Sturm und Drang Makes Me Hungry

Having spent the evening watching primary coverage, I find myself with absolutely no desire to talk about politics and an overwhelming desire to talk about palatics. Here is a list of the top five things I wish I'd been consuming instead of MSBNC election coverage (no offense to Keith "Absurdly Fabulous" Olbermann):

1. Fake Meat Burritos — The more guac the better, and surprisingly good with black olives.

2. Tofu/Asparagus/Mushroom Stir Fry — There's something very satisfying about making a stir fry chock full of the stuff you find yourself picking through the bok choy to get to in restaurants.

3. Three Cheese Lasagna — Doesn't really matter to me what the three cheeses are... ricotta, parmesan, mozzarella, even cottage; toss in a few cloves of garlic for good measure and you have a little bit of Buddha in your mouth, seriously.

4. Goat Cheese and Strawberry Salad — Best with balsamic, and really, the greens are kind of optional.

5. Broccoli Wokly and Cheddar — Because sometimes I feel like being five, and that's okay.

The Wrenching of Guts

Today I have consumed one cup of coffee, one cup of yogurt, one Kashi bar, one fake-meat sandwich (cut diagonally, of course), 72 ounces of water, one single-serving mac and cheese, and six pieces of steamed asparagus. No, I'm not starting a food diary. I'm just contextualizing myself.

This weekend my friend Lauren altered me to a series of images published in Peter Menzel's Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. Menzel's project involved interviewing families regarding their eating habits and then photographing them with all of the products they consume in an average week. For example, America:



Meet the Revis, a family of four from North Carolina that spends an average of $341.98 on food per week. (Full disclosure: I totally use that coffee creamer.)

Now let's meet the Manzos, a Sicilian family of four (point three). For an affordable $260.10 a week, this is what they consume:



So much less plastic! (Or, reconfigured in Americanese, so many more carbs!)

The juxtaposition is revealing on many counts, but in the end, the First World is the First World is the First World. Even the esteemed Dr. Atkins could, I suspect, muddle through for a fortnight.

But there are other worlds. Worlds inhabited by families like the Aboubakars. Here's what they eat for $1.23 a week (a week)... and don't forget to divide by six:



Of course those photos were taken several years ago. I suspect the Aboubakars may now have even less to eat. Today five people were killed in food riots in Somalia. I guess $1.23 doesn't go as far as it used to.

For more images from Hungry Planet, visit TIME's photo series here and here.

What's That Go to Do with the Price of Rice in Sioux Falls?

In one of the more baffling abdications of journalistic responsibility in at least, I don't know, a month, the mainstream media continues to by and large ignore the fact that our planet is experiencing an increasingly serious food shortage. But it might get harder for the likes of Chris Matthews and Larry King to keep their heads buried in the mineral-depleted soil as the soaring costs of basic foodstuffs begin to impinge upon the U.S. marketplace. Already in the past week, multiple reports of rice and grain rationing are coming out of cities as disparate as San Francisco and Sioux Falls.

Ironically, this is partially a robbing Peter problem — diversion of edible crops to the manufacture of biofuels has helped to shape the situation. Another component is the incessant plundering of grain fields to feed the nation's millions of dead cows walking.

But really, can our busy journalists be blamed for getting distracted by things like Miley Cyrus' green bra? I mean, it is Green Week or whatever, right?

Soy for Streams

The ironic thing about Earth Day is that the greatest impact humans have on the planet is perhaps less on the actual earth than on the planet's water. While we in America go through bottle after plastic bottle of clean water each day, forty percent of the planet's population lack basic sanitation facilities. Literally thousands of children die each day as a result of conditions related to water and hygiene, which I imagine is about as pleasant as it sounds.

What can you do to help? There's the obvious — water your lawn less liberally, wash your car less often, and switch to a low-flow shower head. That last action would save roughly 2,500 gallons of water per year.

But why inconvenience yourself all year long when you can absolve yourself of all moral obligations vis a vis water in just one day? According to The Food Revolution by John Robbins, the production of one single pound of beef uses between 2,500 and 5,200 gallons of water.

Simply put, forgoing one hamburger is better for the environment than not showering at all for an entire year.

I can't imagine an easier way to be environmentally proactive than occasionally skipping the Super-Mega-Double-Crazy-Vein-Polluting Beefy Burger. Besides. These things are pretty damn tasty.

Out of the Frying Pan into the Popper

Problem: Reliance on foreign oil.

Solution: Fuel cars with corn instead.

New Problem: Rapidly spreading global famine leads to accusations that biofuels constitute a human rights violation.

New Solution: Given our proclivity for invading four-lettered nation-states that begin with the letter I, move that we invade Iowa and nationalize all arable land.

Or, we could always do that potato famine thing again.

Lasagna Love: Introducing the Sparta-Choke Lasagna

Inspired by The Mean Bean, I decided to create my own veggie lasagna today. Shockingly, it was quite good. For the curious (and the brave):

Ingredients:

8 oz. cream cheese
8 oz. ricotta cheese
A few handfuls of shredded mozzarella cheese (hey, I said this was an experiment)
An indiscernible quantity of parmesan cheese
Optional: 2 eggs
Optional: Chopped garlic
14 oz. can pizza sauce
14 oz. can fire roasted tomatoes
14 oz. spaghetti sauce (your choice)
1 can sliced black olives
1 can quartered artichokes
A few handfuls of spinach
9 no-boil lasagna noodles

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all of the cheeses together in a large mixing bowl and set aside. If you like, include the eggs and the garlic. Mix all of the sauces together in another large mixing bowl and set aside. In a 9x13 lasagna pan, pour a thin layer of the sauce to cover the bottom of the pan. Then lay three noodles on top of the sauce. Spread 1/3 of the cheese mixture over the noodles, then spread 1/3 of the veggies over the cheese mixture. Repeat the layering until all of the ingredients are gone (although you should save some sauce to pour over the top of the final layer). Toss another handful of mozzarella cheese over the whole thing and pop it in the oven for an hour. When you remove the lasagna, let it sit for 10 minutes before eating (unless you're like me and you don't mind eating stuff that is literally still boiling).

Total prep time is about 15 minutes. And it's really good!

Which is nice, because I'd be eating it for a week either way...

FOR SPARTA!

Operation Fact Check: Obama and The War

As someone who has always thought that Bill Clinton was a generally terrible person, it brings me great pleasure to call him out on being a liar. According to Bill Clinton, the idea that Barack Obama has always been opposed to the Iraq War is "a fairy tale."

Bearing in mind that while Hillary Clinton was voting to approve the war Obama was serving in the Illinois legislature and hence did not vote on the matter, here is a plethora of video footing dating back to 2002 clearly demonstrating Obama's consistent opposition to said war:



Also, here's a direct link.

(On an unrelated matter, Southwest fake-chicken nuggets with honey are ridiculously tasty.)

A Little Bit Cheesy

I decided to make a daring switch from Mama Celeste's frozen cheese pizza to Mama Celeste's frozen four-cheese pizza, believing that the result would be a per-inch increase in the quantity of cheese. This belief seemed to be supported by the more cheese-laden picture on the front of the four-cheese box (seriously, it's the same picture with more cheese photoshopped on). Confident in my purchase, I hurried home to partake of what would surely be a veritable feast of cheesy goodness.

Imagine my disappointment to discover that "four-cheese pizza" actually indicates that the pizza contains four pieces of cheese.

Damn.

Peeve-ish

Speaking of truth in labeling (which I was), I have a proposed addendum to the current movement. Henceforth, whenever a restaurant decides to garnish a perfectly normal dish with some bizarre, unexpected and virtually impossible to remove substance, the customer must be informed in advance on penalty of death. By elephant trampling.

For example, if one were to order, I don't know, cheese and broccoli soup, and the restaurant had a habit of putting, oh, say, a gigantic mound of salsa freaking fresca on top, the server (under my proposed legislation) would have two options:

A. Inform the customer.

B. Submit to a painful, smushy death.

I know which one I'd choose.

So, petition anyone?

Free Range Chicken Not So Free

Free or not, I don't eat chickens. I became a vegetarian during junior high school, ate meat during college largely due to an inadequate school cafeteria, and then stopped again once I graduated. (Yes, I did it backwards.) I am currently what's called "ovo-lacto-pesco" meaning the animal stuff I am willing to eat is comprised of eggs, dairy and fish.

I'd like to dwell a moment on the ovo in my ovo-lacto-pesco, particularly those eggs which, like Elsa the beleaguered lion cub, were born free. Or so I thought. When I buy eggs at the hippie-dippie-you-clearly-live-in-California grocery store where I shop, I purchase free range eggs — ostensibly lain by chickens who roam free and happy through majestic fields, dropping eggs thither and yon to be collected at the leisure of their kindly keepers. Like most product pitches that sound too good to be true and thus are, my cursory research into the nature of so-called free range poultry products indicates that animals living under "free range" or "cage free" conditions are actually not much better off than their no-range counterparts. Please, hold the gasps of disbelief.

Basically, instead of putting each bird in its own cage, most free range birds are crowded together into tiny sheds in which they can technically move about, and have a hole in the wall through which a few birds at a time can travel outside into a tiny pen; however, inch for inch they're just as hemmed in as they would be in cages, and their general health and welfare is just as poor. This is clearly a far cry from the gleefully sunbathing chickens portrayed on the front of your garden-variety (or should I say crappy-shed-variety) free range egg carton. But hey — so long as a determined, intrepid chicken could, while obeying the laws of physics, gain temporary access to some modicum of sunlight, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will allow labels such as "free range" and "animal friendly" (not a legal term) to grace the front of the packaging.

"Oh, how misleading!" you say. "I am shocked — shocked — to learn that these mercenary farmers can get away with such dastardly deeds! Will no one think of the chickens?"

Well, you can. There's an ongoing truth in labeling campaign designed to target these types of misleading statements on the food products you consume. Alternately, you can wipe your KFC-grease-covered fingers on your jeans and close this window.

Just be glad I'm not posting pictures.

It was all very well to say 'Drink me' ...

When I was searching for poetry quotes the other day, I came across the following:

"Wine is bottled poetry." — Robert Louis Stevenson

If Stevenson is correct, I assert that the Chileans have casked "Paradise Regained". I'm sure Milton would be shocked to discover salvation can purchased for a mere ten dollars. And yet — Exhibit A.

In vino veritas.

Culinary Creativity

Yesterday I invented a sushi roll.

Innards: Two parts crab, one part tuna, one part avocado. Hat: Three parts salmon, one part avocado.

I call it the What-a-Panda-Would-Look-Like-if-It-Were-a-Fish. May later shorten to Panda Fish.

Also, I'd like to officially express my displeasure with the fact that the latest Coen brothers movie apparently involves some sort of doggie death scene, thereby preventing me from enjoying what I'm sure is otherwise a film made of awesome. What happened to the tasteful sort of man-eating mulcher scenes I'd come to expect from these fraternal auteurs?

Two paws down.


(p.s. Props to Ryan for giving me witty material to steal - e.g. blog title.)