Food...for thought.

As most read this, they are recovering from Thanksgiving feeding frenzies. Some I know had three or four Thanksgiving dinners to devour. We waddle away from these more stuffed than the turkeys we consumed. It is the season in which the guilty pleasure of gorging is soon chased with the guilt-laden advertising of dieting programs, nationwide.

What better time to share some thoughts on food!

Recently, I served up a bowl of dry dog food for my beagle, Roger. Then, I turned my attention to my kids, and poured them some cereal. As everyone was munching away, I thought that every meal should be so simple. Pour it in a bowl and eat it, same thing, every meal, just like Roger.

It also reminded me of a time, as an evil big brother, that I served my little brother a bowl of chocolate puffs cereal. I was tired of serving him breakfast, and I had a bit of a mean streak, too. I waited until he had consumed a few spoonfuls before I told him it was rabbit droppings I’d picked up around the farm before he woke up. (I can only hope my boys won’t be so mean-spirited!) I don’t know the nutritional value of rabbit droppings. I don’t even know if one could put enough sugar on them to make them tasty. I suppose the practice might be environmentally sound, but I don’t suggest it.

What I might suggest, however, is simplifying our diet. This is totally contrary to my wife’s way of thinking. She feels guilty cooking a roast, for it’s too easy. She’s a great cook, inspired by dozens of cookbooks and hours of the food channel. Maybe her way of thinking, that it has to be unique or complicated, is the status quo these days. I know she’s trying to do her best by us, serving sautéed olive skins over braised lamb’s breath sprinkled with shavings of mango or whatever…but truly, it doesn’t have to be a production to be nutritious.

Reminder: I was a bachelor for the better part of twenty years. For me, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were complicated. I often ate cereal for meals, right out of the box. A sack of potatoes offered me a week of meals. I was not one to shun prepared foods, either. I ate my weight in fast food weekly. I did not recognize food if it did not have to first be unwrapped and micro-waved. One of my greatest garage sale finds of all time was a case of military-issue Meals Ready to Eat (MRE’s). To my way of thinking, to this day, SPAM is the ultimate food product. (It is fun to carve into exotic shapes, too.)

Now, I grew up on a dirt farm, and we produced a great deal of grain. Back then, I thought it was only for livestock. I came to marvel at the annual Home Products Dinner held in my hometown, for they had baked bread from the grain of our ground. They had even made donuts out of sorghum. I learned all manner of corn and grain could be popped. When attending Kansas State University, I toured a facility that turned grain into cheese puffs. Finally, I truly understood: grain really was food!
Interestingly enough, I have since learned that most people on the planet live on a diet of grain products. It’s not just for livestock or cheese puffs. Even a review of the food pyramid suggests a healthy portion of breads, cereals, etc. While a diet exclusively grain-based may not be entirely healthy, it is at least more simple.

Of all the cookbooks in our kitchen, I most admire a couple published by the Mennonites, the “More with Less” series. Sensitive to global inequities in food availability and distribution, aware of the massive environmental footprint left by the diet of the northern hemisphere, rooted in the agrarian tradition of their faith, these ladies put together one heck of a cookbook. It features traditional meals, like those we just enjoyed, but it puts a focus on grain-heavy diets.

My wife and I go round-and-round about this. I say, let’s eat cracked wheat. She says, what about the children? I know it’s never going to go my way, that even if we did have cracked wheat, it would be sprinkled over something exotic. I wouldn’t even suggest a grain-heavy diet to anyone, let alone a vegetarian course. (Area ranchers would shoot me on sight.)

I would say, however, that after our annual pig out, maybe it would be okay to take it easy, to eat more simply. There are actually “movements” afoot to encourage us to slow down and eat whole meals at the kitchen table. One such activist group is Slow Food, USA. They argue that “industrialization of food was standardizing taste and leading to the annihilation of thousands of food varieties and flavors.” Who could argue with preserving food and flavor! They advocate gardening, farmer’s markets, less processed and more simple meals.

That all still seems like a lot of work, but I like the idea of slow food. If I were still a bachelor, I’d support the cause. I’d slowly masticate nothing but potatoes from New Year’s to Thanksgiving, then get my fill of all the good stuff.