Jan
19
I’ve been cooking quite a bit lately, which is new for me. There are all kinds of reasons home cooking tumbled down my priority list for so long, but it’s something I really wanted to change in 2010: less prepackaged last-minute foraging, more thoughtful planning and preparation.
It seems like I kept thinking about it but not making any actual effort to change our eating habits, and then I saw Food, Inc. Holy god, you guys. All I can say about that documentary is that it gave me the exact kick in the ass I needed to stop thinking and start acting.
I really don’t want to be an Obnoxious Food Douche on top of being a Tiresome Fitness Douche, so I won’t bore you with all the details of our newfound organic craze (although I am of course writing about it here, because if there is one thing I can’t get enough of, it’s obsessively documenting the minutiae of my thrilling day to day existence. Why, you should see my food journal!), but I will say how rewarding it’s been to put some actual effort into creating our meals. Instead of tearing open a bag or opening a can or just rooting in the fridge, I’m flitting between pots and pans and cutting boards and poking my face in the oven and doing millions of loads of dishes and jesus my feet hurt from that hard-ass tiled floor but it’s all making me so happy.
I’ve spent the last few years relying heavily on Amazon’s grocery delivery service. It’s been enormously convenient, and the fact that I can place an order in the morning and have it waiting for me when I get home from work has been awesome. But for all the time it saved me, I lost any feeling of connection with what I was buying and what we were eating. I shopped by clicking heavily branded product links, one after another, the exact same way you buy anything else on Amazon. Hell, they’ve even got user ratings on each food item, because god knows we all need to know if other buyers thought that bread was worth 3.5 or 4 stars. (Too bad they haven’t yet included reviews.)
I was falling into a rut of coming home from work and downing a bowl of cereal, the kids having already eaten PB&Js or macaroni and cheese for the thousandth time. We bought the same things week after week and rarely dirtied a pan. Things were constantly rotting in the vegetable crisper while the shelves contained an overabundance of colorfully-packaged things loaded with corn syrup and processed flour.
Planning, shopping for, and preparing our food is a big change. It requires time and effort, whether that’s actively working in the kitchen or thinking ahead to the next few meals. But you know, it’s funny, I feel so much better—not just because I believe we’re eating healthier food, but because I’m addressing a part of our family life I think was starting to fall apart. It isn’t always possible to have a nice sit-down meal with two working parents and two young kids, but we’re doing it a lot more than we were before, and cooking—really cooking—the food that we eat seems to . . . I don’t know how to describe it, exactly. It’s like some broken loop is being closed. Like something I didn’t even know was so important to me is finally being addressed.
Plus, homemade bread. God damn.
(Click through for recipes.)
Jan
18
“That was like being cornholed by Jesus,” JB said as we were crossing the parking lot to our car.
I can’t disagree, really. While the first twenty minutes or so of Book of Eli seemed promising, if annoyingly over-stylized (please note, when the End of the World As We Know It happens, the skies will be run through a heavily tinted filter and everything will look like a broodingly grainy music video, which is good news as I’m sure all the radioactivity and such will be harsh on the skin), the last twenty minutes were a butt-reaming straight from the heavens, complete with water-into-wine plot craziness and a carry-on-Christian-soldier final scene that drew actual applause from a few scattered audience members who apparently get spiritually moved by sinewy, duck-lipped actresses wearing improbably flattering post-apocalyptic clothing.
Even stoic, ass-kicking Denzel couldn’t save this Mad Max trainwreck, nor could the campily entertaining old-people-in-the-desert shootout in the middle which seemed to be randomly directed by Quentin Tarantino, and I’d like to know just when Gary Oldman hung his formidable acting chops in the coat closet and told his agent to accept any paper-thin villain character that comes his way, and seriously, MILA KUNIS IN END-OF-THE-WORLD SKINNY JEANS.
So there was that, a 7:15 viewing of Book of Eli, which I heartily recommend to anyone looking to test their faith. Beforehand, we spent about an hour and a half rambling around trying to find something to do between dinner and the movie, before (re)learning that everything in suburbia shuts down at 5 on a Sunday night, even the eternally ransacked-and-depressing Old Navy. Oh, and we had eaten at a conveyor belt sushi place, where we were the only patrons yet were inexplicably treated to Japanese techno at top volume. The plates rotated as sadly as the last items in baggage claim, where you stare and stare, hoping to find the one thing you’re looking for, but you only see the same five unappealing objects over and over again.
Total babysitter bust, is what I’m saying. The best part of the evening was when we came home, forked over the massive wad of cash it takes for us to leave the house without kids in tow, and turned on 30 Rock.
Not a stellar end to the weekend, but everything else was worthy: I ran 14 miles (!) on Saturday, we did a lot of cooking, the boys continued in their quest to send one another to the emergency room. Also, Dylan made a boat:
(Forgive me, but I can’t look at this—the clasped hands, the ear-to-ear smile—without hearing WHEEEEE in my head.)
How was your weekend?
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