Ask TracyFood: For Ellen, in lieu of Foto Friday 13 April 2007 4:37 pm
Posted by Tracy in : advice, convenience, cooking, eating, friends, health, time versus money , trackbackDear TracyFood,
I currently live life at an extremely hectic pace (2 jobs, 2 classes, and a job search for post-graduation employment). One of the results of this is that I eat a lot of junk. Do you have any suggestions for ways I could improve my eating habits yet not cut too much into my precious sleep time?
XOXO,
Ellen
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Dear Ellen,
The question of time is one I keep crashing into over and over again in my thinking about food, which (in case the whole blog thing didn’t make it obvious) I do pretty much all the time, ha ha. Eating well is time-consuming, no matter how you slice it (pun not really intended, again ha ha). The good news is manyfold, however. For one thing, eating well is eminently worth it, and not just from a nutritional perspective. I think your awesomeness is well worth taking the time to open a bag of salad greens and a bottle of dressing instead of chips and dip (okay, maybe chips and salsa if you’re being slightly more scurvy-preventative). But chances are you’ve already heard about how taking the time for good food is taking the time to celebrate the stupendous badassitude of you, and it’s all kinds of fun and easy besides. Easy for me to say, right, since I work with food for a living and somehow still like it well enough to cook after I get home from a day of hippie kitchen?
Well, I have a confession. As excited as I still get about the revelation that working with food for money hasn’t burned me out on cooking at home, I do have days (even non-kitchen-working days) when all I want to do is watch TV or check my email and have food appear in front of me. The good news is I have a partner who values his life and/or my lack of crankiness enough to step up to the stove and make sure I get fed on those days. When he’s not around (like this week for instance) I have to be my own partner, and keep a stock of instant food available in case I’m too useless to fend for myself. I have to do this ahead of time, while I’m bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and up to making a lot of food so I can eat leftovers later. For instance: I can make a big batch of Tracy granola, which I can just pour into a bowl and glop with yogurt and bam. Good times, even before it’s a good breakfast, especially since making Tracy granola is fun and easy and sort of meditative and makes the whole house smell like cinnamon and spices — yum. Or I can make a lot of soup or chili and freeze the leftovers, which I can microwave or reheat in a pan on the stove if I’m feeling fancy. Someday I may even learn the trick of storing it in individual portions, for less of that tricky “is this the right amount?” thinking.
Which brings me to my next point: when you’re busy (or stressed or sick or tired or whatever), thinking is way harder than cooking or eating, which makes it all too easy to eat whatever’s around, good or bad. So unfortunately you have to spend a little more time and effort and thought whenever you’re able, and then thank yourself later for being so responsible and prepared. I am not a big fan of substituting shopping time for cooking time, but if you make sure to keep your house well-stocked with good stuff that you like to eat (this is key), or even good things that are easy to put in a bag for when you run out into your hectic life, then you’re much more likely to make food choices you won’t regret later, when it feels like you’ve eaten nothing for days but Skippy straight from the jar with a spoon, not that I’m speaking from personal experience or anything. I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever buy junky comfort food, but if you could make sure to get some delicious carrots or kale, too, that would make me very happy.
Speaking of kale, I cannot say enough good things about the fun and easy deliciousness that is sautéed hearty greens. Kale, chard, collards, mustard and beet greens — all of these are good food and super-fast and easy to cook. Just chop them up and put them in a pan with some hot oil until they wilt (if you’re using chard, you might want to chop the stems separately and them a little before adding the leaves, which are much much thinner and cook almost instantly). Season however you like — salt and pepper, vinegar, soy sauce, sesame seeds, maybe some garlic during the initial sauté if you’re feeling fancy — and serve on or with the starchy food of your choice — pasta, rice, quinoa, or toast. (This week I have rediscovered the joy of sautéed mustard greens on toasted rye bread with smoked Gouda. So awesome!) Most of the starchy foods I mentioned also have protein in them, or if you’re feeling very diligent you can add tofu, tempeh, or cheese to your concoction (I see pre-seasoned baked tofu for sale all over the place these days in case you don’t want to make your own — subtle hint!). But mostly just enjoy the greens — I find I start craving them after awhile, especially with garlic. Yum. Some stores even carry special “braising mixes” of greens that are especially good for sautéing with a little oil and water — they look like mixed salad greens on steroids. And have I mentioned that greens can be grown almost anywhere pretty much year-round? Aw, yeah. So awesome!
Hmmm, what else? I know I already mentioned pasta, but it’s still super-fun and easy, especially if you make it with vegetables that only need a quick boil (say, in the same pot as the pasta, when the noodles are almost done). Broccoli and cauliflower both leap readily to mind, or asparagus, this time of year. One of the great things about pasta is that even if you don’t have any sauce in the house (home-made or store-bought; just be sure to read the ingredients lists because some of the prepared sauces are sweetened, which is gross) you can usually muddle together a sauce in the time it takes to boil water and cook noodles, like in this love letter here. (Um, can you tell that I feel like I haven’t been eating enough pasta lately? I digress.)
Dear Ellen, I wish I could cook you dinner once a week, and send you home with leftovers suitable for taking as lunch on all your adventures. I hope I have given you some useful ideas, but even more than that I hope that you find good stuff to cook and eat that works for you, by which I mean I hope you find easy but especially fun ways to take care of yourself with food, because if it’s not fun you won’t want to do it or it’ll feel like some kind of miserable obligation and life is way too short to waste meals on anything less than deliciousness. Dear everybody else reading this: all that ranting about knowing and loving what you eat goes for you too but Ellen asked me first so she gets extra-special bonus acclaim today. Happy deliciousness!
Love,
-Tracy
P.S. Confidential to anybody who really misses Foto Friday: I thought I’d posted enough pictures this week, and (in case the super-long response didn’t make it obvious enough) I really wanted to write this letter.
Comments»
Thanks, TracyFood. You’re the best!
I’d never considered greens. I will give that a try. Also, another question for you — one thing I have a track record of being able to make is tofu stirfry. But the tofu is best marinated in some sort of sauce, which increases the necessary time. Is this something that could be marinated as a batch and saved for weeknight?
I honestly don’t have a lot of tofu-marinating experience; it usually absorbs sauce pretty well during the cooking process, like if you add the sauce right after the tofu is nicely browned but before you add veggies (and if you add just a little extra water to the sauce cut up your veggies small, they’ll probably steam up in the time it takes for the sauce to cook and/or thicken and/or be absorbed by the tofu!) If you marinated the tofu in a batch and baked or pan-fried it ahead of time, that would definitely keep well (and hardly need cooking at all on your weeknights). Or you could just make your stir-fry sauce/marinade ahead of time and have it ready to go, and marinate your tofu while you’re prepping the other ingredients, or if that isn’t long enough maybe start it in the morning so it’s ready by the time you get home at night? My only really hard and fast rules about tofu storage are either cook it or keep it covered in liquid, and either way refrigerate it, for the love of whatever you love, and be super-glad you’re being paranoid about bean curd and not dead animal flesh, which is ever so much grosser. Woo!
Oh lady. Maybe I should do some experiments and write a whole new entry about it. Or see if I can get a library copy of The Book of Tofu… hmm.
This is a situation where dips are definitely your friends, as well. I keep frozen wholegrain pita breads and three different flavors of hummus stocked up at all times for just this sort of situation.
And yes, veggie + garlic + olive oil + pasta = the perfect meal. I am looking forward to trying some sauteed greens this week!
I heartily endorse Chiara’s of course fabulous snack suggestions, as they are much healthier than my emergency cheese and crackers or the aforementioned Skippy straight from the jar. Today I was very good and also had a carrot. I have also been trying to keep an apple in my bag at all times, just in case. Also this week we have mandarin oranges, but I’m not very good at snacking on fruit. Bananas can be good instant food but I’m very picky about their optimal ripeness and so there is a smaller window of opportunity in which they can serve as useful instant TracyFood (fortunately, they can be turned into bananas Foster or frozen for use in banana bread, although neither of those is particularly healthsome per se).