Making Meals Matter

Recently, I embarked on a most enlightening culinary adventure: delving into Alicia Silverstone’s new book, The Kind Diet.

Her premise: We all have to eat. The modern food industry is one of the most damaging forces in the world today from both environmental and humanitarian standpoints. Why not make food choices that nourish—and heal—our bodies while lessening the negative impact on the earth’s resources and our fellow creatures?

She doesn’t expect everyone to rush headlong into the Kind Diet. It’s totally cool if you just want to dabble in a more vegan-friendly way of eating. Every little bit helps. She provides chapters from how to “flirt” with a vegan lifestyle to ramping it up “superhero” style—vegan with a macrobiotic twist.

She stresses incorporating more whole grains, greens, beans and fruits and vegetables into your diet—no surprises there. Give white flour and sugar the boot. Her recipes and suggestions for a variety of healthy packaged foods help ease the transition into a more mindful way of stuffing your pie hole.

I know what you’re thinking…That’s GREAT for a millionaire movie star who wants to eat like a nouveau hippie, has the funds to buy the weird ingredients, and a kitchen staff to prepare meals for her.

Cost. Convenience. Deep-seated habits and traditions. I get it. Who wants to give up cheese? (I do love my Cabot.) But seriously, when you’re armed with the knowledge of what this stuff does INSIDE your body and what it does to the environment and other living things, can you really ignore that and keep shoving the processed crap down your gullet until it catches up with you and causes all sorts of problems?

I made an effort to eat the Kind Diet way almost exclusively for a few weeks and I felt great, much better than I ever have on any other eating plan. Like I said, it’s been a culinary adventure trying out new grains and greens and learning to enjoy meals without cheese. (I tried one of the fake cheeses—and trust me, you’re better off with NO cheese that that stuff!)

The Scarlet Roasted Vegetables were amazing—the dried apricots added a sweet-tart punch! And it was fun to watch the Mochi—a brown rice pastry—puff up into chewy little poofs which were tasty drizzled with brown rice syrup for a sweet snack or sesame oil and tamari for a savory treat.

I’m attempting to make my everyday diet as vegan as possible. But I still love trying new restaurants and experimenting in the kitchen. I’ll certainly indulge on occasion—if Smoker & the Bandit's BBQ comes calling, hell yeah, I'm answering the door. I’m not going to be that freak at the table with the weird food hangups, although truthfully, I’m beginning to see that our “normal” American eating habits are a lot more gross than the Kind Diet’s.

What you put into your body determines, in large part, the overall quality of your health—something we take for granted WAY too much in our modern culture.

I’m going to make the most of my life, one bite at a time.

Super Bowl Memories

After the kick-off, Mel and I rolled up our sleeves and hit the kitchen to get Super Bowl XLIV’s dinner underway.

Normally, I wouldn’t have given football’s biggest day a second thought but this was no ordinary Super Bowl. New Orleans, my favorite city-away-from-home, was represented and we had to celebrate. (OK, truth be told, we would have made this meal either way—my sister was visiting that weekend, and that’s what we do when she’s here—we eat fabulous food and mix vintage cocktails.)

A recent e-newsletter from the Southern Food and Beverage Museum included recipes from Beau Chene Country Club’s Chef Hosie Bourgeois: BBQ Shrimp and Truffle Bleu Cheese Grits. The lusty spread of ingredients was enough to jumpstart the anticipatory salivating: fresh rosemary, beer, butter, garlic…bleu cheese, truffle oil, heavy cream…

A little Food 101: BBQ Shrimp New Orleans-style is neither cooked on a grill nor coated in sticky red sauce. It’s closer to scampi and may have been based on that dish back in the 1950s when a restaurant customer, who’d had something similar in Chicago, tried to explain it to a chef down south.

Though I’ve tried many versions, this new one may be my favorite for its lush sauce, perhaps because it conjures up one of my other favorite NOLA dishes, Crawfish Etouffee with its thick, slightly tomato-ey gravy. Typically, BBQ shrimp calls for butter, white wine, Worcestershire, lemon juice, hot sauce and a drift of black pepper. And, typically, you’d use heads-on shrimp, which is fattier and also soaks up more sauce, but I’m lazy and I’ll admit I don’t always feel like making a big greasy mess when I eat.

Back to the kitchen: Both dishes practically assembled themselves—all the shrimp ingredients went into a big sauté pan to simmer and the perfectly timed quick cooking grits were a cinch to stir together.

But the results…Five star all the way. Paired with a simple green salad tossed with homemade Meyer lemon dressing and a fresh baguette for dragging through the juice, this was one plateful of intense flavor.

For dessert…what could be better than a sweet Super Bowl win for the Saints, toasted with clinking glasses of Rosa Regale?


Here’s my adaptation of the recipes:
New Orleans-Style BBQ Shrimp

2 lbs large shrimp (peeled or heads-on, your call)
1 C tomato sauce
¼ C Worcestershire sauce
¼ C lemon juice
2 t. Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning (it’s salty, so use to your taste)
1 bay leaf
5 fresh rosemary sprigs (take a big deep whiff of these before you throw them in!)
6 oz beer
4 T butter
2 oz extra virgin olive oil
A hearty dose of fresh ground black pepper
A few lemon slices
---Combine all ingredients (except shrimp) in a large sauté pan and simmer for ten minutes.
Add shrimp and cook for about 3-5 minutes, till done.


Truffle Bleu Cheese Grits

8 oz quick grits
8 oz heavy cream
2 C water
1 oz white truffle oil
3 oz bleu cheese crumbles
½ tsp salt

---Bring cream and water to a boil. Whisk in grits and salt. Stir over low heat for about five minutes. Remove from heat and stir in truffle oil and bleu cheese.

Lucky Clover

In the summertime especially, New Orleans truly is hotter than hell.
We’d had a busy day: New Orleans Glassworks (http://www.neworleansglassworks.org/) in the Arts District and the riverfront Southern Food and Beverage Museum (http://www.southernfood.org/) in the morning; la petite Absinthe Museum of America (http://www.absinthemuseumofamerica.com/) on the Rue Royale in the afternoon, lots of walking in between.

I wanted to get back to the Dauphine and hit the pool before succumbing to a couple of frosty Hurricanes in the cool darkness of May Baily’s.

Mel wasn’t going anywhere till we got our hubcap-fried burger at the Clover Grill. (http://www.clovergrill.com/)
We perched on a couple of red deco barstools at the counter. Apologetically, the cook said the A/C wasn’t working. (What did it matter at that point? I thought. Just bring us our Co-Colas.)

The guy two seats over from me could’ve been Vince Vaughn, circa 20 years ago. Except for the fact that he was plugged into his iDistraction, watching something, oblivious to my appraisal, we could have tripped backwards in time a little bit.

I’m succumbing to the sultry stickiness, mind adrift, as we sip our icy Cokes and take in our surroundings, a languorous French Quarter late afternoon. We watch the hubcap sizzle on the hot griddle, our little burger steaming away under there, betting it’s going to kick Port of Call’s chunky ass.

Yep. I’m afraid it did, Port of Call fans. It was thin but substantial, perfectly cooked and manageable—it didn’t fall apart in our hands. Between that, the Coke, and the hot oily, salty fries, we found ourselves in a little corner of greasy spoon heaven.