Browse
Engage
Research
Thanks to Mark Bittman, I'm giving up my Wednesday night pizza habit.
For months, I've been doing the weekly "speed" workouts for marathon runners organized by the Montgomery County Road Runners Club on Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. Before heading out of the house, I'd order a large veggie pizza from Papa John's handy website and schedule delivery for later. Hey, I earned it, didn't I?
Then I read Cooking Solves Everything, Bittman's latest, a 10,000-word e-book published by Byliner, a new publishing venture. You know Bittman, right? He's the longtime food columnist for The New York Times ("The Minimalist'), author of the best-selling How to Cook Everything and several other books about food, a PBS food-show host and, lately, an opinion columnist for The Times. Busy guy.
Cooking, alas, doesn't solve everything -- peace will not break out in the Middle East if you roast a chicken, nor will drivers stop chatting on their cell phones if you whip up a crème brulée -- but as Bittman writes, cooking solves a lot:
When people make food a priority in the their lives, they actively contribute to society. Cooking can change our collective lives for the better. It can even change the planet for the better. And this is not hyperbole.
Cooking, he writes, puts you in charge of what you eat. Cooking saves you money, even when compared to fast food. Home-cooked food tends to be better for your health than whatever you buy in restaurants. Cooking relieves stress. Cooking is good for family life. If you buy ingredients, instead of bringing home frozen or processed food, you'll pay more attention to what's in season, which means you'll eat food that's fresher, better for the environment and good for the regional economy. "A nation of cooks would not adequately support a nation of monoculture," he writes. True enough.
And yet it's stunning how little cooking goes on in this great nation of ours. "Americans, I'm sad to report, spend less time cooking than anyone," Bittman writes. Almost a third of the calories we eat come from restaurants, almost double the percentage of 30 years ago. Seven percent of Americans say they never cook. Thirty percent say they cook three or four times a week. Microwaving, by the way, isn't cooking.
Mark Bittmann is the man. I
Mark Bittmann is the man. I have three cookbooks that I consult 90%+ of the time when cooking from a recipe, and two of them were written by him (How to Cook Everything & the vegetarian edition). And as much as I love his recipes, I like his shift toward food politics even more. He's fighting the good fight.
"large veggie pizza from Papa
"large veggie pizza from Papa John's"
You'd be far better off getting a decent pizza than some chain garbage pie. Pizza's fattening - big surprise. Intake your calories wisely with quality food, not junk. Once a week is not going to kill you.
The existence and success of Papa John's and the like make the fact that many Americans do not cook much pretty damn obvious.
And "a lentil-brown rice casserole"? That sounds like something from the original Moosewood cookbook - are you living in the 1970s?
You need a food coach.
And theres no need to give
And theres no need to give up pizza, you could make a fabulous pizza at home using 'real', fresh ingredients and you'd have a much better idea of what's going into it. plus likely save $
The next step in this chain
The next step in this chain of events... Home canning. It is possible to stop and prevent food wastage, think portion control. I just had a hard boiled egg, I canned a month ago, with a 12 oz jar of fruit juice I canned 2 months ago. I cannot eat an entire dozen eggs before they expire,and the cantalope, frequently rots. I know I am not alone. With the invention of the electric pressure cooker, I don't have left overs anymore. I once read that 30% of food purchased is discarded due to spoilage. The is a lot of expensive trash.