They Don’t Care if You Die as Long as You Eat Their “Food”

Don’t for a moment believe that the brightly colored packages and boxes lining the supermarket shelves are filled with healthy, nutritious food that is good for you and your family.  They’re not.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The advertising gymnastics that the big factory food giants perform daily are amazing to me.  It begins in the morning with ads about “fiber.”  This fiber you can stir in water and it will disappear, and, therefore, you don’t have to worry about actually eating or chewing something that will be good for you.  This way, you don’t have to be bothered with using your teeth to eat, say, an *apple* that will take care of what ails you.  They apparently want you to believe that their concoctions are better than Nature. And it gets worse.

A quick perusal of just about any label on just about any package will present you with a laundry list of ingredients that you would never put into your own recipes if you were preparing the food at home.

For instance, let’s take a simple protein bar.  You can make them at home with whey, nut butter, egg (yolks and/or whites), nuts and seeds, natural sweeteners, and oats. Natural, delicious ingredients that won’t hurt your body.  It may take a little time, but a quick trip to the natural foods store will supply the ingredients.

On the other hand, Slim-Fast Protein Bars contain the following:

Read more

Sphere: Related Content

Caprese Omelet

Don’t gag! A recent breakfast at one of the local Omelet Houses had me thinking about doing something a little creative. If you’ve ever seen the Omelet House menu, you know that they have wild combinations of ingredients all enfolded by the humble egg.

Well after enjoying a Popeye omelet - without bacon - recently (my companion opted for an Eggs Benedict since the omelets looked a little intimidating!), I decided to get a little creative with some ingredients I had at hand.

We had enjoyed some Caprese a couple of days prior, and I decided to try my hand at a Caprese omelet. I had plenty of mozzarella left over, organic eggs from Trader Joe’s, fresh tomatoes, and basil that’s growing like weeds in my garden. What’s not to like?

Read more

Sphere: Related Content

Pasta Fresca

I made this up some years ago because I don’t like pasta/macaroni salads with mayonnaise.  I don’t like cole slaw with mayonnaise.  Potato salad is supposed to have mayonnaise and it’s tasty, but I recently had a sweet potato salad that had been made with mayonnaise and it was execrable. Whoever created it obviously didn’t sample it.

At any rate, this is a fresh summer salad that you tailor to your own tastes.  Just follow the basic outline and go from there!

Pasta Fresca

All ingredients are to taste and you can make the proportions any way you want.

  Read more

Sphere: Related Content

Gringo Salsa

I gave this salsa its name because I hadn’t yet developed a taste for spicy foods so popular in my then new home state of California. This was a good transition recipe, and the one I use now has a lot more punch to it. But this is an excellent starter.

This was my first attempt at a salsa, and it has no measured ingredients. You can use all fresh, all canned, or a combination of both. If you are making this in the spring or summer, there’s little excuse not to use fresh. So here you go!

• Fresh or canned tomatoes
• Green onions
• Juice from fresh limes
• Garlic (just a couple of cloves, but depends on your taste)
• Diced green chilies to taste OR
• Roasted Anaheim peppers
• Cilantro
• Chili powder (to taste)
• Salt
• Freshly ground pepper

Coarsely chop everything except limes. Food processor is okay, but I always chop garlic by hand.

Except for the canned tomatoes, I almost always use fresh. Instead of using diced green chilies, go ahead and try using Anaheim peppers. They’re plentiful and cheap in the local area and make a big difference in taste.

The peppers can be put on a grill, on a stove, or use a blowtorch to blacken and crisp the skin. Put in a paper bag for five-ten minutes and then peel off the skin. Chop and add to the other ingredients. Adjust proportions and seasonings and serve with tortilla chips.

You can add red onions for extra color and punch of flavor. Add a few pinches of cumin or some finely chopped tomatillos for extra ethnic flair.

If you add tomato juice, bell peppers, diced avocado and (optionally) tiny baby shrimp (I use small chunks of salmon), you have Gazpacho, a cold Spanish soup.

If you make it into Gazpacho, serve it in a Martini glass, garnish with a sprig of cilantro and top with a dollop of sour cream or (better) crème fräiche, and you’ll have a perfect appetizer for entertaining.

So as you can see, there is a lot of flexibility with this little recipe that I’ve used since my now-adult children were very small.

Bon Appetit!

Sphere: Related Content