Manolo’s Food Blog

After explaining how certain plants have co-evolved through human cultivation (The Botany of Desire), after explaining why fakockteh factory frankenfoods are ruining our bodies and our planet (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), and after laying out an eater’s manifesto for the age (In Defense of Food), now Michael Pollan is laying down the law about exactly what to eat (Food Rules).

This we need?

Taken as a whole, the book’s 64 prescriptions confirm something more: Michael Pollan is your grandmother. In pithy Talmudic aphorisms he’s trying to nudge the world into keeping a new kosher.

Rule #8 – Avoid food products that make health claims.

Rule #11 – Avoid foods you see advertised on television.

Rule #13 – Eat only foods that will eventually rot.

Rule #21 – It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language. (Think Big Mac, Cheetos, or   Pringles.)

Oy, gevalt! Listen up. Americans are potchkeying around with their natural bounty, making a mishmash of their lives and everyone else’s, too. What’s happening to them shouldn’t happen to a dog. Enough already. Keep eating this meshuggener Western diet and you’re going to plotz!

Better you should eat what grandma ate, says Michael. It can’t hurt.

Death, divorce, and debt – the glorious three “d’s” of Sotheby’s and Christies – currently bedevil the extended Henry family, though fortunately not the immediate household. Mrs. Henry believes in keeping up routines and does not countenance such prodigality.

Christmas holidays likewise bring forth a perpetual wellspring of objects seeking new ownership – apple corers, nutcrackers, scented candles in matched sets, cherry red windbreakers and frightful neckties.

Holidays also bear gifts of depression, indigestion, intestinal cramp, bloat and a throbbing gall bladder. Each year Mr. Henry swears he will leave for the holidays because too many around him take leave of their senses, and because despite his renowned self-control at the table, during holidays he abandons all sense of moderation and proportion.

Christmas tradition revives bad food habits from the storied Middle Ages, blithe era of famine, contagion, and dogma. Eggnog (vanilla nutmeg ice cream in a glass!), triple cream cheeses, bon bons wrapped in sparkly foil, preserved fruit, mincemeat, liqueurs, layer cakes, assorted chocolates with cream filling, and nuts roasted in peanut oil, palm oil, or coconut oil. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, fat was a good thing.

Today these caloric gut-bombs serve as anti-depression medications self-prescribed to remedy seasonal affective disorder, better known as the blues and the blahs, horse latitudes of the soul.

What brings out the holiday nuts? After four scotches nutty Uncle Jack dressed in plaid jim-jams slips on the patio black ice and cracks his humerus. Ha! Not so funny now, Uncle Jack’s funny bone.

Brother Clifford treats his seasonal disorders with sour green juice of fresh barley grass mixed with V-8. It puckers the gums mightily, but also promotes good digestion and cures bad breath.

Clifford subscribes to the philosophy of a ph-balanced diet, that is, eating foods that promote an alkaline environment in the blood. Contrary to expectations, preachers of the ph-balanced way do not necessarily extol foods that are themselves alkaline. Lemons and limes are recommended, for example. Wine and vinegar are forbidden, as is coffee. Leafy vegetables are encouraged. Meat is discouraged. It’s hard to keep up. You’d better buy the ph bible.

Clifford claims it cured his incipient diabetes, chronic headache, chronic backache, and fatigue. If you add hoarseness, cottonmouth, snoring, dropsy, flatulence, hip pain and plantar fasciitis, you’ve got old age pretty much covered.

Men, if you think hair loss, knee pain, backache, a pot belly and manboobs will be the most fearful consequences of old age, add one more specter to the list: a fatty liver.

Mr. Henry has one. (The wags might say Mr. Henry is one.) The discovery of this ticklish condition, however, has led to a new diet breakthrough.

Mr. Henry’s surefire weight loss method. Lose ten pounds in ten weeks!

How? You ask how?

First, develop an undiagnosable digestive disorder preventing you from eating more than appetizer portions at one sitting. Coffee, cheese, or anything fatty gives you nausea and stomach cramp, so they’re off the menu until further notice. Because your liver has grown fatty, your gastroenterologist will advise you to limit alcohol consumption to one drink per day. (You can sneak another, but don’t tell Dr. Romeu.)

Second, when the child goes off to camp for three weeks, prepare nothing at home more ambitious than salad with something grilled tossed on top. If you go out to eat, order only the appetizer. (Refusing to be buffaloed by wait staff, Mrs. Henry has been doing this years.)

Third, make sure your air conditioner breaks on Saturday evening. New York City repairmen don’t retrieve messages until Monday, no matter how plaintive, and don’t begin to act until Tuesday or Wednesday. Furthermore, make the AC chiller unit shatter its drive shaft. (Replacement shafts are never in stock.) If you do this during the worst heat wave of the summer, you’re bound to lose nearly a pound per day. Mr. Henry offers his personal guarantee. When it’s this hot, the most anyone can hope to consume is popcorn and white wine.

Fourth, eat a diet inspired by French cures for la crise de foie, even though such a term is not accepted by medical science, even in France. Eat artichokes, salad, bitter greens, lemon, papaya, mint and ginger. (Ginger helps the stomach empty its contents into the duodenum. You had to ask.) Then eat more artichokes.

Here is a southeast Asian style salad dressing that transforms romaine lettuce, carrots, Thai basil, tomato and grilled chicken into princely fare:

1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 teaspoon peanut butter (or sunflower butter)
juice of half a lime
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
three dashes of Tabasco
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (olive oil is not the best, but it’s OK)
salt

Gwyneth Paltrow, of all unlikely persons, has a new lifestyle blog – GOOP – the name derived from her initials G and P. In the food section (“Make”) she offers practical good-sense recipes suitable for young women like herself at home with small children, recipes even more suitable for young women like herself at home with cooks and nannies and part-time bloggers.

When GOOP was attacked on the websites of both Tina Brown and Arianna Huffington, the internet’s evil step-sisters, right away Mr. Henry felt compelled to rise to poor Gwyneth’s defense. After all, isn’t she the only American screen actress ever to have delivered a convincing English accent?

As a fellow celebrity Mr. Henry appreciates Gwyneth’s conundrum. How do you spread the simple joy of being you without appearing to gloat or preen?

Is it wrong for an artist to be self referential? Back in the 17th century did not Rembrandt’s rivals accuse him of painting too many self-portraits? Who today would make that argument? (And it should be noted that Rembrandt in black leotard body-suit didn’t cut half the figure Gwyneth cuts doing leg raises for her new workout video, or rather he cut twice the figure Gwyneth cuts…….let’s not belabor the point.)

Granted, some of her recipes aren’t really recipes, the one for boiling frozen peas, for example. Instructions on how to eat an artichoke may perhaps be unnecessary for “grownies” reading her blog. Moreover, to season a roast chicken do we really need to hunt down ½ teaspoon of Mallorcan hibiscus salt? For reasons left unexplained the only other meat she discusses is turkey, mostly ground for meatballs or sausage.

Nevertheless the site is beautifully designed and the writing is replete with sunny, winning, personal asides. Her noteworthy blunder, however, comes in a discussion of what she calls detox or “Master Cleanse.”

“If your bowel movements get sluggish, you can accelerate things by drinking half a cup of castor oil or using a mild herbal laxative. Bowel elimination is paramount for correct detoxification.”

Whatever the merits of this grandmotherly advice, when earthbound mortals imagine stars nestled in their starry pantheon, thoughts of sluggish bowels have no place in the picture. A certain mystery is lost. For future posts it might be best, darling Gwyneth, to leave poop out of Goop.

Once in a while someone sends a comment that overwhelms Mr. Henry with protective, avuncular feelings.

Avila writes :

I believe I would be able to stick to this diet if I wasn’t essentially nocturnal. Any suggestions for a college student who gets hungry enough at 2AM to break rules 2, 4, 9, 13, and 16?

She is referring to Mr. Henry’s Dietary Dicta (with exceptions), an early screed posted way back in April 2006.

From the vantage point of his estimable age and education today he feels a positive obligation to expand upon his previous theme, even though he thought he had covered the topic quite nicely the first time.

As a prefatory aside, would it be too avuncular to expect you, Avila, a college student, before learning how to eat, an important life skill, to be sure, first to master an equally important life skill, namely, the rules for the subjunctive?

“if I wasn’t essentially nocturnal”  tsk tsk tsk.

Dear Avila, not only are you nocturnal, a biorhythm consistent with late adolescence, but you probably have the digestion of a linebacker, as well, which is to say your metabolism permits you to eat any darn thing you want, day or night, with the same wild abandon you hook up or break up with lovers.

Mr. Henry’s protective, avuncular thing is giving way to overpowering feelings of envy. Go ahead and have a cigarette while you’re at it, Avila. What the heck.

Once it’s mid-day and your Dionysiac urges are momentarily sated, dear maenad, please pause to think about what you are asking. You want to flout rules forbidding eating after dinner, skipping dessert after dinner, eating fried foods for dinner, eating candy, and most important of all, going to bed hungry! These are the essential tenets of the belief system, the sine qua non without which you don’t have nada…..except too much body fat.

Life can be long for those with genius for living. But to live long, unlike the great Antonio Gaudí, you must avoid getting run over by the tram.

As you get older you may notice that trams come along more frequently and from unexpected directions. There is the late night pizza tram, the ice cream in front of the TV tram, the third glass of wine tram, the crunchy snack food tram, and the “oh my feet hurt and I’ve had a long day so I’ll skip my workout” tram, any one of which will flatten you and fatten you dead.

This week Mrs. Henry had surgery. She no longer walks with original factory-installed parts. Chromium now replaces mother nature’s original joint.

In the adjacent room Mrs. Scharf sceamed, “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I’ve just come out of soy-gery! Noyce! Noyce!”

The nurse told her to stop yelling and noted that here in the Hospital for Special Surgery all the patients have just come out of surgery. This argument cut no ice whatsoever with Mrs. Scharf, however, who kept it up the whole day long.

At dawn on the second day after surgery they gave Mrs. Henry two Vicodin (codeine) followed by a can of “creamy milk chocolate Ensure, complete, balanced nutrition.” To the medical profession it may be complete, but Ensure did not offer much nourishment. Its foul taste and texture ensured instant regurgitation.

Poor Mrs. Henry had a bumpy ride that day, but after she refused both the medication and the hospital diet, she began to improve. Throwing himself into the breach, Mr. Henry prepared a dinner that she could find palatable and easy to digest.

What is your go-to comfort food after a bad day in the operating theater?

For Mrs. Henry it is miso soup, soft tofu, white rice (with umeboshi) and broiled Arctic char. She felt better within minutes. For breakfast he made her a compote of white nectarines eaten with cottage cheese and crackers. They released her the next afternoon.

The list of ingredients for Ensure defies exaggeration:

Water, corn maltodextrin, sugar (sucrose), milk protein concentrate, canola oil, soy protein concentrate, corn oil, cocoa powder (processed with alkali), short-chain fructooligosaccharides, potassium citrate, whey protein concentrate, magnesium phosphate, natural and artificial flavors, sodium citrate, soy lecithin, calcium phosphate, potassium chloride…

That is only half the list. The remaining ingredients have really complicated names.

Ensure may well be parody-proof, but its use in hospitals is positive proof of the commercial might of America’s corn and soy agro-industrial complex. To Mrs. Henry, and to anyone who eats a sensible diet, Ensure tastes like poison. Why can’t hospitals figure this out?

Friends brought baskets of goodies. Stinky baked delicious too-many blueberry muffins. Kim sent a gift basket from E.A.T. including a silver bell shaped like a Southern belle (get it?) which Mrs. Henry now rings every eight to nine minutes. The physical therapist is on his way over to treat her bell-ringer’s elbow.

When asked what was her favorite food, Diana Vreeland famously responded “Salad, though I’m not sure it is food.”

Mr. Henry’s friend Bernard, superb home chef and coiner of original observations, declared decades ago that although he was giving the kids pizza one night, “Pizza is not food.”

Michael Pollan’s new book, In Defense of Food: an eater’s manifesto, declares: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

It’s a book replete with genius:

“Don’t eat anything you can’t pronounce.”

“Don’t eat anything that contains more than five ingredients.”

“Eat mostly plants, especially green leaves.”

And so on until you want to sign the manifesto and wear the button on your lapel, if not for its practical good sense than certainly for its wit.

Of this three-part directive, the trickiest one to follow is “Eat food.” Modern industrialized food markets are cluttered with “foodlike substances” – comestibles that at first bite seem tasty and toothsome but quickly sicken or addict the organism.

As a quick reference for friends and relations, Mr. Henry provides the following inventory of everyday horrors:

Foodlike substances
candy
doughnuts
packaged cupcakes
packaged snacks
chips of all varieties
pretzels
American cheese
processed cheese
“spreads”
cheese sticks, twists, etc.
bologna
hot dogs
Spam
McAnything
Pizza Hut, et.al.
KFC
tacos
Subway sandwiches
Cosi focaccia
bottled salad dressings
processed peanut butter
jelly
“snack food”
breakfast bars
pop tarts
sweetened breakfast cereals

Drinklike substances
soda
vitamin water
protein drinks
fruit drinks
Budweiser

At age 35 the male metabolism changes. Between 35 and 40 Mr. Henry gained two pounds per year. At his annual check-up he asked his physician what to do. Dr. K’s immortal reply was “Quit eating!”

Clearly this is sound medical advice, but as in financial, political, and sexual matters, sound advice is difficult to follow.

Today Mr. Henry faces another problem of 35. Blue jeans are manufactured in graduated sizes of 30, 31, 32, 33, and 34-inch waist. After 34 comes 36.

The problem of 35 is that it isn’t there.

Faced with a sinister plot, Mr. Henry’s mind, unlike the darker minds of political reporters, federal prosecutors, and religious fanatics, does not immediately leap to conspiracy for a solution.

Regarding the problem of 35, however, hearsay evidence points to a world-wide conspiracy of skinny fashionistas – black-clad eaters of take-out salads with creamy dressing, spicy tuna rolls, Thai peanut noodles, and cheese-flavored corn chips, all of which are secretly laced with MSG.

Their collective goal is to prevent gracefully aging men from wearing the one worldwide signature garment of youth – blue jeans that fit.

When walking to the dog run Mr. Henry dons a ancient pair of 34’s unwashed since late 2007. Rips at knees and cuffs are not a deliberate style statement. The fabric is spontaneously shredding and simply will not withstand the rigors of a washing machine.

His replacement 34’s will not yet yield to the fundamental argument, and Mr. Henry refuses on principle to buy a pair of 36’s.

Thus diet dominates life. Like a train wreck, the expanded waistline collides with the blue jeans which in turn degrade personal hygiene and shatter self-respect. Not just the jeans lie in tatters.

The solution? Mr. Henry’s Dietary Dicta prescribe no carbohydrates at dinner. It seems he must cease playing by winter rules and face 35 days of fasting in the desert, or at least 35 days of fasting without dessert.

What advice would you give to people who are looking to be happy? “For starters, learn how to cook.” From In-Verse Thinking, Questions for Charles Simic, interview by Deborah Solomon, February 3, 2008, New York Times Sunday Magazine.

All week long Mr. Henry has been chewing over this pithy admonishment. Unfortunately for his waistline, he has been chewing a lot more. The virus colonizing his sinuses hacked into Mr. Henry’s appetite control center. Its sinister program impels Mr. Henry to rise in the night like a Transylvanian Count and glide towards the kitchen to graze. His current fixation is toast, cottage cheese and umeboshi, Japanese salt plum.

Cottage cheese is a preparation not seen in this household since Mrs. Henry’s pregnancy when every few hours she too rose like a wraith and shuffled kitchen-ward to ingest anything resembling pabulum.

Did not Nixon, Haldeman, and Erlichman sitting round the Oval Office lunch on cottage cheese with ketchup? Such satanic visions calls to mind the most famous aphorism from Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s (1755-1826), The Physiology of Taste, “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.”

Mr. Henry is laid low. He can offer no explanation or defense for this craven departure from virtuous habit. Those familiar with Mr. Henry’s Dietary Dicta must be shuddering at this late-night eating, this blatant trespass on established rules.

Perhaps Dickens is to blame. Yes, that must be it. Hardly a chapter of Great Expectations goes past without someone sitting down to enjoy a joint of mutton or a tankard of ale. (As a boy, Dickens was poor and knew what it was to go hungry.) Mr. Henry should go back to reading Samuel Beckett, a writer who genuinely appreciates denial. Though he sucks on a pebble to abate hunger, for the whole of the book Molloy never actually eats anything.

Simic, poet laureate of the U.S., is right. To achieve happiness in life you must learn how to cook. Why? Because you can never really know how to eat unless you understand how food is prepared. And it follows that if you never really learn how to eat, you never really learn how to be happy.

From the perspective of maintaining waistline, the true indicator of male fitness, travel is evil. In Florence how could Mr. Henry NOT try the roast hare and wild boar at Il Latini?

How could he forego the fried artichokes and zucchini flowers at Cammillo? Should he have skipped the pizza in Rome? Skipped the quickly roasted chicory and taleggio at Taverna Fiammetta off the Piazza Navona?

Should he NOT have tried each and every gelato flavor at the Gelateria del Teatro on the via dei Coronari? Should Mr. Henry take vows, renounce all worldly pleasure, seek satisfaction only in the hereafter, and sulk alone in his upstairs garret?

Yes. Because Mr. Henry has grown thick, beefy, almost fat. Little Henry has been taking huge delight in chucking his chins and daring him to wriggle into that Speedo over at the JCC pool. Ice cream, previously relegated to the list of foods favored by the morally craven, has become a hideous obsession. He reaches for it even after breakfast. Without turning to spiritual guidance, 12-step programs, or other superstitious behaviors such as ph-balancing or an all-meat diet, is there no way he can regain the true path?

Facing his summer wardrobe, he trembles, not least because Mrs. Henry may not countenance another mad shopping spree at Patagonia. (Mr. Henry imagines himself surfing pipelines on Hawaii’s south coast, afterwards donning slouchy trousers for their insouciant slacker-headed drape rather than for their abundant “relaxed-fit” seat.)

His sense of self, his inner cool, the requisite confidence for continuing his career path, indeed his entire future depends upon regaining that athletic form he had only two short weeks ago, before Italy, before pasta, before caky white breakfasts and crunchy white breads.

On the tenth day of debauchery in Italy, after a shameless pig-out at Il Latini where he quaffed two carafes of vino da tavola and two glasses of complimentary vin santo, Mr. Henry’s liver went into serious crisis. The next morning on his birthday (one he shares with Olivia) he staggered green with bile along the streets of Florence. Mr. Henry’s liver and Mr. Henry’s American Express card, appropriately positioned in his jacket pocket directly over that benighted organ, throbbed in unison. Dinner for five without wine at a fine but not exceptional restaurant, one much less exciting that the average Manhattan eatery, cost three hundred dollars. Porca Miseria!

But before panic takes hold, Mr. Henry must remind himself that his torso swells each year in spring. He is fighting off a Florentine flu, and extra carbs help keep his energy up. Also, markets don’t offer much fresh produce these days. Wherever lies the blame, Mr. Henry must remember that he is not a victim of the seasons. His own mental rigor will overcome the seductions of Italy. He is made of stronger stuff, even if that stuff feels slightly soft around the middle.