Cooking Adventures - Linguine with Ratatouille Sauce

This morning I was looking online for some new recipes to try. I decided to look at the Food & Wine Web site and found a lot of great things. What appealed to me most was a Linguine with Ratatouille Sauce. Ratatouille is essentially a big mess of vegetables that traditionally include eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, and tomatoes. Apparently ratatouille is originally French, but the recipe I found gave it an Italian twist. Because I think I might have been Italian in a past life—thus explaining my love of Italian food—I decided to give it a try.

For the most part I followed the recipe, but I did make a few changes. Because I don't like things too tangy, I omitted the vinegar. Because I wanted just a little bit of spice to the dish, I added crushed red pepper flakes. After I finished cooking and started eating, I realized that there were a few things I could have changed about the dish. In the first place, I should have diced the vegetables a little smaller. But hunger and impatience led me to give the veggies a larger dice. They probably also could have been sauteed a little longer before adding the crushed tomatoes. The recipe didn't call for peeling the eggplant, but the skin seemed a bit too tough and rubbery for my liking. Maybe it would have been better if I sauteed it a little longer, but I think that when I make it again, I might try peeling it.

All in all the dish was really good and the flavors were great. The only thing lacking was probably my technique, but at least I know where I sort of went wrong so I know how to correct it in the future. The dish was really filling and much heartier than I expected it would be. I have a feeling it would make a great pasta for the fall. The day today was a bit chilly, cloudy, gray, and rainy. So it felt like the perfect day for this kind of dish. It definitely hit the spot.

Cooking Adventures - Tofu Fajitas

Loyal readers of this blog probably know that I love to cook and I occasionally like to experiment with something new. A few weeks ago a few of my co-workers and I went to a fellow co-worker's home for dinner. Her husband did all of the cooking. With a vegan and a vegetarian in the group he made tofu fajitas. It was so good and yummy that I thought I would try to make it for myself. The only thing is that I didn't have an actual recipe for tofu fajitas so I was more or less making things up as I went along.

Tofu tends to need some extra flavor, so I had to put together a marinade. I made a simple marinade of soy sauce, garlic, ginger, crushed red pepper, and black pepper. While that was sitting I sauteed some onions and red bell peppers in olive oil. Then I added the tofu and sauteed it all together. The tofu seemed like it was still missing something—I didn't make enough marinade for the amount of tofu I had—but I found some taco seasoning at the back of my spice cabinet and I added a little bit of that to the dish. I sauteed it for a while, turned down the heat, and just let it simmer. I was still a little nervous because I had no idea what I was doing, but at least it smelled like fajitas.

When it was all done, I dished it onto some tortillas and topped it with cheese and sour cream. It was really good and really yummy. The tofu tasted great and the sauteed onions and peppers were really sweet and I think they really made the dish. I was really proud of myself!

Don't Tread On Our Obesity

Over the past few weeks, I've been caught up in a new reality show, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. The premise of the show is that Jamie Oliver, a British chef, goes to Huntington, West Virginia, on a mission to improve the health of the people in that city. In 2008 Huntington was named the unhealthiest city in America—45 percent of the adults were obese, 21 percent had heart disease, and 12 percent had diabetes. Oliver's mission is to changes people's attitudes toward the food they eat and to help them realize the physical consequences of an unhealthy diet. First Lady Michelle Obama has a similar mission with her campaign to battle childhood obesity. What is shocking is that anyone could have a negative response to these types of campaigns.

Michelle Obama is trying to change the lives of children (and parents) by encouraging them to eat healthy, fresh food and to move and exercise more. The idea seems simple and obvious. If you eat a healthy diet and stay active, you'll live a healthier life. The campaign seems so harmless; it seems altruistic, even. However, in this political climate you can't rule out the fact that people will be outraged by such a campaign. People complain that no one, not a person let alone the government, should be involved with or have a say in how they live their lives or how they raise their children. I call it the don't tread on me or the get off my lawn response. It's too obvious to state that Michelle Obama is not the first first lady to have a campaign to improve the lives of the children in America. Barbara Bush had a literacy campaign. Nancy Reagan had her Just Say No to Drugs campaign. (However, I think the Republican party of today misunderstood that to mean Just Say No to every sensible policy to come out of the Obama administration.) So you wonder if the people who complain about Michelle Obama's campaign would also complain about Bush's or Reagan's campaigns. Or do they simply have a problem with this particular first lady? Let's be perfectly honest. Much of the reason why we have such a hostile political climate right now is because a black man and a black woman are in the White House. There goes the neighborhood, there goes the country, so many people seem to think. But that is an entirely different blog post all together. Back to the food revolutions...

What I find so shocking is that people can be so opposed to teaching children healthy habits. And how can people possibly argue against improving school lunch standards? People complain that it is too expensive and that the federal and state governments should be spending the money on more important things. Really? Spending money on the health of children is not important? It's not worth it to improve the heath of children who weight over 200 pounds at 10 or 12 years old? This is a country that spends billions of dollars to invade, destroy, and "rebuild" foreign countries, yet people are morally opposed to spending money on health and education. That is downright sad and pathetic.

People complain about heath care reform and that it is not necessary. But if you look at the people around you, you'll soon realize that so many people in this country are in such poor health. Yes, we need more jobs in this country, but if you want people to work 8 hours a day for 5 days a week, you need to keep them fit and healthy. A healthier workforce is a stronger, more efficient workforce. When children eat healthy diets and stay active, generally that means they will be healthier and able to spend more time in school and to take advantage of the education they'll need to compete in the world. When people like Jamie Oliver and Michelle Obama are trying to educate parents and children, who are they harming?