Tag: food

Through the Eyes of a Stranger: American Eating Habits

~ Clarissa ~ 59 Comments

This post is inspired by one written by Z.

There are many eating habits shared by North Americans that I find to be very strange. Here are some of them:

1. Eating what looks like bird seed for breakfast and believing that this ultra-sugary dried up artificial rubbish is good for one’s health and is even fit to be fed to children.

2.Eating while walking around or, even worse, running from one appointment to another. For many people, it’s a point of a weird sort of pride that they never have time to sit down to eat and gobble down their dinner from a can while standing over a sink. The truth is, though, that not having time for a normal, sit-down meal doesn’t mean you are hard-working. It means you don’t know how to manage your time, and this is hardly anything to be proud of.

At the Atwater market in Montreal. Is there anything better than fresh fruit?

3. Feeding the worst, most unhealthy crap to little children. I was at a wedding recently, and the food was pretty great. We had a nice salad and a number of good, healthy food options. The kids, however, had a plate of chicken nuggets (a vile, disgusting thing that no kid should even know about) and French fries plopped in front of them. Why fries and nuggets should be considered appropriate food for kids is baffling to me. If anybody should be fed in a healthy way it’s children.

4. Giving kids juice that is made from concentrate, is extremely high in sugar content, and has been stuck on a shelf for God knows how long while thinking that this is somehow healthy. Buying an orange or an apple and squeezing your own juice or making your own apple puree takes no time whatsoever, so there is no excuse to give children the concentrate garbage instead. And then people look at these poor kids who are hopped-up on sugar and convince themselves they have ADD and have to be medicated.

5. Choosing the hottest possible weather to gather around a barbecue to grill stuff. If there is ever a time one can’t possible feel like a piece of grilled meat, it has to be high heat. Not so for the Americans.

This is just a tiny portion of the enormous sea food counter at my mother's favorite grocery store in Montreal. If only I had something similar where I live!

6. Smothering salads in heavy, very salty sauces. All a fresh salad needs is a teaspoon of olive oil and maybe a few drops of balsamic vinegar. Pouring a heavy sauce that has been stuck on a shelf for months or years on top of fresh vegetables simply kills the vegetables.

7. Thinking that huge chunks of barely shredded lettuce and a sad piece of cucumber here and there make a salad.

8. This is, of course, a matter of personal preference but there are some American foodstuffs that I find to be just bizarre. Peanut butter and beef jerky are my favorite examples. How can anybody eat that? I love both peanuts and beef with a passion, so it saddens me that these great foods should be tortured into such weird concoctions.

9. Hamburgers are delicious if made right. But they are never fit to be eaten in public. Unless, of course, you eat them with a fork and a knife like I do. 🙂

10. Thinking that if you combine the contents of a few cans together, you’ll come up with dinner. One’s main sources of nutrition should never come from cans or boxes. Even if it seems cheaper to make, say, mashed potatoes by using a box mix than real potatoes (actually, it isn’t cheaper at all), think of how much money you’ll spend on a doctor after you eat this crap for a while.

It isn’t surprising that nowhere else in the world are you going to meet nearly as many obese people as here in the US. If you have had a chance to spend any time at all traveling abroad, you can’t deny there is huge issue with obesity in this country that is non-existent in other places. And if you look at these eating habits,you can’t be very surprised. It’s fashionable nowadays to pretend that the high rates of obesity that plague this country have nothing to do with what and how people eat. Certain pseudo-liberals especially love to engage in this willful blindness.

Of course, the quality of food is also pretty abysmal everywhere in the US except, maybe, the really big cities on the East Coast. My sister and her family were recently on a trip to Florida and they simply couldn’t eat anything. They tried all kinds of restaurants but the food was uneatable for their Canadian palates and stomachs. When I compare farmers’ markets in Montreal with the farmer’s market here in Edwardsville, the land of farmers, I almost turn green with envy.

Clarissa’s Red Mullet With Spicy Salsa: A Recipe

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

Red mullet is a great fish that tastes and looks beautiful. The salsa that I made to accompany it can be used with a variety of dishes or as a dip.

Clean your fish by removing the scales and the innards. Red mullet’s liver is a delicacy, so if your fish comes with a liver, consider leaving it inside. Of course, if you are not a liver person, then just get rid of it. (What a waste, though!) Salt and pepper your fish, sprinkle it with some lemon juice and put it in a frying pan with some olive oil:

Isn't it pretty?

You will have to fry the fish about 2.5-3 minutes on each side. In the meanwhile, place a big ripe tomato, half a bunch of cilantro, and several cloves of garlic into a blender. I used young garlic and it made the salsa all that much better.

It’s up to you how chunky you want the salsa to be, so you decide how long you blend the ingredients.

I serve the mullet with fluffy Moroccan couscous and pour the salsa on top of the fish. It’s very easy to make, delicious, and looks great.

This is the end result

Clarissa’s Chicken Soup With Rice: A Recipe

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

As I mentioned before, I prefer to make complex, multi-ingredient recipes that take hours to prepare. However, sometimes one feels like creating a simple, easy-to-make old favorite. In our family, chicken soup with rice is one of such staples.

The most difficult part of making this soup is preparing chicken stock. The stock is central to this dish’s success and can under no circumstances be substituted with the store-bought kind. To make really good chicken stock (that you can use for all kinds of soups, not just this one), take some chicken meat on the bone. I only had drumsticks in the house, so I took four of them, removed the skin(nobody in hour house likes the skin) and put them into a large pan filled with water.

This is how it needs to look before you start cooking

I also added a medium-sized onion, two small bay leaves, and several peppercorns. After this is done, put the pan on high heat. It is very important that your stock never starts to boil. This is why you need to hang around as it heat up. Grey foam will start appearing on top of the stock, and you will have to keep removing it with a slotted spoon. Granted, that’s a drag, but the more foam you remove, the clearer your stock will end up looking. After the stock comes almost to the boiling point, lower the heat, add some salt, dice a carrot and add it to the stock. Now, your stock will need to remain on low heat for about 90 minutes.

This is what your stock will look like after it’s done:

The stock was so clear that I had trouble taking a picture without my reflection appearing in it

Don’t forget to remove the bay leaf and the onion after the stock is ready.

While the stock is cooking, boil some eggs and make some white rice the way you regularly make it. Make sure the rice isn’t mushy. Put a tablespoonful of rice, half a boiled egg, some chopped fresh cilantro into a bowl. Add the stock. Throw in a couple of croutons. And you are ready to eat.

Pretty, huh?

Notice how clear the stock looks. You can barely even see it. This means it was made correctly and enough foam was removed in the process.

This soup can easily be eaten as a main course.

Enjoy!