Save Your Fork… There’s Pie

Is butter better?

I have a pound of Crisco that’s been sitting in my cupboard since last fall. I bought it with the intention of buying five pounds of spy apples a few days later and making an apple pie, but then I fell and broke my arm and no pies happened for a long time.

Now I’m getting ready to start packing up the kitchen and I’m wondering if I should just abandon the Crisco to its own devices. I mean… all that trans fat. It’s one of those things that sort of sits just on the edge of your awareness as you dig into a big slice of pie with a piecrust so full of flakey layers it’s like lace, and then you do the mental version of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling “LALALALALA!!!”, and that makes the trans fats go away.

But in its saleable form, in that big solid white lump of slime, you can tell pretty obviously that the trans fats are having a big ol’ party and just can’t wait to hit your arteries and bung them up. It’s like a one-pound brick of death, wrapped up pretty in its blue cardboard wrapper.

Problem is, what to use instead? The intarweb abounds with recipes for butter pie crust, and no doubt, in an effort to avoid a cholesterol-induced heart attack, a healthier margarine would probably suffice, but are they any good? Butter and flour together work just fine… as shortbread. But piecrust? I’ve never done it, so I’m sceptical, to say the least.

Can you tell I grew up in a house that bought Crisco in 5 or 10-pound tubs?

So, I don’t need recipes, just testimonials. Is butter (or margarine) better? Will I end up with pie crust that is as light as angel’s wings or more like something I could chink bricks with?

Do I toss the Crisco or shut my big ol’ piehole and just use the stuff, because we’re all going to die sooner or later and there might as well be good pie in the meantime?

Don’t Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America – Morgan Spurlock

As I mentioned a few weeks ago in my opening editorial, I firmly believe that most people who care about good food know that junk food is bad for them. How can you not know that fact? What worries me, and apparently, also worries Morgan Spurlock, is that even though we all know this to be true, people are still cruising through the drive-through and eating McJunk. Even after seeing SuperSize Me, Spurlock’s 2003 documentary, we’re still putting crap into our bodies in place of food.

Don’t Eat This Book is even more loaded with information than Spurlock’s film. In many ways, it’s easier to digest (heh!), as you can take your time, set the thing down, or go back and reread all the interesting bits. Which you need to do on occasion, because Spurlock really writes in the same way that he talks – fast and furious. This can be amusing, or a bit overwhelming, and after the fifth or sixth Simpson’s-esque “mmmmm… food reference” comment, even a bit annoying.

What he does do is give you facts. All the stuff he relays onscreen during his 30-day McDonald’s diet in SuperSize Me is right there in black and white. In fact, Don’t Eat This Book could almost be considered the literary companion to the film, as Spurlock is able to give more detail about what he went through during the 30 days of the documentary, as well as the reaction to the film after the fact, particularly the reaction by the bigwigs at McDonald’s and the various ways that company tried to control the publicity the film got, especially in countries with a smaller, more concentrated market such as Australia and Japan. The Subway chain, clearly not getting Spurlock’s message of “all junk food = bad”, and hoping to divert former McDonald’s customers to their supposedly healthier options, tried to strike a deal to give away copies of the SuperSize Me DVD to customers who purchased $15 or more of their food. Spurlock quickly put the kibosh on this deal, proving his intention to be true to his message, as the deal would have made him a cool $2.5 million. He is also particularly skeptical of the “healthy options” offered by many fast food chains in the wake of SuperSize Me’s popularity, and shows how, in many cases, they are no healthier than the deep-fried, chemical-loaded concoctions those same chains are known for.

The printed format also allows Spurlock to touch on topics that the time constraints of the film did not allow. He has no love for the US Food and Drug Administration’s Food Pyramid (which has since been updated), and he takes special exception to charity organizations, such as Ronald McDonald House, set up to boost brand recognition and favourably influence the reputation of McDonald’s as a proud member of the community.

No organization is really safe from Spurlock’s cynicism, and he spends a lot of time showing the influence of food advertising on children and discussing school lunch programmes and childhood obesity. He shows how chains like McDonald’s work hard to hook kids from an early age to ensure they become life-long consumers.

McDonald’s and other chains make no secret of the fact that kids are their primary targets. “We have living proof of the long-lasting quality of early brand loyalties in the cradle-to-grave marketing at McDonald’s and how it works,” James McNeal, a well-known kids’ marketing guru an the author of Kids As Consumers, has said. “We start taking children in for their first and second birthdays, and on and on, and eventually they have a great deal of preference for that brand. Children can carry that with them through a lifetime.”

Ultimately, Spurlock tells us what we all, intrinsically, know – junk food is bad. It causes heart disease, diabetes, obesity and possibly cancer. He does everything he can to shower his reader with information, to guide them towards making better, healthier choices. Essentially, if you enjoyed the movie, you’ll probably love the book, and it might just be the push some people need to move towards a healthier diet.

There is, however, the risk of “preaching to the choir”. As with most books possessing a political or moral bent, people tend to read things that reflect the point of view they already hold. That is, people who eat at Mickey D’s three or four times a week aren’t going to want to hear the message Spurlock is sending, and probably wouldn’t pick up the book in the first place. Watching a film is less of a time commitment than reading a book, especially one loaded with facts and references and appendices, so a lot of people might figure that since they saw SuperSize Me, they really don’t need to read Spurlock’s follow-up.

It is clear is that Spurlock is fighting a huge war, and that he is making gains. What he wants each of his readers to know is that they can make those same gains, by making better, more informed choices. Will the world take their food dollars elsewhere, will they start cooking at home, demanding better choices in their school cafeterias, or speaking up when giant food corporations advertise to their children? Or will we become, as health experts are now predicting, a culture of obese people, riddled with heart disease and type 2 diabetes, who can no longer expect to live longer than our parents?

I know, and Morgan Spurlock knows, that we all know better. We are all aware of what junk food does to our bodies, to our culture, to our society. The question is, will we take that leap and do anything about it?

This post was originally published on the WellFed Network.

I’m pissed off about seals today. Not about them getting whacked on the head, but about idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about and their stupid petitions to save the cyuuuooote fluffy seals. So here’s a recipe for Seal Flipper Pie. I only ever ate the stuff once, and it was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever tasted; seal is fatty and greasy and even cleaned and cooked, smells a lot like seal crap.

But if you happen to come across a cute fluffy seal and are inclined to bonk the little bugger on the head – here’s how to cook him up for dinner.

Flipper Pie – compliments of Maisie’s Newfoundland Recipes

2 flippers
1 tbsp baking soda
2 tbsp flour
salt and pepper
1/4 lb. salt pork cut into small cubes
1 chopped onion
2 diced carrots
1 diced turnip

Cover flippers with cold water. Add 1 tbsp baking soda and soak for 1/2 hour until the fat is white. Remove fat.

Mix 2 tbsp of flour & salt and pepper. Dredge the flippers with the flour mixture.

Cook the salt pork in a fry pan. Fry the flippers in salt pork fat until brown. Add a little water and simmer until partly tender.

Put the flippers, onion, cubed carrot and turnip in a roaster and add 1 cup of water. Cover and bake at 350F degrees for 2 to 3 hours. Remove from oven and take flippers from roaster. Add 1 1/2 cups of water to the roaster and stir well.

Fill a small jar with a cover with 1/4 cup of cold water, add 2 tbsp of flour. Place the cover on the jar and shake until the mixture is smooth Add to the meat drippings to make a thick gravy.

Place the flippers back in the roaster and cover with pastry (See recipe below.) Bake at 400F for about 25 minutes until pastry is brown.

Pastry:
1/3 cup margarine
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 or 3 tbsp cold water.

Cut margarine into flour, baking powder and salt until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Sprinkle in water, 1 tbsp at a time and mix. Roll pastry into a ball and place on lightly floured board. Roll out to a thickness of about 1/2″ to 3/4″ and to the correct size to cover the flippers.

It’s been quiet in these parts, and the food has been unexciting. Too much stuff out of packages and too much stuff out of take-out containers. There’s two more weeks of this to go, and I swear, once we get moved and settled, I never want to see another frozen pizza again.

I mean, it’s not as if we’re moving far – a whole five blocks east. But it’s still easier to weed down your kitchen cupboards and buy new, rather than moving all your groceries, particularly perishables. So we’re trying to use up and clear out, which means no trips to Whole Foods, or the markets (Kensington and St. Lawrence), or swank and lovely Pusateri’s.

Instead, we eat the crap. Salads out of tubs, the ubiquitous frozen pizzas, store-bought frozen vegetarian lasagna, and many things from soy made to resemble parts of dead critters. The plan is to eat the crap for now, and once we’re in the new place, unpacked, and have had time to hit all the grocery places for fresh grub, to do a two-week detox to clear all the gunk out of our systems.

We’re figuring it might even be easier to avoid the crap at the new place. Although it’s only five blocks away, here we’ve got lots of different places to grab quick take-away; Jerry’s Fish & Chips, four different roti places, a falafel place, three Tibetan restos, a bunch of pizza-by-the-slice joints to cater to the high school kids, and the hole-in-the-wall Sri Lankan place with the awful dosas, but the highly addictive deep-fried chili peppers. And those are just the veggie-friendly places. Within spitting distance of the new apartment is, are you ready? McD’s, Burger Thing, Quizno’s and Subway. Plus a crappy coffee chain, another roti place and a greasy spoon. Other than the roti place and the greasy spoon, it’s a wasteland. Sure, there are cute cafes and coffeehouses a few blocks east, and even a gourmet pizza place that makes vegan pizza, or we can head west and be back to the old part of our ‘hood in five minutes, but for a quick bite on the way home, there’s nothing we can/would eat. We avoid chains as much as possible, and there’s no way I’d risk my 17-year anti-McD’s campaign, even if the smell of the place didn’t make me want to puke.

No, I think the temptation will be small to non-existant.

In the meantime, we munch on fresh fruit and dates and carrot sticks to try and counter the salt and sugar and msg as much as possible. And once I can find my pots and pans again, it will be an austere two weeks of no caffeine, refined sugar, wheat or processed soy. Instead, it will be brown rice; steamed veggies; some small amounts of fresh tofu, miso and fish; and lots of fruit and juice. Greg will probably drink his morning coffee, but I am going to try to do without, for those two weeks at least. It should be an interesting time.

The grocery options are a lot better at the new place as well. The closest supermarket has a huge “multicultural” aisle with sections for Portugal, Poland, Asia (Tibet, China, India, Japan) and South America – all designed to cater to our very multi-cultural neighbourhood. If I can just keep from getting addicted to Sumol, the Portugese soda, I should be okay. The next closest place is a huge No Frill’s (part of the Loblaw’s chain which carries the President’s Choice line) and has a pretty decent fish counter. As in, “tank of lobster” decent.

So all in all, I’m pretty stoked to get into my new kitchen and start cooking. It’s just the next two weeks I have to get through first.

Ohh, ohh! Ohh, oooo, oooo!

My boyfriend is back.

Because nothing says “summer” like watching Gordon Ramsay curse like a stevedore and push plates of badly cooked risotto into people’s chests. It makes me all fluttery just thinking about it.

I kept the Ramsay flame alive over the winter by downloading British shows like The F-Word and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, but I am jonesing for some kitchen cursing, I am.

Should we start a poll to see how many times he takes his shirt off during the course of the season?

No, that’s spelled right.

For all of my griping about how much smaller my new place is going to be, including the kitchen, there are a few things that actually please me a great deal. First and foremost, having a kitchen where your work triangle isn’t fifteen feet across. Getting from fridge to sink and back to stove in the apartment where I am now requires an awful lot of hoofing, and makes simple things such as draining pasta a precarious hike. I know most people want huge enormous kitchens with many bells and whistles and huge expanses of marble countertops and sinks every five feet and big bright windows, but I’ve lived with some of that and it’s not as sweet as it’s cracked up to be.

People go ga-ga over the expanse of windows in my current kitchen (it’s converted from a smallish room and an old, unheated sunporch) because it’s so bright and sunny, but the ongoing condensation from cooking constantly is causing the hundred-year-old window frames to rot and breed a weird greenish mildew. The one radiator in the room is in the far corner and doesn’t throw out enough heat to keep the area by the windows warm.

And for all of my devotion to my gas stove, it’s really reserved for the stove top. I’ve never been a fan of gas ovens, and truly can’t wait to get my hands on that brand new electric oven waiting for me at the new apartment. Oh, the things we’ll bake! Most gas ovens, you see, are incredibly uneven, making for poorly cooked baked goods. They also need re-calibration almost annually, as they tend to run either hotter or colder than where they’re set, temperature-wise. Electric ovens also have their broiler element at the top of the oven, not underneath it, as gas ovens do. Which means that this is the very last lemon meringue pie that I’m going to have to balance and juggle and *dance* with, as I get down on my knees to put in under the floor-level broiler to brown the meringue.

If you live in Toronto, I’ve probably dragged you to a little place by my house to have “the pancake”. All who have eaten the pancake can attest to its oatmealy goodness, its stick-to-your-ribs heartiness, and the general luciousness of the thing. It comes with a selection of fruit, some especially good homefries and a regularly changing topping. This one is strawberry rhubarb compote, although my favourite so far has been carmelized pecans and creme anglaise. Not so great was the sauteed mangoes. That choice was a bit iffy.

It wasn’t always so easy to get, though, this pancake. There’s a history behind it.

See, the pancake was always available at a little place in my ‘hood called Mitzi’s. Mitzi’s sits in an old storefront in an otherwise residential area. There are no other stores nearby, really nowhere else to go unless you want to walk for three or four blocks. They are also open only for breakfast and lunch and do not have a liquor licence. A few year’s ago, the folks behind the original place opened a bar/restaurant on the main drag, aptly named Mitzi’s Sister. For a while, they served the pancake there, and you could actually get the thing with a pint of oatmeal stout to go alongside it. It was the best breakfast ever.

Then, for some vague reason (something about not being able to cook them properly) Mitzi’s Sister took the pancake *off* their menu. Yes, I could still make the trek to the original location to have my favourite breakfast, but there was no beer to go with it. Not to mention that the original location was always packed, and with family-types pushing strollers, to boot. Then, Mitzi’s Sister moved and started serving the pancake again, and all was well in my world. Then, they stopped – again. There came a point where I once went to the original location, bought a pancake to go, and walked back to location #2 and ordered a beer while I ate my pancake from location #1 out of the styrofoam container. This is how important it is to have oatmeal stout with the oatmeal pancake. When it’s right, it’s right.

The second location is now serving the pancake on weekends, and so far they seem to be sticking to their promise to not take it off the menu. I think the threat of my head exploding convinced them it was a good idea. I could always walk up to Mitzi’s #1 and have my favourite breakfast with coffee, because coffee compliments it just fine, and I do that occasionally on weekday mornings, but weekends mean being able to have my oatmeal pancake with my oatmeal beer, and not having to eat anything else for the rest of the day because the two together really do stick to your ribs.

Oddly, the pancake pictured, while from Mitzi’s #2, was consumed with coffee, as neither of my brunch companions on Sunday drink beer, and I was self-conscious about being thought a lush.