Falling from Grace, Part II

          I was proud of having followed the doctor's orders by increasing my protein intake, but at my next appointment the doctor was not impressed. "You need to eat meat," he said, "red meat."

          I balked, upset, and asked, "If I can get enough protein otherwise, why should I eat meat?"

          He said, "Red meat is the original diet of our species, It contains important hormones. You don't want to have the metabolism of a chicken or a fish, do you?'

         "I don't particularly want the metabolism of a raging bull, either," I returned, and I started to point out that his first reason fell into the logical fallacy of Appeal to Tradition (Fault #3), but at $150 an hour I decided not to argue and asked instead for the alternatives.

         "You can take supplements consisting of the spleen and kidneys and other offal of the red meat animals," he said.

          I said, "Never mind." I wasn't liking this, but my $400 already invested kept me from walking away.

          Then the doctor led me to his elecrtric-impulse machine to find out why I didn't want to eat meat

          "Does Diana not want to eat meat because she is sympathetic to animals?" he asked and touched my finger with the electric wand. The machine drew a steep, sharply peaked line on its screen and whined a high note, meaning "No."

          "Is it because she thinks meat is not healthy for her?"

          "No."

          "Is it because she doesn't know where to buy meat or how to cook it?"

          "No."

          "Is it because she feels superior by not eating meat."

          "Yes!"

          I flung my hand away, crying, "I don't believe it!" To think that I thought I was superior to someone else just because I didn't eat meat was preposterous. The patient look on the doctor's face ("I've dealt with your type before") also upset me, but I was wasting time (money) by resisting, so I composed myself and finished the exam. Then the doctor told me where to buy good, natural meat, and the appointment was over

          I went straight to the recommended meat market, but I hardly knew what to do there. "I've been a vegetarian for thirty years," I told the saleswoman, "and now the doctor wants me to eat red meat." She nodded compassionately. I think she had met patients of this doctor before.

          "What about lamb?" I asked, thinking vaguely that lambs were little and would be an easy place to begin. But she said a lot of people didn't like lamb, bringing up the idea that I might not like the taste of meat. I said, "Well, what about lean beef?"

          At that the customer behind me spoke up "Don't overcook it," he advised. "Overcooking meat destroys the enzymes." Then he added that he ate his raw.

          I recoiled. The saleswoman diverted me by saying if I wanted lean meat, I should try buffalo, so I bought a pound of frozen ground buffalo meat and went home,

where I put on a pot of brown rice and steamed a whole bundle of kale, then ate everything mixed together with brewer's yeast, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar, topped with a sprinkling of walnuts. It was a delicious dinner.

          The next day I found a recipe for sausage shepherd's pie. I thought I could use it by substituting buffalo for the sausage. At 5:00 I gathered my ingredients. I put a skillet on the fire. I dumped the meat into the skillet. It sizzled. It browned. It smelled. It tainted my pan!

         "Okay, Diana," I told myself. "People all over the world do this. So can you."

          I made my buffalo shepherd's pie and put it in the oven. Forty-five minutes later I took it out. I looked at it. I divided it into four parts and put one on my plate. I looked at my dinner. I picked up my fork. I ate meat.

         Nothing happened. Angry gods didn't stomp on the roof. Doe-Eyed buffalo babies didn't wail and cry. My stomach didn't rebel, and my bowels didn't complain. The only difference has been my shame in admitting to my vegetarian friends wha I have done. Here was the vindication of the doctor's machine. I admit it now. I am one of those fallen from grace. I am cast from the garden. I belong with the less enlightened. I eat meat.

Next week: "A Boiled Egg in the Wilderness and Other Ways to Cook an Egg"
Recipes from this post:
     Steamed greens and rice
     Buffalo shepherd's pie



STEAMED GREENS AND RICE
serves 1

Ingredients

1 bundle of kale, chard, collards, or other greens
Mushrooms
1 cup brown rice, cooked
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Brewer's yeast (optional)
Walnuts
Salt and pepper
Preparation
Strip the leaves off the stems of the kale. Slice the mushrooms.
To make
Steam the greens. Steam them well, though don't let them get mushy. Meanwhile, sauté the mushrooms in the olive oil. When the greens are cooked to your satisfaction and the mushrooms browned, mix them together. Mound the rice in the middle of a large dinner plate. Put the greens mixture on top of the rice. Give yourself a generous helping of brewer's yeast (maybe 2 heaping tablespoons) . Pour some olive oil over that and then some vinegar, to taste. Crush some walnuts in your fingers as you sprinkle them on top of everything. Use salt and pepper as you like.



BUFFALO SHEPHERD'S PIE
serves 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes
1 pound butternut squash
1 medium russet potato
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
1 1/2 pounds ground buffalo
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups chopped onions
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3/4 cup frozen peas
3/4 cup frozen corn kernels
2/3 cup nonfat powdered milk
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
Preparation
Thaw the meat, if it is frozen. Peel the sweet and russet potatoes, and peel and seed the squash. Cut all these vegetables into 2-inch pieces. Chop the onions. Mince the garlic. Grease an 8-inch square pan. Preheat the oven to 350º.

To make

Boil the sweet potatoes, squash, and russet potatoes together in a large pot of water until the vegetables are tender, about 25 minutes. Drain, mash, and stir the potatoes over medium heat for about 5 minutes to evaporate the excess moisture. Add butter. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook the buffalo meat in a skillet over medium heat, just as though it were sausage, until it is brown. Because buffalo isn't sausage, though, it will render no fat for sautéing the onions and garlic, so lift the cooked meat from the skillet and add 1 tablespoon olive oil, then the onions and garlic. When the onions are translucent, add the sauté to the buffalo meat. Let everything cool a bit; then add the rest of the ingredients (not the potato mixture) and mix well. Spoon the buffalo mixture into the prepared pan. Spread the potato mixture over the top. Bake 45 minutes to 1 hour so that everything heats thoroughly and potatoes have begun to brown. Let the shepherd's pie sit for five minutes before serving. Eat if you dare.

Falling from Grace, Part I

          My New Year's resolution was to get rid of my migraine headaches—whatever it took, whatever it cost. So when I heard of a naturopathic doctor with a reputation for healing migraines, I called for an appointment. When I found out much he charged, I almost reneged, but a resolution is a resolution. I stuck to mine.

          I was apprehensive, though. I knew that the doctor had a poor opinion of wheat, and I didn't want to stop eating wheat. I also had a nagging fear he would tell me to stop eating dairy products, and I do love my yogurt. But "no matter what it takes," I reminded myself, as I waited in the reception room for my appointment.

          This two-hour conference covered everything from my thirty years as a vegetarian to my two-year bout of schizophrenia, about which the doctor said, "St. Francis talked to the animals, too." (Well, yeah, but they talked back to me, I pointed out.) Finally, he asked if I had any belief systems that would preclude any suggestions he might take. I follow no religious doctrine, so I said no. Then he did an examination which involved electrical impulses that measured my body's response to certain questions, after which he told me that low progesterone levels resulted in headaches and that protein intake affects progesterone levels.

          "You're protein deficient," he said. "Eat meat."

          Eat meat!! "Oh, I don't know," I said, suddenly confronted with belief systems.

          "Do you have the 'doe-eyed 'syndrome?" he asked dryly, meaning that the bigger the brown eyes of the animal, the more staunch the vegetarian. No, I didn't think so, I said. He asked if I would eat fish, and I said, yes, I thought I could (trying not to think of those big brown salmon eyes), and then he mentioned organic chicken, organic beef, bison, and emu. Eat bison and emu?!

          He said I had an allergy to soy but that rice protein powder, yogurt, cheese, and eggs would be good for me. I thought how pleased the people on the egg farm where I buy eggs would be to hear about the doctor's advice,

          But why was I so resistant to the idea of eating meat? It wasn't just thirty years of vegetarianism or the convictions of the animal rights advocate or the doe-eyed syndrome or even the idea that we should eat lower on the food chain. Something else was nagging me...my mother! How could I face her saying, "I knew you should eat meat!" Did "no matter what it takes" include loss of pride?

          It's too early to tell whether my new regime has cured my headaches, but I've been eating lots of yogurt, eggs, and tinned fish lately, though I haven't managed chicken or beef or emu yet. When I told my son about the doctor's advice, he said that he should be so lucky and that he would take me out for sushi when I came to Seattle. When I told my neighbor, she baked me some high-protein cookies. When I told my sister, she said she would increase her own protein intake and reimburse me part of the doctor's fees if it relieved her headaches. As for my mother, when I told her the doctor told me to eat more protein, she said, "What he means is a good, big steak," a comment I deflected without having to tell her she was right.

Next week: "Falling from Grace, Part II"

What Is a Salad?

          I like nothing better than a good salad—whatever that may mean. I can't figure out what, exactly, a salad is.

        Maybe you would say a salad has to have greens, but think of pasta salad, potato salad, chicken salad, and even jello salad, all of which have no greens at all, unless they are served on a bed of lettuce. But it could hardly be the lettuce that makes them salads because potato salad in a serving bowl, sans lettuce, is still a salad.

          Maybe a salad is a food served cold. But consider the hot potato salad, warm egg salad, or a hot-goat-cheese-over-arugula salad. Nor does the definition mirror itself, for not all cold foods are salads. Cakes and pies are eaten cold, but they're not salads but sweets, and if gelatins can be sweets—puddings and pies—they are salads if they contain vegetables, so maybe the presence of a vegetable is the defining factor of a salad, especially if that vegetable is raw, as in carrot and raisin salad, green salad, and slaw. But now we are back to potato and pasta salads and beets in any salad and those three-bean salads with garbanzos, pintos, and red beans. All cooked.

          Maybe a raw vegetable just has to be present to define a salad. Three-bean salads have peppers; tabouli has tomatoes; pasta salads have bits of raw broccoli or rippled carrots But if I leave the celery out of my potato salad and use only used potatoes, pickles, and mayonnaise, you would still call it a salad.

          Anyway, vegetables can't be the key. What about fruit salads? A piece of fruit by itself is just a

piece of fruit. With anything else, maybe, it is a salad: peaches with cottage cheese served on lettuce; apples, walnuts, and raisins with mayonnaise (the famous Waldorf salad); oranges, grapefruits, pears, bananas, and grapes for a mixed-fruit salad. But bananas with granola and milk would never be called a salad, so this definition doesn't work, either.

          The only thing left is that a salad is a food with a dressing. Everything seems to fit this criterion with the possible exception of jello salads, though even they are often served with a dollop of mayonnaise, and peaches and cottage cheese, unless the cottage cheese is considered a dressing. Many people say, "Hold the dressing" when they order a salad at a restaurant, and what they get is still a salad.

          It fascinates me that we have a word that is never unclear but that cannot be pinned down to definition. The best we can do is a list of "usuallys": a salad is a food or, usually, a combination of foods, that is usually eaten cold, usually with some kind of dressing, and that usually contains a vegetable or fruit, usually raw, that, is usually, dominant in the dish. So here is a word for which the much-maligned adage really works: I may not know what a salad is, but I know it when I see it.

Next week: "Falling from Grace I"
Recipes from this post
     My favorite salad
     A raw food salad: Carrot and raisin
     A salad eaten hot: Goat cheese over arugula
     A salad with cooked food: Layered red potato salad


MY FAVORITE SALAD

Ingredients: Use any of the following

Lots and lots and lots of different kinds of fresh garden greens. All kinds of greens. Arugula, butter lettuce, lambs' quarters, and spring greens are among my favorites.

Lots of fresh herbs

Boiled eggs

Tofu chunks

Tuna or other tinned fish (kippers, anchovies, etc.)

Boiled shrimp

Avocado, perfectly ripe

Carrots

Jicama

Radishes

Grated turnips

Partially steamed broccoli or cauliflower

Green beans

Cabbage, red or white or both

Nuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, etc.

Feta cheese or cheddar or Monterey Jack

Good black olives (not pitted)

Cold cooked rice

Flowers: violets, day lilies, or, especially, nasturtiums

Preparation

Tear (don't cut) the greens. Grate the turnips and carrots, if you aren't using baby carrots. Grate, shred, or thinly slice the cabbage. Cut the tofu into small pieces and soak it in tamari sauce. Steam the broccoli and cauliflower. Slice the avocado in its shell; then peel back the shell to let the avocado pieces tumble into the salad. Snap the ends off the green beans and break the beans into pieces. Open tins of tuna, anchovies, or other tinned fish you might like. Boil the eggs; slice them either into rounds or into halves or quarters. Crumble the feta cheese or cut the hard cheeses into small pieces (don't grate). You should use olives with pits for better flavor, so pit the olives. If you need to cook the rice, do, but let it cool before adding it to the salad. Also, put tamari or salt on it before it goes into the salad.

To make

Assemblage is all. I like to put all the vegetables into a bowl and toss them together before adding whatever else I'm using except for the boiled eggs and flowers, which I put on top for a beautiful garnish: a ring of egg slices and a cover of flowers. Sometimes, though, if I'm serving a lot of people, especially if any of them have particular dietary considerations, I'll put a mound of greens in the middle of my most beautiful large serving platter and surround it with piles of egg, avocado, grated carrots (or carrot strips, for this assemblage), and so on, keeping all ingredients in separate piles so guests can assemble their own salads. This is a very beautiful way to serve a salad. Serve the dressing in a little pitcher.

The dressing

You can choose from a myriad of good, well made, health-conscious salad dressings on the market. Or make one like this:

Ingredients

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons good balsamic vinegar (or red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar or raspberry vinegar …)

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

Salt and fresh black pepper to taste

Yogurt or mayonnaise to make a thicker, creamier dressing

Herbs

To make

Vigorously shake all ingredients in a bottle.

A RAW FOOD SALAD: CARROT AND RAISIN

This is a much maligned salad. I like it.

Ingredients

Carrots

Raisins

Dill or caraway or cumin

Nuts (optional)

Pineapple (optional)

Dressing

Preparation

Grate carrots

To make

Mix raisins with carrots and herbs. Use herbs sparingly. (I prefer cumin.) I like a sprinkling of walnuts mixed in, too. Pineapple is good. Dress heavily or lightly, to taste.

The dressing

Ingredients

Mayonnaise. Or yogurt mixed with lemon juice. Or oil and vinegar. Or any good store-bought dressing that tastes good with carrots and raisins. It's a very versatile salad when you consider the possibilities of dressings.

A SALAD EATEN HOT: GOAT CHEESE OVER ARUGULA

The cheese

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups fresh white bread crumbs

2 tablespoons fresh thyme or 2 teaspoons dried

11 ounces soft fresh goat cheese, Montrachet or similar variety

1 egg

Preparation

Mince the fresh thyme, if that's what you're using. Cut the cheese into 8 rounds. Beat the egg to blend.

To make

Mix bread crumbs and thyme. Season goat cheese with salt and pepper. Dip cheese into beaten egg, then into bread crumbs, coating completely. Cover and keep chilled.

The dressing

Ingredients

2 tablespoons plus 3/4 teaspoon white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1/2 cup olive oil

To make

Blend well.

The salad

Ingredients

Arugula or baby greens

Goat cheese ready to cook

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

3 tablespoons olive oil

Dressing

Preparation

Chop walnuts. Heat olive oil in heavy skillet.

To make

Sauté walnuts on medium-high heat in the olive oil about 2 minutes. Remove from pan. Cooking only as many rounds as your pan can comfortably hold, cook cheese rounds until crips and brown on the outside and creamy soft on the inside, about 2 minutes per side. Toss greens with the dressing. Serve on individual plates with 2 rounds of hot goat cheese per serving placed on a mound of greens. Sprinkle with walnuts.

A SALAD WTH COOKED FOOD: LAYERED RED POTATO SALAD

The potatoes

Ingredients

2 1/2 pounds red potatoes

Preparation

Cut unpeeled potatoes into 1/4-inch-thick rounds.

To make

Cook potatoes in boiling water until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain and cool.

The dressing

6 tablespoons olive oil

1 lemon

2 tablespoons capers

1 tablespoon rosemary

1 1/2 teaspoons garlic

Preparation

Juice the lemon to yield 1/4 cup juice. Drain the capers, chop the rosemary, and mince the garlic.

To make

Make a dressing by whisking the ingredients together in a medium bowl or shaking vigorously in a bottle or jar. Season with salt and pepper

Assemblage

Ingredients

Potatoes

Dressing

8 tablespoons green onions

Preparation

Slice the green onions.

To assemble

Put 1/4 of the potatoes in a serving bowl. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then with 2 tablespoons green onions. Drizzle 3 tablespoons of the dressing over this layer. Continue to layer ingredients in this way, creating 3 more layers.

Poisoned!

          One fall [years ago] I attended a Sierra Club leadership retreat at a cabin on Diamond Lake. After a late meeting Saturday night, I got up early the next morning for a solitary walk around the lake. I came back to the cabin refreshed and revitalized after my vigorous walk, but our hostess met me at the door bewailing my absence. I had missed the mushrooms, she said. John had picked a bag of suillus brevipes, sautéed them, and offered a taste to everyone. Doris was eloquent in her description of the aroma, the visual beauty, the tasty pleasure of these mushrooms.

Unknown variety
(Red Buttes Wilderness)

          I was not unfamiliar with such aureate apostrophes to the wild mushroom. Years ago I went mushrooming with a French friend whose ecstasy over wild mushrooms also knew no bounds. He would leap from one clump to another, examining with the botanist's discernment, the hobbyist's enthusiasm, and the gourmet's bliss each species of edible fungus. In France, he told me, the autumn woods are filled with jealous stalkers of these wild delicacies. Oregon's autumn woods are crowded with mushrooms, but in France each is a treasure, hard-won and jealously prized. It almost wasn't fun, François said, to have so many—too much like work. I trotted along behind hm, dutifully filling my bag but lacking the true spirit of the hunt. Because, not to spoil his fun, I was withholding from him, as I did from Doris at Diamond Lake, my previous experience with wild mushrooms.

Another mushroom
of the Siskiyou Mountains

          I had been invited to dinner with friends in Ashland. He who was cooking dinner was not only a good cook but a good botanist as well, the sort who tells you the Latin names of all the plants you find on your walks together. You are enchanted with the delicate beauty of the starflower, and he says, "Yes. Trientalis latifolia." You say, "Look how purple and gold the shooting stars are in that spot of sunshine!" and he says, "Dodecatheon pulchellum." It does at least make you feel comfortable about his knowledge of mushrooms—and I do want to feel comfortable about the cook's knowledge of mushrooms if I'm going to be eating them with him.

          So he cheerfully cooked his mushrooms—the common shaggy mane to me, coprinus comatus to him—while the rest of us, his guests, relaxed in the living room with our glasses of wine, letting the enticing smells tickle our palates as we waited for his gourmet's treat. It was served with a flourish and was delicious. Like the other guests, I heaped praises upon the chef-botanist's deserving shoulders.

Emerging mushrooms
in Siskiyou Mountains

          After dinner, replete and satisfied, we retired to the living room. In the middle of a light and lively conversation, I suddenly thought, "I had better leave right now because I am going to be very sick." I didn't even make it to the door before I became, indeed, very sick, vomiting with enormous, forceful heaves, vomiting so hard I couldn't move to the bathroom. My body was evacuating the poison out both ends, my alimentary system doing everything it could to rid the body of what was trying to kill it. At least, so I thought, and so it might have been if my rejection mechanism hadn't been so strong. I was so sick it wouldn't have mattered to me if I had died. I would simply have passed into oblivion without thinking about my baby, my home, those I loved, or anything else having to do with life. Being sick was the only reality I knew. I was sick for hours. When the elimination spells eased, my friends helped me out of my clothes and into the bathtub. I stayed the night at their house and woke up the next morning shaky but alive.

          I was puzzled why I had been poisoned. No one else at the dinner party had gotten sick, though we had all eaten the same mushrooms, so I could hardly blame the botanist for getting his species mixed up. Researching the problem, I found that there is a relative of the shaggy mane mushroom which is highly poisonous in combination with alcohol. In this case, it must have been the shaggy mane itself, combined with a glass of wine and my own personal chemistry, that had poisoned me. If mushroom poisoning is a matter of personal chemistry, who can trust the books? Most people, maybe, but not I. Doris and François can rave about wild mushrooms, and they can have all they want. When it comes to wild mushrooms, I'm well satisfied with a vicarious enjoyment of their experience, no matter how safe they tell me those mushrooms are.

Next week: "Emma Lou and Fried Apple Pies"
(There are no recipes for wild mushrooms because, of course, I never cook with them.)