Ask the Food Fairy!

A vintage post, rescued from before the site was hacked -January 7, 2008.

Unless you use PeaceMeals, a big part of making your meals for the week is grocery shopping. So why not come visit the new Whole Foods here in Oakland with me?

I am telling you, it is INSANE in there. I always experienced Whole Foods as an upscale, schmancy place, but I did not know how far they could take it. Look at their bathrooms:

And you know that multi-stone-looking granite-type countertop material is some eco-friendly recycled stuff, too. I think it may even be a green building; up in the TOP parking lot (that’s right, they have more than one parking lot) the walls say things about their use of solar power and their carbon offsets and whatnot.

They have outdone themselves. The store is laid out in a circle. You’re led through the seafood and produce section around to the “Bistro.” I have no idea what the Bistro does, since there’s already a prepared foods section and what looks like it may be a cafe. Then past the meat area, where they DRY AGE THEIR BEEF IN A GLASS CABINET RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. I’m sorry, I got a little excited there. CUSTOM DRY AGED BEEF. For as long as you want, I think. Maybe I am projecting my Dream Beef onto them. I read Jeffrey Steingarten’s essay about how wet-aging is cheaper and easier and it’s so hard to find dry-aged beef and the ideal beef is dry-aged 6-8 weeks and, well, it’s a good thing I don’t really eat beef because I would be insufferable about it. Now I have fantasies of ordering beef for them to dry-age and coming to visit it once a week.

Oh, and the produce. The produce! It is not as good as the farmer’s market or the Berkeley Bowl. Anywhere that charges some $2.50 for one pesticide-coated pomegranate, in season, is on my shit list. Especially when I saw that right after buying an organic one for about 25 cents at the farmer’s market. Please. And could I find organic eggplant? No I could not. But (if you’re not actually trying to buy something to eat) they make up for it with the gorgeous layouts. Forests of asparagus:

Walls full of beautifully arranged pre-packaged fruit and vegetable dishes:

What you can’t see in that picture – besides the crazy prices – is that when I took it, every single dish was mislabeled. Fun to look at, happy I wasn’t buying them.

After you curve past the meat window, you pass by the valley of cheeses, where employees are slicing cheeses for you to taste right there. And, of course, the intimidating chocolate mountain:

I was quite impressed with the layout there. It’s really not that much chocolate. It’s just that little island. But the way it is piled up and strewn about, the way that they continue the brands and colors in a line from the top to the base of the pile, gives the impression that there is chocolate absolutely freaking EVERYWHERE, that it is about to start falling from the ceiling and piling up around your ankles and vast chocolate rivers are flowing down the adjacent aisles. And that’s reflected in this store as a whole: being forced to walk around this gently curving series of sections makes it hard to envision where things are and makes it seem like it goes on forever and ever. It’s a great design which I’m sure is making them tons of money – even without the hordes of upscale Oaklanders who have apparently been just dying to spend all their grocery dollars here instead of… where? the Montclair Safeway? The former Grand Lake Albertson’s?

After that the aisles start, and the store becomes something of a blur. The center of the store is mind-boggling all the way around, though: if you stay out of the aisles you get to see costly deli items, locally made refrigerated truffles from XOX, a bakery, a gelato bar… a gelato bar! Inside the grocery store!

And then, since it is Whole Foods, you get to wade through things like thirty dollar bottles of mangosteen puree promising energy and longevity and a mysterious glow emanating from your every pore – not that I’m not tempted by the mangosteen puree – and ridiculously adorable handmade baby booties made from organic cotton, and fair trade lavender-scented cacao butter hand lotion made by small groups of women in West African villages, and a small adult clothing section with more indigenous hand-crafted organic high-priced really pretty clothing, and finally you get to stand next to piles of peanut-butter brownies to wait in line and just try not to buy anything else before you get there.

And then try to figure out how to get back to where you started and find your way out!

It’s like Food Disneyland in there. It’s somehow both wonderful and evil, it’s gorgeous and dangerous, and it ends up costing you a lot more to go there than you initially planned. But man, is it pretty in there!

I am finally joining in the $7 Dinner Challenge! This is a great new blog event where people can share four-serving meals, with protein and veggies, that cost $7 or less to make. I may have an unfair advantage here, since I put together meal plans whose ingredients cost $20+ (for one person) every week. But the more people who share, the merrier, right? (You can find this particular recipe by clicking on “premium meal plans,” in a packet along with fudge-banana protein shakes, butternut squash mac ‘n’ cheese, and minestrone. Yum!) 

I totally love these chicken legs. I actually used the entire can of tomatoes, totally by accident, both times I made them; my girlfriend Annie (pictured below) used the proper amount and said that they tasted different but both ways were good! With mine I ended up with sort of a balsamic-y tomato confit around the chicken legs, which was nice but a little intense. I think without the extra tomatoes, it reduces to a glaze, letting the chicken get more of a word in edgewise in this dish!

(Annie is the one on the right.)

The great thing about it is that braising the chicken makes the skin all slurpy. That was the least vegan-friendly sentence here so far. Mmm, slurpy chicken skin! That is, braising makes it tender and good. Braising too long, though, as I have been known to do, makes it a little tough, so keep an eye on it!

Balsamic Braised Chicken Legs

4-6 free-range chicken legs (about $1.80 at Trader Joe’s, although they’ve started cramming more legs in the tray so some can cost as much as $3!)
6 organic garlic cloves (25 cents)
1 organic onion (50 cents)
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil (say 25 cents or so)
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar ($2 for the fancy stuff at Trader Joe’s)
1 14-ounce can organic diced tomatoes (Half a big can at TJs is 95 cents)
Fresh rosemary sprigs to taste (From my garden – come pick some!)

Total cost of ingredients: $5.75

Dry-brine the chicken: season chicken legs all over with salt and pepper, and refrigerate all day or overnight.
Mince the garlic and slice the onion thinly. In a skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat and brown the onion and chicken legs. Add tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, and rosemary; simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the chicken’s juices run clear when pierced near the bone.

Rosemary sprigs on my sofa. (Not their natural environment.)

Steamed Artichokes

Four artichokes (99 cents on the bargain rack at Berkeley Bowl)

Cut each artichoke in half lengthwise. Fill a stovetop steamer, or a steamer basket in a big pot, with water just up above the bottom of the artichokes. Place halved artichokes in the steamer, cover, and cook over medium-high heat for about 45 minutes or until even the choke is soft, adding water during cooking time if necessary. (That is, if you peek and it is at risk of boiling dry! I have frequently boiled the damn things dry and while they are still edible, the angry-wet-dog smell of burned artichokes permeates both dish and house for far too long afterward.)

Total total cost for both dishes $6.74

Steamy balsamic chicken braising on the stove!

There you go – healthy, super-flavorful, and nice to the environment. Artichokes are, apparently, packed full of antioxidants, and you get red AND green produce in this dish – much better than what I often do, which is cook myself a lump of protein and call it a day! This is why meal planning is so important – even people who do it for a living can fall into a rut and skip all those crucial fruits and veggies for weeks at a time.

That’s tomorrow! For some of you, it’s already today. Standby Saturday is intended to educate us about the amount of energy we waste by leaving a lot of our appliances plugged in. Hey, this has a big impact in the kitchen. There are four levels at which your appliances can be operating:

“Off Mode
The item of equipment is connected to the mains electricity supply, but is switched off by a switch or button located on the item, and generally cannot be woken by a remote control or other remote signal. If no off switch or button exists, off mode is generally defined as the lowest possible power state possible for that item.”

A lot of appliances these days don’t really have an off mode. Like, we say the TV is off, but it’s guzzling energy even in that state – unless it’s unplugged, or plugged into a power strip that’s been turned off. Items that do have an off mode in your kitchen might include a toaster, or… all right, that’s all I can think of. Hm, maybe the oven works that way too. (Ours is gas, so it doesn’t guzzle any electricity at all!)

A regular old-fashioned toaster is so low-tech that no electricity is delivered to the circuit board until you depress that handle – there’s no microchip in there listening for information about turning lights on or whatnot. My rule of thumb – and I welcome corrections on this – is that devices with little “on” or “standby” lights tend to be the ones that are drawing energy even when off – but maybe it should be “anything that probably has a microchip parsing different levels of information is drawing energy even when off.” Although that’s just not as catchy.

Suffice it to say that almost nothing these days falls into this category.

“Passive Standby Mode
The item of equipment is switched on, but is either waiting to be activated by a remote control, or has entered a ‘deep sleep’ state.”

That’s your TV, if you have one in the kitchen, or your turned-off laptop (we’re all blogging in the kitchen, right?), a stereo, a food processor, a breadmaker. Also your cell phone charger and other chargers, which I have been told draw energy when plugged in just as if an appliance were connected to them. But these aren’t the worst culprits….

“Active Standby Mode
The item of equipment is switched on but is not performing its primary function, such as printing documents, processing significant data, playing sound or video, etc.”

So that’s the laptop, most of the day – and laptops are the worst because unplugging them means they drain the battery instead, which means that after a while they shut down, which means having to plug them back in before being able to turn them back on and start everything up again. I’m just saying. It’s annoying. I bet I could get used to it, though – perhaps overnight?

That’s also… THE MICROWAVE. Sitting there telling you the damn time all day long. And then if you unplug it, it blinks “12:00″ forever. Some brands, the evil little things, won’t allow anyone to set a cooking time until the clock is working. I’d like a microwave that doesn’t have a clock at all, so that I can unplug it without annoyance. Oh, and I’d like it to be red. Somebody work on that for me, okay?

“On Mode

The item of equipment is performing its primary function, such as printing documents, processing significant data, playing sound or video, etc. This mode is not a standby mode and does not contribute to standby energy consumption, but has been defined here for the sake of completeness.”

These are actually the worst ones: the appliances that are always in on mode. That’s your freezer, refrigerator, in some cases the hot water heater or the heating or cooling system. This is where solar-powered water heaters and gas-powered appliances can be very handy. (Not that gas is free, but it can have a lower environmental impact than electricity.)

Some folks in New Zealand did a study that showed the average household was spending $80
(in New Zealand dollars) per year for all the wasted energy; the United States Department of Energy calculated here that “In the average home, 75% of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off.

That doesn’t mean you can cut 75% of your energy cost by unplugging or using power strips, since some energy is used by all those suckers that are permanently in on mode – but it can be cut quite a bit. Some studies have estimated that 10% of home energy is consumed by this standby stuff.

Of course, you don’t have to stop at standby mode. If you get into solar power, (there are even solar-powered laptop and cell phone chargers), you can get a lot farther off that expensive electrical grid. There are alternative fuels like natural gas for home appliances, or those great functional home science experiments where you plug a clock into a potato for its power. (Mental note – share one of those here soon!)

But the greatest changes are made with baby steps. Can you take on Standby Saturday in your own home?

Here’s what I’ll commit to you to do tomorrow:

• Go into the closet to inventory our power strips. (Not extension cords, but the ones that can be shut off!)
• Go around each room to see which items can be plugged into a power strip and turned off for ages until needed
• See which appliances might be better off unplugged and replugged (for example, do I want to turn on an entire power strip to use a favorite lamp, or can I arrange the power strips so that they each hold things I want to use about the same amount of the time?)
• Unplug stuff and experiment with how much of it turns out to be really inconvenient that way
• Not be a perfectionist: be willing to try things I don’t like, or that turn out to be overkill, and miss things that I end up wanting to fix later!

What are you going to do to turn those power-bill pennies into tasty treats?