Hiding vegetables from your kid

Ok, I'm sorry: "obviously delicious, secretly nutritious" is a ridiculous slogan. I just saw a commercial where a mother intentionally makes noise to drown out her husband saying that the canned ravioli their son is eating has "one full serving of vegetables" in it. I have many feelings about this. MANY.

Here are a couple.

-Many healthy, well prepared, foods are delicious
-Kids (and adults) often claim not to like something they've only eaten once...and it could have been the way it was prepared or the fact that taste buds need time to adjust (note: I've been called a picky eater many a time, I'm not trying to claim that food preferences don't exist).
-Perpetuating the idea that vegetables have to be hidden is insane.

I feel the same way about Jessica Seinfeld's book about cooking vegetables into cookies, or whatever, so that kids will eat them.

Yeah, I don't have kids, and maybe I'll end up with children who only eat noodles and cake, but I'm pretty sure that saying vegetables aren't delicious isn't helping. Especially because, you know, most fruits and vegetables are in fact insanely delicious when well prepared. I'm also pretty sure that canned ravioli is gross (though I'll give it fast and cheap, which I know are very important).

Actually, that's not even the point. If people enjoy canned ravioli, delightful for them. I haven't eaten it, maybe it's delicious. Heck, I haven't looked at the label, maybe it's healthy. But the idea that you have to trick kids into eating food that is good for them is ludicrous and upsetting.

Eating "Downtown"

This was a problem in Chicago, and it is a problem near Penn Station too. There is no place normal to eat "downtown." I either have to buy $19 soup, or fast food. Within 3 blocks of my new office, there are the following fast food chains: McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, White Castle, Grey's Papaya, Dunkin' Donuts, Subway and Starbucks. There is maybe a Japanese restaurant downstairs, a liquor store across the street and a super expensivo midtown style fresh salad place in the first floor of my building. Honest to god, how hard is it to have a regular deli? Or a falafel place?
So it was in Chicago when I worked downtown near the Lake. There were Au Bon Pains (get it? haha) everywhere, with the $45 sandwhich nonsense, and Popeyes.
Where is the reasonable in between. I am not in a damn airport, I am in Midtown Manhattan, for crying out loud. A little common decency.

Cake does not come from a mix

I make no claims on the cooking front. I agree with Dixie that modifying prepared food does not count as creating an amazing recipe, though I have recently become a big fan of Cooking With All Things Trader Joe's. I'm good at making marinara sauce, poached eggs and spinach (often together). Beyond that, I'm really good at delivery and leftovers.

However, when it comes to baking I have some feelings.

Thing 1, Cake does not come from a mix. Neither do cookies. Or pancakes.

Here's the secret about baking: the hardest part is cleaning up. Beyond that, it's chemistry. Unless you want to get fancy and make up your own new taste sensations, all you have to do is precisely follow the directions. Sure, you may have to make an allowance for an unbalanced oven or altitude, but beyond that....follow the directions.

You don't have to chop a million spices, use any fancy knife skills, or constantly taste for salt. Nope, just follow the instructions in the recipe. Easy. Baking a cake is much easier than making a killer entree.

Cake mixes require, and please correct me if I'm wrong, adding 3 or so ingredients to the mix, then putting it in a pan and baking it. Baking a cake from scratch adds a few more ingredients (but not that many more) and creates a much more delicious end product with many fewer chemicals.

Example. The internet tells me that Betty Crocker "super moist" chocolate cake mix contains: Sugar, Enriched Flour Bleached (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Modified Corn Starch, Corn Starch, Baking Soda, Carob Powder, Propylene Glycol Monoesters of Fatty Acids, Lactose, Salt, Distilled Monoglycerides, Modified Whey, Artificial Color, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Monoglycerides, Xanthan Gum, Datem. Artificial Flavor, Aluminum Sulfate.

To that list of unpronounceables one adds vegetable oil, water, and eggs.

Do you even know what half those things are? They don't even bother to break out "artificial flavor".

My grandmother's super moist chocolate cake recipe, by contrast, calls for sugar, butter, eggs, milk, hot water, baking soda, flour, cocoa, and vanilla. 9 ingredients, all of which most of you have in your kitchen already. There are many simpler cake recipes that use fewer ingredients, this is just a compare and contrast.

I'll guarantee you that the "from scratch" cake takes only 5 minutes longer to prepare and tastes much much better.

I feel similarly about cookies and brownies, and please let's not get started on Bisquick for pancakes. Making pancakes from scratch requires flour, baking soda, milk, and an egg. Oh, and a dash of salt, and of course butter or oil for the griddle. Making pancakes from Bisquick does not save any time, and I'll put my pancakes next to yours any day. Plus then you have a big yellow box in your cupboard when you could just have flour.

Look, I'm all for laziness. I eat the occasional frozen dinner. But if you're going to make cake, it might as well taste delicious.

Oh, and frosting? It does not come from a can. It comes from mixing confectioners sugar with milk and butter. Or any number of other 3 ingredient options.

I make great...

I get really annoyed when people claim that they make a really great (insert food here) and then you learn that they just modify some store bought thing. Such as, "I make really great chicken soup- I take the campbell's soup, and I add that roasted chicken from Jewel and some mushrooms." No, you don't make great chicken soup. My mom does. You have a good idea about how to make canned soup better. Don't get too excited about yourself.

Now, I am a terrible baker. I don't have the focus, precision or drive to be really good. So, when I bake a cake, I use Duncan Hines. And you know what? IT IS DELICIOUS and a lot better than it would be if I made it from scratch. Now, I am not going to go around saying "I bake awesome cakes" because I don't. But I might say, "yo, I baked this cake. From a box. Would you like a slice? It is delicious." and that is fine (HEIDI.) I'm not making any false claims there. But please, don't tell me about your awesome chili recipe, when we are talking about you heating up a can and adding cheese. But yes, I will have a bowl of it, thank you.

Fake Vegetarianism

Ann Marie feels strongly about veganism. I, having been a vegetarian for going on 15 years, feel strongly about vegetarianism.

Here's the thing. If you eat fish, you are not a vegetarian. You aren't. You're someone who doesn't eat red meat or chicken.

If you eat chicken, you are not a vegetarian. You are someone who doesn't eat red meat.

And so on. Vegetarians come in a couple flavors: Lacto-ovo vegetarians are people like me who don't eat meat, but do eat dairy products and honey and gelatin. We usually wear leather and aren't fanatical about products derived from animal by-products.

Lacto Vegetarians drink milk but don't eat eggs. Ovo-vegetarians (are rare) eat eggs but not milk products. Etc.

Vegans don't eat any food that once had something to do with an animal. This usually includes gelatin and yeast and sometimes honey. Vegans usually don't wear leather and are much more vigilant about what products they bring into their home.

There's one thing in common here though: no type of vegetarian eats animals.

Fish are in the animal kingdom. If you eat fish you can not in good conscience call yourself a vegetarian.

I don't care what you eat. I'm not judging your choices. I make my choices, you make yours, we all live happily together. I'm much more likely to lecture you about sustainable cleaning products than giving up meat.

So, in case I wasn't clear, if you eat any type of animal, you are not a vegetarian.

Fake Veganism

Okay, recently I have tried a series of diets, none too noteworthy or, to be honest, none that have worked. Because I like to be informed, I decided to go see a nutritionist, who gave me excellent advice, as well as read the book Skinny Bitch. For fun, or so I thought.

Now, I thought this book was basically going to be funny and have funny advice like "drink wine," "don't eat microwaved meals while sitting in bed watching Hulu," and "have sex, it burns like 500 calories!" (All good dieting advice, btw.) But no, Skinny Bitch is a tome dedicated to convincing scared women that they real way to lose those last ten pounds is to become a vegan.

Now, I like vegans. I think people who are vegans are brave and have will power that I don't have. In short, that's great, but it's not for me. But this whole book is basically a less interesting version of Fast Food Nation, the moral of which is that being fat is the worst and being a vegan is the answer. Because everything we eat is disgusting. Forget it. So not my bag of gluten-free baked chips! It basically just seems like a great excuse for teenagers who frequent pro-ana websites to never eat a family meal ever again. But I digress...

So, my "diet" is going to have to consist of exercise, mainly my horrible, self-hating Bikram yoga, which will inspire a post on "integrated product synergy systems," or Why I Hate that my Yoga Studio Makes Me Feel Like I Have to Drink SmartWater."