BEEF STEW | Second take

I find that second experiences reveal much more than the first. When I made beef stew last week, there were a few things I didn’t understand, like how to get the beef to be so tender, and how to get that thick, rich texture in the dish.

But I figured out both things while making this the second time.

The beef is held together by fibers that essentially give it the tough texture. However, those fibers can be used to our advantage. When we stew them, they turn into a very soft, undetectable material. It’s not all that delicious because, then, all you have is strings of meat. However, when that material is left to cool, that material turns into a gelatinous thing that turns the beef almost hard. And when the  that beef is heated up, it turns into a delicious, tender beef substance.

My description doesn’t make it sound all that delicious, but it is. Trust me.

Oh, and the thick, rich texture — the dark brown liquid keeping it together — is created by the wine that is used to deglaze the bottom of the pan.

Though I enjoyed this dish, I will not be making it again next week. I’m tiring of it.

BEEF STEW | When you have to slow down and smell the beef

Sometimes, it feels like a race. Or a chase. Or even a scramble.

So often, it feels like we have to be faster, stronger, smarter, quicker — just better. It’s survival of the fittest. It’s win, and move on. It’s find and conquer. It’s think and think more. It’s analyze and judge. It’s live and let live. It’s love to be loved.

It’s easy to get caught in this game, especially in college. We’re fighting to get to the top, or get to the place in the world we want to be.

Then one day, you look up and realize it’s just not enjoyable anymore — life, that is.

Last week was spring break, and I spent much of it working. I didn’t slow down and relax. I didn’t see it as a chance to enjoy myself. Instead, I saw it as time to catch up with my work. That’s been my attitude for the past few years, and after getting to a steady place in life, I realized that’s not what I wanted.

When I started this project at the beginning of the semester, I knew I needed to slow down. And I did some of that. But I didn’t know that I needed to enjoy the food. I wanted to enjoy it, but I didn’t strive to enjoy it.

But on my flight this weekend, I could do nothing but sit in my seat and think. And I began to feel a great sense of joy. Nothing happened, but I was joyful because I thought about the grandness of life.  I thought about the beauty of this world, the perfection of this artwork we live everyday.

One thing that was one my mind was the nature of love. Some people say people love in order to be loved. They say we love because it’s beneficial to ourselves. However, I disagreed with this notion yet, intellectually, I had no way of proving otherwise. For example, when we buy someone a gift, we do it because it makes us feel good to see another person happy. At best, it was a neutralizing action.

But, in my seat on the plane, I saw the beauty of us. The fact that we feel good when others feel good — that’s love. The fact that this world reward those who love is beautiful. The fact that we have the capacity to love for no other reason than to want to love is a spectacular notion.

I say all that to get to my point about beef stew.

If you just make beef stew or eat beef stew without thinking about how beautiful this dish is, it’s not as enjoyable. The carrots, potatoes, onion and garlic married with a beef stock form such an amazing combination, and if you think about the sensations your tongue is feeling, it’s amazing.

And when you’re making the dish, it’s so enjoyable to know that these normal ingredients will come together to form a beautiful, grand thing.

I guess it’s not really about slowing down. It’s more about always enjoying the grandness of life; enjoying the textures, the flavors, the colors of life’s crevices.

Oh, and this beef stew was incredible. I have so much to get done right now, but a full stomach and an afternoon of March Madness basketball is enough to satisfy me and sustain me.

Chicken and Rice | Back to the basics

I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “Alvin, you need to start eating some healthy foods again. You’re getting out of shape.” So I decided to go back to the basics — chicken, rice and green beans.

I cooked everything without thinking much about it. I’d done this so many times that it was not only easy, but mindless.

The interesting thing about this meal is that I can eat a lot and still feel like I’ve eaten just enough. I think it’s because everything is low in calories and fat, but I can’t say for sure. I can only say how I feel when I eat the food.

It’s interesting to think about calories because we can never say, “Oh, I just ate 80 calories.” All we can do is feel how full we are and decide to keep eating or stop eating.  I’ve never been a calorie watcher, and I don’t want to start, but starting now, I’m going to rate my meals using “feeling calories” — so I’m going to guess as to how many calories I’ve consumed based on how I feel.

So this meal: 500 fullness calories.

LAMB AND PASTA | Fast food

One of my favorite kinds of meat is lamb. It’s tender and has this fantastic natural savory flavor. But it’s high in fat, so I try not to eat it too often.

But this was a special occasion: I was hungry — really hungry.  And I wanted lamb. Fast. As in, under 15 minutes.

So I was off!

I turned on the broiler, I seasoned by lamb with salt and herbs and I threw a pot of water on the stove — 14 minutes and counting.

I got out the marinara sauce and pasta, washed a plate, and waited for my water to boil.

… the water is boiling!

I threw in the pasta and put the lamb in the broiler — 10 minutes and counting.

After 8 minutes, I pulled the lamb out and drained the water from my pasta. Then I put the sauce in my pasta pot, turned on the heat.

1 minute!

I played the lamb and pasta, poured myself a cup of water and ran to my table to gobble up my food.

Sometimes, when you eat your food is more important than what you’re eating.  Luckily, the food was great, but I ate so fast that when it was all said and done, cooking and eating took 25 minutes.

There are those who feel eating slowly has its benefits. However, at this moment, I’m totally fine with having eaten my food so quickly. It was instinctual. It was satisfying. And best of all, I have time to get some extra homework done!

BURGERS | Wait, burgers in the oven?

Yes.

Sometimes, when you’re craving some burgers, you just gotta get yourself some ground beef, mix in some salt, mustard and ketchup, and put in the oven. Then 10 minutes later, you’ve got yourself some beautiful patties.

We’ve gotten so used to doing things the way we’ve always done them. We always grill burgers. But the moment someone bakes or broils burgers, we kind of cringe. But why not just toast burgers, or deep fry them or even smoke them?

Anyway, I shaped my meat into 3/4 inch patties and placed some cheese on top at the last second. Then, I placed the patty in between two pieces of white bread. It came out like soggy grilled cheese with meat in the middle. But it was delicious.  Taste is relative, I suppose.

On another note, I’ve been thinking about this project, and I realized something very strange has been happening. I’ve been thinking about my eating because I want to make sure I’m satisfying my body. But this is the first time in my life I’ve thought so much about eating, and I don’t like it. I feel like I’m not enjoying it as much. In the past, I would just eat what I felt like eating when I felt like eating, but now, I think about what I’m eating. It’s not instinct anymore.

It’s kind of like when I think about breathing. I hate thinking about breathing because then, my breathing isn’t just naturally there, but it’s something I have to make myself do, and it’s not as comfortable. I wonder whether I’m doing it right. I wonder why I have to do this.

But I’m trying to change this… somehow.

LEFTOVER SURPRISE | Just throw it all in and hope for the best

I had a lot of food in the fridge that I needed to use soon:

• My broccoli, corn and pepper mixture
• Chicken
• Spaghetti sauce
• Noodles

So guess what I did? I cooked the vegetables and chicken, added the sauce and, to get more liquid into the party, I poured some wine into the pan.

Then I boiled the noodles and combined it with the sauce.

I had no desire to eat this dish, but it’s what I had and I’m getting increasingly tired as this semester goes on. So it’s what I had.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t too bad. In fact, I’m looking forward to eating the leftovers for dinner.

I’m actually not in the greatest of moods today, and it’s fascinating how that transfers over to my physical actions. I feel groggy and tired. I am lying around on my bed with no motivation to get my day started. And I am becoming apathetic to what I eat.

In a way, it’s good that I’m simply seeing food as fuel. This way, I’ll just eat anything and be happy. But food has, at times, been a very enjoyable thing for me. That’s why I started this project. So I think it’s a matter of finding a nice balance between the two.

STIR FRY | When steam is your friend

I’ve always been strongly opposed to frozen vegetables. I felt it was very tough to get frozen vegetables to taste even remotely like fresh vegetables.

But as I’ve lived through the more stressful times in my life, I have gone back to frozen vegetables because they can survive in the freezer, they are already cut into nice little pieces, and they are cheap.

Yes, I know this project is supposed to be about making my body feel better. But when I’m stressing out over trying to use the broccoli because it might go bad, it doesn’t make me feel good. And when I have to throw away food and make my tight budget even tighter, it’s not a good feeling. So frozen vegetables are a nice little compromise.

When cooking stir fry, I decided the best option would be to dump everything in the pan with a little oil and salt, and just get it go. So I took my package of frozen broccoli, peppers and corn,  and added it to the strips of chicken I had already cooked. Then it was just time to wait.

But I got impatient. I decided I should cover the pan with a lid. And all of a sudden, there was steam.

After about three minutes, it looked about done. I was afraid that the steam had ruined this dish.

But when I took a bite of broccoli to make sure it wasn’t still frozen, all of a sudden, I was in love. You see, I love broccoli. But I find that it’s so hard to get it to be perfectly tender. However, this little broccoli floret was divine.

I ate only enough to fill me up, and I put the leftovers in a container. Having learned my lesson, I quickly put it in the fridge.

GRILLED CHEESE | Garnished with a few life lesson

I woke up and craved a grilled cheese sandwich — so in a matter of 5 minutes, I grilled up two pairs of perfect triangle-shaped toasted bread with cheese inside.

Lately, I’ve been busy so I don’t quite have the time to plan and cook a meal — or at least, I feel like I don’t have time. Before I began this project, I said part of the objectives was to slow down my life and cook. But I haven’t slowed down my life, and cooking has become something I dread when I am busy — which is almost always.

I won’t go too much into the cooking, because grilled cheese is grilled cheese. But I did have two thoughts that stemmed from this cooking session:

1. From the farms so much of our food goes through a great deal before it makes it onto our plates. In looking at grilled cheese, all of the ingredients have gone through great transformations, even before I begin cooking. I want to try to eat foods that have gone through very little since they have been harvested in their natural states.
2. Part of the joy of cooking is that you can take control of your life. So much of life is controlled by other factors — when you work, you work for others; when you’re at school, you’re guided by a teacher; when you’re at play, you’re guided by friends and what they may enjoy doing. But in cooking, we can look to do things our way and satisfy that need.

One of my rules was that I should be taking chances with my food. And I feel like I don’t mind doing that. But in life, I feel like taking chances and going away from my routine really screws with me. I never thought this project would lead me to bigger life changes, but I want to try to not act out of fear of change or lack thereof, but act out of an assertive desire to control what I want in life.

Who knew so much could come from grilled cheese.

Oh, and by the way, the sandwich was wonderful.

RICE ‘N BEANS | The basics

It’s incredible that a human being can get his or her carbs and protein from the two main staples of rice and beans.

But that said, I wasn’t looking to eat rice and beans because I wanted carbs or protein. I simply had a craving for some plain, bland food. I didn’t want any meat, because after getting sick from meat, I didn’t see meat too favorably.

I started this dish, if it could be called a dish, by boiling the beans in salted water. These beans weren’t even labeled — it just said “beans” on the package. How’s that for minimalist?

Then I made the rice. And this rice wasn’t labeled much either. It just said “long-grain rice.”

There’s not much excitement to this. It was basically rice and beans boiled in salt water. It was incredibly basic, but very satisfying.

My body didn’t want any smell or any complex taste. It just wanted some basic foods to get me through the day.

And strangely, for the first time in a long time, I have no desire to eat any meat whatsoever.

But I did enjoy watching a steak cook-off on the food channel. So I don’t think I’m turning vegetarian quite yet. But maybe it’s a step.

SICKNESS! | Food poisoning? WebMD says yes

So Saturday night, I got sick. Really, really, really sick.

Everything hurt — head, stomach, legs, arms… you get the deal. Anyway, I thought it was just the usual cold so I tried to sleep it off. But sadly, I couldn’t even sleep.

So I tried to take a hot shower. The next thing I remember is waking up in the shower with warm water sprinkling on my face.

Then the next thing I remember is cleaning my toilet. I thought, “Oh, did I throw up? Or am I just in the cleaning mood?”

Finally, I went to WebMD’s symptom checker, the ultimate source for someone who thinks he is deathly sick, and put in my symptoms:

• Headache, worst ever
• Nausea, vomiting
• Tender upper abdomen
• Aching back
• Trouble breathing
• Post nasal drip

And it shot back a few possiblilties:

• Gastritis
• Brain aneurysm
• Food poisoning

I looked at the possible symptoms and causes. I was pretty sure I didn’t have a brain aneurysm, though I could’ve been wrong. Gastritis didn’t sound quite right after reading a bit about it. So I then checked out food poisoning.

“It can’t be food poisoning!” I thought. “I kept everything clean, cooked my meat through, didn’t let anything get cross-contaminated…”

Then I realized what I had done wrong.

Apparently, there is something called “Clostridium perfringens” that spreads rapidly when foods are between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. As you may remember from my last post, I let half of the food I cooked sit in a container because I was going to eat it for my next meal. I didn’t put in the the fridge for a while because I thought it would be fine if I left it in a container.

But boy, was I wrong.

I ended up eating that food later that night, and it got the best of me. When I was eating the food, it tasted fine, but I guess there’s more to food than just taste. So much for evolution helping us out here. (It would be so much nicer if our tongues could detect bacteria… then we wouldn’t eat it! But then again, I suppose we have these brains here that help us avoid creating little habitats for bacteria on our foods…)

And now that I think of it, I’d heard of something like this happening in restaurants. But it had never happened to me before, so this was quite the surprise.

The problem was that I didn’t reheat to a high enough temperature, and I didn’t cool it to a low enough temperature, which made it a little farm for bacteria.

So, I got sick — very sick.

But when I get really sick, I tend to try to separate my mental state from my physical state. I tried to think of things that wouldn’t make me think about how horrible I felt, like sports or work or school or girls. But even that didn’t work. My body kept on reminding me that I was sick, and that I should suffer for my stupidity. (Yes, I know — dualistic wording here. But I’m a dualist — I think — so that’s OK. Also, when I looked up “spanking” to find my suffering photo, I ran into many, uh, graphic photos before I found this one. Just thought I’d share.)

Anyway, sometimes, I am able to separate my physical and mental states — like when I’m running long distances, which isn’t very often. It’s a very dualistic way of embracing the pain, or forgetting the pain. This was actually mentioned in our Susan Bordo reading, where she talks about people dealing with pain, or fighting through pain.

But I also find that when I’m suffering in other non-physical ways, like when I deal with loneliness or heartbreak or depression, I try to separate myself, as well. (Please visit the “Broken heart” Wikipedia link. It’s fascinating. Long-term paralysis?!! So maybe this isn’t non-physical…) But it usually doesn’t work as well, though I’ve hard times when I was able to separate myself from the problem — at least temporarily. (And yes, I understand the dualistic side of me here, too.)

All in all, it was a good learning experience. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

But I still feel miserable. I almost passed out at the bus stop on the way to work, all I’ve eaten is saltine crackers, and I am very thankful for Gatorade. So I can’t say it hasn’t killed me, yet.

Time for bed. (Note: It’s not even 5 p.m. yet.)