processed and packaged stuff. We have pots and pans our ancestors could have only dreamed of but we rely on a stack of take-out menus.
Bruce and I were recently at a dinner party where our hostess told us she has more than a hundred food blogs bookmarked, sites she reads daily. She then proceeded to put out a lovely dinner prepared entirely by a high-end grocery store.
Listen, nobody wants to go back to 1934. Two and a half hours a day spent cooking? That’s nuts. Almost as nuts as eight minutes a day.
When we do cook, we often cook for dinner parties, birthdays, or holidays. Thanksgiving remains the number one day we get in the kitchen. The meals we prepare are hardly the stuff for weekday evenings. We make platters, not dinner.
To make matters worse, the number of servings a published recipe makes has dwindled while the overall amount of food it produces has increased. In Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child claimed a 3-pound chicken served four. Her lobster recipe for six called for three 1½-pound lobsters.15
Today, it’s hard to find a 3-pound, uncooked bird at the market. Even the fully cooked, rotisseried birds weigh in around 4 pounds. And a 1½-pound lobster is considered a single serving.
All of which is gobbled down in no time flat. On average, we spend about thirty-nine minutes a day eating food at home. Again, eight minutes preparing it, thirty-nine minutes eating it—for all meals and snacks.
When we order in, heat up a meal, or even cook our own dinner, we tend to sit down with it in front of the TV. Chances are, we’re finished before the first commercial break. That’s seven to eight minutes.
Which means, given our statistics, that we’ve got at least thirty-one minutes left over for breakfast, lunch, and snacks.
In 1955, twenty-five cents of every dollar spent on food in the United States went to restaurants; today that figure is heading north of forty-six cents, with almost unbelievable growth expected in the next decade.
That’s not the only thing that’s grown. Portion sizes in fast-food restaurants are between two and five times larger than in the mid-1980s.16
A recent scholarly article made no bones about it: “Large portions of energy-dense foods can lead to excess energy intakes.” In other words, when we’re served bigger portions of high-fat, high-sugar foods, we eat more—and gain weight.17
I called one of the authors, Barbara J. Rolls, professor of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State and author of the best-selling Volumetrics Eating Plan, to follow up. “Most of us have good intentions,” she said, “but we have to work hard not to overeat these days. Eventually, if you’re serious about taking control of what you eat, you start to find it really hard to go out.”18
Bruce and I remember growing up in the sixties when portions were not as large as they are now. Take juice, for example. When we were kids, orange juice came in a narrow, squat glass, no more than 2 ounces. It was a treat—expensive and usually freshly squeezed.
Today, it’s an expected part of brunch—in an 8-ounce tumbler, if not a 16-ounce one. That small glass when we were kids contained about 28 calories. And the big one today? About 224 calories, probably downed as one beverage among several.
But here’s where it really gets surreal. For all the fancy presentations, large portions, and multiple beverages, how long do you think the average American spends eating in a restaurant? Just thirteen minutes.19
Watch people sometime. They eat with their heads down, bent over their plates. There’s little thought to what they’re eating. Just like Bruce and I with our breakfast sandwiches at the airport.
And how in the world can restaurants push out that much food so quickly? We know the answers from our burgers near the mall. The ingredients have been precut, presliced, four-fifths (if not completely) premade, pumped with preservatives, then smeared with a thick coating of fat, sugar, and salt to make the patties palatable—not palatable enough to savor, mind you (thirteen minutes, after all), but just palatable enough that we bolt them down and go about our business, temporarily sated, maybe even stuffed, but certainly not satisfied.
It’s best summed up by an episode of that popular sitcom Designing Women. Mary Jo was once forced to work at a fast-food restaurant because her ex wasn’t making his child-support payments. Julia Sugarbaker and the gang ended up helping her out when the restaurant was overwhelmed with a lunch rush—which led to this priceless exchange with a hapless customer ordering a sandwich:
CUSTOMER: “What kind of fish is it?”
JULIA: “Excuse me?”
CUSTOMER: “The fish sandwich? What kind of fish is it?”
JULIA: “It’s sort of compressed.”
CUSTOMER: “Is it fresh?”
JULIA: “Well, let me put it this way: you’re in a Burger Guy; it’s compressed fish, breaded and deep-fried. It costs eighty-nine cents. What do you think?”
CUSTOMER (hesitating): “I don’t know.”
JULIA (quickly): “Yes, it’s fresh.”
All is not lost. There are four ways to turn away from the cycles of deprivation with overeating as their inevitable rebound yet still come out a winner every time—and find real food to boot.
Bruce and I have slowed down by making small moments with food events part of a daily ritual—because we’ve decided that we’re the sort of people who relish food.
These days, I eat breakfast every morning. By which I mean that I sit down and eat it. (Isn’t it weird that I have to make that qualification?) I love café au lait, a big bowl of espresso with frothed milk. I got tired of hunting for it at coffee shops (it’s embarrassing in my PJs), so I bought my own machine. Now, I set my alarm early to have my coffee and read the newspaper. I enjoy a piece of buttered toast (dipped in café au lait, it’s sheer ecstasy!) and I’m ready for the day.
Bruce is an on-the-go type: he rolls out of bed and jumps to work. I’ve seen him go from sleeping to braising in under five minutes. His quiet moments come in the late afternoon. He pours himself a beer, gets a handful of nuts, and heads out to the deck to settle in for some downtime with the birds in the trees.
That’s the key: to decide. Imagine yourself as a person who slows down, who takes time with what you eat. Hold that image for a minute. What would that mean for your day? What would that mean for your meals? What would that mean for your spouse, your children, your partner, or your boyfriend?
Aristotle once wrote that a good story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Meals are like that, too: they go from a beginning (we’re hungry) to a happy ending (we’re satisfied). So here’s how to make your meal a memorable story.
When you sit down, do something that indicates you’re at the beginning. Some people say a prayer; others say a stock phrase like bon appétit or here’s to your health. Bruce and I often begin with a poem from one of our favorite modern poets: Billy Collins, Philip Levine, or Kay Ryan. We once spent a year reading Shakespeare sonnets before our meals.
The middle? Well, that’s what we’re all about in this book—learning to enjoy every bite.
Then set an end to your meal, a ritual that tells you dinner is over. Don’t just use the TV commercial breaks.
The most common ending is a cup of coffee or tea. But there are other ways you can end meals: a kiss, a hug, a thank-you, a song. Make it a ritual so it has the ring of a conclusion. I know one family who says a prayer after dinner, not before.
As a bonus, giving dinner an end point also helps stop mindless eating afterward. A meal is not an open-ended project.
Some foods stave off hunger by manipulating our metabolism and digestive systems so we feel sated for longer. They slow us down internally. You’ve probably noticed some as repeated ingredients in Bruce’s recipes—and you’ll see them again in the steps ahead. Here are the top four:
Chiles
They pack a wallop because of a chemical called capsaicin (technically, C18H27NO3), found not in the seeds as people think but instead in little packets in the fleshy veins that run down the inside walls. When cut or even jostled, these packets pop, coating the adjacent seeds with the hot stuff (thus the myth is born). Why this elaborate fandango? Capsaicin is a natural weapon. Birds are immune: they peck at the chiles, digest the seeds whole, and spread them far and wide. We (and all mammals) grind the seeds with our molars and thus stop the plant’s propagation—so we’re smacked by the chemical defense. Besides the obvious burn on the tongue, one of capsaicin’s other biochemical defenses is to trigger signals in our bodies that suppress the appetite, encouraging us to eat less (thus, saving more chiles for the birds).
Ginger
This root has been found to increase the PH of our digestive system, thus decreasing the acidity and helping retard the recurrent flow of gastric juices. As a bonus, there’s no pain, as with chiles; ginger is just sweet and delicious. Plus, it can be frozen in unpeeled chunks for up to a year, so you’ll always have some on hand.
Pine Nuts
A flavorful addition to so many dishes, these edible seeds from certain pine tree species cause the release of cholecystokinin, a hormone that yields gut-level feelings of satiety and contentment. In other words, you feel fuller and want to eat less.
Broccoli
Your mother was right: eat your broccoli. And not only broccoli but all leafy greens. They aid digestion and offer complex gastric reactions that lead you to satiety faster. Sure, a steak might make your brain happy, but broccoli actually makes your stomach happier. And learning to get in touch with what’s going on down there, learning to let those neurons do some of the talking, is a sure step toward better health—and greater contentment.
Mentioning these four ingredients brings up an important point about what we eat in general: not all calories are created equal. Convincing ourselves to slow down is a worthy goal for increasing satisfaction. But if the food we eat leaves us still hungry or unfulfilled, all our good intentions are for naught.
Remember when Bruce and I wolfed down those burgers at the chain restaurant and were eyeing the muffins a few hours later? To figure out what was going on, let’s imagine you and I actually sat down to eat two different meals, each with the same number of calories. Which would hold us the longest before hunger struck again?
a 5-ounce chicken breast, sautéed in a small skillet with 1 tablespoon olive oil, as well as a medium-baked potato and a medium apple—and go ahead, use a couple tablespoons of chutney with the chicken, put a tablespoon of butter on the baked potato, drizzle the apple slices with a couple teaspoons of honey, and give everything a little salt and freshly ground black pepper
a medium bag of gumdrops (about 6½ ounces)
Unfair, you might say.
Is it? Remember: both meals have about the same number of calories.20 Which are just units of energy. Every one is equal to every other by the laws of physics. So both meals should hold us the same amount of time. Yet we know the first meal will last us several hours, whereas the gumdrops will leave us hungry in no time flat, even if we take half an hour and chew every piece forty times.
The difference is caused by the way food is digested, by the way it leaves our stomachs. Calories may be equal in science but they’re not in our bellies. Protein and fiber leave our stomachs slowly—protein, for example, at a rate of about 4 calories per minute.21 Which means that our chicken breast meal, packed with natural fiber in the baked potato and the apple, even with the added fat and sugar (the butter and the honey), is going to hold us longer than the same number of calories from a bag of gumdrops.
So we don’t just need to slow down; we must also choose foods that will stick with us for longer periods of time. And here’s part of the answer: protein and fiber.22 A sandwich that’s mostly a big hit of sugars (in the form of refined carbs in the bread and corn syrup in the spreads) isn’t going to hold us for very long at all.23
Here’s another comparison:
2 cups cooked brown rice, a tablespoon of butter, some salt and pepper
One 4-ounce, king-size candy bar
Again, the calories are about the same.24 Yet we know, despite their ads to the contrary, that candy bars simply won’t hold us. That’s because sugar empties out of our stomachs at a very fast rate, at about 10 calories per minute—whereas the high fiber in the brown rice will hold us a while.
Let’s be clear: Bruce and I are not saying anyone needs to go eat a plate of brown rice for lunch. Ick! But we need to start thinking about ways to hold off hunger and increase satisfaction. Fiber sticks around and keeps us content.
We should always up the fiber in what we eat. Ask for the sprouts with the sandwich; choose the whole-grain bread. Ask for some crunchy carrots or celery on the side. Eat an apple or half a whole wheat muffin for a snack. Add more beans or chickpeas to a salad rather than cheese and sweet dressings. A lunch of soft pasta and cheese sauce will not hold us until dinner.
Now it’s going to get outrageous. Here’s a final comparison:
that 4-ounce, king-size candy bar
half a 7-ounce bag of potato chips
Ah, this one’s tougher. But we probably know the answer just from feeling it in our bellies. The potato chips will actually hold us longer, despite their having about 10 percent fewer calories than the candy bar. That’s because fat empties out of the stomach at a rate similarly slow to protein and fiber.25
Which can be a problem. We can eat a lot of fat and feel very satisfied, held back from hunger for hours. In fact, restaurants often pump up the fat to increase their customers’ satiety. But fat is terribly high in calories; a good way to put on excess pounds in no time.
We’ll get to a fuller answer to this dilemma in the steps ahead. For now, let’s just say that we want to think about increasing fiber (think vegetables and whole grains), having some good protein, and even adding a little fat to our meals—all to increase satisfaction and keep hunger at bay. Like one of these two meals:
Here’s a stick-with-you meal, especially alongside crunchy radishes and a sliced cucumber. There’s natural fat in the walnuts, as well as lots of fiber in the lentils—and even in the sweet pear. Lentils are done quickly, so take care not to overcook them. If you don’t want to buy a bag of carrots or a whole head of celery, look for individual carrot stalks and celery ribs at the salad bar of your supermarket.
1. Put the lentils in a large pot, add water until it’s about 2 inches over the top of them, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat to low, and simmer until the lentils are tender but with still a little resistance when bitten, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Drain in a colander set in the sink.
2. Pour the lentils into a large serving bowl; stir in everything else.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
By increasing the fiber in this casserole (both with whole wheat pasta and more veggies), we can enjoy the luxury of a down-home favorite. This isn’t a baked casserole but a skillet supper, quicker and easier.
1. Mix the Cheddar and Parmigiano-Reggiano in a medium bowl. Set aside.
2. Melt the butter in a large, high-sided, oven-safe skillet. Add the onion and cook, stirring often, until softened, about 3 minutes.
3. Add the mushrooms and cook until they release their liquid, it comes to a simmer, and then reduces by about two-thirds, about 5 minutes.
4. Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables in the skillet. Stir well to coat.
5. Whisk in the milk in a steady, thin stream until creamy. Then whisk in the mustard, tarragon, salt, and pepper. Continue whisking until the mixture starts to bubble and the liquid thickens, about 3 minutes.
6. Remove the skillet from the heat. Stir in three-quarters of the mixed cheeses until smooth. Then stir in the cooked pasta and the broccoli.
7. Preheat the broiler after setting the rack 4 to 6 inches from the heat source. Meanwhile, sprinkle the remaining cheese over the ingredients in the skillet. Set the skillet on the rack and broil until light browned and bubbling, about 5 minutes. (If your skillet has a plastic or wooden handle, make sure it sticks outside the oven, out from under the broiler, so the handle doesn’t melt.) Cool for 5 to 10 minutes before dishing up.
Note: Broccoli florets can be cut off the larger stalks. (Save the chopped stalks in the freezer to be used for stews.) Make sure the florets are small: an inch across at the largest. If larger, drop them into the pasta water to cook for 1 minute. Drain in a colander set in the sink with the pasta and just dump both into the skillet in step 6.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
We’ve already talked about finding a sense of accomplishment in the kitchen, of treating it as a pleasurable act of creation in the state of flow. But we can only maintain flow if we keep pushing the boundaries.
Boredom can be standard operating procedure when we cook. Most evenings, we’re dead tired and set the challenge far too low, resorting to the same old recipes or foods. Not only are we uninterested, the food we cook is uninteresting. Our palates suffer, caught in tedium. There’s no flow anywhere in sight, nor even the possibility of it.
To compensate, we sometimes shoot too high. We dive headfirst into a whole complicated mélange, buying flaxseeds and quinoa and things we’ve never heard of, roasting this and braising that, a sort of frenzy to be on top of the game.
Soon enough, frustration sets in. It’s too hard, too far, too much. Caul fat what? Mince how? Every turn reminds us of how far we have to go—although we’re pretending to be at the end of the course already. So we throw in the towel, glad to be done.
Flow can be achieved only when our skills and their challenges are growing over time. As Csikszentmihalyi writes, flow’s end result, its whole point (as it were), is “growth and discovery.”26 This means we must always be expanding the challenge. Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves bored and back on the processed, packaged merry-go-round.
So Bruce and I want to start increasing your skills in the kitchen, pushing you a bit so you’ll find more enjoyment in preparing your meals. To that end, here are four recipes, each based on a classic cooking technique. You can hone your skills and maybe learn a thing or two, always the key to greater enjoyment at what you do.
From the French word for “to jump,” sautéing involves browning meat, fowl, fish, or shellfish in a hot skillet. The food skitters and sizzles, sort of jumping as it browns. Which is really the point. Give these chicken breasts enough time over the heat to get a uniform, browned look. That caramelized flavor will permeate the meat—and lie in little burned bits on the skillet’s bottom, waiting to be lifted off with this classic sauce of tomatoes, olives, and capers.
1. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Meanwhile, season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper.
2. Swirl the olive oil into the skillet, then slip the chicken breasts in and cook until well browned, about 6 minutes. Don’t skimp—you want lots of color for lots of flavor. The breasts may well stick at first but let them keep browning and searing over the heat. Soon enough, you’ll be able to pop them up with a large spatula, the natural sugars and proteins releasing from the hot surface.
3. Turn the breasts and continue cooking until well browned on the other side, about 5 more minutes, until an instant-read meat thermometer inserted into the center of one breast registers 165°F. Transfer to a plate.
4. Melt the butter in the skillet, then add the garlic and red pepper flakes. Stir over the heat until aromatic, about 20 seconds.
5. Add the olives and capers, then pour in the tomatoes. Bring to a simmer, scraping up any browned bits on the skillet’s bottom. Knock the heat down to low and simmer slowly until the sauce has thickened a little, about 3 minutes. Basically, if you run a wooden spoon through the sauce, it’ll hold that line a second or so before flowing back into place.
6. Return the breasts and any accumulated juices on their plate to the skillet. Cook for about 2 minutes, just until the breasts are warmed through.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS
Despite the use of fussy parchment paper, found near the aluminum foil and wax paper at the supermarket, no technique is easier than this classic method that seals food in packets and then bakes it in a hot oven, creating a little steam chamber, no extra fat needed. Although this recipe makes a single serving, you can make as many packets as you need for as many as you have to feed by multiplying the ingredients at will. Lift the packets right off the baking sheet with a large spatula, then set each one on a plate, letting everyone peel open their own. Careful of that hot steam!
1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 450°F.
2. Lay the sheet of aluminum foil on your work surface, then top with the sheet of parchment paper. Sprinkle the oregano in the center of the sheet, then set the fillet on top.
3. Sprinkle the yellow squash or zucchini, cherry tomatoes, artichoke hearts, wine or its substitute, salt, and pepper over the fillet.
4. Fold and crimp the packet closed, making sure there are no gaps anywhere. The best way is to crimp the two long edges closed by folding them over each other a couple times, then pinching them tightly shut. Roll up the short edges, taking care not to reopen the long, central seam.
5. Place the packet on a large baking sheet; bake for 15 minutes. Let stand at room temperature on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before serving.
MAKES 1 SERVING
A braise involves long-stewing tough cuts of meat and root vegetables in a little liquid, less than you would for a stew. In effect, there are two techniques at once: simmering the parts submerged in the liquid and steaming those resting above, the better to allow the meat’s natural collagen and fat to melt into an incredible sauce. It isn’t much work, other than to wait for the dish to get done.
1. Heat a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Swirl in the oil, then add the shanks (in batches, if necessary, to avoid crowding) and brown all over, about 8 minutes in all. Transfer to a plate.
2. Add the onion and carrot; cook, stirring often, until the onion has begun to turn translucent and smells sweet, about 4 minutes.
3. Stir in the wine or its substitute, lemon zest, sage, salt, celery seeds, and pepper; raise the heat to high and bring to a full simmer. Cook until the liquid has reduced to about half its original volume.
4. Stir in 1½ cups of the beans, as well as the broth; return the shanks and any accumulated juices to the pot.
5. Bring to a full simmer; then cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer slowly until the lamb is tender when poked with a fork at its large “knuckle” end, about 2½ to 3 hours.
6. Use a fork to mash the remaining 1 cup of beans and the lemon juice into a paste in a small bowl. Stir the mixture into the simmering sauce and cook for 1 minute, just to warm through.
MAKES 6 SERVINGS
Stir-frying is all about cooking ingredients quickly without too much caramelization. Thus, it always involves (1) prepping everything in advance so you can work like mad over the heat, and (2) using Asian condiments to make a flavorful sauce without any browning—in the case of this dish, bottled oyster sauce, soy sauce, and rice vinegar, all available in the Asian aisle of your market. Serve the dish over cooked brown rice or steamed baby bok choy (chopped into chunks and washed to remove any sand).
1. Heat a large, nonstick wok or sauté pan over medium-high heat for 2 minutes.
2. Swirl in the oil, then add the scallions, ginger, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Stir and toss over the heat for 20 seconds.
3. Add the mushrooms, green beans, squash, and carrots. Stir and toss over the heat until the vegetables have begun to get tender but still have a little crunch, about 3 minutes.
4. Pour in the oyster sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar. Stir well until bubbling, about 30 seconds. If you like a thicker sauce, add the cornstarch mixture and toss over the heat just until the sauce thickens, about 20 more seconds.
Note: An Asian staple, rice vinegar is made from rice wine. It comes in two varieties: unseasoned and seasoned. Seasoned has sugar in the mix—and is often labeled seasoned, even in tiny type. The more standard, unseasoned bottling is not so marked. But sometimes, the only way to tell is to read the ingredient list. The recipes in this book call for only the standard, unseasoned variety.
MAKES 4 SERVINGS