Category Archives: hunger

On steak

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“Are we having steak for dinner tonight?” The answer was “yes.” Sometimes I eat steak with a little salt and pepper, and I’m unapologetic about that–no ketchup though, then I would be apologetic. Sometimes I don’t eat steak, but I do hate tofu and can’t figure why anyone would eat it on purpose. The texture is otherworldly and the taste is disappointing, to say the least–it tastes like something dead. On the other hand, there is something which is creepily primitive,but totally satisfying, about eating the flesh of other animals. I think this may be one of my blind-spots, which is goofy, but I’m not sure. Raw oysters really blow my hair back. I like my steak rare, leaning to very rare, burned on the outside and ruby red on the inside, salty. As an omnivore, I like to eat a little bit of everything, although lately I’m for setting the chickens free since the modern industrial chicken tastes like chemicals and not chicken. I don’t eat chicken. Fish, I love fish–tuna, cod, walleye. I’ll eat the six ounce steak on the menu (or I’ll even cook it myself), but I would turn down almost anything larger than that. Digesting animal flesh is hard work, although the payoff if very high. You don’t want to have steak at every meal–the experience would get old really quickly. I like the cut to be either a T-bone or a ribeye. I like nice marbling and juicy meat. There is nothing like putting a nice big steak on the grill, well-seasoned, and sharing it with the other omnivores. I had a big, leafy, green salad last night, and I still feel a bit hungover from that. Oh, one might be a vegetarian, which is a more ethical position, certainly a more defensible one than killing animals for their meat, but I like to eat a little bit of everything.

On steak

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“Are we having steak for dinner tonight?” The answer was “yes.” Sometimes I eat steak with a little salt and pepper, and I’m unapologetic about that–no ketchup though, then I would be apologetic. Sometimes I don’t eat steak, but I do hate tofu and can’t figure why anyone would eat it on purpose. The texture is otherworldly and the taste is disappointing, to say the least–it tastes like something dead. On the other hand, there is something which is creepily primitive,but totally satisfying, about eating the flesh of other animals. I think this may be one of my blind-spots, which is goofy, but I’m not sure. Raw oysters really blow my hair back. I like my steak rare, leaning to very rare, burned on the outside and ruby red on the inside, salty. As an omnivore, I like to eat a little bit of everything, although lately I’m for setting the chickens free since the modern industrial chicken tastes like chemicals and not chicken. I don’t eat chicken. Fish, I love fish–tuna, cod, walleye. I’ll eat the six ounce steak on the menu (or I’ll even cook it myself), but I would turn down almost anything larger than that. Digesting animal flesh is hard work, although the payoff if very high. You don’t want to have steak at every meal–the experience would get old really quickly. I like the cut to be either a T-bone or a ribeye. I like nice marbling and juicy meat. There is nothing like putting a nice big steak on the grill, well-seasoned, and sharing it with the other omnivores. I had a big, leafy, green salad last night, and I still feel a bit hungover from that. Oh, one might be a vegetarian, which is a more ethical position, certainly a more defensible one than killing animals for their meat, but I like to eat a little bit of everything.

On (not) eating healthy

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I try to eat healthy, but I don’t have to like it. Actually, I have no intention of trying to eat “healthy” to either improve my health or lengthen my life. I think that most foods which are marketed as healthy are a marketing gimmick designed to play off of the fears of an unthinking consumer market that thinks it can buy health. I figure that since my grandfather ate half-cooked bacon, ate doughnuts fried in lard, loved brown gravy on his pork chops, and lived to age 92, I’ve got a fighting chance of making 92 as well. I eat steak and butter, despise tofu with a pure passion, think rabbits are well-fed with lettuce (but I’m not), love blueberry pie, and am a connoisseur of chocolate in its endless varieties and mutations. Bacon is good, but popped rice cakes were invented by someone who was very unhappy with life. Trying to count calories will only lead to frustration and unhappiness unless you are trying to see how many calories you can actually consume in one day and not get sick. The joke will be on all of us when we find out the most health food, or food that producers claim to be healthy, has no effect on how long we live or how healthy we are. If you eat average quantities of food and stay away from sugary drinks, you will probably be okay no matter what you eat. I often get the feeling that “low-fat” products are really just “high-sugar” and “high salt” products instead. I think that eating old-fashioned, home-cooked meals in an orderly normal fashion will probably do you no harm no matter what you eat. Probably the only food which is excessively bad for all of us is too much sugar, which was not a large part of our diet as we evolved on the pampas and plains of Africa a million years ago. We get into unhealthy eating habits, not because the food is unhealthy, but because we are way too sedentary today for our own good.

On (not) eating healthy

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I try to eat healthy, but I don’t have to like it. Actually, I have no intention of trying to eat “healthy” to either improve my health or lengthen my life. I think that most foods which are marketed as healthy are a marketing gimmick designed to play off of the fears of an unthinking consumer market that thinks it can buy health. I figure that since my grandfather ate half-cooked bacon, ate doughnuts fried in lard, loved brown gravy on his pork chops, and lived to age 92, I’ve got a fighting chance of making 92 as well. I eat steak and butter, despise tofu with a pure passion, think rabbits are well-fed with lettuce (but I’m not), love blueberry pie, and am a connoisseur of chocolate in its endless varieties and mutations. Bacon is good, but popped rice cakes were invented by someone who was very unhappy with life. Trying to count calories will only lead to frustration and unhappiness unless you are trying to see how many calories you can actually consume in one day and not get sick. The joke will be on all of us when we find out the most health food, or food that producers claim to be healthy, has no effect on how long we live or how healthy we are. If you eat average quantities of food and stay away from sugary drinks, you will probably be okay no matter what you eat. I often get the feeling that “low-fat” products are really just “high-sugar” and “high salt” products instead. I think that eating old-fashioned, home-cooked meals in an orderly normal fashion will probably do you no harm no matter what you eat. Probably the only food which is excessively bad for all of us is too much sugar, which was not a large part of our diet as we evolved on the pampas and plains of Africa a million years ago. We get into unhealthy eating habits, not because the food is unhealthy, but because we are way too sedentary today for our own good.

On peaches

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Peaches are not my favorite fruit, but a fresh peach in August with a little milk and sugar is a delight not to be missed. I mean, I like strawberries and cherries more, but a nice ripe peach is a very special experience. I say this because the peaches sold in the grocery store during the rest of the year are horrific–wooden, tasteless, dry, bitter. They look perfect, but they are only a simulacrum of a real piece of fruit. I won’t have them in the house. As a child we would often have a lug of peaches or pears in the kitchen during the month of August, so we ate fruit morning, noon, and night. They were so juicy that I had to go outside to eat the fruit as the juice would run down my arm and drip off of my elbow. The fruit was sweet and juicy and wonderful. My question is this: why can’t the local grocery stores do that today? With a few exceptions, most all the fruit is harvested green, so that by the time it reaches the stores it looks good, but it doesn’t taste good. Peaches and pears are particularly vulnerable, but when was the last time you ate a tomato or a strawberry that was actually sweet? The strawberries look big and beautiful and red, but they are dry and bitter with only the ghost of a ripe strawberry lurking off in the distance as if it were a stranger in a strange country. And I get it: stores do not want to throw away overly ripe fruit everyday. They need as much shelf life as they can get or their profits go out in the trash. They won’t take a risk and let the fruit stay on the tree as long as possible because if they all do the same thing, the consumer has no choice but to either leave the “green” fruit in the stores or eat crappy tasting fruit. I find this corporate policy to be excellent business, but a poor policy. I leave the fruit in the store because it’s not worth taking home at any price, but I get the feeling that many people do take it home and try to eat it, and then they don’t complain, which puzzles me. I guess that many, many people just accept the nonsense that corporate America wants to sell them. If grocery stores could sell sweet peaches during August back in the sixties, why can’t they do it now? If it were only a question of effort, I would think that better trucking conditions would make transporting ripe fruit over long distances that much easier, but I don’t think it is a question of effort. I think it is a question of the bottom line. I suspect that lugs of peaches were a hook which stores used to get customers in the door. I doubt they made much money on the fresh peaches, but as people came in to get the peaches, they would also buy a lot of other things as well. So the peaches were a loser to get people in the door and spending money. In the meantime, we are offered bad fruit, hard peaches, and no alternatives. The peach is such a simple fruit–fuzz, flesh, juice, sugar–a hedonistic delight when served ripe.

On peaches

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Peaches are not my favorite fruit, but a fresh peach in August with a little milk and sugar is a delight not to be missed. I mean, I like strawberries and cherries more, but a nice ripe peach is a very special experience. I say this because the peaches sold in the grocery store during the rest of the year are horrific–wooden, tasteless, dry, bitter. They look perfect, but they are only a simulacrum of a real piece of fruit. I won’t have them in the house. As a child we would often have a lug of peaches or pears in the kitchen during the month of August, so we ate fruit morning, noon, and night. They were so juicy that I had to go outside to eat the fruit as the juice would run down my arm and drip off of my elbow. The fruit was sweet and juicy and wonderful. My question is this: why can’t the local grocery stores do that today? With a few exceptions, most all the fruit is harvested green, so that by the time it reaches the stores it looks good, but it doesn’t taste good. Peaches and pears are particularly vulnerable, but when was the last time you ate a tomato or a strawberry that was actually sweet? The strawberries look big and beautiful and red, but they are dry and bitter with only the ghost of a ripe strawberry lurking off in the distance as if it were a stranger in a strange country. And I get it: stores do not want to throw away overly ripe fruit everyday. They need as much shelf life as they can get or their profits go out in the trash. They won’t take a risk and let the fruit stay on the tree as long as possible because if they all do the same thing, the consumer has no choice but to either leave the “green” fruit in the stores or eat crappy tasting fruit. I find this corporate policy to be excellent business, but a poor policy. I leave the fruit in the store because it’s not worth taking home at any price, but I get the feeling that many people do take it home and try to eat it, and then they don’t complain, which puzzles me. I guess that many, many people just accept the nonsense that corporate America wants to sell them. If grocery stores could sell sweet peaches during August back in the sixties, why can’t they do it now? If it were only a question of effort, I would think that better trucking conditions would make transporting ripe fruit over long distances that much easier, but I don’t think it is a question of effort. I think it is a question of the bottom line. I suspect that lugs of peaches were a hook which stores used to get customers in the door. I doubt they made much money on the fresh peaches, but as people came in to get the peaches, they would also buy a lot of other things as well. So the peaches were a loser to get people in the door and spending money. In the meantime, we are offered bad fruit, hard peaches, and no alternatives. The peach is such a simple fruit–fuzz, flesh, juice, sugar–a hedonistic delight when served ripe.

On the Cuyuni

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To say that I was skeptical of spending a day with a group of people–a tribe?–who lived at over 13,000 feet in the Andes near Cusco, Peru would be an understatement. The whole idea of ethno-tourism rocks my world in a strange way. Harkening back to the anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th century who struck out for parts unknown hoping to find some isolated group of humans who were still living in a stone-age culture, we set out from our hotel in Urubamba to visit a group of people, isolated in a small Andean village outside of Cusco, to find out what their daily routine was like. No matter how you look at this, it just feels odd. We drove out of Urubamba and up into the mountains, meeting a small welcome committee on a high, isolated plain in the middle of the Andes, above the tree line at 13,870 feet. The air is thin and cool, the stubby pines that have been planted in this rarefied atmosphere are just that, stubby. The welcoming committee was gracious, and we all hiked up to a grassy knoll where the village priest or pacco or misayoq or shaman was preparing a blessing or prayer to the Pachamama or earth-mountain spirit. The ritual was very moving and very colorful. I was struck by the theatricality of the experience, the colorful costumes worn by the local people, their willingness to interact with us, the outsiders. They then proceeded to show us how they cut the local peat moss for fuel and invited some of us to use one of their locally made spades that they use for digging, tilling and planting their crops. For lunch we made our way to their village, and a brief, but expected, rainstorm, soaked everything, including us, as we gathered for lunch in the center of their community at the local one-room school. The Peruvian government has invested a certain amount of time and money into modernizing the village and its cooking, and we were offered a well-prepared and tasty lunch served up to restaurant standards of presentation and hygiene, and it was very good. After lunch we had a weaving demonstration, and we met a llama or two, and our day ended with traditional music and dancing. I am still at odds as to what I think about all of these “demonstrations” of local traditions and practices. I know that our presence brings much needed income into the area, but I am also sure that our presence is a kind of cultural contamination that will change everything for these people. On the other hand, better roads and technology have improved the lives of these isolated people, and some things, such as their health, has gotten better. Crops and harvests have improved as well as education and parallel social issues. Yet, there is a nagging question that remains: is “ethno-tourism” morally wrong or ethically acceptable? I don’t think the answer is black and white or simple in any particular way. I really enjoyed meeting these people, seeing where they lived, eating their food, checking out the livestock–llamas are not common in central Texas. In a way, they were working by interacting with us, which, of course, brings prosperity to an otherwise economically depressed area, and although the mountains are breathtaking where they live, no one can eat the scenery and life at 13,000 feet is very tough. Tourism works for these people. Perhaps change is not always as horrible as it seems, and I’m not going to idealize their authentic lives or existence all out of proportion. The problem I have with all of this is not a simple one, but it does have to do with radically different cultures clashing and what the different participants of that clash take away from the experience. There are questions of poverty, technology, language, religion, and politics which must go both unanswered and unexplored due to time and space. I would go back, though, because seeing a totally different culture practice its traditions, whatever they might be. re-ignites a person’s fires of self-awareness. You see, the contemplated life is a life worth living even if questions and doubts linger.

On the Cuyuni

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To say that I was skeptical of spending a day with a group of people–a tribe?–who lived at over 13,000 feet in the Andes near Cusco, Peru would be an understatement. The whole idea of ethno-tourism rocks my world in a strange way. Harkening back to the anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th century who struck out for parts unknown hoping to find some isolated group of humans who were still living in a stone-age culture, we set out from our hotel in Urubamba to visit a group of people, isolated in a small Andean village outside of Cusco, to find out what their daily routine was like. No matter how you look at this, it just feels odd. We drove out of Urubamba and up into the mountains, meeting a small welcome committee on a high, isolated plain in the middle of the Andes, above the tree line at 13,870 feet. The air is thin and cool, the stubby pines that have been planted in this rarefied atmosphere are just that, stubby. The welcoming committee was gracious, and we all hiked up to a grassy knoll where the village priest or pacco or misayoq or shaman was preparing a blessing or prayer to the Pachamama or earth-mountain spirit. The ritual was very moving and very colorful. I was struck by the theatricality of the experience, the colorful costumes worn by the local people, their willingness to interact with us, the outsiders. They then proceeded to show us how they cut the local peat moss for fuel and invited some of us to use one of their locally made spades that they use for digging, tilling and planting their crops. For lunch we made our way to their village, and a brief, but expected, rainstorm, soaked everything, including us, as we gathered for lunch in the center of their community at the local one-room school. The Peruvian government has invested a certain amount of time and money into modernizing the village and its cooking, and we were offered a well-prepared and tasty lunch served up to restaurant standards of presentation and hygiene, and it was very good. After lunch we had a weaving demonstration, and we met a llama or two, and our day ended with traditional music and dancing. I am still at odds as to what I think about all of these “demonstrations” of local traditions and practices. I know that our presence brings much needed income into the area, but I am also sure that our presence is a kind of cultural contamination that will change everything for these people. On the other hand, better roads and technology have improved the lives of these isolated people, and some things, such as their health, has gotten better. Crops and harvests have improved as well as education and parallel social issues. Yet, there is a nagging question that remains: is “ethno-tourism” morally wrong or ethically acceptable? I don’t think the answer is black and white or simple in any particular way. I really enjoyed meeting these people, seeing where they lived, eating their food, checking out the livestock–llamas are not common in central Texas. In a way, they were working by interacting with us, which, of course, brings prosperity to an otherwise economically depressed area, and although the mountains are breathtaking where they live, no one can eat the scenery and life at 13,000 feet is very tough. Tourism works for these people. Perhaps change is not always as horrible as it seems, and I’m not going to idealize their authentic lives or existence all out of proportion. The problem I have with all of this is not a simple one, but it does have to do with radically different cultures clashing and what the different participants of that clash take away from the experience. There are questions of poverty, technology, language, religion, and politics which must go both unanswered and unexplored due to time and space. I would go back, though, because seeing a totally different culture practice its traditions, whatever they might be. re-ignites a person’s fires of self-awareness. You see, the contemplated life is a life worth living even if questions and doubts linger.

On not snacking

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I shouldn’t do it. I shouldn’t even write about it. I shouldn’t watch cooking shows. I shouldn’t own cookbooks, go to grocery stores, check ads in the paper, watch commercials on television, or fantasize about the next cake or pie I’m going to bake. I have enough food at the two meals a day that I eat. (Breakfast is a mess for me because one, I’m not hungry in the morning, and two, eggs make me sick, so no breakfast.) My metabolism has slowed over the last decade and every snack that I eat goes to live on my waste. The sad truth is that when I get the munchies, I just have to endure otherwise I would be the size of the Goodyear blimp. Snacks are not, in and of themselves, evil, it is only snackers, those partaking of snacks who are evil or who have evil in their hearts. Whether it is pizza or cookies, cereal or chocolate cake, snacks are everywhere in our society, and at least three-quarters of the fast food industry is based on snacks–burgers, chicken, tacos, pasta, ribs, pizza–not a stand-up square meal. Fast food joints may offer salads and fruit, a fish sandwich, vegan dishes and the like, but people, most people, go for the snack food. What is so sinister about snacks is that they are, by their very nature, temptation unleashed. Juicy, salty, fatty, sweet, they appeal to our basest desires to sate our darkest desires even when we have no need–none whatsoever. We are, for the most part, a well-fed society. A good majority of us have more than enough food every day. The fact that our food supply is so overwhelmingly prevalent and accessible stands in dark contrast to how the rest of the world lives, or not. We overeat at every turn, and we still snack. Go to the movies and watch people buy their popcorn, candy, and soda just after they have had a meal. They probably just ate at home just before they came to the movie theater. At home, we stock the larder with all kinds of snacks–cookies, crackers, pretzels, pizza, nuggets, chocolate, cereal, pizza, ice cream, candy, and I haven’t even mentioned all the leftovers in the fridge upon which we might graze–hot dogs, hamburgers, meatballs, mashed potatoes, pork chops, steak, lasagna. Don’t get me wrong, I love to snack as much as the next guy, maybe more in fact. I love to stay up late and eat potato chips, really salty, really crunchy. Maybe the all-time best snack every, a little salty, sweet, crunchy, freshly made caramel corn. Not the stuff you buy in the store, but the stuff you pop yourself and mix with your own homemade caramel sauce. Temptation never had it so easy. I guess the problem with snacks is that it is food we just don’t need to eat, but we can’t either stop or help ourselves. Doughnuts, who needs a doughnut? A triple white mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles? Pound cake with frosting? Muffins. Did anyone ever need to eat a muffin, or it’s weird and creepy doppleganger, the frosted cupcake. As a society we are considering legislation to limit the sale of super-sized soft drinks of 64 or more ounces because obesity is such a problem in America. I imagine this begs the question: is our own success killing us because we cannot control, on a personal level, the amount of food that we eat?

On the incident of the stolen pears

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He probably wouldn’t have done it if the friends had not been there to egg him on. At least, that’s what he told me. He went out last evening with those no-good, dirty rotten boys with whom he hangs around, gossiping about girls and sports and cars and whatever else seventeen-year-old boys talk about. Eventually talk got around to something evil, temptation was everywhere, and they decided to steal Old McDonald’s pears off of the pear tree he has at the back of his orchard. You know, we have three pear trees, here, at home, but this was about stealing, so off they went. Under the cover of darkness they scaled the back wall, took the pears, and fled. Funny thing is, Augustine said that after the fact, he didn’t really want the pears, so they gave them to the pigs at his friend Benny’s place. Auggie told me all of this because he was feeling just a wee bit guilty about the whole incident which left him feeling empty and sad. The thrill of stealing, of being bad, was a momentary high which disappeared just a quickly as it had been felt. I didn’t really know what to do–go the authorities, punish him at home, prohibit his interaction with those boys? I was feeling frustrated because I thought he was a good boy with a strong moral character, and he was acting like a common thief. Had I taught him nothing in seventeen years? What about personal responsibility for one’s actions I asked him, but he said that it was Benny and Tomas, that he wasn’t to blame, that he was innocent. He sat there and hung his head while I scolded him. I told him that he was an accomplice and that he could have said “no” and walked away, but Auggie just looked at me as if I knew nothing of the modern world. He put his ear buds in and turned on his Ipod. He was done listening to me. Yet, I insisted that we talk. He put away the music player and pulled out the ear buds, but he looked at me in total disgust. “We didn’t even get caught, and we got rid of the pears. No one saw us,” he said. I was silent for minute while I let him listen to his own words. “Does it matter,” I said, “that we get caught or not? Don’t you know you’ve done something wrong?” Since there were no consequences of any importance, either monetary or disciplinary, I let the matter go. It was already difficult to raise a young man and communicate successfully with him without putting up barriers of ire and pride between us. A couple of weeks later I saw him turn down an invitation to go out with his criminal “friends,” and I asked him why. He muttered a few lame excuses about being tired, or wanting to study his Latin, but I knew that his behavior had changed–he never missed a chance to hang out with the “boys.” I pressed the issue. He said nothing and walked away. Later, I caught him studying, writing a paper, actually. I have no idea what will become of this young man. Like many his age, his communications skills are poor to non-existent, and he keeps a lot of what he is feeling bottled up inside. We probably won’t ever talk about the pears again, but I wonder what he really thinks about his role in the the pear stealing episode. Whether it was his idea or not, he was guilty of not following his own moral perspective, of allowing himself to be led into a bad situation, and of not acting in an ethical way when he knew something bad was happening. Temptation got the best of him, but I think he realized almost immediately that the pleasure he got from stealing was passing and ephemeral and not at all what he expected.