Fitness and Nutrition

[madupont]

Barton,

"the long lunches" have disappeared from the French Civil Servant's repertoire.
I  thought that I had posted that article from Europe?(if it was not a FirstPost, then it may have been nytimes.com but they have become less hip under Frank Bruni)

This was already a ways back. Because the French do not like to admit to a down turn they will instead attempt to revel in their reputation for being frugal and somehow, it just doesn't fly; it makes one sad.

The article may have been titled,"Shall we skip the appetizers?"( No, that does make it sound too much like The New York Times ) Instead, the French "pass"(we all know the meaning of that word don't we?) on the hors d'oeuvres.  However, they seldom resist dessert.  Thus, in "hard times", instead of becoming too slim, they actually put on weight and regret that this bad patch is not ending more quickly as it tends to make them look "lumpen".

[madupont]

I have to tell you something you probably already know.  I did but I didn't think about it much until I read Eat Like a Man. Recipes by Men, For Men. In the September issue of Esquire.

In which it quickly became apparent that, yes, men cook quite differently than women because of what they like to eat or what they find to eat and turn it into  before they eat it.  It is much more complicated than what women eat and have to cook if they want to eat that.

Got that?  Anyway, it is different.  I kind of recognized it when I saw the first color photograph and carefully read what it was about, and said,'Oh,yeah,I'd cook that," in fact, I have cooked something like that, because these are recipes that please men.  Maybe because I used to cook for my three brothers when our parents went someplace.  I would have to look in the cupboards and the refrigerator, which is essentially what men do, to see what we've got and then begin to improvise and come up with something.  They loved it.  Although when they would say,"Can you make that stuff you did when...?" that didn't tell me a lot.  Then sometime in the last decade, my son said something very similar,"Could you make that thing...?" usually for guests who then became quite overwhelmed.

Of course the one that was a snap to make in the farm market outside City Hall in a small California community where the truck farmers come in from Mexican-American growers, or Japanese or Chinese farmsteads or communities to sell their produce in summer, I've already  posted in Food Matters (probably several times!) which is chicken and peaches with brown sugar and butter in the baked peaches served with baked chicken pieces, a side of French green beans in pot liquer, is merely what happens when the season brings those items together at once.

Peppers at the end of summer with wild rice and ground meat or perhaps just mushrooms is another(you can whip together in New Jersey).

I haven't decided quite yet where they eat this: Peter McAndrews' Sunday Gravy.
Three kinds of meat--plus bones, to power the flavor.

It looked really familiar.  Then when I realized it started with olive oil, and had meatballs and Italian sausage, and pork ribs and neck-bones,which he calls: Sunday Gravy, with all the other seasonings necessary to this, I knew it was Sunday's Sugo in Sicilian and Calabrian households back home on Brady Street. The pork was a give-away that it was Southern Italian cuisine. It used to be made by the mother of a friend of mine(some friend!) who also made that as her mother taught her, and I from then on made it too.

But this Italian woman made it for a young man who was a gambler, as Italians are sometimes wont to be, particularly on Sundays, after Church or instead of Church.

So, while the guys played cards for several hours or more, she could let this simmer, turned down low, on the back of the stove. It used to be described as containing something from just about every meal in the week, with each kind of meat added to the pot and a new sauce formed and then served over the pasta of the day, with bread and salad, and cookies and coffee.

Sugo could just as readily contain chicken, or rolled beef amidst the above combination, add or remove a few.

I am less sure how involved I want to be with something called: Coca-Cola-Brined Fried Chicken although I get the premise.  It browns the chicken fabulously.

They will also tell you: How to Forage Like a Man.
And: The Only Candy a Man Should Eat.
There are at least four other Italian recipes like,--Resuscitated Pizza.
A dish you might find in New Orleans(or Massachusetts):Seafood Hot Pot.
And then there are: Chilaquiles.

This comes to a halt with --The Man Who Couldn't Eat.
(Perhaps because he met Christina Hendricks, who isn't all that fussy.)

[barton]

"In which it quickly became apparent that, yes, men cook quite differently than women because of what they like to eat or what they find to eat and turn it into  before they eat it.  It is much more complicated than what women eat and have to cook if they want to eat that.
"

This sounds, on the face of it, ridiculous.   

[madupont]

Barton,
the way that Esquire puts it is that men look in the refrigerator  to see what they can find and then look in the cupboards for what might go with that and they come up with what they suppose are new inventive dishes but "it sure tastes great".

Women seem to have a dish in mind and assemble the ingredients, although they may stock cupboards methodically, especially by season, to have the spices for instance or the supportive ingredients for those things that are now in season. Given experience over a lifetime, men manage to do that in exactly the same way, because we all learn from doing. Over and over again.

I cook much better now than I did at half my age, because I see the nuances as I proceed with the process of cooking an entree or a dessert.  One improves with age and experience.

Women are however just as likely, from long experience, as  do men, to know how to throw together ingredients on hand for a completely satisfying on the spot meal that they might not even have known about "at half their age".

[madupont]

Ps. barton

This reminds me that my mother "hated left-overs".  I hadn't thought about it before but it was because she had been a dietician in the hospital setting when she went to school in nursing and decided in what she wanted to specialize  for her nursing degree.

It has to do with the title of this section of the forum.  Blah,blah, and "Nutrition",
(in other words, how many of us are "Fit"?  Fit what?, might be a good question).

Undoubtably she realized that left overs do not exactly pack the nutritional punch of  freshly made food, from what we call "Fresh" ingredients.

As an adjunct to the practice of Medicine, the nutritional values of food  are specific in their ability to help or harm.

[barton]

I am sometimes surprised at what I can do when I'm down to three foodstuffs in the house, say,  whole wheat pasta, margerine, and cottage cheese.  I'll allow that that is probably an art at which men more often try their luck.  I cooked the pasta, melted in margerine, dumped some cottage cheese on top and sprinkled some garlic over the whole mess.  Not bad.  Not enough of a meal, so a handful of peanuts from a jar helped to up the calories.

[madupont]

I am sometimes surprised at what I can do when I'm down to three foodstuffs in the house, say,  whole wheat pasta, margerine, and cottage cheese.  I'll allow that that is probably an art at which men more often try their luck.  I cooked the pasta, melted in margerine, dumped some cottage cheese on top and sprinkled some garlic over the whole mess.  Not bad.  Not enough of a meal, so a handful of peanuts from a jar helped to up the calories.

Several cultures do that; hold the p'nuts.

Depending on what kind of pasta you choose, if noodles(including what some people refer to as "butterfly or bow-tie" pasta, that is Jewish Kugel appropriately showing up at this season in Joan Nathan recipes in which she may add everything from a touch of sugar, to apples, at other time crushed pineapple because she thinks of it as a sweet dish for Rosh Hoshanah.  Since it can be served for almost any Jewish holiday, I avoid it.  Although I have made it with   small pieces of green peppers and onions, to which eggs are folded in as well and then this is called a "savory Kugel" which I much prefer.

The New York Times cooking and Food section may have been inundated by everyone's favorite Kugel recipe about two weeks ago.

You're a vegetarian, so we don't have to concern ourselves with this caveat: when served with cottage cheese in the kugel, no meat at the dinner; whereas, I love to throw the gravy of a long slow-cooked brisket over the kugel noodles when I cook this. By now, I have proved to myself that I have forgotten how to cook a brisket properly as it will soon be 3/4's of a year since I began trying to adjust to "upper dentures" and there is a whole lot that is completely uncomfortable to consider. I feel like an anchorite.

Italians like your recipe too; still,hold the p'nuts.

They like to add browned breadcrumbs to the recipe and have been known in a pinch to do that without any cottage cheese (which would more likely be ricotta salata anyway). But, that would leave it a low to non-protein dish if one must live by bread alone although carbs are energetic.  This has olive oil when browning the crumbs.

I actually have located a recipe for "skillet pasta" in which everything cooks in the skillet; and must check it out. It does however have the works for the Italian palate, beginning with pancetta which is a roll of Italian salted cured bacon hung to air-dry. You can buy it by the slice at any reasonable delicatessen-butcher and then you chop it up to let saute slowly when it is added to something like a'Matriciana.  Nowadays, I only do that when I know who is the supplier. You are right to be a vegetarian.

Also I think that if you are going to add peanuts (indigenous to West African cooking as well as Southeast Asian), I'd skip the cottage cheese. Usually use p'nut butter to whip out a sauce, with Mirin(wine) and Nakano rice-vinegar in about equal small amounts, the Mirin is already sweet but otherwise small amount of sugar can be added to the rice vinegar if it is not included in the make up of the vinegar because -- they sell several different varieties.

Seasonings of Thai basil, Mitsuba(Japanese parsley which I grow), although I prefer the strong flavor of cilantro/coriander.
( grated vegetables or minced are often added, as well as soy sauce to the over-all sauce. If you want to flick in some extra chopped peanuts, it can't hurt.

[Lhoffman]

This is so cool!

http://www.geek.com/articles/news/piano-stairs-make-ascending-and-descending-floors-fun-2009109/

[barton]

Do the calories burned in opening a pistachio nut equal the calories consumed in eating it?

[madupont]

Barton
I thought of you today, after discovering all the listing at Huffingtonpost for a vegan Thanksgiving, thus hope you did enjoy a Happy Thanksgiving while the rest of us may or may not have eaten a symbolic meal to fortify against the two to three day shopping spree that begins on Black Friday.
(I never shop in public if I can help it.)

[knoxharrington]

Two Slim Jims and a cup of Mr. Pibb.   It's all you need.

[barton]

No pickles?  No powdered sugar dougnuts?  How ascetic of you. 

[barton]

Also, for a refreshing carb boost, try corn nuts, soaked for about an hour in the Mr. Pibb.  If you have a southern lean, culture wise, you can throw in a few peanuts, too.

[weezo]

Southern lean? in Mr. Pibbs? Amazing! Put those peanuts in a Pepsi where they belong.

[madupont]

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