Protein for boards

Ever notice how food blogs (see links to the right, along with the NY Times Recipes for Health column) feature vegetarian dishes heavy on grains and legumes, while restaurant cookbooks (like Mario Batali's, which I have in my kitchen) have you do as little as possible to more expensive ingredients: cheese, roasted fish, meat, etc.? (The more you can spend on ingredients, the less you need to do to them.) Some of this is motivated by health, no doubt, but I also suspect that it's financial. Bloggers have themselves and their audience in mind: poor, busy young adults like myself. Grains and legumes are way cheaper than meat and cheese.

As someone who has bought into the mostly vegetarian, high fiber, lowish salt and lowish fat way of cooking, I occasionally wonder if it always makes sense. I've been running longer distances again lately and came home the other night craving some solid protein. I switched over to turkey burgers for the week: nothing fancy, no seasoning, not blog-worthy, but satisfying and delicious (with some cheese, freshly ground black pepper, and spinach). No doubt some Americans eat too much protein, but trying to get your day's protein entirely from sources less dense in protein per calorie can be a challenge.

Mix it up.

Microwaveable turkey burger kit (school lunch):

Pre-cooked turkey burger, cheddar cheese, black pepper, 

homemade whole-wheat English muffin/bun, tomato slices, bed of spinach.

Test week, stress week

In contrast to the idealistic chatter of last weekend, my mind lately has been in a bacteria-laden fog that perks up only in reference to pathogens or vectors. These days it's fungi and caffeine that make me happiest.

There has been a lot of caffeine, and around the house, each of us has just made our favorite lazy, unhealthy comfort food: hamburger helper, ramen, and Annie's mac and cheese. We could not have planned it better had we tried.

The coolest thing I've learned lately is that we are all covered in bacteria and viruses: treat a bacterial infection with antibiotics and you risk killing off some of your "normal flora" -- which means less competition for the invasive bacteria you're trying to fight! This one is reason why hospitalized patients get bacterial infections after antibiotic treatment -- opportunists rush in to fill a vacuum, so to speak. (Word of the day: iatrogenic, illness caused by medical examination or treatment.)

However, very little of this has changed the way I eat or cook.

It's time to put a stop to this store-bought comfort food with some homemade comfort food extraordinaire, my all-time favorite home dinner: spaghetti and meatballs.

• ~1 lb ground turkey or chicken
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 egg
• 2 slices bread, soaked in milk and then crumbled into small pieces
• 1/4-1/2 cup grated parmesan or other cheese
• salt & pepper
• handful of chopped parsley, optional
• breadcrumbs for rolling
• canola oil

Wash your hands with soap and water and scrub down all cooking surfaces. Remove ingredients from the refrigerator. In a large, clean bowl, mix together the turkey, onion, egg, bread, cheese, parsley, and salt & pepper. Wearing latex gloves, roll mix into balls about 1-1.5" in diameter. Spread out breadcrumbs onto a separate plate: roll each meatball in breadcrumbs and place onto a clean plate. Wash your hands with soap and water.

Heat about 1/4" of oil in a frying pan, then fry the meatballs over medium heat about 10 minutes until cooked through and autoclaved. Use two forks or a pair of tongs to turn the meatballs every few minutes, cooking on all sides. Keep warm in the oven at 200 degrees. Serve over spaghetti with a simple tomato sauce.

 

Order in a world full of chaos.

Kitchen-cabinet meatloaf

I recently visited my very sick grandparents in Florida and had the satisfaction of watching them scarf down my chocolate chip cookies. Inspired by the sight of these wasting octogenarians wolfing down sweets, I wanted to cook more for them. It's the easiest way for me to make people feel good without sitting on the couch holding hands and watching TV. Prescribed or not, I'm convinced that a week of my cooking would help them gain back some of that weight.

Now that I'm in med school, I viewed my grandmother's edematous legs and oxygen sat with a new understanding. I feel an additional responsibility to take care of her and ease her discomfort. Stuck in the apartment, I opted for raiding the cupboards for something to cook. A fun and entertaining challenge.

There may be a touch of old-people preferences in these ingredients but the results are really delicious:

• ~1 lb ground turkey
• 1 egg
• 1-2 of each chopped carrots and/or celery ribs and/or onion
• 1/2 cup chopped prunes (or other dried or fresh fruit or tomatoes)
• 1/2-1 cup breadcrumbs (or 2 slices of bread soaked in milk and mashed up)
• 2 cloves chopped garlic or 2 tbsp garlic powder or Mrs. Dash seasoning
• ketchup
• salt and pepper

Mix everything but the ketchup together in a large bowl and pack into a loaf pan, then brush ketchup over the top. Bake at ~350 degrees for ~1 hr until a knife comes out clean. I served it with some kitchen-cabinet mashed potatoes (homemade, of course).

If you're not in Florida, this would be perfect for a snowstorm or exam-week studying-around-the-clock meal. Stock the fridge!