Big Daddy Paul

My kid doesn’t eat meals. That sounds weird, but in the past few days I have taken a long hard look at what he consumes and have come to the conclusion that Malcolm is unable to eat anything that involves three or more ingredients. Mac and cheese: OK. Cereal: fine, with milk only. A sandwich: acceptable, but only if the original layout is deconstructed and the items (bread, cheese, meat) are consumed individually. I’m not sure how he got here, but I pine for the days when I can give him some chili and he won’t look at me like I just shot his favorite stuffed animal.

I blame myself. Early on, I learned that I could sneak vegetables into places where they could not be detected. I put tiny bits of asparagus in the spaghetti. I put microscopic amounts of red pepper into quesadillas and spinach into places where even Popeye wouldn’t expect it. One day, he asked what all the little green flecks of green in the mac and cheese were. I told him it was broccoli. He burst into tears and told me that he didn’t love me anymore.

If only it were this easy every time

Now, he doesn’t trust me. He knows that big saucy dishes with tons of ingredients have things in it that rabbits eat. I guess he feels the only way to counteract my sneakiness is to simplify things to the extent where he can easily tell what’s in his food. We have come to some sort of truce, and he will eat raw whole vegetables provided he is satisfied with the sexier portions of the meal. His dinner plates look like he’s anal retentive: each separate food group isolated from the others and segregated to different parts of the plate. He then dissects each portion of the plate in descending order of unhealthiness.

I’m a simple man, with simple hopes and dreams. I want my family to be happy and healthy. I want my boy to grow up and realize that eating food is a social and joyful experience. I want cook like Alice Waters, eat like Luciano Pavaratti and party like Tiger Woods. And one day, I want us to sit down as a family and eat the same thing.

Anyone got any ideas?

Now, I am not talking about giant steaks or plates of nachos that will make your colon cringe.  Those things will be around for a long time and for good reason.  I am talking about large agricultural companies that put tons of crap in their food and are secretly trying to poison your dog.  Well, I have no proof of the last part, but still, processed food is not good for you.  I say eat whatever the hell you want, just use real food to make it.  All those companies out there putting crap in our food: look the hell out!

Item #1 – Hashbrowns.  Hashbrowns don’t need to be frozen and taste like cardboard.  I had a bunch of potatoes sitting around from a recent shipment of our produce box the other morning and I thought, “Why not turn these lumpy brown tubers into a tasty breakfast treat?”  So, I did, and you can too! Just peel the potatoes, grate them with a cheese grater, and then cook them in a non-stick pan with oil or butter (maybe four or five minutes a side).  It’s easy, and it is way cheaper than paying a big food company to process the food and make it worse for you.  I think I ended up paying around $.12 for those hashbrowns, and they tasted better than lame excuse for hashbrowns that they freeze and give to you in a plastic bag. Paul: 1, Big Food: 0.

Item #2 -Applesauce.  Don’t go buying a big jar of that expensive, crappy applesauce with a bunch of extra sugar, unnecesary ingredients and the large severed human ear that inevitably makes its way into the batch.  Whenever you have a hankering for what the French refer to as sauce of the apple, just do this: peel an apple, core the apple, put the pieces in a blender, turn blender on, and then enjoy the freshest most delicious applesauce you have ever tasted.  We use fuji apples, but I would think almost any variety would do.  Sure, you’ll have to clean your blender, but you should have been spending more time with your blender anyways.  What kind of blender owner are you?  Cost for a bowl of applesauce: $.69.  Paul: 2, Big Food: 0.

Item #3 Popcorn. A long time ago, when times were simpler, we all drank in the morning and smoked in bed.  Back then, popcorn was not made in a microwave.  I am glad to say that we have broken the chains of bondage and no longer make popcorn in the microwave.  Neither should you.  Add a generous amount of canola oil to a saucepan, and fill the bottom of the pan with a layer of popcorn.  Put a cover on that pan, because there’s gonna be an explosion, a flavor explosion! Shake the popcorn pan every now and again until it pops regularly.  Then keep shaking it until it stops popping.  Pour the popcorn out into a bowl, add a little pat of butter into the pan to melt in, then put back about half of the popcorn into the pan to coat with butter.  After returning all of the popcorn to the bowl, add a couple shakes of salt and toss.  I guarantee that you will not find better popcorn for watching 30 Rock, and it is quicker to make than loading a bag of bizarre orange shit into a tin box and zapping it with invisible rays.  This popcorn is so good it will make you want to drink in the morning and smoke in bed, and a bowl of it costs around $.50.  Paul: 4, Big Food: 0.  That last one was a blowout.

Putting large agricultural businesses into bankruptcy is a fun and tasty way to spend your nights and weekends.  I highly suggest you try it.  You can buy everything you need for these three items in bulk or in the produce aisle, so you will need little or no packaging, making the earth proud of your gluttony.  It is cheaper and may even be quicker than the processed versions.  Better yet, most of this stuff will come to you in a local, organic produce box, so feel free to order one of those.  I am not saying you need to eat perfectly, I sure don’t.  Just doing little things like these three things, though,gets us pointed in the right direction.

Anyone else got any tricks up their sleeves?  Anyone found a severed ear in their applesauce?

What a long strange trip it has been for us guys.  During our neanderthal days, we killed animals on the hunt and took neanderthalettes to keep the cave tidy and raise our young.   After some time, we invented church so that we could marry our ladies and then invented new churches so we could divorce them. Then, we invented bread so that we could say that we brought something home every day (even though we had no idea what to do with it when we actually got there.) Things pretty much stalled out there until World War II, where we went out and slaughtered one another, leaving our ladies to go out and work in the factories for a living. Forced to deal with the fact that women wanted to work, we have become more involved in the raising of the children, so much so that some of us have evolved to the point where we are the ones raising the little neanderthals (we may have left the cave, but kids are the same dirty, stinky animals that were raised back in the day.)

This progression was not lost on me this week, as we prepared to host Amy’s book club at our house.  We have evolved to the point where working women now gather and are fed by men who keep the home.  We get this honor once a year, when we host some of the movers and shakers in the HR software industry as they get together to swill good wine, eat tasty food, and trash or love whatever the book selection is that month.  These women are intelligent, successful and know the difference between gourmet and canned chili (damn them!).

I was told to offered to make the spread for the event, and then got really bummed to learn that the book was set in India.  Typically, there is a connection between the location of the book and the cuisine served for these book clubs, so I had just signed up for cooking Indian food (which I know absolutely nothing about) for 8-12 foodies.  Oops!  I began to stress.

I eventually came up with a couple of dishes to serve,and tried them out for Amy the night before book club.  The food tasted somewhere between food available at an Indian restaurant and food rotting in an Indian restaurant’s garbage dumpster.  I got even more stressed.  I busted my hump and the event came and went without anyone telling me I needed to go back to work as a lawyer, so that was nice.  A few people were even gracious enough to tell me that they enjoyed eating it, although I am sure the wine had more to do with that than my culinary skills.

As I laid exhausted on the couch afterwords, I thought about how silly the caveman would think I am.  “You a turd,” he would say (cavemen grammar is awful.)  “Women cook, men work.”  I could give him a lesson in how we are better off in a world of gender equity, how much fun it is to be a stay at home parent, or even the feeling of satisfaction one gets in providing a meal that others claim to enjoy.  Or, I could make fun of his back hair.  Either way, we’ve come a long way, and that’s just fine with me.

There is a lot going around about swine flu right now.  In fact, I thought Malcolm had it last night.  He had a high temperature, oinked when he sneezed and was wee wee weeing all around the house.  Classic symptoms.  When he woke up, they were gone.  Close call!

I took the opportunity to think about pigs and realized they they are easily my favorite animal, to eat!  While most people are out there trying to protect themselves from swine flu, I got me a bad case of swine lust.  What an animal!  You can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner.  You can eat it for fine dining or at a taco truck.  It comes in many different flavors, colors and textures.  Try as you might, you will not be able to come up with one organism that provides so many different amazing things to eat. Take that you stupid old cow!

One of the crazy awesomest things that the pig has given us is pulled pork.  It is pretty easy to make, so I thought I’d share the recipe.  This is a simple version.  I have a more complicated version which involves brining the meat and sleeping with your neighbor, but I’ll leave that for another time.

1. Buy a 5-7 pound pork shoulder from the store.  Ironically, this means you will be looking for what they call pork butt, even though it is from the shoulder, not the butt.  Why is it called the butt?  American’s love butts!  Can you imagine Sir Mix Alot singing, “I like big shoulders?”  I can’t.  If you can, buy pork raised humanely.  Being a pig sucks at the end, when the pig is slaughtered to become out food.  The least we can do is let the pigs have a little fun before becoming our breakfast.  I trust Niman Ranch, although I can’t always find it.

2. Take the meat out of the refrigerator an hour before beginning to cook it.  Put a rub on it.  I use a couple of tablespoons of paprika, chili powder and onion powder, with a hefty dose of salt thrown in there for good measure. Rub it all around the outside of the pork until it has a nice coating over it.  Then wash your hands, you have the residue from rubbing spices into a butt on your hands!

3.  Cook in an oven at 175 degrees for around 5-6 hours.  It is done if you stick a fork in it, pull it away, and a chunk of pork comes with it.  It is not done if if you stick a fork in it, and it squeals loudly.  Take the pork out of the oven and let it rest for an hour.  You can pull it apart without waiting, but the juice that squirts out of the roast will burn you and set fire to the kitchen.  While the pork is resting, play some nice mellow music for it, maybe Jack Johnson and try your hardest not to pick at it.  You entire house will smell like pork deliciousness, so leaving it alone will be tough.

4.  Put the pork on a cutting board and pull it apart with 2 large forks.  Small forks will cause your hands to cramp, so the larger the fork the better. I rip off a big chunk from the main carcass and then pull it apart until the meat is in long, thin chunks.  Toss with liberal amounts of barbecue sauce.  This expression is why I am a liberal.  Being conservative with anything, especially barbecue sauce, is just plain wrong.  Put it in a sandwich and you are set.   It will change your life.  When done, it should look like this: