I want to go to there.

The Lazy Epicure's Manifesto

This is going to be my e-scrapbook for my life in food. Yum. "My life in food." That sounds delicious.

Everything should begin with an intention. An introduction. And so I'll begin with what is my Food Manifesto.

Food gets me really excited. I like food. I like food a helluva lot. I am passionate about it. Good food. Good for you food. Good for you food that tastes glorious. And food that is created in a way that doesn't exploit the earth or other people.

And I like cooking too, but I like to do it fast and loose. I like it best when it's almost painfully easy. I do appreciate the care taken to make a lovely duck cassoulet, complicated reduction sauces with fruits and paper-thin sliced vegetable adornments, lasagnas, flaky pastries, Indian dishes layered with scents of individually toasted spices, infused oils, and fragrant rice, perfectly tempered chocolate candies and cut-out cookies, bouillabaisse and gumbo with roux stirred carefully for half-an-hour... the list goes on. Time-consuming, precisely-made food is a labor of love worthy of juicy, drippy, lustful admiration. But I prefer to stand back and admire this kind of toothsome artistry. Preferably with a glass of wine in one hand and fork in the other. And I'll cheerfully pay someone more talented than me to expend that love. When I'm really really lucky, sometimes my very talented friends even do it for me.

All of this still leaves the problem, though, that when I don't have large amounts of cash to burn and I'm not the lucky dinner guest of a silver-spatulaed friend, which is most of the time, I have to make food for myself. Like I said, I enjoy cooking... the rub is that I am lazy about it. There are so many other things I want to spend my time doing, that there's a limited amount I can invest in preparing food for myself. This means I'm most interested in the kind of thing you can pop in the oven and then kick back with a book or phone call. I'm interested in the kind of thing that tastes incredible, but pretty much gracefully makes itself. I like it best when I feel like I'm getting away with something.

Okay, and add to all this that I have goals for personal nutrition and earth stewardship, AND I have a number of diet limitations -- some that come and go (for the sake of better health, and therefore a greater ability to appreciate life, I regularly give my body a break from food that puts stress on my body by "detoxing" -- avoiding alcohol, large amounts of sugar, emphasizing gentle cleansing foods and herbs, and and...), one for the rest of my life (see celiacs disease). All this makes for a saintly diet at times. And a potential pain in the ass.

So this is where things start to get tricky, but also where they start to get fun. It's become a game for me to think up ways to make food that meets all my criteria. There's an addictive puzzle in design within limitations and in engineering with simplicity that leads to a wonderful elegance. I LIVE for those kinds of recipes.

So, without further ado, here are the rules of play:

1. Food must taste good
   Otherwise why bother? Overcooked scalloped carrots and mushy sulfury brussels sprouts need not apply
   
   
2. Food must be nutritious
   Let me emphasize #1 and then say #1 and #2 are not mutually exclusive. Here's how I think about nutrition: I like to follow Michael Pollan's advice and "Eat Food." I eat real food, with real ingredients. Butter is my friend, margarine and hydrogenated-anything a foe. Homemade bread instead of WonderBread, cheese straws instead of Cheetos (okay, except on road trips and 80s movie marathons), tuna and pesto pasta instead of frozen fish sticks.
   
   My nutrition guidelines are simple. I'm too lazy to measure servings or count calories or any of this nonsense that isn't tailored to our individual biologies and metabolisms anyway. I try to keep meals well-rounded and make sure they contain plenty of veggies, grains, some protein, and some good fats made with real, whole ingredients. When I crave something healthy (like cauliflower, eggs, horseradish, blueberries, soy sauce, or curry, for example), I eat it. And I try to get lots of variety. It's overwhelming to try to follow all the food adverts and "expert" advice on nutrition. "Super-foods" seems to fall in and out of favor faster than fashion trends. I believe that if I try to get a variety of many different kinds of grains, fruits, veggies, and proteins, I'll get some of all of their benefits, not too much of any one thing, and I'm less likely to get bored.
   
   
3. Food should be be simple
   Whole food whenever possible. Let the Food speak in it's own voice, but let preparation, cooking, and harmony with other foods shape that voice into something more lovely than we thought possible. This is where the true beauty of simple cooking comes from.
   It shouldn't take much more than 5 ingredients to make a recipe taste good. Often less. This also helps eliminate wasted ingredients. If a recipe only calls for a small amount of something rarely used, then I believe it's not necessary in the first place. Unless you're creating food "Art." But in my kitchen, I am not creating "Art," I am creating Food.
   
   
4. Food should be prepared simply
   It's okay if with me if it takes more than an hour for Food to be completed, but no more than about 20-30 minutes cutting, stirring, washing, and otherwise preparing it. The rest of that time should be spent teasing the roommate, chatting with dinner guests, reading a book, or listening to a record, depending on the mood and the circumstances.
   
   
5. Food does not have to cost too much
   Flavored oils, morels, expensive cheese, rare herbs, and other fancy condiments and additions are marvelous, but I cook with such luxuries extremely rarely (i.e. never, really), preferring to enjoy them in a dish prepared by a more skilled hand than mine. Plus, I have a sort of machismo about using expensive things like that in my "cooking game." I feel like it's cheating.
   It should be emphasized, however, that Food, is never really cheap. Even cheap food at the grocery store comes with a different cost. I try to opt for good quality ingredients and use them in either smaller amounts (like a good grass-fed beef steak, for example) or use ingredients that are inherently less expensive (many whole grains, eggs, greens, and dried legumes, for example).
   
   
6. Food should add to health, not take away
   Food should not contain gratuitous sugar, grease, or, in my case, any gluten (because I can't eat gluten -- see celiacs disease).
   By gratuitous, I mean that if ingredients can sing without it, then I don't need it.
   It's obvious that fat and sugar taste good. And it's my belief that both are essential to our diets within balance (and really, some things that are "bad" for us are good for our souls, right?). But lots of things are essential to our diets (and our bodies tend to need more of those other things). The thing is, that LOTS of things make food taste good. We just have to learn what those other tricks are. Adding fat and sugar to make something taste good? That's so easy, it's laughable. We can do better than that. How about eating a tomato fresh from the garden with some olive oil, salt and pepper? I'm talking about a vine-ripened tomato that's been given a gluttonous number of days in the summer sun to get fat and juicy and ruby-red to its core. That's as much heaven as a donut (yes, in a different way). How about learning how to poach an egg so that the white yields tenderly to the teeth and the yolks spills out like a sexy gooey cascade over a mess of savory greens? How about the grassy fragrance of a good green tea next to a delicate homemade soup stock with rice noodles, delicate shredded chicken and a crisp miso-dressed salad?
   Fatty, sugary things? See, I am not impressed by this trick.
   
   
7. Food should be adaptable
   Recipes for food should be malleable. There are so many ways to prepare ingredients, that a recipe should be open to shaping and stretching, depending on the raw materials in season and in my fridge. I don't like to pick recipes before I shop. When I'm food shopping, I like to pick ingredients based on what looks fresh, what I'm craving, what my friends give me from their gardens, what's on sale, what's in season, what looks intriguing that's I've never tried before, the ingredient that inspired me in a restaurant meal...you get the idea. I like recipes that are outlines with room for veggies and leftovers I desperately need to finish to fill out the flavor. This kind of cooking requires a kind of food intuition, an art of improvising that is a skill I think can be learned. In each recipe I post here, I'll make some notes on some of the transferable skills: what can be learned from the recipe that can be used like riffs for other variations depending on the ingredients that I (or you, if you're inspired) have in the fridge or on the shelf on another day.
   
   
8. Food should be created from ingredients that don't exploit the earth or other people
   I have no right to market myself as a saint in this department. But I do try to choose my ingredients consciously. I think we all do what we can, within our budgets, our time to learn and look around, and our available effort. I believe every little bit helps and it's always better than giving up entirely because perfection is too daunting. That said, I make an effort to emphasize ingredients that are created in a sustainable way, that are organic, and that are locally-grown.
   
   

Key to Special labels

roomate-tested
Roommate likes steak. Roommate likes frozen pizza and bacon too. A lot. I do too. I mean, who doesn't? These things are Roommate's staples. Roommate is suspicious of what he calls my hippie-like ways. Roommate is suspicious of my rinsing out lidded hummus containers to re-use as Tupperware and rinsing Ziploc bags. Roommate is not so sure about my green smoothies or homemade yogurt. He prefers whipped cream out of a can to the stuff in the carton. When we went to the farmers market, he bought a polish sausage and cheese curds (nothing else). Roommate can eat anything and he does. Frankly, I am jealous of his superior gut. Roommate doesn't balk at soft-drinks or bread that can sit on the shelf for more than two weeks. But then I've also been known to eat a whole bowl of lettuce (nothing else). And Roommate has been known to call me a goofball and worse (justifiably so). All of this makes roommate a perfect test subject. The moral of this story is that we temper each other. If roommate likes my food, I figure it is probably something a wider audience of other people will like too.
Also, Roommate is a great photographer with a fancy-pants camera and if any of my food pictures turn out particularly pretty, it is probably to his credit (all his photos are marked with his name and you can visit his Web site.)

cheap
Especially budget-friendly

30-minutes-or-less
30 minutes or less total cooking AND prep time

vegetarian
No meat, but includes eggs, butter, and/or dairy

vegan
No animal products

season
Ingredients in season for Fall/Winter/Spring/Summer

gluten-free
Almost all recipes will be gluten-free. This mean they contain no ingredients that would offend a celiac or wheat-free diet.

casein(dairy)-free
Free of dairy products and casein (a milk protein)

what's-in-the-fridge
These are especially amiable to leftovers in the fridge

prepare-ahead staple
These are things one can mostly prepare in the background (while cleaning, doing homework, etc.) and toss in the freezer to use later. I usually feel they are worth the ahead-effort when I have the time because they make food taste much better, they are cheaper and taste superior to store-bought versions, and/or they are useful quick "kicks" to otherwise boring recipes. These items tend to last at least few months in the freezer.

unique
Unique recipes shake things up. They are an unexpected use of an ingredients and they break the routine. Oh, and they make good conversation-starter party recipes.

detox-friendly
May not fit all detox diets, but this label means I ate this thing while I was detoxing.