“The people who created this country built a moral structure around money. The Puritan legacy inhibited luxury and self-indulgence. Benjamin Franklin spread a practical gospel that emphasized hard work, temperance and frugality. Millions of parents, preachers, newspaper editors and teachers expounded the message.”

Brooks actually has me excited about reading the think-tank report summary he references, which is here. I hope this exchange of ideas means more people are starting to see what I do: a rising social consciousness, one that transcends left and right.

The worsening economic climate is as good an excuse as any for the mainstream media to run another story about freegans. I’m not complaining; as long as they’re not being depicted as total freaks, I think it’s positive that stories like this are being added to the national conscience, instead of the constant hum of spend! spend! spend! Tougher times are starting to force a shift in the messages of TV and news outlets; we’re seeing more acceptance of thrift, and what I see as a more prudent, responsible spending habits.

Of course, this takes it a little far — I think dumpster-diving, especially for food, is where a lot of people draw the line. (Not to mention, if you’re just a middle-class boho artist who likes to rebel, should you take that bag of perfectly good bagels instead of leaving them for someone who really can’t afford to buy their own?) But I have to admit I’m fascinated by these stories, just as I’m fascinated by what people discard. When I walk around my neighborhood on large trash pickup day, it’s hard not to stop and inspect the perfectly nice shelves or weird old dollhouse, and I do often wish I’d brought a van. And I have to say I wouldn’t mind checking the trash for stuff like that, if it weren’t for, well, the trash, and the stigma of going through an actual dumpster. Curbside, I have no problems — in fact, Mr. L. and I rescued some sturdy cardboard boxes from the recycle pile just this morning.

What do you think? Where’s your line?

The veal is hidden

Don’t ask me how, but last night I stumbled upon a blog dedicated to horrifying 1950s recipes, most of which involve aspic. Those who remember “Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974” will probably be reminded of them.

Postwar American cooking — as represented in the era’s trendier cookbooks and women’s magazines, anyway — was weird. Everything, from tomatoes to tuna to veal, had to be molded into some other shape, a ring or a loaf or little piped scallops. There was no plain old food-shaped food because SCIENCE! was making life better for families and for America. I assume. I mean, why else would you keep trying to reinvent the wheel? What’s wrong with roast chicken? And not only do these recipes look unappetizing, they look damn hard to make, too. Imagine you’re a 23-year-old newlywed housewife in 1958 who’s never cooked — and now Ladies’ Home Journal says cooking means making a (perfectly symmetrical) Boeuf à la Mode en Gelée? (Apparently women’s magazines have been asserting their relevance by making easy things seem difficult for a long time now.) Attending a dinner party in the 1950s must have been one of the most terrifying experiences in American suburbia.

And scanning through the bizarre dishes, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this is about when we started to go wrong with food. Prosperity and SCIENCE! started bringing us factory farming, produce shipped hundreds of miles, and food-like products to replace the actual foods that we liked just fine before we became Modern. And we’ve been getting fatter ever since.

Thank goodness that today, rustic food is coming back into fashion, simplicity is in, and we actually know what Thai or Mexican or Indian food is supposed to look and taste like (as opposed to Chicken Indienne or whatever the hell this is). I’m so grateful to live, and cook, in a time when we’re finally starting to find our way back, ever so slowly.

Allure magazine has finally provided womanity with illustrated step-by-step instructions on how to take a shower. Visit Jezebel to see the whole beautiful thing, and read the comments, which are a scream.

Pouty? Really?

I’ve never tried Pinkberry, the magic frozen yogurt that has all the trendsters buzzing in New York and L.A., but I still have to smirk when a company that touts its absurdly expensive product as an “all natural” health food — all the while refusing for years to reveal its ingredients — gets taken down a peg. Ever since I read last year that the yogurt is actually a concoction involving some mysterious white powder, I knew something was up. Turns out it’s full of the usual:

The ingredients list for Original Pinkberry has 23 items. Skim milk and nonfat yogurt are listed first, then three kinds of sugar: sucrose, fructose and dextrose. Fructose and maltodextrin, another ingredient, are both laboratory-produced ingredients extracted from corn syrup. The list includes at least five additives defined by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as emulsifiers (propylene glycol esters, lactoglycerides, sodium acid pyrophosphate, mono- and diglycerides); four acidifiers (magnesium oxide, calcium fumarate, citric acid, sodium citrate); tocopherol, a natural preservative; and two ingredients — starch and maltodextrin — that were characterized as fillers … Some of them can be characterized as natural, while others are clearly not.

Yep, the yogurt chain that’s “targeting neighborhoods where people care about their health and body” is serving up the same stuff you can find down the aisle of any 7-11. You’d get pretty much the same deal with one of those Skinny Cow ice-cream sandwiches — except you could get 12 of them for the cost of one large Pinkberry yogurt (7.45, according to that L.A. Times article … and that was two years ago!). Better yet, make your own, with three ingredients — and if I can just get my hands on an ice-cream maker, I think that’s what I’ll do.

Yesterday I was reading a copy of Ladies’ Home Journal — at, where else, the doctor’s office (I’ve had a nagging cold, which partially explains the time between posts) — and was not a little distressed by the content. I know our world is full of misinformation about what constitutes healthy eating, but here, within the pages of this venerable old institution, it was ratcheted up to a level of hysteria I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Not that I should be surprised. For many years I’ve rolled my eyes at the covers of mainstream women’s magazines in the supermarket checkout line, nearly all of which sport cover lines like “Lose 25 pounds FAST!” alongside a photo of, say, a seven-layer chocolate cake (First stands out as a repeat offender). The juxtaposition is so insanely blatant, there’s no way the editors don’t notice. There must be something behind it.

So this particular issue of Ladies’ Home Journal (the cover is above — I wish I could link to something, but nearly all the content on their site requires registration) included, among other things, a “funny” weight-loss diary by Marie Osmond, who gasped a confession that when she’s feeling tired, she grabs whatever unhealthy junk she can get her hands on. Like bread! Guess what, Marie. This is bread:

… and so is this:

But yeah — practically an entire food group = evil. That’s totally livable. Elsewhere in the magazine, a new weight-loss diet warned of the dangers of carbohydrates — didn’t we get over this in 2005? — and included a list of “Good Foods” and “Bad Foods.” There’s your first red flag; any diet that decries official “Bad Foods,” other than trans-fat, screams “arbitrary” to me. But even better, this list of poisonous foods included fruit juice, bananas, and skim milk — along with some shaky scientific claims about carbs and the glycemic index. I wonder how many women read that and think, gee, I’ve never heard before that skim milk makes me fat. This must be highly advanced, exclusive information! And this, I realized, is how the diet industry makes money.

There is no money in telling people that it’s as simple as, “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” — sales of Michael Pollan’s books notwithstanding (an author who seems to be read only by people who are pretty smart about food already, in my experience). To make money, you must convince people that eating healthy is very, very hard. That it requires secret, closely guarded information not available to the general public. That it takes as more time and commitment than going back for your Master’s. And you can do it only with lots of outside help.

The government is pretty good about encouraging people to be more active, but it’s so entangled in the bad-food machine by corn and soy subsidies that I don’t think it will ever be a voice loud enough to compete with this widespread manipulation. And the factory farming system fights against freshness every step of the way, creating such a glut of empty calories with those corn and soy products that the food industry needs to keep coming up with new junk foods to make sure we buy those calories and consume them. And then there’s that misinformation, so widespread now that it’s in the trusted pages of the magazines our mothers and grandmothers used to read.

What can we do? Just about the only thing one person can — vote with our dollars. Don’t buy the lie. You already know how to eat healthy. Listen to your body, not the magazines, and you’ll do fine. Once you shut out the shouts and clutter of bad information, you’ll actually be able to hear what it’s telling you.

John Mason, 35, married Shelley Martin, 34, in a quiet ceremony Saturday at his parents’ home in Duluth.

Nothing like a media circus to make you forever shun the shrill and overblown. Good for them!

Most people look for four features in their food: easy, healthy, tasty and cheap. You usually only find two or three at a time — cheese quesadillas are easy, cheap and tasty, but not too healthy; ordering sushi is easy, healthy and tasty, but not cheap — and so on. Tonight, though, I managed to score a four-fecta with a pantry- and freezer-clearing experiment I’ll call Cheapskate Curry. The best thing about this is that you don’t even need all four of the main ingredients, just some combination of them. And you could add new ones, too.

As with so many things, the spices are the key. Good ones can take you anywhere. We received a wonderful set of Penzeys spices as a wedding gift, and I’ve used them to dress up many a homely soup or bean dish into something amazing.

Cheapskate Curry

Makes about 3 servings

Ingredients:
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 can plain diced tomatoes with juice
1/2 package of frozen spinach (or more, or less… this is just what I happened to have)
1/2 cup red lentils, rinsed
1/4 cup diced onions (I keep some in the freezer — so handy!)
2 tsp. Garam Masala (and Penzeys is a-maz-ing)
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. curry powder
1/4 tsp. ground cumin
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
Salt to taste
1-2 tbs. peanut oil

Heat peanut oil in a nonstick saucepan or deep skillet. Mix all spices and salt in a little prep bowl — this just makes things easier. When the oil is hot, add onion, as well as all the spices, and stir fry for a minute or two. Then add the garbanzo beans, tomatoes and spinach. Once everything is combined, heated through and has started releasing liquid, add the lentils. Simmer for 15-20 minutes or until the lentils are soft. Serve with basmati rice, or couscous, or quinoa, or whatever you like. For dessert, have ice cream, because you’ve earned it.

Right — why face the hassle of an actual, substantive conversation with the man you’re spending the rest of your life with? The ladymags say you’d only screw it up anyway, so  don’t worry your pretty head about it; you’ve got placecard holders to buy. Whee!