Libertiste

From the lazy cook who brought you What To Do With Wrinkled Tomatoes, now it’s What To Do With Wilty Basil!

Last week I brought in all my outdoor herbs, and was quite proud of myself for doing so. Other years I couldn’t bring myself to hack them all off while they were still in their relative glory (around here, that’s halfway into November) , and passive-aggressively let them die in the first frost so they at least didn’t die at my hand. That’s stupid, of course, because then you get nothing. But this year I managed not to be so wasteful: I harvested, then hung the thyme and marjoram to dry (very pretty, hanging above the window) and stuck my bouquet of basil in a vase, intending to make pesto or some other pasta creation while they were still flush with life.

Obviously this did not happen. So I turned to that great kitchen forgiver — stock.

Making stock — meat or vegetable — is just about my favorite thing to do on a chilly weekend afternoon. You get the lovely aroma that’s almost as homey as a crackling fire, and you get the deep satisfaction of using things that you otherwise would have thrown away: chicken bones, celery leaves, past-prime carrots (though not in our house; Mr. L is allergic), that last little bit of garlic… the list continues almost indefinitely. Add as much spice as you want, and 2-3 hours of unattended simmering on the stove, and you’re good to go.

So I took my neglected basil and redeemed myself by making it the basis for what turned out to be a fantastic Italian stock. In the process, I also cleaned out the freezer. The main ingredients:

• Basil
• Bones from two chicken quarters
• Dried marjoram, plus other spices from the cabinet
• Celery leaves
• Juice from a can of tomatoes (I can’t remember why I put this in the freezer, or how I withstood the almost certain heckling from my husband when I did, but I’m glad I had it!)
• Rind from a wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano
• Small onion cut in quarters
• Several (?) cloves of garlic — the tiny ones at the center of the bulb, which are almost useless otherwise
• Plenty of salt

Seriously, this was so good that I made soup from it that very night. Some more onion and garlic, cremini mushrooms, zucchini, can diced of diced tomatoes, cannellini beans, and pasta — which was leftover couscous from a dinner earlier that week. The whole pot probably cost me five bucks to make, and now we’ve got six more lunches in the freezer. I tell you, after all the stress and pizza-ordering of our wedding season, it feels really great to get back into thrift.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has come out with a list of “food frauds” — processed foods that claim to do things that they do not actually do. I’m sure this list is by no means exhaustive, and it proves perfectly one of Michael Pollan’s main points in his New York Times Magazine piece “Unhappy Meals,” which I wrote about briefly here.

Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.

The products on CSPI’s list certainly fall under the category of “foodlike substances.” I find the baby juice made of corn syrup especially repugnant: I remember in the book Angela’s Ashes, the family was so poor that they had to fill their babies’ bottles with nothing but water and sugar, and for me that was the final detail that made it all so incredibly sad that I had to put the book down. And now Gerber would have middle-class American families do this on purpose?

Full disclosure: I currently have “whole-grain tortilla chips” in my kitchen (not this brand). Not to tell myself I’m getting fiber, but just because I like them. If you can find a brand without partially hydrogenated uranium or whatever, you could do worse.

Edited to add: We saw Dar Williams later that night, and during her banter she plugged none other than Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. Synchronicity!